Pentecost 9, 08/06/2017

Sermon on Matthäus 14:13-21, by Paula Murray

¹³When Jesus heard [of John the Baptist’s death], he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. ¹⁵Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” ¹⁸And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. ²¹And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. NRSV

It has been a while since we hosted a dinner party. We enjoy having people over for a bite to eat and conversation. It is a fine way to really get to know people and there is not a lot more satisfying to a cook than those moments of silence when everyone dedicates themselves to fully sampling, and enjoying, the menu offerings. Dinner parties work to the extent that its hosts make a true offering of themselves for their guests. If a dinner party is about the host, it is likely to be an uncomfortable affair, and a short one as guests compete with one another to find the best excuse for leaving the house as soon as possible after dessert and coffee. If, on the other hand, the hosts truly are interested in providing a wonderful experience for their guests, then the evening feels charmed and is remembered fondly for years after it happened. We have flooring issues, so we’re holding off inviting people over for a meal until we have that problem solved. Previously, we had a roofing problem, leaks, then a siding problem, a storm blew the siding off, then an HVAC problem, when the 22 year old air conditioner gave out on the hottest day of the summer. Note to self, air conditioners never go out on the coldest day of the year. No, that’s what heaters do. God willing and the transmission doesn’t go out on the Escape, we will get new flooring this year, and we’ll invite people to dinner again.

Having said this, we know that we can invite people to our home with the dingy gray carpet, originally white, and the shredding linoleum and still provide a good meal and a good time if we focus on our guests’ needs and happiness and not on our own pride. It’s possible to have a fine dinner with friends in a shack tilting a bit on its foundations if it is clear that you care for your guests comfort and have compassion for their concerns. It is also possible to have a miserable meal in a mansion with a Buckingham Palace-sized dining room, even if they serve turbot with lobster mousse on plates trimmed in 14k gold and crème brûlée for dessert if the dinner party is really all about the host’s ego and possessions.

We see this dynamic in this morning’s Gospel reading. We have in today’s Gospel reading accounts of two very different dinner parties. The one dinner party is obvious, for what we have before us is Matthew’s take on the Feeding of the 5000, a miracle story so very familiar that people who have never walked into a church’s sanctuary on a Sunday morning can repeat it. But we also have an echo of an earlier dinner party that reverberates through the text even though it is only alluded to in today’s reading. That dinner party sets the conditions for the happenings of the feeding of the 5000, but it also lays out for us the difference between human self-centeredness and divine compassion.

The compassion of God is a constant theme throughout the life of the Church; as the Psalm says, “His mercy endures forever.” It is, after all, God’s enduring mercy and steadfast love that led to Christ’s willing gift of his life for our sins. But God’s compassion as a theme seems especially prominent this summer as we read through with one another the Gospel of Matthew and the associated readings on Sunday mornings. Think of what we have heard just in the last few weeks. God will life us up from human misery on eagle’s wings; Jesus had compassion on the “sheep without a shepherd;” we are of more value than the sparrows on which God keeps his eye; we are to cry to him as if he is our Abba, our father; he will not separate the grain from the weeds lest he destroy us who are sometimes unbeliever and at other times believer; and we are treasured, though without cause, by God himself. Jesus’ compassion is directly contrasted with that of a very human, and thoroughly despicable, ruler, so we can see for ourselves the differences between that kingdom of which Christ is King, and that over which Herod thought he had rule.

Our reading begins with an allusion to Herod, and to a dinner party probably arranged to celebrate Herod’s birthday. You will remember this one, for it is infamous for the dessert course, which was John the Baptist’s severed head carried in for all to see on a silver (presumedly) platter. Herod Antipas, tetrarch or king of Judea, was married to Herodias, his second or third wife, I forget. Herodias had been his brother’s, Philip’s, wife, but she divorced him to marry his richer and more powerful brother. This was a no no for the religious establishment, a violation of Mosaic Law, but it had been papered over to avoid upsetting Herodias, who held a vicious grudge, and Herod, who might get mad on her behalf. John the Baptist was not much for papering over sin, the sin of the poor or the rich, and so he was a constant and loudly vocal critic of the marriage and of Herodias herself.

