Halt, Good News For The Hungry, March 1, 2026

This week is our first part of the H.A.L.T serious of sermons where we cover that Jesus is good new for those who are hungry, angry, lonely, and tired.

Matthew 14:13-21

Rev. Howard Dudley

March 1, 2026 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This morning's New Testament reading is uh Matthew's version of what Jenny just described in the children's sermon. Um this comes from Matthew chapter 14, starting at verse 13, feeding the five thousand. Let's hear now the word of our Lord. Now, when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them, and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late. Send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves. And Jesus said to them, They need not go away. You give them something to eat. They replied, We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish. And he said, Bring them here to me. Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and 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. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Men. Will you join me in prayer? Holy and merciful God, provide for us this morning, for we are hungry. May something of what is said and done here this morning be not of me, may it be not of us, may it be of you and your providence and your grace, your mercies for our lives in this your world. In your holy name we ask it. Amen. So today's Bible story is one of my favorites. As Jenny alluded to earlier, it appears in all four Gospels. In fact, it appears six times. Twice a story about Jesus feeding the multitudes appears in Matthew, and twice it also appears in Mark. I like this story, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, because I think it offers such great insight into ministry and also into life in general. And understanding this story and what it has to offer us begins, I think, with realizing that while this is a story about hunger, it's not actually a hunger for food that the story speaks to. It's about a hunger for hope. See, when people get hungry for food, they tend to know what it is that they are craving. You can feel your stomach rumble, you look down at your watch, you realize that it's almost 6 p.m., and so you have to ask, what are we having for dinner? What's the plan? A hunger for hope, though, comes from a deeper form of discontent, a void that we kind of constantly live with and don't even always know that we need to have filled. But it's only once you get a taste of hope, a taste of it, that you start to realize how desperately you have needed it. In today's story, Jesus' ministry has been up and running for some time. We get to this story halfway through the Gospel of Matthew, and by the time we get to it, people have gotten a taste of the hope that Jesus has come to offer, and word has begun to spread throughout the countryside, and people keep coming back to Jesus for more. And so for some time now, the crowds have been gathering in street corners and in synagogues to be blessed with the good news Jesus brings, to be prayed over for their healing, to be told by him that their sins have been forgiven. And this ministry that Jesus has begun has grown so large that he has now begun to enlist other people in his efforts. He has recruited disciples to help him bring this hope to the masses. But the ministry has grown too quickly. The demand for what Jesus has to offer has started to become demanding. The crowds coming to see him have grown larger and larger and larger. And so, in a strategic effort to maintain some level of control, Jesus and his newly recruited team have together decided to take a retreat, to pause, to halt, to get away and slow things down a little bit. They get back into a boat, they head out across the lake to a deserted beach on the other side of the lake, far away from the masses, from any village, from any town, so they can get their bearings. But a hunger for hope is not a thing that can be controlled. And so the crowds follow Jesus and they make their way around the lake on foot. And when Jesus pulls ashore, the crowds are already there. They're waiting for him. They are desperate to see him. The scriptures tell us that Jesus, upon seeing the people and how far they had come, was moved with compassion for them. The very compassion of God. And so the intention has been to retreat. There in the middle of nowhere, Jesus sets up shop. Just as he would on any street corner of Capernaum or Tiberius or any other village or town where lines would form around the block full of desperate people, waiting for a blessing of good news, a prayer for healing, maybe a word of forgiveness. And so there on the shore all day long, Jesus starts to do what he does. He starts offering hope, hope to people who have traveled far, and people who now wait patiently all day long for their chance to receive it from him. But then as the day goes on, the people keep coming and they keep coming and they keep coming because the hunger for hope is deep. And so the line isn't getting any shorter. And soon the disciples start to feel their stomachs growling. They look down at their watches. They had watches back then. And they realized it was almost dinner time. And that other kind of hunger, the hunger for food, starts to stir in them. And you see, these disciples are good Presbyterians. That means that they are logistical people. They are really good at anticipating problems. They want to know what the plan is. And they can see that at some point they're going to have to start turning people away. So a