In Jesus’ Hands

A Sermon for Sunday, July 26, 2020, Proper 13 | Gospel Lesson: Matthew 14:13-21, “Feeding of the Five Thousand” | Pastor Paul C. Sizemore |

Matthew 14:13-21

         There are dinner parties and again there are dinner parties. The fourteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel opens with a classic presentation to us of a dinner party, that was to be more specific, a birthday party that “King Herod” had just thrown in honor of himself.

Oh, it was not the kind of unassuming birthday party that young parents often host in honor of their young children, with both sets of grandparents seated comfortably around the table!

Oh, no, for this birthday party was far more raucous in nature! It was an “Adults Only” kind of party!  There would have been music, I am sure, and much eating and drinking!

And the final act of entertainment, reserved like the grand finale is reserved for the end of a fireworks display, was a very sexually provocative dance that Herod’s new stepdaughter, a girl named Salome, performed to the great delight of his invited guests.

Herod’s thinking was clouded, who had more than likely, had consumed a great deal of wine, steps up to the microphone and says to Salome in full view of his invited guests: “Ask me for whatever you want, up to one-half of my kingdom, and I will give it to you!”

Why just think of all the things that this young woman could have ask for, if this same scenario, were to take place in this present day!  She could have asked for a new sportscar! Or she could have asked, quite possibly, for a palace of her own, with a housekeeper and a cook to attend to her every need. She could have asked for a Visa Card with an unlimited amount of credit affixed to it.  But this young woman was stupefied by such a shocking invitation that she turned to her mother for her advice; and her mother was none other than Herodias, a woman who for years had been married to Herod’s brother, Phillip, by which she was Herod’s sister-in-law, but Herod enticed her to divorce her husband and marry him, so that Herodias was not Herod’s recently, new, acquired wife.

She was so incensed against John the Baptist for having denounced her and Herod’s marriage as an adulterous affair, that she told her daughter, Salome, to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter; a gift that Herod could and did provide, since he had had John the Baptist locked up in the dungeon of a prison, given the name of Machaerus.

When Jesus received the news of John the Baptist’s death, he was heartbroken for sure.  For John the Baptist and Jesus, St. Luke informs us, were cousins.  They would have grown up together. Jesus knew who John the Baptist was, the man who had come in fulfillment of the Prophet Isaiah’s own prophecy.  He was: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert, a highway for our God!”

Jesus remembered that when he arrived down at the banks of the Jordan River one day to be baptized by John, it was John the Baptist, who called out with respect to our Lord: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)!

Jesus knew that John the Baptist had come into the world in direct fulfillment of a prophecy given to us by Malachi, in the last chapter, of the last book of the Old Testament in Malachi 4:5-6: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction!”

You might remember than when Jesus first presented himself to John to be baptized by him, that John the Baptist protested. “It is not you who need to be baptized by me, but it is I who need to be baptized by you” (Matthew 3:14)!  But Jesus responded, saying: “Let it be so for now in order to fulfill all righteousness!”  And in this great act, Jesus was taking our sin upon himself and making his first public step towards the cross, so that by his reconciling us to his Heavenly Father, he might bring to us the forgiveness of all our sins and the sure hope of eternal life!

Although Jesus was fully God-in-human-flesh, he was also fully Man-in-our-human flesh also!

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Therefore, Jesus wanted nothing more than to withdraw from the enormous crowd of people from which he has been ministering.  Therefore, he gets in one of the disciple’s boats and sails from one side of the northern shore on the Sea of Galilee to a more distant shore, also on the northern coast, but, believe it or not, these highly anxious people,St. John tells us, whose needs were now causing them to become highly self-centered in a rather selfish way, hightailed it around that northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and were standing, right there, waiting for Jesus, when our Lord arrived!

Cannot we, however, just imagine Jesus losing his temper!

Cannot we, however, just picture Jesus calling these people, down on the carpet for their being a public menace and a gigantic nuisance on top of that?

But this was not Jesus response to this great intrusion of people upon him; this same group of people whose company, he was trying to escape, that he might have some personal time in which to pray and mourn the passing of John the Baptist!

Matthew tells us: “When Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14)!

Mark tells us: “When Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34)!  And Mark interjects that Jesus, first taught to them the Word of God, whereby he proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom into our world, so that he must have ministered to them in a highly personal way, that whole afternoon!

But now the day was far spent, and nightfall was drawing near!

The disciples of Jesus were ready for this gigantic mass of intrusive people to pack up their things and to go home.  And it is quite possible that these disciples’ own stomachs were growling.    And it is not that these people, at this precise moment in their lives, were actually dying of starvation the way that the Old Testament people of God, may have somewhat falsely accessed their own situation, upon their liberation from Egypt, before Moses prayed to the Lord and the manna began to fall down, fresh for them, every morning from heaven!  But this was Jesus, in action, when he told his disciples: “YOU GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO EAT!”   And here, I want to make a very important point that I believe is absolutely essential if we are to glean from this section of God’s Word, the spiritual knowledge he wishes us to gain here this morning!

