Broken Bread by James Johnson. |
August 3, 2014
Matthew
14:13-21
13Now 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. 14When he went ashore, he saw a
great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When
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.” 16Jesus said to them, “They
need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17They replied,
“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” 18And he said,
“Bring them here to me.” 19Then 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. 20And all ate and were filled; and they
took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21And
those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Sermon: “The
Broken Pieces”
Where is it you go, when
you need to get away from it all? You
know, when you’re feeling a bit broken up inside, or when the brokenness of the
world seems like too much to bear? When
you see the news coming out of Palestine and Israel, when a dear friend feels
funny and gets checked out and leaves having heard that dreaded word:
cancer. When one day bleeds into the
next, with no sign of things getting better.
Where do you go?
We all have a place. Mine is where I had my family reunion last
weekend: Mo Ranch, a Presbyterian Camp sprawled across the hill country of
Texas, where the Guadalupe River springs up from underground and cliff faces
tower above you while stars shoot overhead and the Milky Way looks like you
could just reach up and touch it.
Whatever level of peace (or lack of it) I’m feeling in my life, there is
always peace to be found in that place.
Always.
If I can’t get to Mo Ranch,
anywhere with trees and sunlight is a good replacement. I’m especially fond of a particular spot in
my yard, where the grass is soft and the evening sun shines like gold through
the pine forest between my house and Earl and Juanita’s. Perhaps you’ve seen me there as you drive
by. We all need a place to find
peace. If a place of solitude and
soul-tending isn’t springing to mind for you, let me assure you, you need a
place like that. So please, find it.
Jesus needed a place like
that. He had several, actually. When life became overwhelming, when the
celebrity status of a healer became more burden than blessing, when the crushing
power of the State and religious elite left him feeling embattled on every
side, Jesus went to a quiet place.
Our text from Matthew this
morning begins with such a place. The
lectionary reading, which I generally follow each Sunday, simply begins
cryptically with, “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat
to a deserted place by himself.” What
was “this?” What news made Jesus
immediately want to withdraw from the world?
Tragic news, actually. John the Baptist had been beheaded by Herod,
which is horrific enough. The fact that
it was to fulfill the birthday wish of a pretty girl makes it even more
senseless. Do you know who it was who
baptized you? Can you picture that
person? Now imagine that they not only
died, but that they died in a violent and humiliating way. How would you feel? That is how Jesus was feeling that day. John baptized Jesus, began his ministry in
waters of grace. And now that powerful
start was gone.
All that was left was a weary, broken Messiah, and crowds hungry for hope and healing pressing in on every side.
All that was left was a weary, broken Messiah, and crowds hungry for hope and healing pressing in on every side.
So he went away to his
quiet place to find some peace. It
didn’t work. I don’t know if a fish on
that presumed island went and announced his presence to the nearest village or
what, but somehow, word got out. The
crowds found him. And his quiet place
became like the circus that was Jesus’ everyday life. So he went ashore to where the largest of the
crowd was gathered and did what he did.
He began to heal and teach them.
He began to heal and teach them.
The disciples showed up a
bit later, and like good Presbyterian elders, noticed that this location was
not ideal for such a gathering. “It’s
too deserted here!” they said. “And
people are surely getting hungry. Let’s
have a little recess for supper and continue with this lesson tomorrow.”
But Jesus knew, better than
any, that sometimes the kingdom of God needs to come when it needs to
come. Some lessons can’t wait until
you’re whole or your tummy is full to be taught or learned. Life is short: John’s horrific death reminded
Jesus of that. There was no time to
waste.
Jesus summed up the entirety
of his work on earth in the next couple of sentences: “They don’t need to be
sent away. You give them something to
eat.” That sent these sensible disciples
into a tailspin. They began to hurriedly
form a fellowship committee and decide how they could possibly pull off such a
feat. “Two fish, five loaves! That’s it, Jesus! There’s no way we can feed these people with
that. And we don’t even have any sweet
tea!”
You see the disciples were
operating in the way we human beings often operate in life: from an assumption
of scarcity. There’s not enough food to
go around, so we better stockpile it or overfill our plates, so we and our
families are provided for. There’s not enough
compassion to go around, so we better only give it away when it’s really
deserved. There’s not enough grace to go
around, so we better go ahead and seek retaliation and leave the forgiving to
God. There’s only five loaves and two
fish, so we might as well not even try to feed anyone.
But Jesus operated from a
different reality, and that reality was the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God always, always
operates from a place of abundance, no matter how ridiculous that abundance may
seem. In the kingdom of God, a Savior
broken by grief for his friend can still teach people something powerful. In the kingdom of God, when you take bread,
bless it and break it, it becomes not just your meal, but a meal meant for the
masses. The blessing in the kingdom of
God, you see, is in the brokenness.
A broken world in need of
hope. A broken Messiah in need of
solitude. Broken bread in need of
sharing. Broken people in need of
healing and sustenance. The kingdom of
God wastes nothing: especially not the broken pieces, which is perhaps why
those broken pieces of bread were gathered into baskets, after well over 5,000
people were fed to the brim.
I don’t know what they did
with those broken pieces, but I feel certain they also played their role in
this miracle. Perhaps a little wandering
bird nibbled on those holy crumbs.
Perhaps a few people who didn’t know where tomorrow’s meal was coming
from stuffed some in their pockets as a promise of being filled once more.
You don’t need me to tell
you that we live in a world of brokenness.
This is why we seek places of escape and solitude, that we might find
the tools to bear such fractured living.
But let us never forget that it is the broken pieces that become nibbles
of God’s kingdom of abundance. Let us
never forget that the moments of brokenness are still moments where God can use
us to share good news. Let us never
forget that God wastes nothing, no matter how broken.
Though the kingdoms of this
world rage against one another and call us to hate and hoard, we operate from a
different kingdom, one of abundance and healing. Though our society demands perfection from
us, saying that we can never have enough money or be beautiful enough, we
confess our brokenness honestly, knowing that by God’s grace, our broken pieces
fit together into a beautiful mosaic of hope and peace. Though our lives call us to do more and more
and respond to times of trial by seizing control and raising our voice, God
calls us to moments of prayerful solitude in a quiet place.
If you are feeling broken
today, that’s okay. If you see the world
to be a broken place today, that’s because it is. But remember, we place our trust in a God who
used brokenness to bless multitudes, and still does. The broken pieces matter. It all matters in the kingdom of God. And there’s always more than enough to go
around until, with each crumb, we taste the peace of God, not just for us, but
for this entire broken world. Thanks be
to God. Amen.
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