John the Baptist has just been put to death by King Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great, who was king when Jesus was born. John had been preaching against the immorality of Herod’s marriage to his half-brother’s wife Herodias. Both of them had divorced their spouses and married each other. John the Baptist spoke against that, and Herodias asked her new husband for his head, and the story goes that he presented it to her on a platter.
John’s disciples buried him, and went and told Jesus about it, and immediately afterward the gospel narrative reads that Jesus, who had been preaching in Nazareth, withdrew from there and went off to be alone. John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin, he was and evangelist for Christ, a herald of the Messiah. Some believed that he was the reincarnation of the Prophet Elijah, and for preaching the truth, he was put to death.
It’s understandable that Jesus needed time to grieve, but he was not given that opportunity. His intent was to be alone, but crowds of people followed him. However, instead of getting back into his boat and shoving off again in order to find the much-needed rest that escapes him, Jesus “had compassion on them and healed their sick,” says the text.
Jesus returned to his ministry of compassion, even in the midst of his own grief and loss.
Now, I think that we can read too much into this text. After all, this is Jesus we are talking about, it’s not a metaphor or an analogy about how we ought to put everyone else ahead of us all the time. As Christians, there will always be times when we need to set aside our own worries and respond to the needs of others, but there are also times when “life” just needs to be put on hold for a while and we need to run to Jesus and be fed by him.
But this story is about us as well. Maybe you are one of the 5,000 who comes to Jesus to be fed, or maybe you are one of the disciples, trying to do what is right by Him. Either way, the need was somewhat the same.
What happened when evening came and the people had been with Jesus throughout the day? As the disciples observed, there was nothing for the people to eat, and nowhere for them to stay. And so they suggested that Jesus disperse the crowds so that they could see to their needs. But Jesus said to them, “You give them something to eat.”
Jesus is tired, he has received terrible news about John the Baptist, was denied a chance to grieve, and pursued by crowds of people, all of whom had very real and immediate needs that he could not ignore. And now they have another need, but now Jesus delegates.
“You give them something to eat. You feed them.” Do we expect to only sit around while Jesus does all the work? Do we just go to church to be filled and then go home again without any intention of actually doing the things that we hear just commanding us to do when we are at church? Why are we disciples at all, if not to learn to become apostles, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, servants who reach out to bring Christ to the world around us?
Now is the time to put faith into action, now is the time to feed the hungry with the same word that has fed us. “You give them something to eat,” says Jesus.
But Jesus, the disciples said to him, “we have only five loaves and two fish.” Basically what they are saying is that they have nothing. How can we feed so many people with so little? That’s the problem of ministry. We really don’t have much to give. We have nothing. How can I, who have nothing worth bringing, possibly make a difference in a world that needs so much? How can I feed a world that is hungry for the truth, hungry for the gospel, when I am still hungry myself?
This is the point where much of the so-called hope that the world offers us begins to fail. Food runs out, it fails to satisfy.
But Jesus does something very different. He says to his disciples, “Bring them here to me.” Bring me your five loaves of bread and two fish, bring me your inadequacy, bring me your nothingness, and through it, I will feed the hungry. Of course the disciples cannot do what it is that Jesus expects of them, but Jesus takes their nothing and transforms it, he makes something out of nothing.
This is what God does for us. In the beginning, there was nothing, and God spoke and the whole universe came into being. He created us out of nothing, and without Him we are nothing. Jesus Christ gives us substance, he gives us meaning, and only He can fill us when there is nothing else. But He does it through our ministry to one another.
Consider the second story. Again Jesus attempts to withdraw. He sends his disciples back across the Sea of Galilee while he disperses the crowd and hopes to get some time to himself. Again that doesn’t happen. A storm picks up, and the disciples are stranded in the middle of the sea. Jesus walks out to them, to give them hope, to give them courage and strength.
And at first, they react out of fear, then Peter jumps out of the boat with a sort of reckless faith that isn’t really faith at all, and finally, as he is sinking into the water, probably terrified out of his mind and feeling like a complete fool because of what he has gotten himself into, Peter calls out to Jesus, “Lord save me.”
Immediately, Jesus reaches out his hand and took ahold of Peter. The disciples had nothing, Peter had nothing, not as it compared to the enormity of the troubles that were facing them. They could not face the storm alone. Peter could not walk on water! They had nothing to bring, nothing to give.
So often in life, we forget that we are not alone, we forget to cry out to Jesus, “Lord save me! Lord I don’t have enough to give, not if I want to make any sort of difference. There is no way that I can do this on my own.” But we are not alone, ultimately of course, it is Jesus who feeds the hungry, it is Jesus who calms the storms that threaten to overwhelm us and destroy us.
Jesus takes our nothingness, he takes our brokenness, and He transforms it. Sometimes we just need to hold on to Him in order to keep from drowning, and sometimes we are faced with 5,000 people who have no food to eat, and they are looking to us to feed them.
What do we have to save us, what do we have to give? Not nothing. We have Jesus Christ. We are not alone, we do not have to go away hungry. We do not have to fight the storms on our own. But we do need to cry out, “Lord, save me!” in order to remember that He is already here, offering us His hand.
I love how Jesus has this way of both scolding Peter for his lack of faith, and also encouraging him at the same time. He allows Peter, and the disciples, to grasp the impossibility of the situations that they are in, and in so doing they learn the lesson that they need to learn, but He does it lovingly, without snapping at them, “Well, you should’ve known that in the first place!”
Jesus never gives up on us. May we never give up on ourselves. In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
