Matthew 14:13-21 Its On the House Sermon preached November 24, 2013 Opening About fifteen years ago,

Susan and I were living in Newport News, Virginia and our anniversary came around and we went out to a nice restaurant to celebrate. The restaurant was named Victors, and it was on the waterfront in Hampton VA, on the harbor where all these nice sailboats were docked. Nice restaurant, nice location, nice view. We order our meals and the appetizer came. It was Brie en Croute - a small round of brie cheese wrapped in pastry and baked and topped with raspberry sauce. The waitress delivers the appetizer and I take my knife to cut into it but run into resistance - I can cut through the pastry but not into the cheese. Thats weird. So I pull back part of the pastry and find the problem - the cheese is still in its plastic wrapper. The cook forgot to unwrap it so the cheese got baked in its plastic wrapper. I called the waitress over and showed her and she was mortified and quickly whisked the plate away and apologized and said because of the error, desserts would be on the house. That made me smile. Then our salads came after a short while, ate our salads, good salads. And then we waited for our main courses, no hurry, we talked and looked at the nice view and gazed into each others eyes... Our main courses came after a while and we were enjoying then (I had filet mignon with a demi-glace sauce; Susan marvels that I can remember a meal I had 20 years ago but not what she sent me to the store to get) when the restaurant manager came over with a concerned look on her face. And she said because of the unfortunate incident with the appetizer, and because our entrees had not been served as promptly as they should have been - not only the dessert, but the whole meal was on the house. Ill tell you , Ive never enjoyed a meal as much as that one. This was a pretty good evening to begin with, but that just put it over the top. We finished our entrees, ordered and enjoyed dessert and coffee - and everything was wonderful but somehow knowing that it was all on the house made it taste even better. And the memory of that wonderful, free meal makes me smile every time. Context of the reading Our scripture reading is about another free meal, served not on white tablecloths at a fancy restaurant, but out in the middle of nowhere in Galilee as the sun was settling 1

towards the evening horizon. And it had been a terrible day for Jesus. Right before our passage we read that the Lord had just learned that his cousin John the Baptist had been executed by the petty tyrant Herod Antipas who ruled Galilee. Why? Because the king had gotten drunk at a party and made a drunken promise to a dancing girl that she could have whatever she wanted and the girl asked for Johns head on a platter. Jesus, having a human heart, was deeply grieved and perhaps angered by the unjustness of Johns death, and he wanted some time alone to grieve and weep and pray so he climbed into a boat and crossed over the Sea of Galilee to a private place. And the last thing you want when you are grieving, are people to put demands on you. Thats why its wonderful for friends to bring over meals when you are grieving and burying someone you love, its one less thing you have to deal with. Jesus did not get that consideration. A large crowd of people - poor, hurting, sick, somewhat desperate people, had been following Jesus around as he preached and healed and taught his way through Galilee. The crowd is almost like a character with its own identity in the gospels - and they are a hungry crowd - hungry for hope, for healing, hungry for God and they were finding those things in this extraordinary prophet and rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. And so they somehow find out where Jesus is going and they take the long way around the perimeter of the lake and theyre waiting on the shore when Jesus arrives. And the Lord had compassion on the crowd We hear that and think, oh, right, of course. Well, not so fast. If youre a teacher and its been a long day and a long week and youre ready to go home and a student, one of your more obnoxious students, appears in the door and asks to talk to you, how do you feel? If you are a nurse and youve already worked a 12-hour shift and then someone calls in sick on your floor and the floor is completely full of patients, every bed, and the nurse supervisor wants you to stay longer until they can find someone to cover, how do you feel? Irritated...put upon...probably not compassionate. This crowd...they want and want and take and take from Jesus. Heal us, teach us, help us, on and on and on. Wears you out, people like that. The whole point of Jesus secret boat 2

