The Wilderness

Matthew 14:13 -21 When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. 14 When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. 15 That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16 But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.” 17 They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.” 18 He said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers. 21 About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten.

INTRO

Over the past several weeks, we have heard about the difficulty of being disciples of Jesus Christ, we heard about the need to have compassion, and then the need for mutual hospitality of the other. The last time we heard from Matthew’s Gospel three weeks ago, we heard about the sower who wastefully sows seed on four different times of soil. We heard about our calling to look beyond the moment, beyond what others might see as failure. To realize that we were offered the same grace that is found in the wastefulness of the parable. Grace is offered to us before we even decide what kind of soil we are going to be. Because we have been offered such grace, we strive to offer that grace to all.

Today, we are confronted not necessarily with the issue of wastefulness. After all, it seems crazy to think of such wastefulness found earlier in Matthew’s Gospel when confronted with the overwhelming need found in today’s text. Who can blame the disciples for wanting to send the crowds back into the towns to eat? Five thousand men is a lot of food, too much money, and a lot of serving. That number does not even include women and children. We might as well call this miracle the feeding of 25,000. After all, we know that Women and children are more likely to be among the sick, poor, and widowed due to the inequality that existed then and still exists today.

These sheer overwhelming numbers also need to be coupled with the grief expressed by Jesus and his disciples. They had just heard about the brutal murder of John the Baptist, and after a long day with the large and desperate crowds, the disciples were understandably seeking to get away, to take a break, to step back and grieve a bit. The disciples were grief-stricken, like us in our own moments of grief, we tell the crowds, the people hovering around, to go away. We too often want a moment to grieve, to be angry, to feel hurt, upset, and overwhelmed.

We’ve seen this happen in our own lives. As we watched 41 United Methodist Churches around us disaffiliate, friends who are no longer a part of the same church, and others who question our allegiance to Christ as we decided to remain. We watched COVID hurt our attendance and budget, and we have seen the grief of politics divide friends and families. We know what it is like to grieve, to be tired and burnt out. We, too, want a moment to be angry, feel hurt, upset, and overwhelmed. We know what it is like to want to isolate ourselves in grief.

Don’t you see? The directive of the disciples to “send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Is their response to their own searching, their own need to feel fulfilled, their own hunger? It is a response to their own isolation as they ask internally, “If John was killed…what does this mean for me? Is there hope? What is my place now? How do we keep moving forward?” In other words, while they are grieving the loss of their friend and mentor, they’re also frozen in fear. It is here, on the heels of that fear, where we hear Jesus command, “give them something to eat.”

Interestingly, there are six accounts of miraculous feedings in the Gospels, two each in Matthew and Mark and one each in Luke and John. This is the only miracle outside of the resurrection that is found in all four gospels. Our text for this morning is not about us, the disciples, or our collective fears. Rather the text is telling us something about God’s Reign.

Herod was scared to behead John the Baptist because he was worried about an uprising. Herod is an arm of the Roman Empire, wherein Roman rule is exercised indirectly through governors or “kings” and other uppercase elites. Rulers like Herod had to collaborate with Rome and keep “regional” peace or be dismissed. Thus Herod feared putting John to death as he feared losing his political standing with Rome. The death is public, whereby the head of John the Baptist is paraded around a on platter. It serves as a stark warning to those who might start an uprising.

When Jesus goes to the deserted place, he chooses that which is seemly opposite of Rome. The desert or wilderness is known throughout the biblical canon as a place of wandering, doubt, and uncertainty. It's known as the place where Jesus was tested before starting his public ministry; it is the place where the Israelites rebelled against God and wandered around for forty years. In other words, desert places are those spaces where profound questions are raised regarding one’s identity, security, their calling in life. It is the place where we search for God and question who we are in response to God.

The disciples and the crowds are surely aware of John’s brutal death, and they are wrestling with who they are in response to this man named Jesus, the one who disrupts the status quo as John did. They are searching for God in the midst of their grief. One commentary notes, “They, too, (the crowds) may have just been hearing of John’s death, and their journey to the desert may have also been an act of grief or bewilderment or something else desperate enough to end up in the wilderness with no food.”

The crowds follow Jesus into the wilderness, and in doing so, they forsake their towns, which are part of Rome’s imperial system; they forsake the systems of domination upheld by the empire through local collaborators such as Herod and Pilate. They reject the social systems that require an inequitable exchange meant to keep them under the oppression of the elite just so that they can eat.

The crowds are looking for answers. Five thousand people would have been larger than most all of the towns in the entire region. Five Thousand people in one place who are bewildered, angry, and disheartened over the death of John the Baptist could have made a great start to an army that could have stormed Herod’s palace. Yet, Jesus does not use the pain, hurt, or anger felt in this moment to rile up the disciples or the crowds; he instead has compassion for them. He meets them in their grief.

He takes the disciples’ fear and reorients them back to the very nature of God. To love and to be compassionate, he reminds them that going back to what was is not the answer. It is important to Journey through the wilderness and desert places. It is necessary to question God, to doubt ourselves, to wonder who we are in response to God when it seems our church is unstable when finances keep dwindling - when conflict keeps arising. When we are grieved by the loss of a loved one or news that is not too good, going back like the Israelites to Egypt might be easier, and going back to town might be easier, but neither of these things leads to the promised land.

Are we willing to walk through the wilderness, go hungry, and trust in God’s provisions? Are we willing to take risks? Are we willing to remember that it's better to address conflicts than to return to niceness? Are we willing to ask the question of who we are - as we hunger after God, as we feel loss, hurt, and pained? Are we like the disciples going how will we “feed them” and ourselves when we are barely making it?

All these questions will lead us back to the grace of God. As Jesus tells us, “to give them something to eat.” Don’t let your fear paralyze you. Don’t go back to the way things were before…keep loving, keep hoping, keep trusting!

We, like the disciples, have been called by God to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. To be the body through which God’s work is done in the world. God does not work alone but through people like you and me. God Telles the disciples to offer the crowds compassion, to feed them, to keep on loving them. To do so regardless of social status or reciprocity.

Jesus asks for food to be given and received as equals regardless of social structure. Like the disciples, we might be looking at our resources going, “How in the world are we going to do this?”, How are we going to keep our backpack program going? How can I tithe when this, this, and this is happening? How can we do this when we do not have enough?

The miracle found in our text is not that God fed 5,000 men. It is a reminder that God will give us the power to work for good in the world, even when we are faced with situations where we are not sure we can manage. It reminds us that the more love you give, the more love you seem to have.

Our text reminds us that discipleship means taking on the impossible task of proclaiming the good news to the poor, unbinding the captive, liberating the oppressed, reconciling the enemies, and feeding the hungry. Discipleship does not mean saying this is too much and sending “them away.”

This morning you might be journeying through the wilderness. Maybe your home church closed, maybe you are here because your church has disaffiliated, maybe you are back in church after being away for a while, maybe you have been sitting in the pews since the founding of Saint Luke’s, and you are wondering where do we go from here? No matter where you find yourself, know this God meets us in the wilderness with compassion.

Whatever your fears are, don't let them shape you. Instead, come to the table where God reorients us back to the nature of God…one where love is always enough. Here at this table, God will take what you have, bless it, break it, and give it. God will increase your capacity to love and will then send you out to feed others. God will give you the capacity to keep loving as you experience the abundance of God’s love.