The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 13A
“Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” I mean, could I possibly pick a better Gospel lesson for the last Sunday before my sabbatical than this? Talk about rest and refreshment … and immediately get derailed because Jesus does not get a retreat or sabbatical out of this. As soon as he steps on land, the crowds show up, and he’s pulled into caring for them. So… in fact, it’s probably more a cautionary tale in my case then, no? Get out into that boat and go farther away or else people might expect you to teach and feed them! Run away!
But, I also am cautious about any sermon that puts the preacher in the hero role, or puts the preacher in the position of Jesus in the reading. I’ve heard plenty of sermons where the preacher reads their own experience a little too hard into the Gospel reading and preach on their own virtues. And we all know that my extraordinary humility would not allow me to be so self-absorbed that I make the sermon all about me, anyway. See? Extraordinary humility. So humble.
So if I’m not like Jesus in the Gospel story… who might I be? A disciple? One of those disciples? “Jesus, it’s late, we’re tired, send these crowds away who only came to see you. Surely they’re hungry, right? Can we please send them away?”
“Wait, Jesus, you’re not serious, right? We don’t have that much food. Five loaves, two fish. Some of us have been thinking about a tuna sandwich all day.”
“Oh… ok, fine. Whatever you say, Jesus. Wait, how do you still have fish and bread to give out? You’ve given me enough pieces that I think we could construct a whole house out of bread at this point!”
The humanness of the disciples along with the humanness of the crowds is where we find ourselves drawn today. The disciples are trying to be practical, and here then is a miracle. The crowds’ desire healing, and they are healed and fed. The crowds are our bodies – hungry and sick, tired and lonely. The disciples are our minds – trying to figure out how to get it all done, trying to sort out what we can take care of and what resources we need… while also managing our own bodies. We, too, get hungry and sick and tired.
I wonder if the disciples are willing to acknowledge that they are hungry and tired, too. Five loaves and two fishes aren’t much for these twelve apostles, let alone the crowd. And it’s been a long day of trying to listen. It takes a lot of energy to listen and focus. You’ve sat through some sermons that probably made a point somewhere along the way and then kept going. Many of you can recall what sitting in a classroom was like with a subject that you struggled to understand. Maybe the disciples are feeling anxious – this story of the miraculous feeding comes soon after the beheading of John the Baptist – perhaps the disciples are fearful of what might happen and want to close ranks and get away to be safe.
We Christians do a good job at times of acting as if our brains, our wills were just so superhuman that we can power through anything. Our bodies will drag us back down to earth, however.
In counseling, I use the acronym HALT a lot with the substance use group. HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. If you’re any of those, then your body might be impacting your brain and possibly even your judgment. If you’re hungry, eat something before you bite someone’s head off. If you’re angry, maybe take time to re-center yourself before your anger leads you down a path you don’t want to go. If you’re lonely, go be social instead of sitting with that endless stream of thoughts of all the ways you’ve disappointed everyone who’s ever lived. If you’re tired, go rest instead of spiraling into whatever worry is consuming your brain. Your body is not to be neglected, and your brain needs your body on-board and well-nourished and cared-for in order to do what the brain needs to do – we do well to remember that our brains and minds are part of our body system.
The greatest danger to us spiritually is when we think we’re doing something for the right reasons – such as saying we’re worried about the crowds and saying they need to be sent home to eat and sleep – but it’s actually coming from something inside ourselves. We see that when it’s our own unhealed wounds that make us react with outsized emotion, or when people in power have unhealed wounds that lead them to do harmful things to others instead of doing the soul work inside.
We need to make ourselves aware of our own needs so that way we can work on them. The crowds knew what they needed: healing and food. The disciples didn’t seem to know what they themselves needed – but they sure were ready to tell Jesus what to do.
When we take time to know what we need, what we really need, deep inside our hearts and minds and bodies, then we can actually take care of ourselves. It’s scary at times – we want to pretend that our minds aren’t part of our bodies with all the woundedness of life. But we’re human – nothing more, and nothing less. To use a phrase from trauma work, “the body keeps the score” – our physical body and our squishy brains have a whole life continually being written in their fleshiness, and the story of our body is also being written into our brains.
We need to embrace all of that.
But, we’re also Christians. As Christians, we do not do this work by ourselves. We learn more about ourselves by being in this community, gathered in the name of Christ, the Body of Christ. We learn our own woundedness and we let the healing power of Christ work its work inside us and through us. We do not have to be whole to be a disciple of Jesus. We together make up the body of Christ, all our woundedness mingled with Christ’s own wounds on the cross.
The disciples, throughout the Gospels, are so incredibly human. Imperfect. Flawed. Wounded. The crowds know they’re sick and hungry – but the disciples seem to be unaware of their own needs; they just know the sensible words to say to get Jesus to send the needy crowd away.
So what is it that you need – deep down inside? How do you want to be like the crowd, bringing it to Jesus? How might you let Jesus work healing inside you – and make miracles happen through your work?
What is it that we need as a parish – deep down inside? How are we going to be the crowd bringing our sickness and hunger to Jesus to be transformed? How are we going to be disciples, taking our woundedness alongside our loaves and fishes, to let Jesus make a miracle happen through us? As we prepare for this wonderful sabbatical ahead, we do so knowing that Jesus is doing for us better things than we can ask or imagine. He will be here to feed us and care for us, to teach us and guide us. He will make the miracles happen: He will heal us, he will make loaves abundant for all, and we shall be filled. Amen.