Matthew 14:1-21, David Orendorff.

I have learned or been reminded of three things by today’s scripture. They are lessons I have trouble remembering but need to remember if I am to be at peace, at shalom, with life.

1. The first lesson is that suffering is universal. We can be as good as John the Baptist in forgiving and still another’s anger can behead us. We can be as close to Abba as Jesus is and still we can lose friends, be betrayed by friends, be tortured and even murdered by the enemies.

There is an apocryphal story about Einstein.

Albert Einstein was supposedly a late talker as a child. So late, in fact, that his parents were afraid he had some mental difficulties. Finally, one night at dinner, young Albert spoke up and said these words: “The soup is too hot.”

His parents were jubilant and in shock. He had broken the ice, his first words spoken. They asked him why he had never said anything before. Albert answered, “Because up to now, everything was in order.”1 Ed Kittrell, Funny Business, January 1996, 5.

I doubt this is a true story but still we are not very long in the world before we discover that everything is not in order. Not just for some of us, but for all of us. We have either suffered, are suffering or will suffer.

There are those, of course, who argue that there is no real suffering except that which we cause ourselves. I believe there is suffering we bring upon ourselves but there is also suffering that we do not make. Natural disasters are an obvious example of suffering we did not make. And almost all the poor, the ill, the hungry, and those who suffer in war did not create the circumstances of their suffering.

My family has known in the last year its share of suffering. We have dealt with the deaths of two aunts and an uncle. We are dealing with my Mother’s recurring and probably terminal cancer while we continue to watch Vickie’s recovery from cancer. We are dealing with multiple family addicts. The list could go on. But I know we are not suffering more than any other family.

Once when the Buddha was teaching that suffering was universal a mother whose child had died came to him, pleading for an end to her pain. The Buddha told her he would help her. He commanded her to bring him a jar of wheat from a home in which no one had died. The mother went from house to house seeking grain. She found no such home and returned with an empty jar.

The universality of suffering makes grief also universal. And so like us when Jesus is told of John’s death he gets in a boat and withdraws to a “deserted” place. There are times when the pain seems just too much, when we are raw and overly vulnerable to grief. In those times we may want to crawl in bed and pull the covers over our heads. Or we may do what Jesus did and seek a deserted place, somewhere to be alone with our tears.

But there is no hiding from suffering, not even for Jesus. The crowd runs ahead and when Jesus arrives at the other side of the lake they are already there, full of their wounds wanting healed. Now how this crowd of five thousand, not counting the women and children, could run around a lake the size of Lake Washington before Jesus could row or sail across is a mystery. The point is that though he wants to be alone he cannot escape from the needs that surround him.

I suppose Jesus could have gotten back into the boat and tried to out row an already exhausted crowd. But he didn’t. And it wouldn’t have worked anyway because wherever our boat lands the world is not in order and there is no wheat untouched by tears to fill our jar.

2. The second thing I notice about this scripture is that Jesus, tired and sad as he is, “has compassion” for the crowd. Even as he is suffering from the murder of John, still Jesus feels compassion. And then Jesus is moved more by compassion than by his own grief so that he heals the sick.

The Greek word here translated as “has compassion” is fascinating to me. Σπλαγχνιζωμαι most literally means a movement of the loins (that part of us made to give life) associated with heart-felt mercy.2 Helmut Koster, The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971, VII, 548-559) Its roots in Judaic Hebrew go back to making an offering to God and the associated feeling in the lions for making life whole and holy. To be thus inwardly moved by the suffering of another is to feel the holy desire to give life.

Jesus’ compassion, his desire to give life, is stronger than his desire to be alone. Like the fireman who risks his life for strangers, compassion leads Jesus to immerse himself into the crowd, to share their anguish and to cure the ill. In fact, the healing response to grief is not isolation but compassion, the merciful desire to give life. To be a disciple of Jesus is to serve the pain of others as we suffer our own pain because our desire to give life is stronger than our desire to grieve death.

3. This leads me to my third reminder or lesson. It is a lesson the disciples don’t quite yet get. When it becomes late in the day and the crowd in this deserted place is hungry Jesus asks his disciples to feed them. At first the disciples resist not believing they have what it takes (scarcity thinking) to feed 5000 folks. Ed Spivey has written a tongue in cheek piece taking the disciples argument, modernizing it, and suggesting “Why Jesus Shouldn’t Have Fed the 5,000.”

