The People Are Hungry
The People Are Hungry
Matthew 14:13-21
As I write this sermon, hundreds of thousands of people—men, women, elderly and young—are on the brink of starvation in Gaza. Nearly thirty thousand have died in bombings since October, ten thousand of them children. On October 7th, over a thousand people—men and women, elderly and young—died in a wave of terror attacks. All these people—Gazans and Israelis—are victims of violence that comes from the heart of human darkness. The attackers on each side justified their actions based on the attrocities that preceded them. Debate such things all you will, thousands upon thousands of people have been sacrificed in the name of vengeance.
Before we get too “holier than thou,” we should consider the civilian toll of the wars in which we have been involved. In Iraq, betwen 280 and 315 thousand Iraquis died. In Afghanistan, 70,000 civilians died. In Vietnam, an estimated 2,000,000 civilians died. And, in Japan, in between August 6 and August 9, 1945,105,00 civilians died and another 99,000 were severely injured—all in three days. Wars are terrible things.
Of course, in every conflict, there are the individuals who come to symbolize the conflicts. It’s the “evil” opposition leaders—Gadhaffi, Hussein, Hitler. It’s the protestor who sets himself on fire, protesting the plight of the Palestinians. It’s the pictures and videos of the individuals who were dragged into captivity by Hamas. Against the backdrop of huge, sweeping actions our eyes are caught by these individuals, trapped in something far bigger than themselves. At this level, we suffer with every such person. At this level, we shudder at the ruthlessness of particular leaders.
Human beings do terrrible thigns to one another. And then, having suffered, we feel wholly justified in doing terrible things to someone—anyone—though rarely the people who did the terrible thing in the first place. Every act of vengeance leads to another act of vengeance and on and on and on.
Even before Jesus, John, the Baptist, in his wilderness days, screamed at the people to change their ways. When push came to shove for John, he called on people to live differenty. If you have two shirts, share one with someone who has none. If you have food, share it with someone who has no food. If you are a tax collector, stop cheating people. If you’re a soldier, even though you have the power, don’t use that power to extort people or to falsely accuse them. “Repent,” says John. “Stop abusing one another and refusing to help one another and taking advantage of each other.” Those things plant the seeds of violence.
Having said all that, John falls victim to the worst of human nature—the abuse of power and the abdication of responsibility— that he had decried. In the long prophetic tradition, it was the job of every prophet to speak the truth to power. The other part of that tradition was that those in power tended to beat the tar out of the prophets in order to silence them. The person in power in John’s world was Herod Antipas, the son of Herod, who was essentially the king of Galilee. Herod had abused his power to steal his step-brother’s wife. John wasted no time in calling Herod out in the most public ways imaginable.
Herod wants to kill John but he’s afraid of what people will think. This self-interested fear—the thought that the crowds might turn on him— distinguishes Herod from leaders like Putin in our world who kill their oppostion without a thought of any repurcussions. However, things get murky fast. Herodias, the apple of Herod’s eye, has a daughter—an early teen. As a birthday present, the daughter dances at Herod’s party, and if anyone thinks she was doing ballet, they’re missing the jist of this moment. Herod, who like so many men of power can’t keep his lust in check, promises the daughter anything she wants. Prompted by her mother, who is at least as conniving as Herod, the daughter asks for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Herod delivers that head. In the grand tradition of powerful people, Herod and Herodias buy into the notion that the best way to silence the truth is to murder the truthteller.
John’s disciples come, take John’s body, and bury it. Then, they go looking for Jesus to tell him. Ask yourself, “Are they telling Jesus so that he can lead a vengeful response, so that he can take John’s place in being the prophet, so that the revolution against the powers that be can begin?” Or, maybe, having lost their beloved teacher, do they simply feel the need to share their grief with Jesus?
