What We Do and What God Does

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday August 3, 2008, the18th Sunday in Ordinary Time.


Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 17:1-7, 15
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Lately, in one way or another, I have been preaching on discipleship. I can only guess why. Perhaps one of the reasons is that Matthew’s gospel was specifically written for Jewish followers of Jesus. He was teaching the nation of Israel how to be disciples of their long awaited messiah. Another reason is that discipleship has been weighing on my mind and in my prayers. It’s as if I am reading scripture through lenses that focus on discipleship. Anyway, today will be no different. But in addition to looking at Matthew’s gospel to see what we do, this reading is also about the glory of what God does.

When Jesus heard about the execution of John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. John has just been put to death by Herod, beheaded at the request of his daughter-slash-great-niece and her meddling mother-slash-first-cousin.[1] So Jesus left to be alone. Did he go because he was grieving? This would be a normal response to grief over the loss of a friend, the man who baptized him into the earthly church in the waters of the Jordan.

Did he want to be alone because he feared for his life? Given the circumstances, what human wouldn’t? Being fully divine doesn’t prevent Jesus from experiencing his fully human emotions. And in this case, fear and its fleeing response may have been just good thinking.

So what does Jesus do, what does God incarnate do? God loves, God feels, and God reacts to life.

The next thing that happens is that the crowd follows. Curiously, scripture doesn’t tell us why the people followed. Did they see him as the new John? Did they see him as the messiah? Did they see him as a man of miracles? Did they see him as a good teacher? As with any crowd there are as many reasons for following as there are people, but why is not important. “Why” was so unimportant to Matthew that he didn’t even bother to consider it. What is important is that the people followed.

“When Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” Regardless of what was going on with our Lord, grieving or fearing, when the Lord saw the people, he responded to their needs with compassion. Minor needs or crippling, small or critical, chronic or acute; he had compassion for them and cured their sick. Regardless of the ailment, curing the people is done compassionately.

Evening comes, and his disciples come to him saying, “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.”

What do we have here? The disciples come to Jesus and tell him what to do. They make valid observations. They are even being at least somewhat sensitive to the needs of the people. But here’s the crux, they tell God what to do.

And how many times have I done that? How often do all of us do that? Just like Jacob, we wrestle with God.

Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He shows the disciples a new way. “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Jesus turns their point of view from “let the people go and take care of themselves” to “you, you take care of the people.”

We tell God to do something and God comes back saying, “No, you do something.”

Surprised I’m sure, they answer “We only have five loaves of bread and two fish.” They come back saying, “Look Lord, here’s what we’ve got and it isn’t nearly enough.”

God offers the disciples a new challenge, and they are sorely inadequate to meet it. Give them credit, for a crowd this size, their bounty isn’t nearly enough. They are being realistic about their situation, realistic to a fault.

With slightly different inflection, their response can go from a realistic description of their situation to a whining complaint. “What can we do? We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish.” Is this a statement of fact, or railing against God? Again, scripture doesn’t tell us, but I can easily imagine either or both of these responses coming from the disciples.

Jesus says, “Bring the loaves and fish here to me.” He ordered the crowd to sit down. Then taking the bread, he looked up to heaven and blessed it and broke it and gave it to the disciples.

Jesus takes charge again. This time, he accepts the disciple’s offering and blesses it. Then he gives it back to the disciples who give it to the people.

One more time with the mechanics of what happened here:

The first element of this cycle is implied, not mentioned. The Lord provides the disciples with a smattering of bread and fish. When we receive our daily bread, we see it as the wages of our earthly toil and strife, but it is more than that. If everything we receive comes from the Lord, our earthly wages come from the Lord. We receive what the Lord gives us.

Next, when the Lord asks the disciples about the bounty they have received. They tell him “Here’s what’s in the offering plate, Lord.” With this comes the implied, “It’s not nearly enough, but it’s what we’ve got.”

Third, the Lord takes what is offered on the altar of his life and blesses it. God blesses the offering of the disciples.

Then and only then, the disciples give the goodness of the bounty of creation to the 5,000 men, along with the many women and children who were there. And the people ate until they were filled. There were even twelve baskets of bun-ends left over.

Often when hearing a sermon, we ask “so what?” Frankly, the question is just as important when crafting a sermon too. So, here’s what we do and what God does:

The Lord leads us.
We follow.
We have needs only the Lord can meet.
And the Lord meets them.
Jesus has compassion for the people, and so do his disciples.
The Lord invites us to take care of the people.
We see that what we can do isn’t enough. If we are completely honest, we have to say that what we can do by ourselves is never enough.
The Lord says, bring it to me.

And when we respond in obedience, when we respond to Jesus’ invitation; God blesses our offering and makes it enough.

And this is what is important to learn here: God blesses our offerings, the offerings from what God gives us in the first place, using that, and us, to bless the world.

The Lord says “you take care of the people.” Through the Lord we are called to participate in the reconciling work of Jesus Christ.

There are things we do and things God does. We are called to follow the Lord God. We are called to be disciples of Jesus. We are called as his disciples to take care of his people. We are blessed and fed by the Lord when we follow.

We get into trouble when we try to do God’s work without God in the work. We get into trouble when we go into God’s good creation without God’s presence and leadership. We get into trouble when we look at how little we have and make the mistake that that’s all we have. When disciples respond in obedience, then the people do the work of God feeding the God’s children.

This is it, this is as simple as it gets. What we have is limited, but in Christ, with Christ, and through Christ; what we have is lifted up and blessed; able to do far more than we could ever hope or imagine. The love of God multiplies and blesses all that we have and all that we give. The Lord takes what is ordinary from us and uses it to do extraordinary things, all for God’s glory. In this wondrous mission, we are called to participate.

And participate we must. We participate in worship. We participate in celebrating the sacraments. We participate in the breaking of the bread. We participate in remembering our baptism. We participate in fellowship. We participate in serving God and God’s good creation. We participate in sharing the gospel in word and deed. We participate in prayer. We participate in our offerings to God. We participate in giving the fruit of that offering to others.

So let us be disciples. Let us give the Lord the offerings of God’s bounty. Let us, each of us, invite the community and the world to come and hear and share and participate in the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[1] “Herodias” and “Herod (Family)”, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Keith Crim, General Ed. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1976. (These folks were a plane ticket to Chicago away from being an episode of “Springer.” This is what John had railed against that got him beheaded.)