Preached by the Rev. David Henson on Oct. 6, 2024
It’s so good to see you. I’m not just glad you’re here. I’m glad you survived.
Secondly, how are you?
No really how are you?
Not how is your house, how is your power situation, how is your refrigerator …
How are you?
Because it feels a little bit like everything around us has broken this week.
Literally not metaphorically.
Our beautiful mountains broke. Our forests broke. Our electricity broke. Our water systems broke. Our roads broke. Our communications broke. Our credit cards broke. Our homes broke. Our lives broke. Our sense of safety broke. The futures we were expecting, anticipating, hoping for, whether this month or this year, broke.
I’d be shocked if you haven’t felt a little broken in spirit this week, too.
Unfathomable loss and trauma has overwhelmed this region.
We are in shock. We are grieving.
And that’s okay. I’d be worried about you if you weren’t.
And that’s why today’s reading from Kings and from the gospel of Matthew are so important.
At first glance, both stories seem to be about miraculous abundance, and they are.
But both begin with loss, with grief, and with suffering.
With brokenness. With things falling apart.
God sends Elijah to rely on a widow and her son who scarcely have enough left for one meal. They are so hungry and so hopeless, she literally tells the prophet she’s essentially prepared their last meal, after which they will resign themselves to a wasting death of consuming hunger.
In Matthew’s gospel, too, grief and lament are the backdrop against which this story about the feeding of the 5,000 unfolds. Deep and profound grief.
Jesus has just learned that his mentor, his cousin, the person who baptized him into this work of salvation, who probably understood him better than anyone else, John the Baptist has been gruesomely and xxx executed, beheaded and presented at Herod’s court on a platter.
So Jesus, broken, grieved, and traumatized by the news, gets in a boat to isolate himself and to grieve.
But the people follow him out there. Oftentimes, I’ve thought of these crowds as interfering with our Lord’s private space for grief and lament. But, after this week, after being isolated for a few days and finally getting to see some of you, to bump into you downtown, to hug you and whisper relief that you’re okay and that I love you and that we’re in this together, I’ve completely changed my mind.
I think the people understand that Jesus needs them in his grief. And that they need him. Because the crowds are grieving too! John was a popular, beloved, and well-known prophet, a folk hero almost. These are interlopers. These are fellow grieving people, seeking solace in the presence of one another. The multitudes are just as broken by John’s death as Jesus was.
And like humans have done whenever tragedy strikes, they seek the comfort of community.
Isn’t that why we’re here today? Isn’t it what we’ve always done?
We seek one another out.
But the disciples are overwhelmed by the sheer scope of need and their own scarcity, just like the widow is overwhelmed by Elijah’s need and her scarcity. Folks are going to be hungry and no restaurant is open nearby. Maybe the credit cards aren’t working.
Send them away, the disciples say, to somewhere they can actually get food, their needs fulfilled, because their’s nothing here in the midst of all this brokenness and lament, nothing except five loaves and two fish.
Nothing except a can of beans, a last bottle of water, the last gallon of gas, the last of the food still fresh enough in a cooler with melting ice.
Send them away. We can’t help them and they need help.
But Jesus says, no.
No, you give them something to eat.
And they do. Somehow there is enough.
It’s hard to explain. Most of the time, I’d probably tell you I don’t have a clue how it happens, this multiplication of loaves and fish. But, this week, friends, I’ve experienced it.
A text for help to an old college friend and priest in Birmingham is transubstantiated into an airplane with needed relief supplies landing at the Asheville airport while the roads were still impassable.
Empty cabinets are transubstantiated into tables and tables and tables of food for the hungry.
Having nothing left is transubstantiated into an impromptu feast in the wilderness by the one person with a working generator.
If you have your doubts, take a quick walk through our parish hall and Trinity Room and see the gifts from God’s people to the hurting here in Western North Carolina. Stick around after service and bear witness to the power of every person sharing just a little until it becomes more than enough!
Maybe the feeding of the multitudes was something like that, something like we all are experiencing. Maybe all it took was the disciples being willing to share, not just five loaves and two fish, but them being willing to share everything they had, the last of their own food, with others, out of compassion, that caused every single person in that multitude to empty their pockets, the purses, their knapsacks and turn up crusts of bread, wedges of cheese, handfuls of nuts, and figs, and suddenly there was more than anyone could ever need when moments before there had been nothing but hunger and fear and scarcity.
All because Jesus lifted up the bread … and broke it too.
This is fundamentally a story about a shared feast of brokenness in the midst of brokenness, that out of it, somehow comes abundance, an interconnectedness, an interdependence that brings hope out of hopelessness and lament, meaning out of confusion and tragedy, life out of certain death.
In fact, every story in the Bible about miraculous abundance begins in brokenness—Hagar in the wilderness, manna in the wilderness, Jesus and the multitudes, even Jesus at the Last Supper. Though the Eucharist is fundamentally a celebration, at its heart is also lament and brokenness. It was Jesus’ last meal. He’s about to be betrayed to death by his friends. His disciples are fragmenting and breaking apart. Jesus himself is about to be broken by torture and the cross. And he breaks the bread—his body—so that all, even his betrayer can share in that brokenness.
Its why we break bread together, on our knees as the song goes. Not because we seek penance or forgiveness but because sometimes, we can scarcely stand for the weight of our brokenness.
But the feast isn’t the end of the story, either.
After everyone has their fill, the disciples collect the broken pieces left over, broken pieces that might typically have been discarded and left to rot as waste, and they fill up 12 baskets full of them, a startling abundance that symbolically would be enough to feed the whole nation.
As I’ve watched our region be broken to pieces this past week, and pondered the brokenness at the heart of this story, of Scripture, of the Gospels, of the Eucharist, I’ve become convinced this isn’t just some throwaway line intended only to show God’s miraculous overabundance and deep love of leftovers.
This story begins in a brokenness that breaks our hearts and ends in brokenness that restores to wholeness.
And that is the Gospel hope in this moment, perhaps even the call. That we who are fed by Christ’s broken body go out into the world and see the brokenness in the world, gather them together and invite them to the feast of the life-giving brokenness of the bread of life, and through the inexplicable miracle of grace, find healing, friendship, meaning, and direction, together. Our brokenness is our invitation to the feast of God.
Because everything breaks in the world, eventually. And everyone. Even God, in Christ on the cross. That brokenness isn’t necessarily something that can be fixed as if it was never broken, but it can be transformed. Out of that brokenness and lament, God creates a feast, a celebration that embraces our sorrow even as it transforms it into joy. When we enter into Gods feast and into that divine shared brokenness, we deny it the last word in our lives or in our world, no matter how fractured things may seem. Through it, through Jesus’ cross, we find hope and we come to resurrection.