Matthew 14:22-33 - All You Need Is Faith and Trust ...
/Matthew 14:22-33
13When Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place to be alone. When the crowds heard this, they followed him on foot from the towns.
14When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw a large crowd. He had compassion on them and healed their sick. 15When evening came, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place and the hour is already late. Send the crowds away, so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
16But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17They told him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.”
18“Bring them here to me,” he replied. 19Then he instructed the people to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fish. After looking up to heaven, he blessed them. He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples. The disciples gave the food to the people. 20They all ate and were filled. They picked up twelve basketfuls of what was left over from the broken pieces. 21Those who ate were about five thousand men, not even counting women and children. – EHV
Sermon Text:
“All you need is faith and trust … and a little bit of pixie dust.” So Walt Disney told all of us in the animated telling of Peter Pan as Peter told Wendy, John, and Michael how to fly. There is just a little problem with that. Peter grows up! Wendy, John, and Michael too, and as they do, they forget. The realities of the real world overtake them, and we all learn that while faith, trust, and pixie dust might be nice for fairy tales, well, it’s not so good for anything of real substance.
I wonder if we don’t treat God in somewhat of the same fashion, especially when it comes to His providence in Scripture. Take the events of our lesson today for example. Jesus feeds 5,000 with a little boy’s lunch (5 loaves (maybe more like buns) of bread and 2 small fish) and 12 baskets are filled with leftovers thereafter. We all announce God can provide, but we know better than to think the same will happen in our refrigerators and freezers at home. Good for dare we say it, I can’t, but still not so good for the real world, right?
Well, hold the phone there just a bit. Let’s back up and dive in this morning, and even if we don’t end up finding the magic pixie dust, God just may restore that faith and trust once more.
Our lesson this morning is interesting on a number of levels. John the Baptist has just died. News has come to Jesus, Who just wants to get away for a moment, perhaps to pray and reflect on the senseless murder of His forerunner. We might go ahead and say reality has set in.
So, they hop in the boat and look for a desolate place to be alone. Ah, but it doesn’t work, and the crowd follows on foot until they find Him. Jesus is better than a doctor after all, and that’s kinda the point. The crowds know Who Jesus is or at least what He can do. Go ahead and call that proof. So many have said so much more of so much less after all.
And how would you respond in such a situation? I might be tempted to lash out at the crowd that follows after and say, “Hey, now just back off for a minute, can’t you see I’m trying to grieve and breathe?” But not Jesus. Nope, He sees the crowd and those who are ailing, and compassion overcomes Him. So instead of rest, a moment to lick the wounds, and catch His breath, He spends the day at work, healing and teaching.
And there was much of it to be done. So much that evening approaches and with it the disciples too. Tummies were starting to growl and therein the realization that they were where they were, a desolate location (no McDonald’s to quick pull through for a bite). So, they tell Jesus to dismiss the crowd so they can find some grub. Interesting, now, here is a Guy that has spent the day doing miracles, but the disciples feel the need to come in with the reality check.
Jesus sees an opportunity for them and for us and takes it. “They don’t need to go away. You give them something to eat.” The disciples take stock; parallel accounts tell us “at Jesus direction”, and come back with the report that there are five loaves and two fish. One little boy, John tells us, had come prepared for the day's events, or at least hadn’t eaten the lunch mom and dad had packed for him. Again, parallel accounts tell us they wondered out loud about just how far that would go among so many.
Again, one wonders a bit. Did they not know their Old Testaments: The Widow of Zarephath and the flour and oil that knew no limits, Elijah and the Ravens (our first lesson), or what about the granddaddy of them all – the manna in the desert? Ah, yes, but they had grown up fishing for the markets, taxing the profits, putting in the sweat equity needed to build family businesses and put food on the table for their families. Life has a way of making us think we are the providers.
So Jesus reminds them. The people are seated on the grass. The food is set before Jesus. The heavenward posture that let them visually, if not audibly, know Jesus was giving thanks for the bounty brought before Him. Then He portions it out and sends it forth in the hands of the disciples.
