Deserted
Matthew 14: 13-21
Click here to view the full service for August, 2, 2020.
As someone who was raised going to church and who has been a pastor for a while now, it’s easy to think that you have certain stories down. After hearing something so many times it’s hard to imagine that it might have anything new to teach us. Today’s story is a case in point. Each of the gospel writers have some version of this event, where Jesus takes seemingly scant resources and feeds a multitude. Some of them like it so much, they use it twice. Of course, there’s a bit of irony there, because one of the things that the feeding of the multitude has to show us is how limited and limiting our imaginations can be when it comes to what God is up to in the world; what God is up to in our very own lives.
Our reading picks up with something of a tease. “Now when Jesus heard this,” Matthew tells us, “he withdrew from there.” Heard what? Withdrew from where? Immediately before this passage, Matthew recounts the events that brought about the beheading of John the Baptist and how Herod was afraid that Jesus was, in fact, John raised from the dead. I suspect that was pretty awful news to hear. According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus and John were cousins, close in age to each other. What is clear in every gospel is that John and Jesus are forever tied to one another by John’s baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river. Every account of Jesus’ earthly ministry begins in that river with John, where the Spirit arrives to reveal the singular nature of Jesus’ relationship to God as God’s anointed Son. It was Jesus who would have sought John out, maybe heard about what he was doing out in the wilderness. And while it was the Spirit that came down in that moment, it was John who facilitated the encounter. John’s importance to Jesus cannot be overestimated.
My first year of seminary wasn’t an easy one. We uprooted our entire life with a toddler and dropped into a community unlike any we’d ever known it quite that way. It was hard navigating new relationships while living in student housing with a baby on the way and a developing sense of myself and this vocation I felt called to. In many ways, we felt very alone and out of place. Then I started to get to know David. He was married to one of the preaching professors and was working as the interim Dean of Students until he found his own pastoral call to a local church. He came along side me and encouraged me through that first year. He became a friend to me when I really needed one. Toward the end of it he was called by a local congregation to be their pastor, and talked to me about doing my ministry practicum work with him there. In early July, we drove back to Denver to have Grace baptized at our home church. While we were having breakfast, I got a call from a seminary friend. David was dead. He had been killed in a head-on collision when an oncoming driver fell asleep and crossed the center line. David’s boys were only slightly older than my girls. I had been left without my mentor, but they had been left without their father. The whole thing was devastating. I know how hard it was to lose someone like that so suddenly. I can only imagine what is was like for Jesus to lose John not only suddenly, but so violently. No wonder he wanted to withdraw. I know that I did.
The last we heard from Matthew; Jesus had been in his hometown when he got the news. He had gone back to Nazareth, but all they could see in him was who he had been, not what he had become. Between that and the news about John, it’s pretty understandable why he’d hop in a boat and try to get away from it all. Only he couldn’t. The crowds followed him. They heard where he was headed and they took off on foot to meet him there. What follows is reason number five thousand why Jesus is Jesus, and I am not. Because if I had just been rejected in my hometown and learned that my spiritual mentor had been violently killed to satisfy some perverse request, I don’t think I’d be too happy about having my downtime invaded by a needy crowd. I’d be looking for a way to duck out on them. But then I, clearly, am not Jesus. Jesus steps off the boat and has compassion for the crowd. It might be closer to the truth to say that he found the condition of the crowd gut-wrenching; their need for healing, their persistence in seeking him out, even in this deserted place that he had come to. He stepped off that boat raw, hurting, feeling every bit as desolate as the place that he’d come to. Only it wasn’t deserted. He encountered in the crowd something like what he himself was feeling. He couldn’t duck out on them. In fact it may just be that he needed that crowd every bit as much as they needed him in that moment. When our pain turns us inward, we become the center and our best option is to feel sorry for ourselves. But Jesus lets his pain turn him outward. Instead of isolating him, it becomes the very thing that connects him to the people that come seeking him out. And when that happens, healing takes place.
The difference between Jesus and his disciples is that as they survey the landscape coming off that boat, Jesus sees the people. The disciples see the deserted place that they intended to go. In other words, they see what they were expecting, what they understood. Jesus sees the reality in front him for what it is. So, for the disciples, in this deserted place, they see the people not for the pain they bring and their own need for healing, but for the problem that they represent. It’s a practical concern. There is no food here. The people need to be sent away to get themselves something to eat, or things will get ugly. That is how they see the situation. It isn’t just that they lack imagination, that’s certainly the case, it’s that all they see is the lack. Emptiness. Desert.
Sometimes it feels like that is where we are at right now. This pandemic has thrown us for a loop. We cannot see how it’s going to play out. We were told to take dramatic action to flatten the curve of infection and lower the number of potential deaths caused by the virus. And we were promised that if we did, things should be able to incrementally return to normal. Only that isn’t what has happened. Instead the efforts toward and commitment to mitigation were undermined by a host of other concerns. People didn’t take it seriously. They thought it was a hoax. They didn’t want to be told to wear a mask. The list goes on and on. And now we’ve seen a surge in infections, a rise in deaths, and we’re beginning to realize that we haven’t got a clue about what the future holds. We are at a loss.
When Jesus suggests that the people don’t need to go away, but that the disciples should give them something to eat. The response is telling. Did you notice. The first words are, “we have nothing.” Emptiness. Desert. Lack. Nothing. Well, they correct themselves, nothing by five loaves and two fish. Wait. That’s not nothing. That something. Oh, but it’s not nearly enough. Hardly enough to feed a crowd. This is what happens when we see things only in terms of our own expectations and what we understand. This is what happens when we see only the problem, and not the people. Only what we’re sure that we lack, and not whatever it is that we have to give. I’m sure some of the disciples thought, “I’ve got to take care of me and mine. I’ve got to feed myself and my friends first before I go giving what little I have to a crowd of strangers.” I get it. That’s where we are. That’s where we find ourselves. There’s a lot of that going around these days.
Only it just so happens that God does some of God’s best work in the desert. Just ask Moses. It just so happens in the desert of our souls, when our limited imaginations think we have nothing to give, Jesus sees something that he can work with. Jesus sees something that he can take, bless, break and then return to us that we might feed the hunger of this crowded world of ours.
Today we come to the table to remember that, to be reminded that when we are tempted to focus on all the problems that come from being in a deserted place, Jesus sees a people who are hungry and gives himself to us that we might in turn give ourselves to others. Jesus sees the gut-wrenching situation we are in and doesn’t turn away. Instead he heals us, he feeds us, turning what little we think we have into an abundance that is beyond our imagining. At the table we discover that we have more than enough. Alleluia, amen.