by Sharon Marr
(Based on Matt 14:13-21, and a previous address by Chris Ison)
‘Compassion fatigue’ is an expression that has come into vogue in the last 30-40 years. It must, I think, be associated with the development of modern media communications which enable us to see most of the tragedies in the world in real time. We can sit and watch the news and see the sea of refugees trying to find a new safe home, the horrors of the war in Ukraine, and the hopelessness of families in Napier and Gisborne as they view the loss of everything under the deluge of cyclone-induced flooding. Coupled with this, we are beset with appeals through the post, on the phone and by direct advertising from a plethora of charities, all of which seem eminently worthy of support.
If you are like me you feel overwhelmed and you harden your hearts a bit more because you just can’t cope. Somebody ought to do something … but I can’t fix all the problems of this country, let alone the world. You must feel the same, when, at the end of a bad day or a bad week, when everything seems to be going wrong or needing urgent action, someone else phones or calls wanting your time or attention.
We might be justified in thinking that Jesus was in this state when we begin looking at today’s Gospel reading. John the Baptist’s disciples have just arrived to tell him that John, his cousin and collaborator, has been executed by Herod as a result of Herodias’s scheming. Small wonder if, as it says, when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.
But what happens – a crowd turns up!
What would your reaction be? I know what mine would be, and it wouldn’t be polite.
But compassion fatigue is not something Jesus knows about, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.
The day wears on and evening approaches. The disciples start to get concerned as they are in a deserted place and they want Jesus to give up and send the people off so they can all get a meal: “That’s all for now – you guys must be getting hungry, so we’ll call it a day.” (I have been very glad to hear this from a concluding speaker at a conference or seminar.) But Jesus will have none of it. They don’t need to go away – you give them something to eat. “Who, us?” respond the disciples. “We don’t have anything … well, only these five loaves and two fish.”
And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (So there could have been up to 20,000 people there. A fair slice of the local Galilean population.)
Let’s look at the conversation that has taken place, because it tells us a lot about what will happen when we get involved with Jesus. We start with involvement. We see a world in need and we are overwhelmed: what can we do about it, we can’t even think where to start, heaven knows we may have little enough. But we know something needs doing, so, like the disciples, we approach Jesus. Perhaps we even suggest a solution that he might like to be responsible for.
But it doesn’t seem to work like that. Involvement involves openness to response and the response from Jesus is ‘You do something’. Like the disciples, this may well call forth from us, “I can’t, what can I do, all I’ve got is ….”, and it’s at that point that Jesus turns back to us and says, ‘Give me what you have got’, and we blunder in, uncomprehending, with our ideas, what little we have. Jesus takes them – ideas, loaves, fishes, talents, love, humour, artistic skills – and blesses them and offers them to the Father in his name. Then breaking them, so they are ready for use, he gives them back to us, perhaps in a form we had not dreamt of; our meagre offerings transformed for his service.
The outcome may not be immediate, as with the loaves and fishes, and it may not be what we expect or when we expect, but an outcome there will be. A few small loaves become a table of plenty – if only we have the faith to ask … and wait on him. This from a God who does not know limits to giving, let alone compassion fatigue.
But, as if this were not extraordinary enough, we can go deeper.
Although this is an astounding miracle, we need to remember that Jesus’s greatest work was done not in Galilee but at Calvary, where, we will be reminded shortly as we celebrate that last supper:
On that night before he died he took bread and gave you thanks. He broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said: Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you; do this to remember me.
He blessed, he broke, and he gave.
However, we don’t just remember something that went on 2000 years ago. Through the mystery of this sacrament we are brought, in the power of the Spirit, to participate, once again, in that final sacrificial meal. The past becomes present and we in the present participate in the past. We are part of the gospel story, the story becomes present to us. We come together with God, through his Holy Spirit, and he transforms us, and we are changed. We are not, like the 5000, having our physical hunger met, but like the countless millions who have participated in this gift of grace before us and with us, we are having our spiritual hunger satisfied.
Christ says, ‘Give me what you have got!’, so we bring to him our thanks, our brokenness, our hopes, our fears, our regrets, our guilt and the things that we dare not admit even to ourselves, and we who receive Christ’s body become the body of Christ – the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
We are transformed and changed, given new life, new hope and new being.
As we shall say as part of the post-communion prayer: Accept our thanks for all you have done.
Our hands were empty, and you filled them!
And, filled, we “go out to love and serve the Lord”.
A Table of Plenty indeed!
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