“On A Deserted Hill” 

Matthew 14:13-21 

As you drive north up I-15, after you pass through the town of Mesquite on the way to St George, you find your self climbing up through a mountain pass. It rises up from the desert floor thousands of feet. You find yourself, all of a sudden, with mountains towering up on either side. On either side are red and brown rocks, Joshua trees, and sagebrush. 

There are many twists and turns in the road. With each turn the way behind is blocked from view, and so is the way ahead. You can't really tell where you are headed. You can't see the other side of the mountains. There is no cell service. It is a hot, dry, and desolate road. 

If you, in your travels, have driven anywhere around this part of the country, you know hot, dry, and desolate. You can imagine, perhaps, what it was like for the crowds that pursued Jesus into the wilderness; only they did not travel in air conditioned comfort. They did not have GPS, or radios or maps. They only had their companions on the journey, and the collective knowledge of the lay of the land. What that collective knowledge told them that they were headed for a desolate place. The reason one would even think of heading out into this wilderness is, in good biblical tradition, to find God or God's prophet. Could it be this Jesus? 

Can you picture the scene? Can you picture the deserted place along the lakeshore? There are rocks and dirt not unlike the mountain pass along I-15. Two or three boats are pulled up onto the land. Just where the water quietly laps onto the shoreline, there is a figure of a man that stands out. One's eye is drawn to him. He has the very ordinary robe of a Galilean peasant. His sandals, usually dusty, are clean now because he has just gotten out of the boat and his feet are still wet. There is an expression of unmistakable compassion on his face as he reaches out to those around him. His face expresses the stubborn, steadfast kind of compassion that carries with it a determination that will not be denied. 

As the eyes of your imagination move from the man, you can begin to see the hillside that rises up from the water's edge. A few dusty paths crisscross this hillside, and along these paths is a ton of people. 

A few faces wear frowns and scowls. They have traveled to confirm their

suspicion that this celebrated Jesus is a charlatan, a fraud, a con artist that preys on the weak and marginalized, or at worst a dangerous rebel with the potential to upset the apple cart of the status quo. 

There are a few of those; but the rest of the crowd is filled with people who have amazed expressions on their face. There is one woman with a smile because it is the first time, having been blind from birth, that she has actually seen the lake. She laughs with her cousin who had led her to the man's touch. It was his touch which had opened her eyes. 

There is a young child running down one of the paths. He is laughing because he can now run home, that lame leg having been healed. Behind the child is running his father with a face both joyful and bewildered. His expression is at the same time joyful because his child can now run, and bewildered because it has just occurred to him that he will have to now chase his son more than carry him. 

Also along the path there is a man quietly weeping, his finger tips gently running up and down the smooth skin of his arms. When he had arrived at this desolate place, his body had been covered with open sores which had kept him from being with his family (the law declaring him unclean). But having been touched by the man, he is unclean no longer. 

Finally, gathered around the man is a smaller group of individuals, a mere handful, and they are passing out bread and fish to the crowd. They look bewildered, as if they don't understand what is going on, as if their hands are performing some action they did not think possible. 

This is the scene. Now, with your imaginations, I invite you to scan the scene and look at faces of the people. I want you to find one face in particular. Are you looking? I don't want you to look for Jesus' face, nor Peter's, nor Waldo's, but yours. Where are you in this scene? If you picture yourselves in this scene, where are you? 

This scene comes from a day long ago, but as Scripture it is a story that happens again and again. On Sunday morning, in a time set aside just for this purpose, we gather at the lakeshore and focus on a man who is like no other. The compassion he felt for the crowd is the compassion he now feels for me, and for you, for this congregation, for this community, and for this world he came to redeem. As we gather, and as the story plays out once again, I ask you to reflect on where you are in it? 

Are you like the crowd who gathered back in the day? Do you need to be fed this morning? Do you need to be healed? Is there an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach, an emptiness that comes from a burden or struggle that you have brought to this place with the hope that you will be touched by man? It may be a physical hunger, or an emotional, or a spiritual one. 

Perhaps your journey to this place has been long and your body is tired.

Perhaps your journey has been very unforgiving, or dangerous, or lonely.

Perhaps your journey has been marked by fear, or hatred, or intolerance, or by a lack of meaning in the midst of business, or by any one of the countless manifestations of brokenness in the world. 

To those of you who picture yourselves among the crowd, hungrily waiting for the basket of fresh smelling bread to be passed to you, our scripture readings say, your hunger, your hurt, is not the end of the story. There is a basket headed your way. 

There might have been a few of you who pictured yourselves as one of the disciples passing around the baskets. Are we able to imagine that? 

When the disciples came to Jesus, encouraging him to send the hungry crowd in search of food, Jesus responded to them with the kind of surprising answer that he loved to give. I picture Jesus looking at his disciples, one of them holding their own snack of a few loaves and fish, with a little twinkle in his eye.

“You give them something to eat.” 

Now remember Jesus was fully human, so he may not have been fully cognizant of how the whole thing was going to play out. But where the disciples always thought in ways that were too small and too literal, Jesus always dreamed dreams that were big, God sized big. “So, my friends” he said to them, “you give them something to eat.” 

I am going to go out on an interpretive limb here and say that the followers of Jesus passing out the bread were more diverse than Matthew lets on. We witness from the last verse of the story that in Matthew's world, the women and children didn't count enough to be numbered, but they were there

nonetheless. Elsewhere the gospels note that there were always women among the number who followed Jesus from the beginning. Jesus didn't let social or religious boundaries or taboos keep him from loving or teaching or touching those who heard his call. I would even bet that when it came to it, between the male disciples, the clueless twelve on the one hand, and the women who followed Jesus on the other, the men were still looking down on their hands wondering how 5 and 2 would feed thousands while the women were already busy passing it out. 

We hear from John's telling of this story that it is a boy's lunch that feeds the crowd, and Jesus himself said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs (Luke 18:16 NRSV),” so as I picture the disciples passing out the bread, I picture women and children there too. We won't let Matthew's patriarchal blinders cover our eyes this morning. The question remains: are you among them too? 

We find ourselves in a desolate world. Sometimes it seems as if the 5 loaves and the 2 fish isn't even enough for our own dinner, for our own survival, let alone a hungry world. But while we are tempted to focus on our scarcity, Jesus, this morning invites us to consider the possibility of abundance. When all we see are rocks and dirt, when all we feel is parched and hot and alone, when all we have is a handful of meager resources, Jesus invites us to see each other, to see the blessings of life, and, when shared, the abundance of what God has given us. Jesus invites us to see the power of what we can do together.

Where are we in this scene past and present? Are we scowling or frowning? Being fed? Are we feeding? Wherever we are, we hear the good news that he has compassion for us. 

Here is a table, my friends. Where are we in this story of love and grace? Some will view this table as a mere morsel, a crumb, an empty ritual. Others, however, will see a feast: a feast of hope, a feast of strength, a feast of love that feeds us in this moment and strengthens us to pass the basket on to our neighbor. We find here, if we dare to imagine, an invitation that will not only lead us to luscious gardens that nourish us, but will also work through us to feed our, no God's hungry world. This table empowers us to choose: hope or despair, sharing or hoarding, faith or cynicism and inactivity. Which will it be for you? 

Amen. 
 
 
 

August 3, 2008

Rev. Paul Heins

First Presbyterian Church

Logan, Utah