The Kingdom Feast
August 6, 2017
Pentecost 9A
Matthew 14:1–21
Brookside Community Church
The Death of John the Baptist
At that time Herod the ruler heard reports about Jesus; and he said to his servants, ‘This is John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead, and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ For Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been telling him, ‘It is not lawful for you to have her.’ Though Herod wanted to put him to death, he feared the crowd, because they regarded him as a prophet. But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company, and she pleased Herod so much that he promised on oath to grant her whatever she might ask. Prompted by her mother, she said, ‘Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.’ The king was grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he commanded it to be given;he sent and had John beheaded in the prison. The head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, who brought it to her mother. His disciples came and took the body and buried it; then they went and told Jesus.
Feeding the Five Thousand
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.’ 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. 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.
—Matthew 14:1–21
Close your eyes. Imagine that you and your family have been invited by a “very important person” to attend a feast at a very highly regarded location. What are some of the factors that will determine for you whether or not you will attend? Maybe you will ask who this VIP is. Maybe you will ask who else is going to be there. Maybe you will ask what will be on the menu. Maybe you will begin looking through your closet to determine what you are going to wear — or whether or not you are going to need to go shopping. Will you bring the rest of the family?
Now imagine that you have been invited to participate in another feast by another VIP. Let’s assume all of the same deciding factors apply. But the challenge here is that you cannot attend both feasts, and you will need to choose. What will be the deciding factors, the most important things you will consider when deciding which one of these feasts to attend. Open your eyes.
This morning’s lectionary reading is about one of two separate feasts. There is good chance that you have read or at least heard about one of them. The other, perhaps you have never heard about it. And, the odds are, if you have heard it, you haven’t heard it told like I’m going to tell it this morning.
The feast of power, exclusion, greed, fear, and death
Our text this morning contains two periscopes about two separate feasts. The first passage is about the feast of King Herod to celebrate his birthday. In this feast, Herod lives in a world of power and authority. In order to make people happy, he makes promises based on the belief that he can get anything he wants by doing anything he wants to anyone he wants.
But this is a feast of exclusion. Only a select few are invited, and those who are invited must gain some favor with the king in order to be recognized.
It is a feast of scarcity and greed. Those who attend are treated to pretend that they can have anything they want, but this is in celebration that there is only a limited amount to go around and because they have been invited, they are privileged to what is there.
It is a feast of fear and death. Those who are in power use violence to protect themselves from the fear of those who challenge their right to rule. It is a feast of death, as those who are critical of the king are treated with contempt and suffer violence because they challenge the king’s rule and methods.
The feast of compassion, mourning, inclusion, hope, abundance, and life
The second passage is found in all four of the Gospels. It is a passage about the Reign of Heaven. In the Gospel of Matthew, remember, Jesus is obsessed with the Reign of Heaven. For the last few weeks we have heard parables from Jesus about the “Kingdom of Heaven.” The word parable, remember, means “to lay side by side.” This second feast is intended to be read with the previous one—side by side—so that we can see what makes the Reign of Heaven different.
It is a feast of mourning for those who suffer, an offer of wholeness to those who are broken, of healing to those who are sick, and of sustenance to those who are hungry and thirsty.
It is a feast of radical inclusion. This feast is for the large crowd who has been following Jesus around, filled with people who were excluded, broken, and sick and now find hope and healing in Jesus.
It is a feast of hope and abundance. Those who begin in fear that there will not be enough discover that there is more than enough, and even some left over. Economies based on scarcity always privilege some at the exclusion of others because it is believed that there are limited resources that only a few deserve to have access to. The Reign of Heaven, however, is based on an economy of abundance. Rather than a world where people are envious of each other’s possessions, the Reign of Heaven invites those who participate the chance to see that there is more than enough for the wellbeing of everyone.
It is a feast of giving. We could make the assumption that Jesus had an inner-circle of privileged people. But this passage calls us to upend that. When the disciples told Jesus to send the crowds away, Jesus gathered them in together and called them to share what they had with each other.
It is a feast of compassion. Compassion is not the same thing as pity. Pity comes from a place of privilege where one person looks out at others and says, “I have the power to fix you.” Compassion, however, is moved by a feeling of love and empathy. Jesus did not look on them as an outsider, a ruler looking down on them. Rather, he saw himself as one of them. Unlike Herod who called his guest to a feast to celebrate his power, Jesus invited the crowd to join the feast to celebrate their own empowerment, to discover that they had everything they needed right there among them.
It is a feast of life! While the world is spinning out of control, people who have lost hope and health have come together to find healing and wholeness and to be restored to life. Those who are hungry are filled.
The Eucharist: The Feast of Thanksgiving
This morning, we are gathered around a table together. We have been invited to celebrate the Reign of Heaven in this holy feast we call the “Eucharist.”
While most Protestants call it “Communion” or “The Lord’s Supper,” I want us to learn again to call it the Eucharist. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word εὐχαριστία, which means “Thanksgiving.” This feast we are participating in is a feast of thanksgiving.
Unlike Herod’s death feast, this table calls us to participate in the Reign of Heaven — a feast of compassion, inclusion, abundance, and life.
What Happens at the Eucharist?
A major debate during the Reformation centered around the question of what happened to the bread and the wine during the Eucharist feast. Not finding the language of the text sufficient, the church worked tirelessly for centuries, even inventing numerous philosophies to understand how the substance of this meal could change. The great reformers Luther and Zwingli met in 1529 to come up with a solution they could agree on. But they failed. Luther argued for “consubstantiation,” that the “Real Presence of God” was in and over and all around. Zwingli argued that the feast was symbolic, aimed at teaching us something.
But there was a third voice, rarely considered by most theologians — and that was because he was an Anabaptist — who went by the name of Pilgram Marpeck. Marpeck suggested that maybe both Luther and Zwingli were right, but they could not come to an agreement because they were focusing on the wrong question. The question we should be asking, Marpeck suggested, is not what happens to the bread and wine, but what happens to the people. Marpeck, see, believe that it was specifically the Eucharist that “made” the church. The church came into existence through the Eucharist. In other words, by practicing in this feast together, we are transformed from a gathering of people and into the Body and Blood of Christ.
By joining in this feast together, we are choosing to participate in the Reign of God in opposition to the reign of the violent rulers of the world. We are continuing that feast of Heaven’s Reign which began in Jesus. We are choosing compassion over fear, inclusion over exclusion, abundance over scarcity, life over death.
By joining in this “Thanksgiving Feast” together, we are taking up God’s invitation to become the Body of Christ, the people who live out God’s call to bring restoration and renewal the world.
