A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church building on Sunday 2 August.  The service was simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page.  For the next four weeks, you can catch up here.

The Bible passage was Matthew 14:13–21 and David led the service and preached.  We will publish the full text of David’s sermon here within the next few days. It begins at 41:35 on the video.

Sermon

Feeding 5000 and Non-Violent Response

Before we dive into the text today, I must make a quick confession. I dropped by the kitchen earlier to ask our hospitality team if we could stretch this morning’s tea and coffee budget. I asked if they could take five Tunnock’s teacakes and two fish fingers and somehow turn them into enough to feed all of us, plus five thousand people down the road!

I await the results with excitement.

When we open the Bible today, that kind of impossible catering nightmare is precisely the situation the disciples find themselves facing. A massive, expectant crowd in the middle of nowhere, with evening drawing in, and hungry bellies to fill. And that’s where we generally focus our attention. The great food miracle.

Yet as we look deeper into the story, the food is only a small part of what was really happening on that hillside.

Context is really important when reading a passage. And today’s Scripture started with the words:

When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. (Matthew 14:13)

What had happened? Well, Jesus was dealing with a tragedy. His cousin, John the Baptist, had been publicly murdered in the most brutal way by a leader obsessed with ego, with popularity, and driven by his own insecurity.

Thank goodness we don’t have insecure, ego-driven leaders today.

Jesus has not long returned from his home town, where he was treated poorly and was the object of derision. And now, just as he’s looking for a time of quiet to mourn the loss of John, a crowd descends on his location, and he’s pushed into work when, perhaps, he’d rather be alone.

Jesus is witness to violence all around him. Not just the murder of his cousin, but the systemic violence of state power, the heavy-handed military suppression of political unrest, the recent slaughter of worshippers, spiritual abuse, and the structural injustice that routinely pushed the vulnerable to the margins.

Now, if I had been employed as Jesus’ personal advisor I might have recommended a different approach to the one he adopted.

After all, five thousand men – plus women and children – have gathered, all keen to see Jesus. He could have formed a pretty decent army. Five thousand men is roughly the same size as a full Roman legion. And I’m confident Jesus would have increased his popularity even further if he had. After all, if Jesus really was the Messiah, then people expected that he would be a military deliverer, forcing the Roman occupiers out by violence.

The crowd were up for it for sure. According to John’s Gospel the people were trying to make him their military king by force.

But Jesus didn’t do that.

Instead we witness a tale of two feasts.

John was killed in the middle of a banquet, an embarrassingly lavish feast attended by the elite, characterised by imperial power, ego, coercion and a demand for murder.

Jesus’ banquet, however, was a simple affair. A gathering characterised by compassion, healing, and shared resources. There was no violence from Jesus. Instead he created an alternative space of life, peace and communal care.

One of the reasons for all the healings and miracles, like this one, beyond the raw compassion Jesus had for his fellow humans, was as a sign of who he was. Jesus was no ordinary man. The Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus told the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. Where have we heard this before?

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
² He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters,
³ he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.  (Psalm 23:1-3)

The people were like sheep without a shepherd; lost, desperate, afraid… angry.

Jesus reveals himself to be the True Shepherd whose response is to provide peace, safety, and rest for his flock, directly countering the physical and spiritual exhaustion and exploitation imposed by the Empire and religious leaders.

Violence today

Research tells us that much societal division arises from a fear of scarcity: the belief that there isn’t enough power, security, or resources to go round, and a basic disbelief that creation can sustain us all.

You can see that message of scarcity being shared now: aid budgets are cut, weapons budgets are increased, immigrants are demonised, different groups aggressively compete to be heard.

But Jesus takes his little community of followers and models a whole new way of being, where people share and recognise the importance and abundance of creation. He creates an environment where active care and justice can flourish.

There is something quite different being developed here. A third way of being.

It is not rolling over, and accepting that things are simply as they are and there’s nothing we can do about it. To be clear: Jesus never asks us to stay in harm’s way, nor to tolerate domestic abuse, coercive control, or mistreatment. Seeking safety, setting firm boundaries, and removing yourself or others from danger is not a failure of faith; it is essential.

But neither does he tell us to perpetuate a cycle of revenge by meeting violence with violence.

Jesus recognises that it’s not enough to simply not be violent, but that we must demonstrate that there is an alternative to those systems. We must have active care and justice. Jesus shows us where peace starts: right here, with what we already have, when we choose to share what we’ve been given.

When evening approaches in our story… when the darkness begins to descend… Jesus’ disciples default back to a scarcity mindset, urging him to send the crowd away to fend for themselves because there won’t be enough.

Jesus’ response demonstrates his philosophy: He says the crowd can stay. And what else does he say?

“You give them something to eat!”

You! Care is a shared responsibility. There really is enough to go round when a whole community moves from a scarcity mindset to a sharing mindset.

There was indeed a miracle going on in Jesus’ wake. But maybe it’s not so much about loaves and fish… or even Tunnock’s teacakes…

Maybe it’s more about the miracle of a transformed community.

Personal Approach

That’s all good, but where on earth do we start?

Like Jesus’ disciples I’ve wrestled personally with this.

Perhaps you don’t have the opportunity to set up a convent and become Mother Theresa. Jesus repeatedly called not only his disciples but also entire crowds to “follow him”. Twenty times in the gospels! Following Jesus requires completely changing our daily priorities to live like an apprentice learning from and copying a master.

It seems to me there is an obvious place to start – with ourselves.

The theologian Walter Wink noted that we all carry the capacity for violence within us. We can point fingers at political leaders or systemic injustice, and justifiably so, but it is also worth reflecting on our own daily reactions.

I’m not talking about abusive dynamics here, but the everyday ways we default to hostility: the sharp comment made in traffic, the exclusion of others, the quick insult in an argument, or defensive hoarding out of fear that there will not be enough.

Jesus calls us to a Third Way. He asks us not to mirror the violence of the world around us, but to disarm it. Nobody can do everything – but everybody can do something.

We aren’t called to be doormats or passively accept violence. Instead, Jesus teaches us to disarm hostility by living out a loving alternative, even when it feels undeserved.

At a basic level, we can make a difference through whatever small offering we bring: our time, resources, kind words, expertise, love, or simply our presence. American Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote:

For whatever is demanded by truth, by justice, by mercy, or by love must surely be taken to be willed by God. To obey God is to respond to God’s will expressed in the need of another person…

Every time we choose the antidote over the poison, love over hostility, we add a drop of peace to our world. And whenever we choose compassion, the kingdom of God breaks through right where we stand.