Jesus sent the apostles out with authority to cast out demons and to heal.  Oh, how we’d love some healing, just now.  Can you feel the need for it, out there?  He sends the apostles out to share good news and call people to follow Jesus.  Are we?  At the outset of his ministry, Jesus says he had come for the purpose of proclamation (Mk 1:38).  It’s not really about the exorcisms and miracle healings.  The healings, the cleansings, point to something else: the power of the Word.  The Word came in power to be a powerful Word for those whom God had chosen before the creation of the world (Eph 1:4).  Every healing is a restoration of what was broken, a return of what was lost.  His supreme healing Jesus accomplished on the cross.  If we are healed by his wounds, by his death we live.

As we just heard, the apostles have now returned, eager to share all that happened: stories, experiences, feelings, testimony.  They need time and a place for that sharing, that celebration, there in the presence of Jesus.  He wants to take them a little north of the Sea of Galilee, to Bethsaida (9:10).  John tells us Bethsaida is the hometown of Philip, of Peter and Andrew (Jn 1:44).  It’s like they’re coming home, but once you follow Jesus, home is no longer here.

The crowds know that, where Jesus is, wonderful things happen.  They trail the group to Bethsaida.  No time to get away.  No time to rest.  No going back; only going forward.  “He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing” (9:11).  The crowds are eager for Jesus—not just for the power to heal their bodies, though they find that amazing.  They stay for the teaching.  They listen.  We may believe that there just isn’t that much excitement out there for Jesus, now.  It doesn’t look like it, so why bother?  The Spirit will surprise us.  The power of Jesus is the power to change lives, the power to save.  No, Jesus won’t seem too attractive if someone is not looking for a change in his or her life.  When someone truly yearns for true change, he or she may just begin to consider Jesus.  But who will be there to help?  Who will be there to listen, respond, and invite?

Jesus wanted time with his disciples: his time was growing shorter day by day.  And we can’t imagine Jesus turning the crowds away, refusing to speak to them, refusing to touch them.  The Son of Man came to serve.  He came to seek and call his own.  His own hear and know his voice.  They come when they are called, and he leads them and feeds them.

The Gospels remind us Jesus came to proclaim.  He speaks about the kingdom.  He heals.  Proclamation precedes and interprets power.  It’s the Word that heals, heals “those who needed healing”: those, that is, who knew they needed healing, maybe even a few who didn’t even know.  How do we know we need healing?  Maybe like the woman with the hemorrhage, or the ten lepers.  Maybe like the blind man beside the road, crying out for Jesus.  Sometimes it’s hard to hide the hurt, especially when help is so near.  Jesus won’t refuse.  The healing he offers, though, is according to his way and his power.

Healing comes by way of proclamation.  German pastor, theologian, and victim of the actual Nazis Dietrich Bonhoeffer recalls us to the glorious truth that “Christ is present in the Church as the spoken word.”[1]  When we hear God’s Word, we are hearing Jesus; we are experiencing the true presence of Christ.  Bonhoeffer’s contemporary Rudolf Bultmann agrees: “the redeemer is present in the word of preaching, the message from above.”[2]  Proclamation is for healing, restoring and maintaining health.  Proclamation builds health, builds strength, endurance.  Proclamation addresses our hunger, our thirst, and fills us.  In preaching, in reaching, there is Christ Jesus.

The Spirit makes proclamation Christ’s power for healing.  The baptism of Jesus is a reminder at the beginning of each year’s journey that, for us, everything begins with the Spirit with Christ.  We hear Jesus, and the Spirit causes and enables us to listen.  Jesus walks by, and the Spirit prompts us to reach out, cry out.  We behold Jesus, and the Spirit causes the tears of our woes to become the laughter of our joy, become the resolve of courage born of faith.  Even our young disciples can begin to perceive the truth of all this.

And that’s all well and good, but the disciples are concerned, not to say worried.  “Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, ‘Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here’” (9:12).  These people can’t stay here, after all.  There’s no food for them, here, Lord knows!  No shelter for them, here!  There are some interpreters who suggest that many of those people probably had food with them but were reluctant to bring it out because it was obvious there wouldn’t be enough to share; these same interpreters suggest that it’s when Jesus is finally able to get a critical mass of them into a sharing mentality that they discover there’s enough, after all, even more.  Maybe, but Jesus might respond as to the Samaritan woman by the well: they will eat only to be hungry again.  Jesus hasn’t come to get us to share more freely, good as that is.  He wants us to know something else; he’s teaching something else.  It’s not about what we already have when we come to Jesus; Jesus is not some key to unlock our innate, untapped potential.

The miracles of Jesus point to another power entirely.  What people need is the bread that satisfies, the drink that quenches their thirst.  We’re all hungry, thirsty in this life, and we pursue many things.  We enjoy our pursuits, even some that harm us, but neither our pursuits nor our pursuing cause us to be fulfilled.  We’re told to stay hungry, stay thirsty, my friends, but it does seem strange to me how, as they seek fulfillment, people pass right by abundance.

Americans are accustomed to material abundance.  A Forbes magazine article from 2020, drawing from research out of the USDA, reported that thirty to forty percent of our food goes to waste.  That’s like each of us setting a match to about $2000.[3]  We haven’t always enjoyed such abundance that we could afford such loss—as though we can really afford such a loss even now.  We don’t quite remember anymore that the first Thanksgiving took place amid deprivation and difficulty; the Puritan settlers there at Plymouth were acutely aware that their lives depended upon God’s provision.

