A Grateful Life (Part 3)
A Grateful Life (Part 3)
Matthew 14:13-21
Most Christians spend a lot more time thinking about Jesus than we spend thinking about John the Baptist. We remember John when Jesus is baptized, get a little taken aback by his appearance and his diet, and move on. After all, we know who the main character of the story is: Jesus of Nazareth. If anything, we move out into the wilderness with Jesus and, glancing over our shoulders, we think, “Well…that guy was a character. Kind of weird though.”
When we take John the Baptist lightly, I think we separate ourselves not only from the crowds of the day but from Jesus, himself. The suggestion in one moment during the Advent story is that Jesus and John recognized one another while still in the womb. It was John the Baptist who established himself first. He set up shop on the banks of the Jordan River on the premise that anywhere God was present was already a holy place and that what made a person’s life holy was not getting cleansed at a temple but living a faithful life. Like the temple, John’s emphasis was still on being pure but the notion that one could be made pure apart from the temple was radical. It also laid the groundwork for Jesus to teach that the goal of a faithful life wasn’t to be pure but to be loving.
Before Jesus ever drew a crowd, John’s booming voice and his crazy take on things made him a magnet. That attention made him a target for the authorities. John was challenging the powers that be and stirring up the people. John had his followers. Jesus has his followers, too. The authorities have their eyes on both.
The authorities go after John first. It seems that John was relentlessly badgering Herod about sleeping with his brother’s wife. (What? Someone holding a leader accountable for sexual midsconduct?) John just spoke the truth: “It is not lawful for you to have her.” Like many other powerful men, Herod had no interest in the truth. The problem wasn’t what he was doing. The problem was that John would not overlook what he was doing. Eventually, Herodias, the woman that he was sleeping with, asked for John’s head on a platter. Herod delivered. Speaking the truth to power cost John his life.
Why spend all this time on John? In our text, Jesus has just learned that John is dead. Unlike Jesus’ disciples, John’s disciples don’t run for their lives and scatter into the night. Instead, they walk into Herod’s court, take John’s body, and bury him. Then, without hesitation, they make a bee line to Jesus. They tell him the whole story—every bloody detail. Then, I’m pretty sure, Jesus and those disciples weep together for the man whom they all loved.
What does Jesus do? He retreats to a quiet place. We’re not told what he’s feeling or thinking. It’s not hard to make an educated guess, though. He had to be deeply grieved. John had to have been a colleague, one of those people who you know is pulling in the same direction, the kind of person who makes you feel less alone, just knowing they are out there. If Jesus is fully human (I think he is) then his heart must be broken. He needed space. He needed to be by himself. Yes…he is wounded. Jesus also had to be frightened. No matter how much you believe in what you are doing, you can still be terrified. From moment to moment for Jesus, there had to be an unfolding revelation that his calling was hard, that nothing was going to be easy, that this may not end well. Learning that John the Baptist had been killed by the authorities had to be an absolute elevator drop in that frightening journey.
Jesus finds a quiet place. However, even before he finds that quiet place, the crowds hear rumors about where he is. In my mind’s eye, I envision Jesus high up on a hill, looking out, breathing deeply, putting himself back together. Then, something catches his eye. Are those ants or are they people, snaking their way along the shore. How many people are there? Are they friendly or are they soldiers, sent by Herod to finish the job?
Think about it…Jesus has every right to a day or two off. “The guy is deeply grieved. Can’t we cut him some slack?” He also has every right to be afraid, to just want a safe place to hang out, to just was to be invisible for a little while. No one would blame him if he looked for a better hiding place, right? But that’s not what happens. He stands there broken-hearted and afraid, yet when he sees the crowd, he feels compassion for them. What he sees are broken human beings, care-givers dragging loved ones to him for healing and those poor people who had every malady known to man.
Jesus doesn’t wait to be done with his grief or to get over his fear before he connects to others. You don’t have to be totally healed to be a healing force for others. You don’t have to feel perfectly safe in order to take the risk of trying to help. You just have to care. You just have to be able to look with compassion on someone else’s pain. You just have to be willing to put compassion into action. Even when Jesus is heartsick, he wades headlong into the needs of others.
