“When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, he
withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” Let us try and place
ourselves in the person of Jesus in this Gospel story. His cousin, John, the
one who baptized him in the Jordan River, whose track in life spiritually
paralleled his own, is executed by King Herod. This loss for Jesus is more than
just the loss of another “holy” person/leader in the community.
I think that if we have a fault concerning Jesus, it is
usually overemphasizing his divine nature to the point of almost negating his
human nature. This was a significant loss to Jesus. John was blood kin, Jesus’
cousin. Born closely together, they probably shared the same age in years. Did
they play together as cousins do when they were children? They were uniquely
born, in that their destinies were intricately and intimately tied together in
ways they probably innately felt, but didn’t cognitively know as children. From
the moment they were born, their lives were directed to a specific mission
within Salvation History. Was this a devastating loss for Jesus? The only hint
we get in this passage was that upon hearing John’s execution, Jesus needed to
go away alone, in order to sort out his feelings and perhaps to mourn the death
of his cousin.
As emotionally compromised as Jesus may have been, the
crowds were all the more needy and so desperate were they that they didn’t
allow Jesus the respite he needed to work through all the conflicting thoughts and
emotions that were washing over him. I wonder, did Jesus feel exasperated by
these crowds and wished they would just leave him alone? That would have been
my initial human reaction. Whether he did or not, from deep within Jesus welled
a great pity and compassion for this desperate, broken humanity who just wanted
to be near him, to look upon him, hear his voice, and feel his healing touch.
So desperate for Jesus were they that they rushed off to follow him without any
food, or other provisions. So Jesus dug even deeper within himself, and with
the very little food with which he was presented, fed 5000 men, not counting
women and children. By modern standards, the family unit is considered 2 adults
and 2 children. It is very likely that Jesus preached, healed and fed not just
5000 people that day, but 20,000 people including women and children.
While we are not called upon to feed 5000 much less 20,000 people,
are we not called by others, often times when it may be most inconvenient, to
attend to their need? There are times when our lives are overwhelmed by the
personal losses we are experiencing. We can feel overwhelmed by the losses of
all those we know. We can feel hopeless and helpless by the overwhelming losses
that exist within our world, and humanity’s penchant for cruelty and a patronizing
dismissal of the losses of the most vulnerable in our world. What do we do when
the broken people in our lives come knocking on our doors at times when we feel
the least capable of addressing their needs?
This Gospel story of Jesus calls us, in the midst of feeling
overwhelmed, to dig deep within ourselves and find within the source of our
being, the gifts with which God has given us, to call upon God to bless those
gifts, and then take those gifts and distribute them to those most in need. It
is not easy being a disciple of Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus calls us to
understand with compassion the inconsiderateness of others, the annoyance of
others, and the invasion of our own personal time and space. However, as Jesus
will tell us later in Chapter 25 of this Gospel, “when you did this for the
least of these, you did it for me.”
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