Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
/ Dominica XVIII per Annum A
2 August 2020
After being rejected in his hometown of Nazareth (cf. Mt. 13:54-58) and after receiving the bad news about the death of his cousin John the Baptist (cf. Mt. 14:3-12) today’s Gospel selection begins with Jesus responding by withdrawing to a deserted place. As on so many other occasions crowds hear of Jesus’ location and they form to get near him. Some verses later the disciples are thinking logistics and practicalities of so many people being gathered that they ask the Lord to send people away because “this is a deserted place.”
We have had a lot of bad news lately and so much around us is deeply confusing and disturbing and lacking hope. Many of us are confused, concerned, afraid, angry, or just mentally exhausted by the lack of stability. Perhaps that explains why in my own reflections on this Gospel passage the two mentions of the “deserted place” stand out. What does it mean to call the location of today’s passage a deserted place? It clearly isn’t empty of people – because a very large crowd has gathered – but it is a place seemingly empty of possibility. It is deserted in the sense of not being hospitable or convenient. It is a deserted place because it is lacking in something necessary, in this case adequate food. It is deserted in the sense that it is a place to leave and get away from in relationship to some place better. What spiritual message can we find in reflecting upon our own deserted places? What are our deserted places?
Maybe for us it is literally a location, literally a place, or a thing. Maybe we would say it is the world around us. We see its order seem to dissolve into chaos, civil unrest, the proliferation of ideological slogans and untested, unproven claims of widespread systemic injustice in our country and in her institutions. Maybe the deserted place that comes to your mind is the humanity of the Church Universal. So many bad stories of weak leadership, scandal, and criminal sin from those who owe God and owe us better. The Church closed down for months. Does that mean we have adopted a fatal notion that we are somehow non-essential? The Church now opened, thanks be to God, but far from normal. So many people still not back. I keep detailed stats from our weekends of being reopened. Our attendance is good compared to other parishes, but still our best weekend so far has been only 44% of our normal total average weekend attendance. Maybe the Church is more literally a deserted place now than we’d like to imagine.
What else might be our deserted places? Perhaps instead of some literal place, it is something existential. Might a deserted place be some empty place in our life or in the life of a loved one, a friend, a spouse, or a child? The deserted place might be some challenge in life. Some suffering. Some experience of difficulty that is dry and inhospitable. A deserted place in life might be where we don’t have enough of something we need for a good and a holy life. A deserted place could be some dark part of life where we think God is restrained from working.
Consider the places that come to mind when you reflect on where the Lord would like you to permit Him to be with you. Is your inclination in the spiritual life to quickly say “let’s get out of here?” “Let’s move away from here and go to where we have seemingly more richness and blessing?” Sort of like the tendency of the disciples in the Gospel: “Dismiss the crowds [Lord] so that they can go… and buy food for themselves.” Or we focus on what little we have and like the disciples we say, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” Jesus responds: “Bring them here to me.” Bring what you have. Bring what you think is not enough. Bring yourselves. Give it to me. Let me do with it what you cannot do and what you think cannot be done with so little.
In the Old Testament God’s covenant is tied to the image of eating and drinking, it is tied to bread and wine. We see this frequently in the prophecies of Isaiah (cf. 25) and it is the hint and reference at the conclusion of today’s first reading. That reading called God’s people to come to a free, generous, and rich meal. It said, “You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk.” The notion of eating, the notion of a rich banquet meal, is connected to God’s covenant relationship with us. Did you notice how that first reading mentioned this promise of rich food and then could conclude: “I will renew with you the everlasting covenant, the benefits assured to David?”
There are some striking similarities in this Gospel passage of the miraculous feeding to the Last Supper. It takes place in the evening, as did the Last Supper. The attendees recline on the grass, as the apostles reclined at table at the Last Supper. There are the same actions and in the same order in this miracle as in the Last Supper. Jesus took, blessed, broke, gave. As much as we want to get away from our deserted places, might we take a lesson from the Gospel and see them as places where the Lord is ready to be present and to work and to do more than we can imagine in His covenant love for us? To let him work there we have to resist the temptation to flee and to get away to some place we think is better. We have to resist the temptation to take ourselves to where we think we already have a sufficiency, where we already have enough, where we have what we want, where we have what we think we need. To let him work in our deserted places we have to give the Lord permission to work in us and with us. Jesus told the disciples: “Bring them (the loaves and fish) here to me.” We are invited to bring the truth of all that we have and all that we are to the Lord. So that, like the actions in this passage and in the Last Supper, the Lord might take, and bless, and break, and give. Oh, but the breaking part… can we just skip that part? Not if our deserted places and not if we ourselves are to be brought into the Lord’s covenant. It was in the Lord’s being broken on the Cross that we were saved. It was in the breaking open of his tomb that we have hope for resurrection. It is in the breaking of the bread that eyes are opened to the presence of Jesus. So, yes, we have to remain in our deserted places. We have to permit the Lord’s covenant work by bringing all to him. In repentance and in confession we let him break what is sinful and bless what must be healed. In Holy Communion, if we receive it, we are given the Lord’s total gift of self, recognizing in it a call to covenant life by which we too must give of ourselves.
Resist the impulse to flee, bring the Lord everything, and be with him even in the deserted places. He will take, bless, yes, He will break, and He will give. A covenant of newness of life will result if we will stay in the places that seem empty and if we will enter into relationship with Him there. And if so we will find sufficiency beyond our expectation and a superabundance of blessing for there will still be more left over. “They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over – twelve wicker baskets full.”