Proper 13

Preparation

Please begin by reading Matthew 14:13-21 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided the text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--Need, Compassion, and Plenty

“Compassion,” writes Frederick Buechner, “is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin … the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”

Jesus’ life was a life of compassion. Jesus was always about the healing of the sick, the feeding of hungry bodies, and the feeding of hungry souls. Sometimes, as here, he had a need to be away to refresh his own being in communion with God. Even at those times, though, one sight of the need of God’s people always brought compassion welling up—really God’s overpowering love for God’s people flowing freely through.

Human need can always be met with God’s abundance, though seldom in ways we anticipate. Jesus told the disciples, who were focused on the how little there was, to feed the people, “you give them something to eat.” They then brought their little to Jesus. Jesus called on God to bless the little and it was turned into abundance.

Like the disciples, it is so easy for us to focus own our own lack when we see need instead of remembering how God can bless and multiply our little and turn it into abundance.  Our neighborhood, our town, our city, the world, all are still vast reservoirs of human need. Bodies and souls are hungry everywhere! When we women and men of God’s family look at the vastness of the need, we often feel overwhelmed. “God, the need is so great and we have so little! I am so weary from trying. Can’t I just go away to a lonely place and let it all go? Can’t you just make them go away for awhile?” But the words of Jesus are still the same: “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

Once again, God calls us to compassion and calls us to remember that God can take our little, bless it, and make it more than enough.

revclay

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Matthew 14:13-21

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.  When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 

When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." 

Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." 

They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." 

And he said, "Bring them here to me." 

Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 

And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

 [NRSV]