What does Jesus do? He withdraws to a quiet place to be by himself. We don’t know what he was feeling and thinking but we can speculate. Like us when we hear about violence that strikes close to home, he had to think, “If this could happen to him, then this could happen to me.” The precedent has been set. In particular, he had to be thinking that if this is what happens to a truth teller like John, then he, as a kindred truth teller, was likely to suffer the same fate. The authorities weren’t going to like what he was saying any more than what John was saying, after all. Finally, there had to be the sheer personal loss of what had happened. In every act of violence, there are the family and friends of the victim who are grieving someone whom they dearly loved. Jesus knew his cousin, John, well, and knew what a senseless loss John’s death was.
Jesus barely gets to his quiet place before the crowd catches wind of where Jesus is. Jesus sees them coming. Jesus could have just found a better hiding place. Jesus could have been a power hungry leader and seen the opportunity before him. He could have used his bully pulpit in the moment to whip the crowd up and turn them around and make them the foot soldiers for an assault on Herod’s palace. Instead, Jesus acts out of his compassion for the crowd. He heals their sick and he teaches them lessons about things far deeper than revenge. This was the man, after all, who taught people to love their enemies, to forgive, and to turn the other cheek. “Watch me, “Jesus might have said, “This is how that’s done.”
What did Jesus do with his grief? He turned it into compassion. That really is an extraordinary thing. Shakespeare wrote about people turning their grief into vengeance. We all know the temporary rush of turning a moment of loss into rage-filled action. Then, we know the horror of stepping back and asking ourselves with a gasp, “What have I just done?” Jesus is offering us an alternative to such things. When you’ve been hurt, use that energy to help others who have been hurt. When the world has been outrageously unfair, claim the power that you have to not let that world and their unfairness dictate your next choice. Rise above that. Be better than that. Rather than adding to the waves of vengeance around you, turn the tide by acting with compassion.
Finally, the day is ending. The sun is setting. Jesus has to be exhausted. The disciples, though, have mostly just been interested spectators. As soon as they heard about John, they wondered what Jesus would do. To tell you the truth, they were more than a little miffed when Jesus just took off and left them: “What about us?” When he returned, though, they were back on board. “Did you see what Jesus did with that leper?” “Did you hear that story he just told?” “He really is amazing, you know…”
Then, they decided that it was time to give Jesus a little advice. (Before we judge them too harshly, I’ll confess that I’ve offered plenty of unsolicited advice to all sorts of people.) Maybe Jesus was just tired or something. It had been a long day. But, he didn’t seem to be recognizing that the evening was coming on fast and this crowd needed to get going. “Someone should point this out to him.” “I’m not going to tell him. You tell him!” “It was your idea. You do it!”
“Um…Jesus. I don’t want to seem critical here but you know, these people are getting hungry and it’s getting dark. You should really tell them to move along. You should tell them to go home. You should really do something here!” Those may not be the exact words but we’re in the “zipcode.” There’s always someone ready to lead “the advice committee.”
Again, let’s be honest and own that we’ve all been the disciples here. We see a need. We fold our hands and close our eyes and bow our heads and offer up a prayer that sounds a lot like the disciples’ words: “Well, God, I wanted to take a few moments of my precious time to share a few insights with you and, with all due respect, tell you what you should do.”
Give the disciples partial credit. They recognized the needs of others. We can give ourselves the same credit. We see the people who are suffering around us. We watch reports from Gaza and Ukraine. We don’t need to be more aware of a world of hurt and needs. Rather, the need—for the disciples and for us—is to take the next step. Once we recognize the needs of the world around us, the next step isn’t to tell God what to do. The next step is to pool our resources and our wisdom and actually do something, ourselves. Without hesitation, Jesus looks the disciples in the eye and says, “You should feed them.” “You’re right, the people are hungry. What are you going to do about it.” They look Jesus in the eye and say, “We don’t have enough!” “We couldn’t possibly do enough.” Again, they are us. We are them.
“You do something.” According to our text, when they finally do something, the door is opened for miracles. People are connected to one another in new ways. The crowd is sorted into small groups. In those small groups, people share. When people share, it turns out there is more than enough. Five loaves and two fish wasn’t much. However, if they weren’t willing to share what they had then there was never going to be room for a miracle.
When people are hungy, faithful people turn compassion into action. When love comes to life, who knows what can happen?