Did I mention that Herodias could hold a mean grudge, for a very long time? Herod had imprisoned John the Baptist, in part to get him to shut up and maybe in part because he was too afraid to kill him outright since Israel saw the Baptizer as the prophet he was. Herodias sent her 15 year old daughter to dance for what was probably an all-male event, and that very young woman so pleased her step-father Herod that he foolishly offered her whatever she wanted, even up to half of his kingdom. Herod, after chugging a few too many jars of wine, was probably plumping up his ego in front of the movers and shakers in his kingdom. Salome went immediately to her mother, probably hanging out in the hallway close to the action, and asked her what she wanted. Mother, either taking advantage of the situation or reaping the sick fruit of the rotten seed she had planted, told her 15-year old daughter to go back to Herod and to beg for the head of John the Baptist. In other words, she told her daughter, I did say the girl was all of 15, barely out of childhood, to request the assassination of one of her mother’s critics. I guess you had to grow up fast in those days. The girl returned to the dinner party, made her request of her king, and we are told in Matthew 14, verse 9 that, “The king was grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he commanded it to be given; he sent and had John beheaded in prison.”

It’s hard to see how Herod’s guests, some of whom might actually have gone out to the wilderness to see John and hear him preach and maybe even to have been baptized for repentance at his hands, wanted to see John the Baptist murdered. Notwithstanding the religious reasons for keeping John alive, there were good political reasons to keep his head and his neck attached to one another. Given that the populations of both Galilee and Judea correctly thought that God had sent them a prophet in John the Baptizer, they could hardly want his execution and the consequent public unrest that would result after John’s death at Herod’s hands became widely known. It is more likely that Herod ordered John’s death to avoid losing face and power with it. If you are king, it never hurts to remind even the rich and the powerful that you hold the lives of the citizens of your kingdom, including their own, in your hands. This dinner party was never ever about a king’s compassion for the people he ruled or even his joy at tacking on another year to his life; it was about keeping people who might challenge his rule close to him, and consolidating his power over them.

None of which should be a surprise if we read history. This is what kings have always done; it is their nature and the nature of earthly kingship. But it is not the nature of the true king of kings, nor of his rule over the kingdom of heaven. Divine compassion is his nature, and we are reminded of it again in the first lines of today’s Gospel. We read there that when Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, his cousin or some other relative, remember, from the Gospel of Luke, “he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.” Jesus took himself away from his disciples and the crowds that followed him so he could grieve the death of family without the needy presence of hundreds of people bearing down on him. But they were needy, those people who followed Jesus to hear of the kingdom of heaven and to be forgiven their sins and healed of all their diseases. They were lost sheep whose shepherd had found them, and so they followed him to where he went. And although our Lord wanted to be alone in his grief, “he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”

Our Lord’s compassion did not end with healing the sick. There were many in the crowd that day, 5000 men alone, and also the women and children who accompanied them into the desolate area between towns to be healed and to hear him preach about the coming of the kingdom of heaven in his person. I have no doubt that sinners that they were, most of them were there for their most immediate need, to escape illness, disability, and death. They might not have much wanted to hear the preaching at all, even though God’s saving Word is the one medicine that can heal even death. But the Word of God comes first, the healing and even the miraculous meal to follow are the means by which the Word is made manifest in the world. They are the exclamation point that ends Jesus’ sermon.

The meal, like the healing, arises out of Jesus’ compassion for the sheep of God. As the day passed into evening, the disciples encouraged their Lord and Master to send the people away so they could go into the villages surrounding the area in which he healed and preached and find food. After all, many in the crowd were children or aged they would need food for cramping bellies. But Jesus refused to send them away. He had people in his care who required feeding, and like any host concerned about his guests’ well-being, he would offer them food. And lo, there was a miracle. The measly five loaves and two fishes in the disciples’ possession became enough bread and fish to feed over 5000 people, with twelve baskets of bread and fish left over at the end of the meal.

The most miraculous aspect of this event is not the wondrous expansion of the number of loaves and fishes. It is God’s continued willingness to work for the salvation of a stubborn and stiff necked people. His faithfulness endures forever; we are doing well if we are faithful for a significant part of one day. Daily, God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, offers us the sustenance of his Word. Weekly Jesus feeds us for our growth in his grace his own body and blood. Like the best ever host of the best ever dinner party, we are invited to sit with our brother Jesus, and to receive from his own hands the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. He calls us to follow him, to be his apprentice in the faith, formed and reformed by his Word and living under the shelter of his compassion. Jesus asks us to yield up to him our obsessions with our own place in our families, or worksites, or this church, so that we might together be compassionate and caring for others. He would have us be good hosts of his Word and his sacraments, that through us his saving work may be done. And, finally, he teaches us not to fear that what he has given us for this work will be insufficient to do his will, and to act on his behalf for his people. We may look at the poor, the needy, and the hungry, with Christ’s own loving eyes, and offer them the bread that not only satisfies the day’s hunger but also the food that feeds their spiritual hunger, the medicine of salvation.

Pastor Paula Murray
Glen Rock, Pennsylvania
E-Mail: smotly@comcast.net

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