I have been in a bad mood for the past week; I am sick of the news, I am sick of the sickness, I am sick of pain and loss and fighting and hunger.  I have alternated between tears and anger, between silence and complaint, between resistance and surrender. 

            If you have been paying attention to the news, you know what I am talking about. Bloody, senseless, horrific attacks in Norway.  Horrible, mind-numbing, overwhelming famine in Somalia.  Drought and hunger and suffering in Kenya and Ethiopia.  A young woman, so musically gifted, dying at the age of 26, drawing attention to addiction and alienation among young people.  The leaders of our nation, valuing politics over progress, while far-right extremists gain ground in our country and in the world.

            And here at Edgewood, one of our dear members passed on earlier this month, and another beloved member of our church family has just moved into hospice.  We have others struggling in the hospital, others struggling in their homes, and we do not want to say good-bye to people that we so dearly love.

            I am hungry.  Hungry for good news, thirsty for hope, parched by the pain, and waiting for something, for someone to fill me.  There is a lot of suffering in this world, and right now, I am just sick of it; I am just sickened by it.  I am guessing that many of you feel this way, as well.

            And I think that Jesus probably felt that way, too, in our reading for today.  At least he did in the beginning.  You see, right before our scripture starts, Jesus has just learned of the death of his cousin.  John the Baptist had been imprisoned by King Herod, for speaking truth to power.  And then, during the King’s birthday celebration, Herod agreed to present the head of John the Baptist on a platter to his wife and her daughter.  He sent his soldiers into the prison and beheaded John the Bapist.  How nauseating and awful; not only was this man killed, not only was he beheaded, it was done as part of a celebration, John’s head a gift to a woman and her daughter.

            Jesus hears about this, and he just wants to get away.  This is where we find him at the beginning of the scripture.  He withdraws in a boat to a deserted place all by himself.  He is sick of it; sick of the violence and pain, the suffering and sorrow, and he wants to mourn the loss of his cousin, John the Baptist.  There is too much pain, and it overwhelms even Jesus.

            But this scripture doesn’t stay in a place of pain.  Instead, it moves forward into miracle, and nourishment, and joy.  Jesus changes location, and he calls us to change location, as well.  From despair and sorrow to miraculous hope.  He tells us to move location.  Jesus leaves the brutality of Rome, the violence of power, the tentacles of tyranny, and he goes to an alternative location.  A place of miracles, a place of feeding, a place of love, a place of compassion.

            Once Jesus has withdrawn and gone to this deserted place, the crowds follow him.  They want the same alternative.  They are hungry, too.  Hungry for hope and peace and comfort, hungry for change.  And so he teaches them, he heals them, he has compassion for them and cures those who are sick.  But evening comes, and the crowd has nothing to eat, and the disciples themselves are ready to give up.  “Tell them to go away!  We don’t have anything to feed them!”

            But Jesus says, “Give them something to eat.”  And the disciples began to feed the crowd.  And to their astonishment, they have enough.  The disciples are the ones who pass out the food, and they end up with a great abundance.  All are fed, and there are 12 baskets left over.  Where there was hunger, there is now abundance.  Where there was loss, there is now plenty.  Where there was sorrow, there is now joy.

            Jesus moves to an alternative location, away from the brutality and pain of Rome, towards the abundant, faithful, joyous reign of God.  And he leads us there, as well.  He leads us to a place where we will be fed, where we can feed others.  But we have to change location; we have to move away from a place of despair.

            Father Michael’s Lottery is a novel that takes place in Southern Africa, in a hospital filled with patients who are dying of AIDS.  At the time it takes place, anti-retroviral drugs are not available to the patients, due to their high cost, and the patient’s wards are full of those who are dying.  It seems like it should be a place of despair.

            But there is one woman, deathly ill, emaciated, starving, who does not have AIDS.  And when she enters the ward, the patients change location – from a place of despair, to selfless, life-giving hope and love.

            “Dr. Morgan saw the girl in the course of his morning round.  At first he thought he was dealing with another inevitable death.  She was obviously dying.  Her clavicles stuck out like flagpoles, every single rib was visible, her pelvic brim was covered by skin only, her withered hamstrings barely separated bone from skin….Returning to the foot of the bed, he took the battered clinic notes and started paging through them.

            “Slowly he put the story together: how she became ill during pregnancy, how she developed a perinephric abscess that was inadequately treated…was referred for an opinion and diagnosed as an AIDS patient without an AIDS test, and how she was discharged for home-based care.  How she got sicker and sicker through infection, misdiagnosed as AIDS.

            At first he swore softly, under his breath.  Then he swore a bit louder and eventually exploded like a powder keg…

            For the next two days she somehow managed to stay alive.  And on the third morning, Morgan interrupted his ward round, drove to the town, and walked into a shop.  He took all the ice cream out of the freezer, together with a dozen eggs, stacked it all on the counter and paid.  The baker raised his eyebrows in surprise, “What are you doing with all that ice cream, Morgan?” he asked.

            “I’m having a party.”

            In the ward he calculated a 3,000 calorie diet using ice cream, eggs, and protein powder, and divided it into two-hourly portions.  The other women were all sitting on their beds, watching him.  Morgan paused, realizing that two-hourly feeds were going to be a problem since the nurses were already overworked. 

            He straightened his back, faced the women who were all watch him and asked: ‘Do you think you can help this girl?’ They didn’t know what he had in mind, but all of them nodded their heads affirmatively.  ‘Can you see she is very sick?’ he asked, standing in the middle of the floor like a sergeant major.  Yes, they nodded solemnly.  ‘Can you feed her every two hours?’ he asked.  Yes, of course, they nodded.

