When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for
them and cured their sick. (Matthew 14:14)
You know I do a lot of funerals, right? Last week I was on a conference
call with two young women for the purpose of preparing the memorial service for
their beloved big brother. Big Bro was young by our standards (although my standard is anyone younger than I am
is too young to die!), only in his early forties. His death came, as deaths
have a nasty tendency to do, without any kind of warning. It was just a sucker
punch, made a bunch worse because it followed the death of the girls’ mom only
four short months earlier. That’s a ton of grief stuffed into a very small sack
of time.
I was on the phone with the bereaved sisters for about forty minutes,
and, as you can imagine, there was a lot of crying. I did what pastors do—I
listened and prayed and made suggestions. I offered what comfort I could under
the circumstances, which wasn’t much. There’s just not a whole lot you can say
at these times. I mean, every death is
sad, but not every death is tragic.
This one, coming as it did, was tragic. I hung up the phone with a profound
sense of my own impotence.
I also felt pretty wrung out. Other peoples’ emotions can kick your butt
just as hard as your own can at times. The conversation with the two young
ladies made me think about the gospel lesson appointed for Pentecost 10, Year A
in the Revised Common Lectionary (Matthew 14: 13-21). I started to wonder how
Jesus might’ve felt when he was confronted with so much pain and need by all
those folks chasing after him. If you read this story in context by starting at
the top of chapter 14 you’d have to figure Jesus wasn’t in the jolliest of
places when the necessity to feed five thousand people and heal their sick was
dumped in his lap. His great mentor, John the Baptist, had just been
decapitated by Herod. Think about it: if your
great friend and mentor just had his head lopped off by a cruel and venal
dictator, how do you think you’d
feel?
Jesus just wants to be alone. He gets into a boat and goes away by
himself. He doesn’t even take Peter and James and John with him. Sometimes you
just have to shut off the noise of the world. The trouble is, the noise doesn’t
want to be shut off. Need and sickness and hunger follow Jesus and don’t even
allow him time to be sad and process.
So what does he do? He summons up his compassion, and he meets their
needs. Even while grieving—and we have to believe that Jesus grieved—it turns
out he had enough love in him to get the job done. God’s store of love and
mercy is inexhaustible.
Fear of privation is a tool of the devil. The Hebrew scripture lesson
the Revised Common Lectionary marries to this gospel tale was written (or so we
believe) around a time when the exiles in Babylon stood a good chance of going
back to their old turf. The prophet wanted to give them a picture of what God’s
rule should be like once their homeland was restored. It’s a picture of abundance,
given to all—even folks from other nations!—without condition or qualification
just as Jesus gave to the multitude.
I officiated the funeral service for the young man the day after I spoke
with his sisters. One sister was, as the old King James Version would say,
“great with child.” I asked her how she was feeling and she confessed feeling
apprehensive about giving birth to her second child. “I don’t have my mom
anymore,” she said, “and with my brother’s death I feel emotionally drained.”
Trying to console her, I assured her that, when the baby came, God would give
her all the love, compassion, strength, and understanding she needed. Our God
is a God of abundance, not scarcity. Even when we fear we won’t have
enough—either materially or emotionally—God provides.
May the abundance of God’s love console and strengthen you in your
journey this week.
Thanks for stopping by, and do come again!
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