5000

Propers: The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 18), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

John the Baptist is dead.

He was murdered as entertainment, as an obscene dinner-prize, at a lavish feast held by Herod Antipas, the Roman-appointed puppet ruler of Galilee and Perea. Herod had arrested John because he dared to criticize Herod for openly shacking up with his own brother’s wife. And he then beheaded John at the request of his niece-cum-daughter, who had danced to titillate her uncle-father, serving up the gory head on a silver platter like an entree at the feast.

All of this, mind you, occurred right before this morning’s Gospel, which is why the reading begins, “Now when Jesus heard this,”—when He heard of John’s death—“He withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by Himself.” John was Jesus’ kinsman, His cousin. Jesus had called John even before he’d been born, the Spirit moving from womb to womb. John was Jesus’ forerunner, His herald, the prophesied voice in the wilderness proclaiming, “Make straight the paths of the Lord!”

Everything Jesus did, John did first. John baptized in the River Jordan, preparing people for the coming of the Christ. John gathered disciples around himself, several of whom would go on to be Jesus’ Apostles as well. It was John who spoke truth to power, who proclaimed the Word of the Lord to Jew and Gentile alike, who pointed explicitly to Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John preceded Jesus in all things—even death.

John’s death, brutal and unjust, carried out at the whim of a besotted tyrant to appease the bloodlust of the mob, presages Jesus’ own. As John has died, so Jesus knows He too must die. And He loved His cousin; He called John the greatest prophet amongst those born of women. So it is a blow, as it would be to any of us, to learn that His kinsman, His forerunner, to whom He had been linked before either of them were yet born, is dead. Murdered. And the question now is—how will Jesus respond? If you kill the Messiah’s right-hand man, what’s He going to do?

The first thing, of course, is that He goes off by Himself. To mourn, surely. Perhaps to steel Himself for what is to come. But it seems that Jesus can do anything except get a day off, for the crowds follow Him relentlessly, on foot and en masse. And His response to them is not to send them away, not to rebuke them for pursuing Him even amidst His grief, but instead He has compassion on them, curing their sick. He always has compassion for the crowd, even from the Cross.

And when the shadows grow long and the hour grows late, He does something rather unexpected. We are told that the crowd consists of 5000 men, not counting women and children—a vast multitude in search of an evening meal. And so Jesus feeds them, miraculously, with only five loaves and two fish. And somehow, out of this paucity, this scarcity, Jesus elicits an astonishing abundance, feeding the masses until all have been filled, and He sends out the Apostles on clean-up duty to gather the leftovers into a dozen great wicker baskets.

In response to Herod’s feast of death, Jesus puts on a feast of life. And this is a very dangerous thing to do.

So dangerous, in fact, that this is the only one of Jesus’ miracles specifically recorded in all four of our Gospel accounts—a story that bore great repeating. To feed 5000 families, openly, publicly, miraculously, is to court death. It is to threaten the wealthy and the powerful, the rulers and their reign. Because in the ancient world, food is power. And to feed 5000 men is to raise an army—roughly the number of soldiers in a legion.

The ancient world had no middle class; there were the rich and the rest. And this is not to say that the rest were all dirt poor. They had houses and clothing and nice things. But what separated the rich is that they never had to worry about food. You could be a soldier, a rabbi, a skilled artisan or builder, and make a decent living, but if there were famine—if there were drought or blight or the disruptions of war—then you and your family would go hungry. And people do crazy things when their children go hungry.

To eat and be filled was a rarity, a luxury reserved for the rich and the ruling. And that upper crust knew very well that if you could feed the mob, you owned the mob. Recall that Rome had just recently recovered from a full century of civil war, sparked in part by a pair of brothers who gave the Roman people subsidized grain. You will fight for those who feed you.

Now of course, Jesus isn’t going to do this. He isn’t going to froth up the mob and set them loose upon Herod. He’s not going to lead His hungry army into battle against the Romans, the rich, and the ruling—no matter how Judas and the Zealots might want Him to do precisely that. Jesus feeds and cures five thousand families—in peace—and by doing so demonstrates exactly where the true power lies, who the true King is. It isn’t Herod with his garish parties festooned with human heads. It’s a Rabbi out in the wilderness, the true heir of David’s royal line, who can conjure a feast of abundance in the middle of the desert!—and then sends the people home, forgiven, fed, and changed.

Such is the power we see Jesus demonstrate time and again: mastery over the elements, over the mob, over death itself. Time and again we catch glimpses of who and what He truly is, what He can do—and we shudder! Who is this Man, who commands the sea and the storm? Who is this Man, who can conjure an army in the wilderness? Who is this Man, of whom demons are terrified, who pulls up souls from the dead to bring corpses to life? All the things of which we are afraid are afraid of Him! Is there anything too great for Him, anything He cannot do?

Yet never does He unleash this power in anger. Never does He smite His foes in vengeance. He responds to death with life. He responds to murder with peace. And in some ways, that’s the scariest thing of all. He is so far beyond all that we can imagine.

And so, slowly, His disciples begin to realize that this is indeed the Messiah prophesied from of old, Son of God and Son of David, the Almighty once again setting foot upon the earth. And they recall the prophecy of Isaiah from more than half a thousand years before:

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend for that which is not bread, and labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander. See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

John the Baptist is dead. War has been declared upon the Kingdom of God. And so the Messiah raises an army, a full Roman legion, but not for war. Not for death. He is raising an army of life, to conquer the grave, and wage everlasting peace.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.