The next part is significant too. “They ate” we are told and they “were filled”. This isn’t a “Wisconsin nice” moment where everyone smiles and doesn’t want to admit there isn’t enough, so they take a crumb and a sliver of fish and talk about how gorged they were. No, twelve full baskets are gathered afterward, waste not want not after all, and 5,000 men, some go as high as 15,000 or more with women and children who may have gathered there that day, all ate and were satisfied. Someone should have cried out, “It’s a miracle!” because that’s the only explanation for the event.
It’s a nice story, right … but then, well, the alarm goes off, the bills get paid, or they don’t because things are tight this month and the trips to the grocery store, or at least the ordering for the delivery of the groceries, get done, and life well, like those disciples, has a way of making us think we are the providers.
Now don’t get me wrong. The Bible does say that “If a man shall not work He shall not eat (2 Thessalonians 2:10).” But then maybe it would do us well to recall our Old Testament a bit too. Moses spoke to the people of Israel, “17You might say in your heart, “My ability and the power of my hand have earned this wealth for me.” 18But then you are to remember that the Lord your God is the one who gives you the ability to produce wealth, to confirm his covenant that he promised to your fathers with an oath, as he does to this day. (Deuteronomy 12:4)”
Dear friends, I could regale you with real-life lessons of my own where I had looked at my wife and simply said, “I don’t know how, but it’ll happen. The Lord always finds a way.” And sure enough He did. I bet you could tell them too. But then that’s not really the point of these words is it? If it is, I would dare say we quickly end up sounding like “name-it-a-claim Christians”, who though they may not always come right out and say would blame poverty and strife on weakness of faith and move on.
No, I think the real problem here is rather that elevated thinking that we’ve talked about a few times, which would rob God of His providence and place it instead in our hands. Of course, whenever we wrestle something from the hands of our God and seek to make it our responsibility, well, a whole heaping helping of anxiety and worry usually follows. All because we refuse to look different at times from the world around us and put that faith and trust in the hands of an Almighty God who has given not stories but histories of proof telling us “He’s got this.” So it often goes when we put the emphasis on the wrong thing in the pages of Scripture. Focusing more on the miracle we want repeated than what the miracle was supposed to show, demonstrate, and teach.
So what is that? Well, I know I sound like a broken record at times here, but every miracle of Jesus teaches the same thing. Jesus is God! Go try to feed 15,000 with two fish and five buns and see how well you do. No, that’s a miracle … that’s divine. And that’s significant. Not because it makes my mouth water and my aching joints rejoice at the prospect of free food but because it means God provides what we really need in this world of ours as well.
Yes, “when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son to be born of a woman, so that he would be born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law, so that we would be adopted as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5)” You see, God looked at a bunch of people that let the world strangle out their faith and trust in Him, and instead of condemning us, saved us. He had compassion on us. Just like He did with the crowd that refused to give Him a moment alone to grieve and breathe. And that compassion, or we might say that love, then led to something more amazing than the feeding of a multitude off the beaten paths of Israel. It led to God giving His life for us. Perfection pegged to a cross for my sins, for all the times I treat God’s truth like a Disney movie with nice lessons but light on reality … for all the times I cast Him from His throne and announce myself the provider instead of Him. Jesus, Divine, God Himself lays down His life for me, for you, for more than 15,000, but for a whole world of people from the first sin in the garden until the last one on the day of Judgment.
And that truth dear friends, well it’s like watching five loaves and two fish multiply through a crowd. For the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, fuel our faith and trust and begin to enlighten us to the other amazing truths of Scripture which lighten our loads and put things back where they truly belong so that God shoulders the load for providence, or as Paul so wonderfully put it in the Gospel Acclamation, He Who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things. It’s not just dust, or pixie dust, dear friends. It turns out our Lord Provides, yes, every need. So forgiven and set free, our faith and our trust can be found in Him. Amen!