Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 13 (August 2, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and further edited for readability.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
Jesus said to the disciples, "You give them something to eat." And the disciples said—
So I remember last November when the government slashed numerous benefits designed to ensure that people in our country had enough food to eat.
I remember that we put that verse on the sign out there.
Jesus said, "You give them something to eat."
And I will admit that I felt and carried in doing that attention because I was well aware that no effort on my own part, nor the ministry and charity and goodness of all the people in this church, nor the contributions and goodness of every church in every town and city across the United States could make up for the destruction to the safety net that had happened.
There was a great need, a great gap, and private charity alone could not fill it, could not meet it. And yet I and you heard these words of Jesus, which is, "Nevertheless, you give them something to eat."
And that's what I have been remembering today, because so much of what this Gospel reading is about is that tension that human beings like me and you feel when we look out over the crowd, as it were.
We look out into the world and we see the yawning gap between God's design, God's intention, the kingdom of God.
Where, like Isaiah says, "Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who are hungry, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."
That is God's vision.
God's vision is that all ate and were filled, right?
But there's a yawning gap between that vision and the reality that we live in and see.
And the disciples feel that pain, the pain of that gap, deeply. And so do we.
And Jesus feels it.
I told Gail this morning, I was like, I'm practicing my Greek vocabulary, but this one I had to write down because what a—this is a great word. Are you ready?
“Splagchnizomai.”
He had compassion.
Splagchnon is your guts, your heart, your intestines, your lungs—the organs that take in the breath of God, that receive the nourishment of creation and that keep the force of life moving through your body.
And that is the level of compassion, gut level, that Jesus has when he looks out over the crowd.
Splagchnizomai.
It's the same compassion he has in chapter nine of Matthew's Gospel when he looks out over the crowd and it says he had compassion, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.
He felt for them in his guts.
And that is how we feel when we look out.
God incarnate, right? And Matthew is using this word very on purpose to remind you of exactly what incarnation means, right?
It means having guts. It means having embodied compassion.
And it means feeling so deeply for your fellow children of God that it's painful in your guts.
And I think Matthew wants us to remember what a gift it is to be those made in the image of a God who has love and compassion and mercy at the gut level, and that it's a gift that we don't ever want to lose.
Right?
St. Paul talks about this too. He says, "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart."
It's a gift to have sorrow at the heart of you.
It's a gift to feel for your neighbor at the heart of you.
And we feel this looking out over the world, looking out over the nation, looking out in our own community.
I know many of us feel this pain in our own homes, caring for loved ones.
And maybe sometimes also this feeling of compassion arises or is struggling to arise for our own selves. Sometimes having to compete with the compassion that we feel for everything around us.
But this compassion, this gut-level compassion, is truly a gift from God.
And so is that feeling that the disciples have, which is, "We can't do what we want to do. Our own resources, what we have at our disposal, even who we are—it never quite seems to be enough to meet all those needs."
Right?
That was how we felt last fall.
But we find that Jesus, who feels that same compassion with us, he doesn't let us off the hook any more than he ever let himself off, you know? And he knows what it's like to live in a world like ours.
You see at the beginning here that he goes away in a deserted place by himself. He withdraws.
The first verse is cut a little short. It actually says, "When he had heard this, he went away to a deserted place by himself."
And the "this" that he had heard was the news of the brutal execution of John the Baptist by Herod.
Do you remember the story?
The head on a platter.
That is the world that Jesus was living in.
And he, like us, looking out over the need of the world and fearing and facing the violence of the world, withdrew.
But the world pursues him. The world pursues him.
The people in need of healing, the hungry people, they follow him wherever he goes.
And as the world pursues, he finds that he continues to be moved in the heart of him, in the guts of him, to do whatever he can, even when it feels—and even for us, when we feel—the anguish that what we can do, or what we think we can do, is not enough.
So it's really important to watch what happens when Jesus says to the disciples, "You give them something to eat," because he does not then walk out the door and say, "Good luck to those guys."
You know, what do they say to him?
They say—they admit that there's a problem, right?
They say, "Well, there are 5,000 people, also women, also children."
There are a lot of people here.
And we have—count them up, James. Right. We have five loaves and two fish.
So you see, Jesus, that we have a problem.
And again, this is a universal problem for all human beings who are moved in their guts with compassion.
It's not that we don't see the need. It's that we feel and have perfectly sufficient evidence that we don't have enough.
And what does Jesus say to them?
He says, "Bring it to me."
"Bring it to me."
And he takes the bread and the fish.
And this will be familiar to you who are here on Sundays.
He gathers in what the people offer. He takes it.
He gives thanks for it. He blesses it. He breaks it.
And he gives it all away.
And all ate and were filled.
And there were twelve baskets full left over besides.
The Scripture is full of stories like that.
The generosity and the abundance comes from the giver of all good things.
As the Psalm says, "Everybody opens their hands to you and you give them their food in due season."
Or as Jesus taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."
We do indeed live in a world where our five loaves and two fish do not seem to be enough.
But I think what we forget is that we ourselves alone and our own resources—we weren't meant to be enough all alone.
Jesus says, "Give it to me."
And this is something that I've been struggling with and working with. And I have to admit, it's not quite fully formed, but I'm going to share it with you anyway because I think that sometimes the Spirit speaks, and maybe she will speak to you more clearly.
Yeah.
When I bring God a problem, often God will say, "Okay, you know what the problem is, and you've certainly spent a lot of time looking at it.
"Now, would you please look at me?"
And this is not—this is not what it might seem to be, which is sort of like a quiet escape from the world, like, let me just be spiritual.
But rather, it is taking the world in with our whole self, you know, with our guts, with our heart, with our breath, with our being, offering it to God, the God who says, "Bring it to me."
That is the practice I suggest.
Think about what the Spirit might be whispering to you right now about how you might take whatever problem you have been looking at and bring it to God.
Because God transforms, and all have enough and are filled.
This is the same Jesus who said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.
"And you will find rest for your souls."
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.