The Rest of the Story (Part 1)
The Rest of the Story (Part 1)
Matthew 14:13-21
You know, there’s always a story before the story, right? There’s the story that you know and then there is the full story. I remember when I was a kid, Paul Harvey made a career out telling, join me if you’re old, “The rest of the story!” And if you don’t know who Paul Harvey is, now you have your discussion starter question for when you are hanging out with your elders.
In the case of our text for this morning, there is a story which precedes our story. In fact, this story before the story, like many stories before the story, invites us to see the story in a whole new light. Our text is so familiar. Who doesn’t know about the feeding of the five thousand. My challenge to you this morning is to listen differently.
When you look at a text in the Bible, you need to look at it in context. Here’s what immediately precedes the feeding of the five thousand. Herod, the son of the Herod who was in charge when Jesus was born, is ruling over Israel. He’s super paranoid (like father, like son!) John the Baptist has caught his eye as a threat. In a move that should surprise no one who has spent time thinking about John the Baptist, John has no problem declaring the truth about Herod to everyone within earshot (never a wise thing to do around paranoid people!) Here’s the “skinny…” Herod was married. However, like many men of power and wealth, (let’s go with the Broadway line here,) “He had never been satisfied!” So, he decided to have an affair with his sister-in-law. (Let’s all list as many rich and powerful men who’ve made dumb decisions like that as we can in the next five seconds. Ready begin…) John sizes this up and yells, “Adulterer!” Herod sizes things up and yells, “Arrest him!” John, the not so diplomatic truth teller ends up in jail. (He’s hardly the first or the last to land there for speaking the truth to power!)
Herod really, really wanted to kill John. As John rotted in his prison cell, Herod’s birthday approached. Of course, the birthday parties for rich and powerful men can quickly turn into extravaganzas. This one really wasn’t that spectacular…except…the entertainment for the night was…the daughter of the woman with whom he was having the affair, his brother’s daughter, was the entertainment. Rumor has it, she danced like no-one was watching (or perhaps like the most rich and powerful guy around was watching.) How creepy is that? Rumor also has it that Herod was bombed out of his mind. Swept away by the dancing, or addled by too much alcohol or…and I’m going with option three…he was awash in the excitement of the plan that he had hatched with his sister-in-law. The plan? Be so excited about the dancing that you offer the dancer whatever she wants. And you, because you are conniving and powerful, know that the dancer has already been coached by her mother on her answer. That girl might as well have pulled a 3 X 5 card from her tunic and read the words out loud: “Umm…I would like…uh…the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” I’m kind of thinking she threw in the “on a platter” part on her own.
So, the very first story told in the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is the story of John’s death. It’s the story of the multi-generational abuse of power (the kind of thing some people call, “Original Sin, no matter how un-original is might seem!) It’s the story of how one bad choice leads to another bad choice until there is just one giant crescendo of awfulness that surrounds everyone. It’s the story that broke Jesus’ heart (at least one of the stories.) How could people be so awful? How could they be so destructive? Why does the world so often destroy those who tell the truth?
(Just as an aside here…do you remember when Jesus is standing before Pilate after his arrest and Pilate asks him, “What is truth?” Do you remember Jesus’ answer? Don’t hurt yourself trying to remember it. He didn’t answer at all. He just stood there and stared back at Pilate. I like to think that maybe, just maybe, he was thinking to himself, “I could try to tell the truth but look where that got John.” It’s possible in this life to be so powerful that almost no one will ever tell you the truth and when someone does, you can just get rid of them. That’s how the world works, right?
John’s disciples recover what’s left of John. Despite the fact that they are crushed and their hearts are broken, they bury John with great dignity. Then, they go to Jesus and tell him the story of what happened. Jesus’ cousin was dead, the man who baptized him. Suddenly, Jesus had to feel terribly vulnerable and totally alone.
That’s just the story before the story but it is also the story that shapes everything. Jesus has witnessed the worst of this world. He has been touched by the worst of this world at the most personal level. The story of Jesus is not a tale about a guru in a cave. The story of Jesus is not the story of some monk who invites us to leave the brokenness of this world behind. No…God so loved the world—the real world— that God became one of us. Jesus so loved the world that he refused to give in or give up. He practiced hope and courage on a daily basis and he did that in a horribly broken world. He sought to show us all a different way of living in this world when it looked for all the world like the only worthy goal was to amass as much wealth and power as possible so that maybe you wouldn’t have to hear the truth and maybe you might be able to censor or arrest or even offer the head of your enemy on a platter to some hot dancer. (Don’t think beheadings here. Just think of the terrible things that men with wealth and power have done to women who looked them in the eye and said, “No!”)