            He paused and asked, ‘Do you think I am crazy?”

            “Yes!” they all said in a chorus and smiled their broadest smiles. 

           The irony was not lost on Morgan.  All the women had terminal AIDS; they looked like scarecrows themselves and most of them were dying, but they were happy to help.  It would take their minds off the business of dying.

            Afterwards, whenever Morgan went to the ward, there was someone sitting next to the girl, who tentatively sucked milkshakes through a straw and seemed exhausted by this small effort.  Even Mary was pushed to the girl’s bedside in a wheelchair and sat there holding her hand.

            At first, the girl seems oblivious to all the attention and Morgan was dismayed by her lack of response.  Her temperature chart looked like a drawing of high alpine peaks, her white blood cell count stayed high, which told him he wasn’t controlling her infection.

            He carefully chose the least damaging antibiotics to make sure he didn’t damage her other kidney.  Morgan sat down next to her bed, intercepted her gaze and said: ‘I know what your name is, but I want you to tell me yourself.’

            Her eyes seemed to stare straight through him.  There was complete silence in the ward.  It seemed that she had forgotten her name, but just when Morgan was about to give up, her lips moved.  He heard her speak for the first time in a barely audible whisper: ‘Naledi.’ And Janet, the woman with Kaposi sarcoma, said: ‘It means star.’

            ‘How can you forget a name like that?’ Morgan asked.  He took his pen and drew a star right on the bed sheet.  Violet scolded him.

            ‘Just so that everyone can remember,’ he said.

            We can feed one another, using what we have.  AIDS patients dying in southern Africa feeding another woman so that she can live.  This can be our location – a location of love and hope.  When we move from despair, we realize that we can feed one another, using what we do have.  When we move from despair, we realize that even in the places of deepest pain, love is still present and powerful.

            This is what happened to the disciples.  They really didn’t think that they had enough.  Only 5 loaves and 2 fish, and over 5,000 hungry people.  But Jesus says to just give what you have, just offer what you can, and they will be fed.

            Now, this scripture never explains how the miracle actually occurs, how all of those people were fed, with abundant food left over.  But my favorite interpretation of this scripture suggests that once the disciples offered what they had, everyone began to offer their own food to others, and the food multiplied miraculously, because of the infectious generosity that spread, once the disciples gave all that they had.  It was a miracle of feeding, of abundant generosity, as men and women and children began to offer all that they could, so that all could be fed.

            I cannot get rid of the images of the famine in Somalia; they are imprinted in my mind and I cannot forget the visions of horror and hunger they represent.  But if I stay there, in that place of despair and hopelessness, I will never feed anyone.

            Instead, I turn to Bread for the World, and I read about progress, real progress in the battle against hunger.  World Food Prize laureate, economist and minister, David Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S. advocates for hungry and poor people.  He currently serves as president of Bread for the World, and he says the following, “The most important thing to know about hunger is that it is not hopeless.  In fact, the world has been making dramatic progress against hunger, poverty, and disease. Back in the 1970s, about a third of the people in developing countries were hungry.  Even after the economic problems of the last few years, about a fifth of the people in developing countries are now hungry.  From one third in the 1970s to one fifth - that's a dramatic change for the better.  And we've made good headway; between 1990 and 2015 it is quite possible that the world will cut poverty in half!”

Beckmann goes on to say, “We live in the most powerful nation in the world, and our government has an impact on people all over the world.  When the U.S. government agreed to write off some of the unpayable debts of some of the world's poorest countries, Europe and Japan agreed to do their part.  Many African governments used debt relief as an opportunity to expand primary education.  So as a result, 29 million more African children are in school now than in the year 2000.  Church people in this country played a crucial role in pushing for debt relief and giving millions of African children a chance to learn to read and write.”

            We offer what we have – we write letters on behalf of the hungry – and we see real change occur.  Just one letter, just one envelope, multiplied by thousands, and policies change, protecting the most vulnerable people in our world.  We offer what we have – we send in our donations to Unicef, Oxfam, Church World Service – and we watch them multiply by the millions, and people are fed, lives are saved.

            We can stay in a place of despair, for it is horrible, famine is intolerable and infuriating.  But we can also move into a place of hope, transformation, and love.  And every time we offer what we have, we change location.  We participate in the miracle of loaves and fish.  We leave the tyranny of Rome and live within the compassion of Jesus.

            Jesus tells us to feed them.  When we say we don’t have enough.  When we give into despair and sorrow.  When we are angry, when we are sad, when we are overwhelmed.  Jesus just says, feed them.  Offer what you have, offer what you can, and trust that God can multiply your gifts. 

            The pain in the world, the pain in our church, the pain in our lives can be overwhelming, just like it would be overwhelming to face 5,000 hungry people with only a little food.  But we can offer what we have.  We can feed them.

            Those who are sick, we offer our visits and our presence.  To those who are mourning, we offer a hug and a prayer.  To those who are hungry, we send our money, our letters, our hope.  To those who suffer, we donate what we can and trust that it will multiply.  We do our part, and we leave the rest to God.

            I don’t know about you, but I am ready to change locations: from the wilderness of brutality and hopelessness onto the meadow of miracles and transformation.  I am ready to watch life flourish as human beings are fed, as human spirits are nourished.  I am ready to move – from hopeless despair to powerful faith.  Because I can feed others, you can feed others, and together, we can all be fed, through the love, the hope, and the power of God, who is still working miracles – through you, through me, and through the love in this world, that cannot, and will not, be overcome.

            Amen.