At the end of the day, no doubt, Jesus is still deeply grieved and afraid. Healing grief is a life-long project. The fears weren’t going away either. Still, at the end of a very long day, some sick people had been healed. Some hopeless people felt hopeful again. Some people wondered who this Jesus really was. However, everyone was hungry. This is where the disciples come in. Here’s when the disciples fail: they recognize the needs of the crowd; they pay lip service to compassion; but their solution is to send the crowd away where someone else can help them. “Wow, Jesus, it’s getting pretty late here. These people are going to need something to eat. You should send them on their way.”
Now, I have to be honest and say that I think we’ve all probably done this, right. We see a problem. We think about how hard it would be to have that problem. We might even look the other in the eye and say, “Wow…I’m so sorry that you have that problem!” However, the final step, as a person of compassion, really should be, “I want to help you. Let’s figure this out.” Compassion without action does nothing for that suffering person: “Wow, I know they cared but they didn’t actually care enough to help.” Compassion without action also leaves us with compassion fatigue. It takes real energy to feel for another person. Doing something—however limited what I can do may be—is what restores that energy. If we don’t close that loop, then the energy is drained.
Really, in our day, this is the problem with being bombarded with the news, especially visual media. “Have a seat here for a half-an-hour. We have combed the world and sent our best journalists and camera men to expose you to the most jarring and upsetting footage that we can put together. You will feel for those people—the victims of war, of natural disasters, of human cruelty. Maybe some of you will turn that exposure into a donation to support a cause or the impetus for political action. However, mostly you will be drained. You’re a good person who feels things but feeling those things over and over again may convince you in the end that you can’t do anything.
This is where the disciples are. It doesn’t even occur to them that they, themselves, might do something in response to the crowd’s needs. So, on top of Jesus’ grief and fear, I imagine that he is now just standing there, shaking his head and wondering, “Has all this time with the disciples just been a waste of time?” Jesus, though, doesn’t chew out the disciples. He doesn’t shame them or guilt them or put them down in some other way. Instead, he just makes a statement: “You know…you could actually do something. You don’t have to send them away. You could actually feed them.”
The disciples do what we are all prone to do in such a moment: they do the math. In fact, I would say that they had already been doing it because their answer comes so quickly and is so precise: “We only have five loaves and two fish.” Of course, this math runs in several directions. “First, we’ve done the math and know that this is a big crowd—five thousand and that’s only counting the men (because this was a world in which only the men were worth counting.) If we try to feed them, they may riot! Second, we were already doing the math and were worried that the five loaves and two fish wouldn’t even be enough for the twelve of us and Jesus. If we share with them, there won’t be enough for us.”
Now, if you were here last week, you know where we are about to go. Last week, we talked about wants and needs. We said that God provides for our daily needs, not our big wants. Those daily needs can be for bread and water, but those daily needs can also be for patience or for courage and strength or for wisdom, or simply for God to help us discern how to help someone else. As with manna in the wilderness, God provides enough of all those things for today, if we are willing to gather them and put them to work. And when we trust that our daily needs will be met, we run the risk of actually believing that life is about more than just meeting my needs. We might even begin to learn that there is a thing called “enough” and that might lead us to the radical notion that often we have “more than enough.”
So, maybe instead of worrying about whether there is enough for everyone in the crowd to be stuffed, maybe what the disciples (and we, ourselves,) should be worried about is that everyone should have something. (Honestly, this is why I really like using little tiny cups and tiny pieces of bread for communion. Enough is enough, right?) It should be hard to go to sleep with a fully belly knowing that your neighbor’s belly is empty, right? So, response from the disciples and from us, without Jesus prompting us should be, “Whatever we have, we should share.”
Here’s the other thing. If we believe that God is in this mess of a life somewhere, and we believe that we live our faith by being loving and compassionate people, then don’t we have to do something? Dont we have to try? Don’t we need to stop doing the math and leave a little room for a divine surprise? I can’t tell you how many good things have happened when something worthwhile got started and others saw what was happening and joined in.
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for. Jesus takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it and gives thanks to God. Imagine that! This is probably one of the worst days of Jesus’ ministry. John is dead. Jesus is frightened. Jesus’ heart is broken. He wanted a moment but barely got one. He waded straight into the world of the crowd’s pain. As the sun was setting, Jesus’ disciples utterly failed to live what he was teaching them. Everything was wrong. Nothing was working the way it was supposed to work. And yet, Jesus offers gratitude to God.
Then, because someone dared to do somthing, a miracle happens. People share. What was never going to be enough turns out to be way more than enough. Everyone is fed and there are baskets and baskets full of leftovers. Everyone is stunned by what happens when love and compassion lead to grateful action.