Here’s why all this matters. If we could get away with thinking, “Well, if my world was as perfect as Jesus’ world was” or If my life was as comfortable as his” or “If I knew that I was God’s favorite son or daughter, then I’d be special and spiritual, too.” We don’t get to do that. I am overwhelmed on a daily basis by the shootings in the city, in neighborhoods and on our expressways, and by how often the victims are just random bystanders or children in their homes. I’m horrified by the deaths of 13 servicemen and women as they sought to save lives in Kabul all at the hands of a suicide bomber who didn’t care who he killed or maimed. There is an endless supply of evidence of just what a mess our world is. Throw in hurricanes, wildfires and COVID and we just end up overwhelmed. When we are overwhelmed, we tend to get lost or stuck.
This is the theme of chapter 14 of the Gospel of Matthew. What are we supposed to do when it looks for all the world like chaos is winning? What are we supposed to do when we are so overwhelmed that we are mired in “compassion fatigue?” (Been there and done that!) What are we supposed to do when the world seems nearly devoid of any sign of the presence of God? At the beginning of our text, Jesus offers us an answer: walk away.
Jesus is heartbroken and all he wants is a little time to himself. Can you blame the man? As is so often the case, though, that is not the plan. Of course, it’s a good thing to get some time to yourself. In fact, it might be so worthwhile that you might want to allow for some of that time every day. It’s important enough to me that I trade sleep for an early morning walk, day in and day out. The thing is, though, that’s not what Jesus is doing. He’s had it and he’s calling time out. He’s in danger of giving in and giving up. (Remember, the man is human after all. Like us, he struggled.)
We take this as a sign of humanity because we’ve all been there and done that, too. Or, maybe I’m the only one. Faced with grief and loss, we head for the hills. Faced with humanity at their worst, we shake our heads and walk away (if, that is, we have the privilege and the power to do so.) I saw this happen this past week when yet another child was shot. One of the community activists was there—a really good guy who has been there for a long time—and he couldn’t take it any more. He walked away. Had I been there, COVID or no COVID, I would have thrown an arm around his shoulder and at least tried to comfort him. If you are paying any attention at all to the world around you at any level—global, national, village-wide, or you just look at your family, you haven’t just been tempted to walk away, you’ve started walking.
Then, what happens? God finds you. Well, actually, people who need you find you which is one of God’s sneakiest ways to draw us back in. It as if God says, “You realize that I know how to restart a broken heart, right? I made that heart in your chest in the first place!” In Jesus’ case, the crowds search for him until they find him. For me, when I’ve had it and I just want to go for a walk and get away as fast as I can, that’s when my phone rings, or my mind drifts to the person that I’ve just realized I need to call, or, on one particularly exasperated afternoon, I went for a peaceful walk and found a body instead. Suddenly, the terms of the moment shifted from “Woe is me…” to “Whoa! How am I going to keep the kids from finding this body and still get the police here?”
That’s how it works. (Not necessarily the body part…I’ll grant that.) How it works is people with genuine, heartfelt needs find you, despite your best efforts and… surprise… you care again. You may kick the dust in front of you. You may roll your eyes. However, as soon as you start to help, you realize that the person who is being helped and maybe even saved…is you. You are being saved from a fate worse than death. You are being saved from walking through life and not caring about anyone or anything.
You know the story here. Every sick person from miles around comes looking for Jesus. (Can you imagine what a sight that was—a bunch of sick and wounded souls who against all the odds were holding onto hope and practicing courage on a daily basis? Why that might look strikingly like the Kingdom of God!) Every person whose soul was empty comes looking to learn something good. Jesus filled them with words of grace and stories of unconditional love. (Again, can you imagine having that many un-cynical people, gathered in the same place and willing to listen to the truth? Why…you might call that a “congregation.”)
Of course, up to that point, the disciples were just along for the ride, just watching Jesus doing his thing and thinking, “Man, that Jesus…he’s the man!” Then, they did what people who are spectators almost always do; they became the advice committee. They did what all of us have likely done at one point or another: they dared to tell “The Man” what “The Man” should do. (Haven’t we all bargained with God? Haven’t we all dared to make our demands clear? “God, you really need to do something here!) Jesus does what inevitably happens to us in those moments. He looks the disciples in the eye and basically says to them, “So…what are you going to do?” The disciples, again, in an entirely human way say, “We don’t have enough!” Jesus says, “How about we try anyway!” Sound familiar? Jesus organizes the crowd. He blesses the food. He fills every empty stomach. And there are leftovers.
Everyone in the story is overwhelmed by the world and its needs. Everyone ends up satisfied. Why? Because people quit doing the math and get busy, doing what needs to be done.