Pentecost 9, 08/06/2017

Sermon on Matthew 14:13-21, by Samuel D. Zumwalt

¹³Now when Jesus heard this, 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.

[I found helpful Prof. Dr. Jeff Gibbs’ work on this text at http://concordiatheology.org/lalp/]

THANKFUL LIVING: HUNGERING FOR JESUS

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

John the Baptist has just been beheaded. Now about halfway through Matthew’s gospel, we are reminded as we were with Herod’s murder of the little boys at the outset in Bethlehem, that Jesus has not come to rule triumphantly in Jerusalem over an earthly kingdom. Jesus the King has come to be crucified in order to destroy the ugly reign of sin, death, and the devil. Jesus has come to save us, and we do need saving. Everyone needs saving from sin, death, and the old enemy’s lies!

If Jesus were only a man, even only a prophet and not God’s Incarnate Son as in Islam, the prospect of his impending death would be more than he could manage. His going away by boat to a lonely place might even seem to be a retreating from overwhelming forces and a desire to save himself. But the Lord is not turning back from the threat (the root verb in Greek is “anachoreo”), is not retiring from his work, and is not getting out of harm’s way. His going away by Himself is always in communion with His Father and the Holy Spirit, one God in Three Persons. The Lord Jesus is never alone. He is always an integral part of that Holy Community within Himself! So, then His withdrawing, is as all retreats for us should be, a withdrawing with the Lord to refocus.

Eight years ago, with my wife’s encouragement, I (finally) went away to the General Retreat of the Society of the Holy Trinity after having ignored that call to prayer since 1997. I needed to withdraw for a few days from a parish in chaos after the ELCA’s misbegotten capitulation to the zeitgeist (an exercise of raw power and arrogance in the name of a marxist, gnostic reimagining of Jesus). In such a false gospel, “love” (as an emotional psychological acceptance of others) is posited as what Jesus would have us legalistically do whenever a disturbing scriptural word discomforts the old sinner in us. As Philip Melancthon observed in his Apologia, “If somebody believes that he obtains the forgiveness of sins because he loves, he insults Christ and in God’s judgment he will discover that this trust in his own righteousness was wicked and empty” (Tappert 127:150).

Anyone who has refused to kiss Baal or bend the knee to the zeitgeist has doubtless learned there is nothing quite so vicious, nasty, or unrelenting than someone who has power to force you to “love” as that one does. More than a few pastors and lay persons have been seized by the proverbial throat (ala Darth Vader) for their appalling lack of “faith” in the zeitgeist. The old sinner in each of us is a wrathful little “god,” because the old sinner remains in the sway of the father of lies. That old sinner in each of us needs a daily drowning in the baptismal font, but, the old sinner’s conceit about the abundance of his or her “love” for neighbor (especially a child, friend, or lover) is quite certain that “love” is deathless. C.S. Lewis, in his amazingly apt depiction of the old sinner in The Great Divorce, described the monster mom who would rather have her son in hell with her than to lose her possessive “love” to have the one true God’s love.

Going on quarterly retreat in which we pastors can confess our sins, join in the corporate prayer of the Church across the ages, and have our minds stimulated by sound theological conversation, is indeed getting in the boat with Jesus and withdrawing with Him, His Father, and the Holy Spirit. That is balm for the heart, mind, body, and spirit before returning to the battle, not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities even in the Church (local, regional, national, and global). After thirty-six years of ordination, I wish I had experienced this much sooner. The old Adam dies slowly, especially when he gets “religion.” Mea maxima culpa!

Of course, the crowds “found” Jesus as they always “find” pastors who understand the holy ministry as vocation and not as a career from which one retires. We have six retired pastors in our parish ranging in age from mid-60s to mid-80s. Every one of those men delights in reading the Word, serving the Blessed Sacrament, preaching and presiding according to his individual energy level or physical ability. There is not one “careerist” in the bunch. Thanks be to God! The people of God rejoice when all of them serve together on festival days. They still have it!

The Lord Jesus had compassion on the crowds. He healed their sick. As the day grew long, the disciples, like far too many pastors and laity alike, were very much slaves to chronos (clock time). As another aside, if you are worried much about clock time in worship, you are probably worshiping other gods. So the disciples tell the Lord to dismiss the crowds so they can go get something to eat. When I was 34, on my first Sunday serving in Waco TX, several people said: “Remember, Pastor, BTBTL. Beat the Baptists to Luby’s (Cafeteria)!” Of course, the Eucharist was only offered every other Sunday at each service, because the Sacrament wouldn’t be as special if you had it at every service...and they might not beat the Baptists to Luby’s!

The Lord Jesus has already shown He operates in kairos (God’s time). He isn’t like the careerist who says, “I’m sorry I can’t show up at the ICU or do a funeral, because it’s my day off.” There will yet be time for a retreat. There will yet be time for a day off. But right now there is an immediate need. Compassion compels Christ to give the people what they need. When the Lord tells the disciples not to send the folks away but to give the people something to eat, they, like most Lutherans, point to what they don’t have. It’s the scarcity mentality. Left to their own resources and their bondage to the tyranny of self, they only have five loaves and two fish.

Obviously, the disciples don’t know Who Jesus is. Doubtless they know the words of the psalm, not its LORD: “The eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand and satisfiest the desire of every living thing” (145:15-16 KJV).

Jesus wasn’t just enough for 5000 men. Jesus wasn’t just enough for the women and children with those men. Jesus was enough for everyone. There were 12 baskets of fragments left over after He took the bread, blessed, broke it, and gave to the disciples to distribute to the people who came hungering for more than they knew. They came into the wilderness of their lives hungering for Jesus. They knew Jesus could do something about their sickness. And you?

Those captive to the zeitgeist will want to turn this sermon into a commercial for the world hunger appeal or a rant against the hard-hearted politicians in the national or state capitals. When you worship the wrong gods, all you have left at the beginning, the middle, or (sadly) the end of a long “career” is the same old tired advocacy, the marxist liberationist theology that Jesus would have preached if only he had been as compassionate or smart or as well-versed as you in the latest, coolest hermeneutics. Pope John Paul II and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived under Marxist Leninist tyranny, and they knew the real Jesus was and is what the people were hungering for. Oh, but they’re just a couple of old, dead white guys. Who will listen to them?

Two more dead white guys also have much to teach us. The late church historian Jaroslav Pelikan began his five-volume history of Christian doctrine with the warning: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Another well-known quote from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy reads: “Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”

One more dead white guy, Thomas Oden, in his book Change of Heart, tells of his spiritual and theological journey from the tyranny of the new to the deep well of African Christian theology and spirituality. But, then again, Who does he know? With the help of an older Jewish colleague, Oden discovered the splendor of Truth in orthodox Christianity.

If, pastor or lay person, you are hungry, but you don’t know Who you are hungry for. Or if you have come down off the sugar high of the latest, coolest whatever, and you know you really need to eat. Then it’s time for you to take a break with the real Jesus, true God and true man, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, Who, at the right time (kairos) was given into death for you and your salvation. When you lift your powerless empty hands to receive His true Body and His most precious Blood, you will be satisfied. He is still more than enough for everyone in the world! Everyone still needs to be baptized into His saving death!

Why, then, do we also feed the physically hungry? Because the Lord Jesus, Who gives us His true Body and most precious Blood, tells us His Father wants everyone to have a full belly!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Samuel D. Zumwalt
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
E-Mail: szumwalt@bellsouth.net www.societyholytrinity.org

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