trip was to get away from these people and their yammering demands. And when they show up, the whole smelly lot of them, how does the Lord react? With compassion. And not a cerebral kind of compassion where the Lord makes a cool mental calculation that, Ok, these people need me, a mental calculation that he uses to suppress his emotional annoyance, alright, suck it up, gotta deal with this people - the Greek word indicates an emotional kind of compassion deep down in the gut that you feel intensely, the kind that you feel when you see a hungry child or an abused animal. The Lord responds the same way today, to genuine human need. Jesus is the clearest picture we get of God - since he was God in the flesh - and Jesus reveals Gods heart to us - and what we see is a heart full of compassion. If you are suffering and crying out to God - Gods attitude towards you is not, Dont bother me, Im too big to pay attention to the likes of you; or, Dont bother me, Im too busy running the universe; Gods attitude towards you is a heart full of compassion. Dont be afraid to go to him. And the Lords attitude here, is good for us to imitate. Annette Simmons in her book The Story Factor tells a wonderful story about Tipper Gore, the ex-wife of former Vice-President Al Gore. In those days Tipper volunteered regularly to aid the homeless around the Lafayette Park area of Washington, D.C. She helped to provide food, shelter, and other services. Annette Simmons tells about one particular homeless woman that Tipper helped. Her name was Mary. The volunteers goal one particular day was to transport the homeless people in the Lafayette Park area to a shelter for a healthy lunch. Mary would not leave the park. Why wouldnt she leave? Because she was convinced in her own mind that she was married to the president of the United States, Bill Clinton. And for this reason no amount of cajoling could convince her to leave the Lafayette Park area, which has a good view of the White House. Tipper came up with an idea. She asked Mary if she would accompany her to the guardhouse next to the White House. As they approached, the guard immediately recognized Tipper. As the guard watched, Tipper stood behind Mary and shook her head, no to the guard. The guard looked puzzled but knew something was up so he followed her lead. Tipper said to the guard, I have Mrs. Clinton here. After the briefest pause, he nodded in deference. Mrs. Clinton wants to come with us, Tipper continued, to have some lunch. Could you give us a pen and paper and see that President 3

Clinton gets our message that she is with us. We dont want him to worry. The guard snapped to attention and said, I most certainly will. Mary wrote her husband Bill a note and was then happy to leave the park and go to the shelter for lunch. This was a turning point for Mary. Ultimately, reports Annette Simmons, Mary was reunited with her family, given medication, and now has a full-time job and a home. Compassion is the beginning of healing and hope. The Lord has compassion for us - so drink it in - but, do we have it for others? The problem of compassion But the Lords compassion creates a problem. Theyre out in the middle of nowhere. Its getting late. And theres 5,000 hungry men, in addition to the women and children. The disciples get anxious and impatient with Jesus for not recognizing that this crowd is going to be a hungry crowd, and hungry crowds are mean and dangerous crowds. The disciples come up to him and dont even use the usual respectful form of address Lord - they just tell him, send these people away so they can go into the surrounding towns and buy themselves supper. That is an eminently practical and sensible response. But Jesus, in his puzzling, sometimes infuriating way, isnt rattled at all by this situation. Hes perfectly calm, and goes back atcha with the disciples - You give them something to eat. The no doubt mutter to themselves and scout around and all they can come up with is five palm-sized loaves of bread, and two smoked fish - probably the size of smelts. A sack lunch. Enough for about a molecule per person. Now - heres something you need to know - if you are following the Lord Jesus and wanting to serve him and the world he loves - it is guaranteed that he will put you in situations like the disciples are in here. Where you look out at something like the hungry crowd in this story and all youve got is something like a sack lunch. You will feel, this is impossible. You will do a rational calculation comparing the need with your resources and think, no way. You will look at your self and see your inadequacies and want to run away. Dont run away. Because it is at the moments of greatest challenge and even greatest desperation that the Lord does his best stuff. Like the writer Madeline LEngle wrote, 4

