Compassion – Matthew 14:13-21

A text – Matthew 14:13-21

¹³ 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. ¹⁴ When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. ¹⁵ 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.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷ They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸ And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹ 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. ²⁰ And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹ And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

A reflection:

Here is a story we have all heard. Probably many times. It’s an amazing story all by itself. But it did not occur all by itself. It immediately followed the story of King Herod Antipas’s birthday party, at which John the Baptist was beheaded. The news of John’s death is the “this” in verse 13, the first line of this Gospel story. Jesus is told this news, withdraws by himself to a deserted place – to grieve, to lay low if Herod is somehow on the warpath, to come to terms with what it means to be the voice of God in that moment – and then encounters the crowds following him. Instead of running farther away, he has compassion for them and continues his ministry of healing them, and later of course feeding them.

The miracle of abundance is life-changing for the disciples. They probably never forget it, watching more and more bread and fish appear, watching the gratitude from the people they were handing it out to. They tried to count the multitude and include it in the story at the end, but my former Luther Seminary colleague, New Testament scholar Dr. Matt Skinner says, “…it sounds like someone wasn’t trying hard when they included this line: ‘Those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children’ (Matthew 14:21). So, let’s rename this story “The Feeding of Many More Than 5000.” The abundance was clear, and it started not from nothing but from a gift of someone’s five loaves and two fish.

But this week, as I read this lesson, I am less struck by Jesus’s provision of abundant food and healing than I am struck by the abundance of Jesus’s compassion for the crowd. He is in deep grief over John, and somewhere, sometime, we have all been in such deep grief. One has a lot of compassion for oneself at those moments but not always compassion for a host of others. I have folks I’ve promised a phone call to, and I fail to have even that much compassion for their needs, even on a sort of ordinary day for me. Our Lord is gracious and merciful, and this story is living proof of that grace and mercy – compassion that heals and feeds a multitude of Many More than 5,000.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for being made of compassion that is never absent. Help us to embody your compassion sometime today when we see someone who needs our action. Help us to be your hands and feet for someone on our path. Amen.