Proper 13:
Isaiah 55.1-5;
Romans 9.1-5;
Matthew 14.13-21

JESUS "withdrew to a deserted place by himself". Why did he do that? We are not told, but we do not have to speculate. We do not have to, because we can imagine.

St Ignatius Loyola taught us that if we are Christians, our imagination - along with everything else about us - is baptised. It is a baptised imagination, exercised within the community of faith, that must be brought to bear on a terse text such as this.

Jesus has just had bad news. John the Baptist, his kinsman and kindred spirit, has been butchered by Herod. We have hints and more than hints that there was a special bond between Jesus and the one who went before him on the path of history.

It was not only at the passing of Lazarus that Jesus wept. Jesus needs to be alone with his grief. His uncomprehending disciples can offer little comfort, for they cannot begin to fathom how, for their master, the Calvary of the Baptist foreshadows his own.

Jesus longs for somewhere away from it all, where he can deal with his grief in his own time and in his own way. So he sets out for the desert, where "nature has clefts in the rocks where he may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence he may weep undisturbed".

His intention is to grieve and to pray in the terrain that John had made uniquely his. There, in the desert, the memories of the one he mourns will be intense and vivid, and there he will feel close to him in spirit. That, we Christianly imagine, is his intention.

Yet more is going on here. A more powerful compulsion draws Jesus to the desert than a desire to mourn in private. The Spirit drove our Lord into the wilderness long before the martyrdom of the Baptist, long before even those 40 days and 40 nights when he fasted in the wild. Jesus's first departure for the desert took place when "he left his throne and his kingly crown".

In setting sail for a deserted place, Jesus follows the trajectory of the incarnation. The orientation of Jesus's ministry is always centripetal - always away from the centres of power, always towards the periphery. Jesus's destination is "outside" because his destiny is "outside".

To be sure, Jesus made his way to Jerusalem, but the end of his earthly journey was not the city itself, but a waste place outside its walls, a hill of skulls and bones. Such was the self-emptying of the Son of God.

Jesus sails across the lake to a deserted beach - except that it is no longer deserted. The crowds have followed him on foot around the shore, and, as soon as he disembarks, they clamour about him. The quiet uninterrupted period of mourning for John he had planned is no longer possible.

He has come to this peripheral place, and here he meets peripheral people. Far from the centres of power, he finds himself among the powerless. The distant margin of the lake is emblematic of the margins of society, and the 5000 - and many more, so Matthew suggests - represent the marginalised of every age, those at the mercy of powers to whom they matter not a whit.

Famously, Jesus feeds them. We must read the oft-told tale of the feeding of the 5000 in context. The context is not so much what went before and what comes next in Matthew's Gospel. The context is what is going on now in our own hungry world.

The context is the recent report of an Afghan father who sold his 11-year-old daughter for $2000 to buy food for his family. The context is the food riots occurring in places as far apart as Mexico and Morocco, Uzbekistan and Yemen, Haiti and Senegal.

The context is what UNICEF tells us about the steeply rising incidence of child malnutrition in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The context is the doubling of wheat prices, the mounting cost of bread, and - nearer home - the steepest increases in food prices in our supermarkets for 14 years.

The context is the utterances of today's prophets. For example, Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at the University of Leeds, who has recently warned: "We are sleep-walking into a crisis."

John the Baptist, whom Jesus missed so much, said much the same to his own complacent contemporaries. He told them that swift and terrible retribution would fall on them for their careless, self-indulgent, and exploitative way of life (Luke 3.7-14).

Herod, having murdered John, later came to wonder whether John had been raised from the dead (Matthew 14.2). Perhaps Professor Lang of Leeds is John the Baptist risen from the dead. Be that as it may, we had better pay attention to him.

Text of readings

Isaiah 55.1-5

The LORD says this:

1Everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
3Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
4See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
5See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.

Romans 9.1-5

1I am speaking the truth in Christ – I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit – 2I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. 4They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; 5to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

Matthew 14.13-21

13When Jesus heard that Herod had beheaded John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15When 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.’ 16Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ 17They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ 18And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. 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. 20And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.