WHATEVER JESUS COMMANDS US TO DO, HE ALSO EMPOWERS US TO DO, NOT SIMPLY WITHIN THE LIMITED STRENGTH OF OUR OWN HUMAN POWER, BUT WITHIN THE UNLIMITED STRENGTH OF HIS DIVINE POWER.  May I say that again?

Yes, Jesus told the disciples: “You give them something to eat!”

And it is interesting that St. John tells us in his rendition of this great miracle, that Jesus first turns to his disciple named Philip and asks him: “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat” (John 6:5), which makes sense, since Philip was from Bethsaida!

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Philip did not say: “Well, there’s a Wal-Mart or a SAMS STORE 3 miles from here!”  Though there may have been some sort of market around the corner, somewhere, Philip was much more focused on the price tag that would be attached to such a shopping expedition!

Then John tells us that Jesus said this, “Only to test Philip, for Jesus himself knew what he would do!”

Nevertheless, Philip answers Jesus, saying: “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little” (John 6:7); and it is highly unlikely that Judas Iscariot, the treasurer, would have had any where’s near 200 denarii, available to Jesus and his disciples, in his checking account!

But at least Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, who was the first disciple Jesus called to be numbered among the twelve, who must have been a resourceful fellow, found this young lad with five barley loaves and two fish, but even Andrew expressed his doubts in the face of this enormous challenge, saying to everyone present: “But what are they among so many” (John 6:9)?

Yet every unanswered question that the disciples of Jesus had, up to this point, in their own in hearts and minds—suddenly begins to fade away for them with Jesus’ further announcement: “Bring them here to me” (Matthew 14:18)!

I am sure that Jesus performed this miracle not only to quiet down the grumblings that could be heard in so many of these peoples’ abdomens, he also did it, to demonstrate who he himself was and is and evermore shall be!

Yes, just as Moses provided bread to the children of Israel in the Exodus experience, and just as Elijah provided bread to the widow of Zarephath and her son during the days of a great drought in Sidon, so Jesus was revealing his divine connection with his Heavenly Father here, too.

As the Son of God, Jesus commanded the people present to sit down, St Mark tells us, in groups of a hundred people, as well as others in groups of 50 people. And its possible that the men sat in groups of 100, and the women and their children, sat in groups on the other side of the field, was this something Jesus did to get a clearer picture in his own mind, of just how much food, he needed to prepare?

Probably not! Perhaps the real reason was so that the disciples could look out on those 50 groups of a hundred men each, and readily see that there were 5000 men there!  Of all four Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Matthew is the only one who mentions the fact that there were women and the children present there, that day, too—almost as a throwback to his days of extensive record keeping as a tax collector.

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Yes, we can see that Jesus is God in human flesh, in his ability to feed this many people with such a limited supply of bread, and  yes we can also see that Jesus was and is the Creator, alongside our Heavenly Father: In that just as God the Father, told Adam and Eve at creation’s dawn: “Be fruitful and multiply!”  It’s almost as if Jesus is saying this very same thing to these five little barley loaves of bread and two fish; which yes, quite truthfully, could, I imagine, as some people have suggested, been as limited as two little sardines, with the phrase “little sardines” being an oxymoron!

Friends, just as Jesus turned water into wine at the Wedding Feast at Cana, without drawing all kinds of undue attention to himself, so Jesus here also, provides bread and fish for 5000 men, in addition to many women and children, without drawing any kind of attention to himself either!

And one of the greatest lessons to be gleaned from this Gospel lesson today, is that our time, our talents, and our treasures, and yes, even our whole lives that we may offer to God as living sacrifices that can seem so small, trifling, and insignificant at times CAN MULTIPLY, AND GROW EXPONENTIALLY—WHEN TRULY PLACED IN JESUS’ HANDS!

Friends, I remember reading a quote from Dr. Martin Luther years ago, that went something like this: “God seldom, if ever, does those things for us that we are capable of doing for ourselves! Instead, God does those things for us that we could in no way ever do for ourselves!”

And certainly, this is true when it comes to the gift of our eternal salvation, isn’t it?

And our salvation is a gift of God’s grace and mercy to us also.

Listen to the words of Isaiah in our Old Testament lesson today:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without price!

Why do you spend your money for that, which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen, diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear and come to me; hear, that your soul may live!

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:1 -3, 6-7).   AMEN

Pastor Paul C. Sizemore

Trinity Lutheran Church

1205 Ridgewood Avenue

Daytona Beach, Florida

32117