Talking about Jesus’ bad day today. And something like 10,000 people eating bread and fish. You know, the usual.
Matthew 14:13-21; Romans 9:1-5; Psalm 145:8-9,14-21; Isaiah 55:1-5
Jesus was not having a good day. The gospel lessons starts out, “When Jesus heard what had happened…” but with the way things are broken up, it doesn’t actually include the news that Jesus heard. If we read the 12 verses before this, then we can get the idea. Some time in the past, Herod had John the Baptist arrested because Herod married his brother’s wife and John kept telling Herod how that wasn’t a good thing to do. Salome, Herodias’s daughter and Herod’s step-daughter, danced at Herod’s birthday and made him so happy that he promised her anything she wanted, so she asked for John’s head on a platter. Herod didn’t really want to, but because he made his drunken, stupid oath he was stuck, so he did as she asked. Then John’s disciples buried his body, and went to tell Jesus.
Now, we sometimes forget, but Jesus and John were likely quite close. John was only 6 months older than Jesus; their parents were apparently quite close, as Mary went to visit Elizabeth when they both were pregnant; they each had somewhat extraordinary birth-stories. It would make a lot of sense for Jesus and John to have grown up together, so his death likely hit Jesus hard.
So it makes sense that, when Jesus heard of John’s death, he wanted be by himself for a while to mourn. Unfortunately, the crowds caught wind of the “solitary place” Jesus headed to, and they beat him to it. Then, it got close to evening, and the disciples were telling Jesus, “Hey, boss-man, we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere here, and it’s getting late. Send the crowd home so they can get some food before it gets dark.”
So Jesus does the sensible thing and listens to their advice, right? No that’s not it. He snaps at the disciples for even suggesting it? No that’s not it either. But he does something odd, he says, “I don’t really want to send them away; how ’bout you guys find some food.” After what I’m sure was a good deal of wrangling, the disciples managed to come up with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Then, Jesus sat down, prayed, and started handing out the food. After a while, and 5 thousand men, and likely at least that many again in women and children, had their fill, they had 12 baskets of food left over.
Now, that part is kind neat, but it’s not really the point I want to make today. See, as cool as it is to have a practically infinite supply of food around, the key is this verse: “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them…” Jesus, even though he just wanted to be alone, had compassion on the gathered crowd.
In John’s gospel, he doesn’t just feed the gathered crowd with food, it also records some teaching that he did during this incident, saying, essentially, “I’m giving you bread now, and you ate your fill; but don’t focus so much on this bread, focus instead on the food that brings eternal life.” It sounds quite a bit like the reading from Isaiah, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”
But what is this food that brings eternal life? Well there’s two directions this goes, and both are right. The first is the sacrament of Holy Communion, through which we have forgiveness of sins and in which Jesus is truly present. The second is, as Paul writes in Romans 10 (which we’ll look at in more detail next week — that’s a teaser, kids!), “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
That is the true food that God has for us — salvation from sin and death to grace and eternal life. Though the feeding of the five thousand left 12 basketfuls of food, this feeding of our souls has so much more for us, because while bread will fill our stomachs for a time, only for us to need more of it in a few hours, the Word of God fills our souls in a way that we will never be hungry again.