Lectionary Reflection for Proper 13A on Matthew 14:13-21
OVERWHELMING NEED AND COMPASSION FATIGUE
In the last two months, since my wife and I learned of her brain cancer, I have experienced, as never before, the power of a few compassionate people. Friends, walking companions, and students from my wife’s yoga studio have constantly begged us to let them help us. They have lent us equipment that has made this journey so much easier. They have been a constant presence of care, have helped to keep our home running, and have given me much-needed time to get out of the house to manage chores and administrative tasks that I can’t do at home. And they have fed us. We have eaten better and more extravagantly than we ever would have on our own, and have had so much food delivered that our freezer will stay packed for weeks to come.
I am aware of how fortunate I am to have a support network like this, and I grieve for those who don’t. But with all the people and resources in our world, there is no good reason that any person should have to face lack, suffering, or health crises alone. There are more than enough resources for everyone to have their basic needs met. We just don’t seem to be able to create the systems to distribute those resources effectively. For many of us, the enormity of the need leaves us paralysed by not knowing what to do, and when we do try to respond, we are quickly overwhelmed by compassion fatigue. And so the suffering continues.
In the famous musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, there is a scene where sick and broken people come to Jesus asking to be healed. As he begins to touch as many as he can, the crowd grows bigger and more urgent. In response, Jesus’ attempts become more frantic and desperate, until finally, bursting away from them, he cries out, “heal yourselves!”
Who hasn’t felt like this at times? Who, especially if we take the brokenness and need of the world seriously, hasn’t felt overwhelmed and unable to give enough or be enough for what is needed? To portray Jesus in this way is to reflect our own sense of inadequacy and our struggle to believe that Jesus could really have been as self-giving as the Gospels claim. Yet, in the Lectionary reading for Proper 13A from Matthew 14:13-21, this is exactly the claim that the writer makes. But it goes even further. Jesus not only manages to find what seems like super-human compassion within himself, he has the audacity to expect his disciples to share it and participate in it.
Sometimes reading the Bible can be extremely uncomfortable because it doesn’t let us off the hook. And this is one of those times.
INTERRUPTED GRIEF
The Gospel writer begins Matthew 14 by interrupting his narrative about Jesus with the horrific story of Herod’s execution of John the Baptiser. For his birthday, Herod hosted an extravagant banquet—feeding those who had no lack of food1—and decided to reward his step-daughter for her dancing. Showing off to his guests, he announced that she could have anything she wanted, and so, at the urging of her mother, she asked for John’s head on a platter. His arrogance having now come back to haunt him, Herod had to go through with the execution, and John’s life was prematurely and meaninglessly cut short. It takes just twelve short verses for Matthew to reveal the nature of the unjust and cruel world that Jesus and his disciples inhabited, and to highlight the stark contrast between Herod’s oppressive leadership and Jesus’ mission.2
When the narrative returns to Jesus in 14:13, we find him in a boat seeking solitude to process the news of his cousin’s death.3 But the crowds, who saw him go, raced around the lake and were waiting for him when he got back to shore. Despite his grief, on seeing the great need of the people, Jesus felt no frustration or resentment. Rather, “compassion seized his guts”,4 and he immediately started serving them again. As Tom Wright indicates, this was the first miracle5—and this is where Jesus Christ Superstar got it wrong. Jesus’ ability to lay aside his own needs and offer compassion to others is what set him apart.
It was also what ultimately got him killed. Such generosity, humility, compassion, and service will always challenge the heartlessness of the powerful who ignore the needy and make no effort, in spite of their great resources, to alleviate suffering.6
After some time, the disciples, who were perhaps beginning to learn a little of Jesus’ concern for others,7 asked him to send the crowds away because it was late and the people had no food. The scene is now set in Matthew’s narrative to highlight the contrast between Jesus and all structures of power that feel nothing for human struggle, and to reveal Jesus as a new Moses, who had come to recreate God’s people under the law of compassion, justice, peace, and love.8
THE MIRACLE OF GENEROSITY
While Herod fed the well-fed, Jesus provided food for the hungry. But unlike the time of Moses, where God fed the people with no help from human beings, Jesus did not do the work himself. When the disciples noted the hunger of the crowd, Jesus responded, “You feed them” (14:16). They had seen the need; they had witnessed Jesus’ compassion. Now, they were to step up and participate in his mission.
But they did not have the resources to provide for such a huge need. So, characteristically, Jesus simply asked them what resources they did have—which amounted to some bread and fish. This was all Jesus needed. He blessed it and broke it (a foreshadow of the sacrament),9 and then he gave it back to the disciples for them to distribute. In a crowd of this size, with no big screens to show what was happening at the front, it is likely that many people knew nothing more than that the disciples were feeding them. Perhaps, they only discovered later that they had been participants in a miracle.