"Slowly I have realized that I do not have to be qualified to do what I am asked to do. That I just have to go ahead and do it, even though I can't do it as well as I think it ought to be done. This is one of the most liberating lessons of my life. In Moments of Scarcity and Desperation We Find Gods Abundance That sack lunch of bread and dried fishies - not much of a solution. But heres what we learn - your little becomes a whole lot in Gods economy. Come with me back for a quick look of Genesis. Adam and Eve rebel against God and are evicted from the paradise of the Garden of Eden. And their world, changes. Life is hard and full of suffering. And they encounter the economics of scarcity. The Lord says, Cursed is the ground because of you, in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you... (Gen 3:17b-18a). And ever since, we worry that theres not going to be enough. And sometimes, theres not, there are famines and depressions and recessions, and people suffer. We still live in a world under the curse of Genesis 3, the world of thorns and thistles. But in our reading, the Lord is about to give a sign that theres a new world breaking into our world. So Jesus has the crowd sit down, so they can receive from him. The point of sitting, is to be served - like when you are served a meal at a nice restaurant. You just sit there and the food arrives. And the Lord takes the little sack lunch and he looks up to heaven and blesses the food and breaks the bread - and the abundance of God is unleashed and everyone in that crowd eats - 5,000 men plus women and children. Enough people to fill our football stadium here in town. In Jesus Christ a new world of abundance is breaking into our world of thorns and thistles, our world of scarcity. The call to imaginative faith So here we are in this world still filled with human need...and called to trust God for our needs, called to do something about it through trusting in Gods abundance. How do we get there, from here? Well - do you remember the great movie The Princess Bride? Theyre about the storm the castle I think to rescue Princess Buttercup and the question is asked: What do we have as assets? And the reply comes back - Well, we have a wheelbarrow, and...the cloak of imagination.

The way to tap into Gods abundance, is through faith-fueled imagination. And that can be a challenge for practically-minded people. But without imagination, all you can see is what is in front of your nose, or what youve experienced before. Christians know that there is another dimension of reality - the God-factor - which permeates all of reality. Albert Einstein once said, They way I see it you have two ways to live your life: the one as if no miracles exist and the other as though everything is a miracle. To be open to the miraculous means your mind and heart have the imagination to believe that God can make possible the impossible. I mean, this is what God does, what God delights in doing. If we have the faith-fueled imagination to put our meager resources before the Lord and trust, all kinds of things can happen. And we have seen some of Gods abundance this year. The Pork & Sauerkraut dinner - wow. There was anxiety, that there wouldnt be enough. Wouldnt be enough people, to serve the hungry crowds. Wouldnt be enough cakes, to feed the hungry crowds. Well, we had so many people turn out to help that we had to scramble to find a job for everyone to do. I had to make up a job for myself - door opener. I opened the door for guests and welcomed them. It is now one of my core competencies. And - we got so many cakes that the freezer was stuffed full of leftovers is this sounding familiar? - and well be eating them for coffee & fellowship time for the for a good while. The church budget this year - wow. We began 2013 with a projected deficit of over $60,000. A deficit between what we expected to receive in offerings and other income, and our expenses. That $60,000 was a big scary red number. Yet right now were running a $12,000 surplus and if you keep giving like you have been we will likely end the year not with a big honking deficit, but a small surplus. And future challenges There is so much need out there, so much suffering. Like human trafficking - and somehow some people in this church have got it in their heads and hearts that we have to do something about this, that we can do something about this tremendous evil of young girls and boys being kept in sexual slavery. Did you know Carlisle up the road is a hub for human trafficking? Its right here, folks. So theres a ministry team here thats all fired up about doing something but all theyve really got so far is the equivalent of a small lunch in a bag - but God is going to do something with that and were going to make a difference.

Like - broken families raising children who do not know love, do not know how to love. Some of us were talking about the game teenagers are playing called Knockout. Pretty simple. Teenagers dare one another to sneak up to someone on the street and with a brick of whatever hit them on the head and knock them out so they drop like a stone to the pavement. They keep score, how many people theyve knocked out. Its all the rage right now. Makes you despair. What can we do? Well, weve got this Mothers Day Out ministry up on the third floor, we welcome in not just children but their families and teach them about Jesus. Thats something. It may feel like all weve got is a small lunch in a bag to offer - but the Lord can multiply our efforts beyond our imaginations. The Lords Supper And here we have another mean, thats on the house. And it doesnt look like much. Some little pieces of bread and sips of grape juice in these little shot glasses. But God does a whole lot, through this little bit. Because through this meal, God brings to us the presence, and peace, and abundance of the Lord Jesus Christ. This meal is free for us. But it cost Jesus everything. For us, and for our salvation, the Son of God paid the price of becoming one of us, leaving the glory of heaven and born a human being, coming all the way down into misery and marvel of our human existence. And he went all the way to the cross and paid the price with his own life to defeat the powers of sin and death; he rose to everlasting life so we can drink in the abundant love and grace and mercy of God. Jesus paid it all, so we could have all this, for free.