Miraculous Amid the Mundane

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Church of the Epiphany | Washington, DC

Matthew 14:13-21

All who came to hear Jesus that day in the desert—our gospel tells—“ate and were filled.”

We hear echoes in this story of the Hebrew people wandering in the desert: where they too were miraculously fed with manna. This is something of a foundational story of our faith.

In the Feeding of the Multitudes we just heard, something so essential happens that all four gospels include it in their account of Jesus’ ministry. Later, in the earliest years of the Church, when Christians gathered together for a Eucharistic meal, they would begin by reciting this story as an affirmation of the faith that sustained them—much as we recite the Creed together.  

God feeding those who hunger and thirst is so common it almost sounds altogether normal.

Over these recent handful of weeks we've heard in Matthew’s Gospel several parables: in which Jesus teaches from multiple angles what the kingdom of heaven is like. And as I suggested last week, there is something quite ordinary about faith—that it is practiced in the ordinary moments of ordinary people. From ordinary lives, God’s reign breaks forth.

This morning though, Matthew shifts from parables Jesus told to miracles he performed. And even within the miraculous there remains the ordinary… It is in fact the very context from which multitudes are met in their need.

As our passage begins, in its unabbreviated version, “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” The “this” thing that Jesus hears is the news of John the Baptist’s death. Jesus’ beloved cousin. Who leapt for joy in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. The person who baptized him in the River Jordan has just been brutally executed in prison—and Jesus wants to be alone.

He is surely filled with grief. So, in his sorrow, he retreats into solitude.

There’s something so familiar to this. Something so human. Because tragedy strikes all of our lives. At one point or another, we all know the deep pain and confusion of loss—even Jesus. We are all united together in a hunger for wholeness.

Soon after Jesus retreats, the disciples follow after. And then crowds flock to him on foot.

Perhaps the greatest miracle here is that in this moment Jesus is moved to compassion! 

Because who would fault him for setting a boundary, and even forcefully if necessary; Jesus was after all known to use a sharp tongue when necessary. 

In the normalcy of his grief, he is once again surrounded by hungry, broken people. But rather than turning away, his commonplace pain breaks him open to be united in common with the hunger of humanity. And for this reason many are healed.

Anyone who has known loss like this can tell you just how miraculous this response is… 

In the actions of Jesus, in both his sorrow and his compassion, this story tells us something about who God is. I’m reminded of a song by the artists, Over the Rhine, who sing: 

All my favorite people are broken [...] All my friends are part saint and part sinner [...] Orphaned believers, skeptical dreamers [...] All my favorite people are broken / believe me / I should know

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God is a friend to those who hunger. To the needy, to the broken. And to all who come seeking to be healed, the heart of God breaks open with compassion.

In a similar way, through the disciples actions, this story tells us something about what it is to faithfully follow this God who befriends broken people.  

When evening comes, the crowd is hungry. And at the end of this grief-stricken day, the disciples’ first response is quite understandable: please just go away. It’s exceptionally human and ordinary. But this is precisely where the miraculous begins to unfold — because miracles always happen in the most implausible moments. 

Jesus tells them: “give them something to eat.” Feed my people. Give to the hungry good things.

Now, just as Jesus could have turned away from the need before him, the disciples could also turn away. And it would make for an abrupt end of the story. Who would blame them?

They have nothing left to give. If God’s kingdom is a place of abundance, the disciples have very little of that kingdom in themselves to spread around. Because at this moment all they hold in their hands is lack. 

What’s two fish and a few loaves when faced with the need of thousands? Nothing.

All they have is nothing but need: that of the hungry crowd around them, alongside that of their own. And as the Lutheran minister, Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it, “This need [of theirs] is an endless resource.” Need is the very thing God uses time and again. Pastor Nadia says, “...the raw material that Jesus had [to work with that day], was the need of humanity for a God that can do miracles.”

The disciples cannot meet the moment on their own. It is simply too great. So, this raw material is just what the disciples offer.

Jesus tells them to give the people something and so they open their hands and lift up an oblation of scarcity, doubt, maybe some fear, and probably a good bit of shame—and from that meager faith the God who creates out of nothing uses it to bring forth something.

Even from the disciples’ shaky-yet-humbly-willing faith, no bigger than a tiny mustard seed, Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives to the multitudes: who somehow eat and are filled. 

This is a foundational story of our faith because it is our story.

Each week, as broken people, we come to this table, bringing before God our ravenous need. And it is at this table that we hear these words: Take. Eat. Be filled. 

On this muggy August morning, trust that God might meet you even in the mundane. Wouldn’t that be truly miraculous? From this living bread let your spirit be fed.

Finally, in this story we also hear echoes of Jesus’ own mother, Mary, who proclaims with joyfully prophetic fervor “[God] fills the hungry with good things…”

All of this, as Mary knows right alongside Jesus, is about more than spiritual needs. God cares about feeding souls and about feeding bodies.

So, even as you are spiritually fed, strengthened, and finally sent out from this place…

Let your need and brokenness meet need and brokenness.

Let your desire to be whole meet others in their desire to be whole.

Let your own hunger meet the hunger of all you encounter. 

Even in the profoundly ordinary and commonplace—as God takes your oblation to feed, to heal, and transform—something miraculous will surely happen.

Amen