Very few today remember the deprivations of the Great Depression or the lean years during World War Two, when staples like meat, sugar, cheese, and coffee were rationed.  Those events weren’t that long ago, historically speaking.  Economists, manufacturers, and distributors can help us to begin to understand what’s involved in the marvel of modern material abundance, but Jesus isn’t offering material abundance.  No wonder people don’t seem interested!  Yes or no?  There aren’t many problems that an extra $2000 or $20,000 won’t solve.

The problem is, the disciples are confused, too.  Jesus wants his followers to feed hungry people.  Methodist pastor and theologian William H. Willimon writes that, “The Kingdom begins where the hungry are being blessed and filled.”[4]  All the panicked disciples can think about is their lack, their insufficiency, their inability—not enough!  Lord, we’ve done the math, run the numbers, looked at the models, and, Lord, well, frankly, it just can’t be done.  We don’t have what we need to do it.  As a matter of fact, it’s kind of unreasonable for you to ask us to do the impossible, because, Jesus, you know, who can do the impossible?

We don’t have what we need to do it.  Exactly.  They have demonstrated their mastery in the one side of what Jesus has been teaching.  For man, for people, yes, it is impossible.  What is impossible for us is not impossible for God.  But that doesn’t require technological savvy or logistical expertise.  To know that what is impossible for us is not impossible for God requires faith: lived faith, enacted faith.  With God, all things are possible.  Adam and Eve, with all creation turned against them.  Noah in the ark.  Abraham practically alone among strangers.  Jacob fleeing for his life with nothing but the clothes on his back.  Joseph at the bottom of the well where his own brothers threw him, or in the prison cell for days that became months that became years.  Daniel in the lions’ den.  Jesus on the cross.  Peter and Paul in prison, time after time.  Have faith.  And we cry out like that desperate father: I believe; help me in my unbelief!  O ye of little faith.  Ah me, of little faith.  Yet God does not refuse to help; He has compassion.  He reaches out to take us in His arms.

What’s sort of staggering is that the Twelve had just returned all fired up with what they had done in the name of Jesus: healings, cleansings.  Ah, but this—feeding these thousands?  Now, yes, if some ten thousand people should just happen to show up here for worship on a potluck Sunday, we could feel a little concerned.  When Jesus sent the Twelve, he instructed them to take basically nothing with them, have nothing of their own with them.  That meant that, along the way, they were going to be forced to rely upon—what, the kindness of strangers?  No, the grace of God, the Lord’s provision.  God is possibility.  Odd, how no one wants to rely upon God, yet He continues to be, will always be, the one upon whom every living thing must rely.  We can’t but God can.  We don’t but God does.  Without God we won’t; with God we will.  When, in God’s abundance, we leap into the work of life, we work with the right outlook.

The disciples understand about hunger and thirst, but they don’t understand about Jesus.  The Lord said, “The poor and needy ask for water, and there is none, / their tongue is parched with thirst. / I, Yahweh, will answer them, / I, the God of Israel, will not abandon them” (Is 41:17).  It’s remarkable how little the twelve understand about Jesus: they were the ones almost constantly with him!  And how much do we understand?  We know something, of course!  And how much we have yet to learn, to experience, to know, to live.  What we need to know, first, is take it to Jesus, take it to the Lord in prayer.  We take our lack, our insufficiency, our inability, and we lift it and leave it with Jesus.  And Jesus does something quite remarkable: he takes what we give him—our nothing!—“and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks” and breaks.  “Then he gave [food] to the disciples to distribute to the people” (9:16).

Jesus himself could give it to each man, woman, and child directly, and he does—through us!  You and I—we disciples—are direct channels to Jesus, and from Jesus.  When we offer Jesus to anyone, man, woman, or child—offer him through our words of invitation or comfort or counsel, offer him by the kindness and generosity of our hands—in a real sense it isn’t us but Jesus alive in us for others.  When we offer Jesus, we offer true food and true drink.  “The Kingdom begins where the hungry are being blessed and filled.”

Oh, we’re almost constantly preoccupied with our lack.  Jesus would have us occupied with his abundance.  What you have isn’t enough.  Who you have is.  When you have Jesus, you have more than enough.  Keep living in this faith and you will continue learning the truth of it, and the truth will set you free . . . and bring the hope and offer of salvation to many.

Afterwards, after all “were satisfied [. . .] the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over” (9:17).  Twelve.  Hmm.  One for each of them.  Oh, I suppose the hunks of bread and fish fillets eventually ran out, but Jesus wasn’t teaching a material, physical lesson.  Jesus gives; he supplies all our need.  He is our eternal surplus.  Here is the table to remind us.  He is the bread of life; he is the cup of salvation.  Jesus gives to each of us.  He gives to each of us someone to whom we can give.  Give.  Love.  Call.  Bless.  Repeat.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

      [1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Christ the Center [Wer ist und wer war Jesus Christus?]  Edwin H. Robinson, trans.  New York: Harper & Row, 1978.  52.

               [2] Bultmann, Rudolf.  Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting.  Trans. Rev. R. H. Fuller.  New York: Meridian, 1956.  201.

               [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanabandoim/2020/01/26/the-shocking-amount-of-food-us-households-waste-every-year/?sh=3b87244a7dc8

               [4] William H. Willimon  Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry.  Nashville: Abingdon P, 2002.  76.