The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
March 22, 2009

4 Lent-B
2 Chronicles 36:14-23
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 6: 4-15

The feeding of the multitudes is found in all four Gospels, and Matthew and Mark report it as having happened not just once, but repeatedly. No other event from Jesus’ life is told by the evangelists so many times, so they clearly believed it was important. We often call it a miracle. But the evangelists do not call it a miracle. Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t call it anything; they just tell what happened. And John calls it a sign, a sign of bread that endures for eternity, food for the weary of heart and spirit.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is healing and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God to great crowds of people, and he sends his disciples among them to do the same. And “when Jesus saw the crowds,” Matthew says, ”he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, and he healed their sick.”

While Jesus is doing this, Herod arrests John the Baptist because of his preaching, and then has John killed. And when Jesus hears about John’s death, he decides he needs a break from teaching and healing, and he withdraws by boat to a solitary place. But “hearing of this, the crowds followed Jesus on foot from the towns.” Apparently, they reached Jesus’ intended place of retreat ahead of him, so eager were they for his teaching and healing. And again, “Jesus had compassion on them, and healed their sick.”

And then, “as evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.’ [But] Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’ ‘We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,’ they answered. ‘Bring them here to me,’ Jesus said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

In John’s Gospel, it is a small boy who provides the bread and the fish. Otherwise, the event is reported pretty much the same as in Matthew, except that John adds that after the people had eaten and were satisfied and “saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ But Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.’”

If you want some rational explanation of how this event happened, you won’t get it from me. I haven’t a clue! It’s just that this is the way all the evangelists report it – not once, but six times.

We are told three essential things about this event, as I see it. First, that Jesus had compassion on the crowds, who were harassed and helpless. Second, that Jesus took what little there was to offer, and blessed it. And third, that when Jesus did this, everyone ate and was satisfied.

Jesus had compassion on the crowds, who were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. That would be us. That would be, in the Gospel accounts, an oppressed people scratching out a living with two enervating weights that sapped their life and spirits: the oppressive heel of a hated foreign government pinning down one shoulder and the cheerless heels of self-righteous and dreary religious authorities pinning down the other.

The harassed and helpless crowds. That would be us, today, who are ensnared in an economic crisis that weighs us down not only financially, but also spiritually, because the snare we have created is not only a financial issue, it is also a spiritual issue, involving, as it does, at least three of the seven deadly sins: greed, gluttony, and envy. The harassed and helpless crowds. That would be us, today, who are entangled in economically and morally draining military commitments we do not know how to let go of. That would be us, this week, who are harassed and helpless in the wake of events we do not understand and struggle to live with. Two are working in the field. One is taken, the other is left. A young woman, a sister in Christ, dies in a horrible accident. Another, a cherished brother in Christ, lies gravely ill with a disease that physicians can monitor, but do not know how to cure. And we struggle to understand why, if God is good, such things happen.

If you want some rational explanation for these events as well, I can’t provide it. Such understanding will have to come from a wisdom deeper than mine. What I can say is that even as we struggle, harassed and helpless, Jesus draws near and shares our burdens. He has compassion, the Scriptures say.

Compassion, from the Greek splagxnizomai, which literally means that Jesus’ entrails boiled over. This, because to those who spoke Greek, the splagna, the viscera, were the seat of emotion. It means that Jesus is so moved by our helplessness that he himself moves in to share it, and to offer what little he has, himself.

He offers food for our bodies, and we eat and are satisfied. “But I tell you the truth,” he says, ”you are looking for me again because you ate the loaves and had your fill. But you need food for your souls as well, food for your spirit as well as your bodies. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.... I am the bread of life. This is my body; take and eat,” he says. “I am the true vine,” he adds. “This is my blood. Take and drink. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

“Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asks. And with the disciples we say that we have, but, of course, we haven’t. We know only our immediate need, our loss, our pain and grief, our failing bodies, our poverty of heart and soul.

“I had seen poverty before,” the man said. “I had seen even poverty such as this. The man at my door was asking only for something to eat, so I gave him a morsel of bread from my full loaf. I gave as one who had much to one who had not. I gave hoping he would then go away and let me have my morning coffee in peace. He apparently knew this attitude. He responded accordingly, a little bow of the head, a muttered thank you, and then he moved away from my door and out of my sight.

“I didn’t think about him again until I saw him again, at church the next Sunday. There he was standing in line waiting to proceed to the altar. The man who had begged for food at my door now stood just two persons ahead of me in line, waiting to beg for another kind of bread.

“All of a sudden I knew this man, for in him I saw myself, a beggar man before the Lord. The two of us in the same bread line, indistinguishable. For I, too, have to present myself at the Lord’s table without one plea, without a claim in the world to make except my own need, and my trust that Christ will provide.”

Having compassion on us, because we are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, Jesus invites us into companionship with him. He offers to walk with us in all our troubles and grief and pain. He offers food for our souls. For as George Herbert reminds us, it is Love – Jesus, the Christ – who can feed our spirits.


Love bade me welcome; yet my
soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me
grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly
questioning
If I lacked anything.

“A guest,” I answered “worthy to
be here.”
Love said, “You shall be he.”

“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my
dear,
I cannot look on Thee.”

Love took my hand, and smiling did
reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d
them: Let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love,
“Who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down,” says Love,
“and taste my meat.”

So I did sit and eat.


“Beloved in the Lord: Our Savior Christ, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood as a sign and pledge of his love, for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of his death, and for a spiritual sharing in his risen life.”

Christ himself is the food that endures for eternity. With the weight of things we do not understand on our hearts, even with the weight of powers and principalities and the burden of sin on our spirits, Jesus invites us today to draw near and take that food, that our strength might be renewed, that we might walk and not be faint, and that, with God’s help, we might, once again, run and not be weary.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.