Apparently, biblical scholars funded exclusively by a Christian (Political Action Committee) now feel that, for their own good, the 5,000 should have worked for that food instead of depending on an overly generous Messiah. Scholars are convinced that the disciples - the first shareholders in the kingdom of God, if you will - probably tried to stop Jesus from creating a culture of welfare among his followers. ‘Oh sure, Master. Today you feed 5,000, then what? Feed 10,000 tomorrow? Look, just give the kid back his lunch, make your speech, and let’s get out of here. (Hey kid, you gonna eat all them loaves?)3 Ed Spivey, Jr., Sojourners, Nov./Dec. 1995, 98.

When Jesus encounters the suffering of others he is moved by compassion to action. When the disciples encounter the hunger suffering of others they are moved by a mentality of scarcity, reasoned with an intelligent practicality and perhaps some prejudice. The disciples say they don’t have enough food for themselves, and not enough money to feed so many.

Often when I have a lucid moment and fully encounter the universal suffering of the world I too feel inadequate, wholly ill equipped or resourced to feed the hungry. We too are intelligent and practical people and we too wonder if we have what it takes to be a part of God’s healing for the ill, the hunger, the homeless, the criminal, the enemy, and all the other suffering of the world. We know for sure that we are not Jesus.

Mixing our strong desire to be compassionate with the feeling of inadequacy leads to what is called compassion fatigue. We try and we try harder and then we haven’t got it in us to try any more. And then we are either depressed about it or choose to be willfully ignorant4 James P. Carse, The Religious Case Against Belief, (Penguin Press, New York, 2008), page 13 (I know it is there but I choose to ignore it).

It never seems to occur to Jesus that he can’t be a part of God’s healing compassion, of his servant love. Jesus believes in abundance and not scarcity. Jesus acts in absolute trust of God’s desire and power to heal and not a feeling of inadequacy. Jesus believes that by the power of God he can help and he does.

Now here is the part of the story that really struck me this time. Even though the disciples don’t believe they can do it, uses them to get it done. Jesus commands them to bring what they have. And mysteriously, miraculously, the five loaves and two fish, what they have, feeds the crowd, 5,000 men not counting women and children, and there is an abundance of leftovers.

So the third thing I remember and re-learn is that though we may not think we can help, if we but bring to Jesus what we have, it will be more than enough. We feed and heal the world not by our power but by the power of Jesus through us.

To believe and then act in lovingkindness with trust that God is for us and not neutral or against us, is with us and not far off, gives us the resources necessary to do those things to which we are called. Faith is trusting this to be true. By obedience to the divine movement of compassion for life in us Abba uses us to heal the ill and feed the hungry. In an abundance of grace we become God’s heart and hands for a suffering world.

Evelyn Underhill wrote: We are agents of the Creative Spirit in this world. Real advance in the spiritual life, then, means accepting this vocation with all it involves. Not merely turning over the pages of an engineering magazine and enjoying the pictures, but putting on overalls and getting on with the job. The real spiritual life must be horizontal as well as vertical; spread more and more as well as aspire more and more.5 Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life, quoted by Job and Shawchuck in A Guide to Prayer, (Nashville, The Upper Room 1983), 250.

What Jesus asks of us is that we bring whatever it is we have, put on our overalls and get on with the job of healing and feeding the world. What Jesus teaches and demonstrates is that even though we may have only a little, by the grace of Abba, it will be more than enough.

These three things are what I remembered and learned again:

1. Suffering is universal. We all suffer.
2. Compassion, the desire to give life, is stronger than the paralysis of grief.
3. Abba will take our small offerings of compassion and make them enough for the healing of the creation and all her creatures.

By the life of a disciple in worship, study and service I want to be more like Jesus to see the suffering of others, to be moved by compassion and to offer my humble gifts to Abba’s use. May it be the same for you.
And by the work Abba does in and through us may we show up at our families ready to have and give compassion; may we show up at our work trusting grace shows up with us; and may we show up in the grocery store and in the street as those who live Christ like lovingkindness. And in this way may Abba use our suffering and our gifts to heal a much suffering world.

Shalom and Amen.

[1] Ed Kittrell, Funny Business, January 1996, 5.

[2] Helmut Koster, The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971, VII, 548-559)

[3] Ed Spivey, Jr., Sojourners, Nov./Dec. 1995, 98.

[4] James P. Carse, The Religious Case Against Belief, (Penguin Press, New York, 2008), page 13

[5] Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life, quoted by Job and Shawchuck in A Guide to Prayer, (Nashville, The Upper Room 1983), 250.