couple of disciples go to Jesus and they wait for the right time to interrupt his work of blessing and praying and forgiving the masses. They whisper into his ear over his shoulder. They say, Hey, Jesus, I know you want to help all these people. They are so, so in need of it, but but they are just, there's a lot of them. There's so many of them, and it is starting to get late. We're going to have to start wrapping up soon. These people have got to start getting home for dinner. But Jesus is not in the business of turning people away, especially people who are hungry for hope. Jesus' compassion runs deep, deeper than the hunger that has brought the crowds to him. They don't need to go away. Just give them something to eat, he says. You give them something to eat. You give them something to eat. The disciples don't know what to make of this instruction. And since we ourselves, gathered here this morning, call ourselves modern day disciples, I have to ask, do we know what to do with this instruction ourselves? When Jesus says to you and to me, you give them something to eat. There are two concerns that I imagine must arise in the disciples' minds. And perhaps they might arise in your mind as well. The first concern is why? Why is it our responsibility to feed this crowd? I mean, it wasn't the disciples who decided to travel all day out into the middle of nowhere when Jesus was clearly trying to get away with nothing packed for dinner. It wasn't the disciples who've chosen to stick around all day long, despite the huge crowd, despite having to wait in line for hours and hours as the hour grows increasingly late. Whether it's food or whether it's hope. But at some point, people have to start taking some responsibility for themselves, no? I mean, in fact, if anything, the disciples here are trying to do the responsible thing by sending the crowds away. So why then is it on the disciples? That is on us to feed the masses? All of which leads to a second concern, which is how? I mean, even if we grant that it is the disciples, that is our responsibility, to feed the masses, then how exactly are they, are we supposed to do that? Where are you going to get food for all these people in the middle of nowhere? Who's going to pay for it? No one wants to be given a responsibility that you find yourself entirely incapable of fulfilling. That's not fair. Jesus, we can't. We have nothing, the disciples say. We have nothing. Nothing. Just five loaves and a couple of fish. Here again, Jesus responds and acts in a way that the disciples and perhaps you and I do not know what to do with. He takes the nothing, he bows his head, and he gives thanks to God for it. He gives thanks for nothing. Thanks for nothing, Jesus. At least that must have been what it felt like to those disciples. It must have felt like a thanks for nothing. Gratitude does not seem like the appropriate response in this situation. We people of the world, we tend to think of gratitude as a thing that we express in response to what we receive. Response to getting something that we need. Every November come Thanksgiving, we we gather around tables that are just packed full of food. And we look back over the past year and we think about how lucky we are to have what we have, to have received what we have received. Thanks is a thing you give once you have been satisfied. It is a thing you give when you are no longer hungry. Not a thing you give while you are still hungry. Thanks for nothing. But five loaves and a couple of fish are nothing. See, Jesus' response here shows us something critical for understanding the compassion of God and the hunger for hope that it satisfies. You see, the compassion that Jesus offers is not just a gift, not just a present, it is also a promise. It's a promise that invites for you a different kind of gratitude. A promise invites a kind of thanksgiving that not only looks back at what you've already received and what you already have in hand, but also dares to look forward to what God will most certainly provide, even if you can't quite see how God will provide it. Which is exactly what happens here. To this day, we cannot say how God takes five loaves and a couple of fish and manages it to turn it into enough to feed everyone in line with twelve takeout boxes of leftovers. But what we do know is that in the end, no one had to be turned away. No one. Which means you, like the disciples, you want to know what the plan is. You want to know how it's going to happen. But this kind of gratitude that Jesus expresses here over nothing, it provides and invites you into a different way of looking at the world, a way in which we realize that compassion, especially the compassion of God, is never a zero-sum game. It is a thing that is given in abundance. And abundance changes everything. When you know how to trust the how to God, the why falls right into place. Of course, we are responsible for one another. Why wouldn't we be responsible for one another? Of course, we must give the masses who are hungry for hope something to eat. The world is hungry for hope. You right now may be feeling hungry for hope. It wouldn't surprise me. Not with the cancer or the corruption or the anxiety. Or now with war haunting our world. I know that I can feel my stomach growling. Here's some insight into ministry. And possibly also some insight into life. But what if? What if we could give thanks and learn to anticipate God's providence as well before it arrives? Let us give thanks to God for what God will give. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.