Over the past few weeks we have listened to Jesus teach us about the Kingdom of Heaven and God’s grace and mercy through parables. Parables are interesting ways of teaching because they evoke various responses depending on your personal reflections and experience. So one parable can evoke various responses and they can all be correct because that’s the purpose of a parable – to create discussion. Parables, therefore, never become irrelevant or outdated. But here in our Gospel reading we don’t have a parable but rather an actual event that puts the parable to the test.
Last week we heard the parable of the mustard seed – the smallest of seeds that becomes a huge tree providing shade and rest for the birds of the air. We heard that the Kingdom of God was like a pinch of yeast that when mixed with an amount of flour mixes in with the batch of flour to cause the flour to rise. And here we see in action how from little things big things grow.
Jesus is teaching out in the open field and is followed by thousands of people – 5,000 men plus women and children. It is getting late and Jesus is concerned about their wellbeing and asks his disciples to feed them.
They panic and say “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 rejects their suggestion and says – They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat. Their natural human response is to look at their dilemma with physical eyes: We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish – how many could that feed? From there Jesus blesses the food they have – they distribute it to the people – and they pick up 12 basketfuls of leftovers – presumably more than they started with.
As in the parables of the yeast and the mustard seed, Jesus is teaching us that we don’t need to look for supernatural miracles to the issues that are facing us. God has given us ample provisions to do his work even with what seems to our eyes to be rather small and insufficient. Jesus could have caused a miracle like in the Old Testament where God rained down manna from heaven and blew quail with a strong wind to feed the people. But Jesus wanted them to look at what they had and solve the issue at hand with the provisions God has given them – their daily bread as he teaches in the Lord’s Prayer.
Likewise God challenges us when we are faced with momentous issues to not give up but trust God. As St Paul had to when he sought supernatural healing for his suffering, Three times I prayed to the Lord to remove my ‘thorn in the flesh’ . To which God replied – my grace is all you need. My grace is sufficient. Your 5 loaves and 2 fish are sufficient.
It is easy to give up and live within our means. To look at our budget and say – we can’t afford it. To look at our membership and say – we don’t have the resources to do this. To look at our schedules and say – I don’t have time. Our work for the Kingdom does not start with what we have or what we can afford or what we can see. It begins as it did with Jesus – with compassion. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Compassion has moved people to commit their lives to helping others – to solving world problems without first wondering if I have enough. The word compassion in the original context here means a pain that emanates deep in the bowels. As we often express when we see something that upsets us we talk about being “sick in the stomach” or a real “kick in the guts”. That’s the meaning behind compassion – it made Jesus sick in the stomach to see the people in their distress.
Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel we read also about Jesus compassion: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Which is why Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd.
He never abandons his sheep – even going after the one lost sheep. Behind mission and ministry of the church should not be physical resources as we would always doubt. We would always fall short on resources or fear that they would run out. Mission and ministry is driven by compassion for others. If we have compassion then we will always find a way as Jesus did.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. Our other 2 readings speak about the challenges that we face. We have Jacob wrestling with this unknown assailant all through the night and neither could subdue the other. Jacob realizes that the one he is actually struggling with is God and not an enemy.
Sometimes our struggles are with God himself. Wondering “what are you doing God”. When God places compassion on our hearts but we feel inadequate. Paul also shows the pain of compassion and the sacrifice he was prepared to make for his Jewish brothers and sisters who did not accept Jesus as the promised Messiah. He says: I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. And what was the sacrifice he was prepared to make? That I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel.
As painful as this is – the pain deep in stomach with compassion for others we know that it produces amazing results as we see in the feeding of possible 10,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish – with abundant leftovers. It reminds me of what Paul says about our human suffering that it produces perseverance, which produces character which produces hope. Some of the greatest humanitarian efforts have been achieved by survivors of human suffering.
I know suffering is difficult and at times we can wrestle with God and ask “WHY” and like Paul to remove it. But perhaps, as Jacob did, we can ask God for a blessing. And in that blessing we can be a blessing to others. So may I encourage you, in your wrestle with God and all that’s going on in your life, to look deep inside yourself – into the compassion deep in your stomach – and ask not what God can do for you but what you can do for God. Jacob walked away from his wrestling a changed man. He walked away with a new name, Israel, one who has struggled with God and with humans and have overcome. But he also came away with a limp.
We too may come away without full healing but we come away blessed by God to be a blessing to others. As Paul also discovered – when I am weak, then I am strong for the power of Jesus Christ rests on me. May the power of Christ also rest on you as the peace of God that surpasses our understanding watches over you now and forever. Amen.
