Sermon Notes — October 4, 2026
“World Communion Sundayt”
Matthew 14:13-21 (NRSVUE)
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
October 4, 2026
Several years ago – maybe a lot of years ago, actually – I caught myself using a phrase that I had to rethink.
God-forsaken.
I really love descriptive language, and God-forsaken is just that. It’s descriptive, it’s edgy, it engages the imagination… But I started to reflect on what it really means. It means that there are places and situations that God has abandoned – that God has forsaken. And I started to wonder if using the phrase “God-forsaken” was an indictment against God. Even if I was just being overly-dramatic, was I mischaracterizing God by claiming that there were places that God wasn’t? Was I violating the Third Commandment – Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain? And so I stopped saying it, just like I stopped claiming to be “starving” when I was just really hungry. I just couldn't accuse God of abandoning – of forsaking – anyone or anything, even if it was just a colorful descriptor.
I share that with you to say this: today’s story is set in a place that everyone assumed was God-forsaken. And yet this story has become for Christians one of the most fundamental illustrations of Jesus’s abundance, compassion…and even Jesus’s presence.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Providing God, by your Holy Spirit feed us with your Word, that we might be filled with the bread of life. Amen.
In the passage immediately before this one, Jesus hears the news that his cousin, John the Baptist, has had his head cut off at the command of Herod Antipas. Herod Antipas is the son of King Herod, who was the king who tried to kill Jesus. You can find the story of John the Baptist’s death in Matthew 14 verses 1-12.
Jesus is devastated–obviously – when he hears the news, and he tries to find a quiet place where he can be by himself. Matthew tells us in verse 13 that Jesus goes to a deserted place. The Greek is eremos, and it’s not just a deserted place. It’s a barren place. A place where nothing can grow, where nothing can live.
And that sounds like a great place to go if you’ve just received the worst news of your life and you want to be alone with your grief and share your sadness with God. It is not a great place to host 5,000 people who really need you.
But that’s what happens.
Jesus gets in a boat to try to find a deserted place – a dead place – where he can mourn death. But the crowds figure out where he’s going and they beat him there. He gets out of the boat looking forward to being alone with his grief and his sadness and his heavenly Father, but what he finds is a jillion people waiting there for him. Maybe it was because he was nursing his own grief, but when he sees the crowds, Matthew says, he has compassion for them and he cures the people who are sick.
Matthew doesn’t tell us how long Jesus and the disciples stay there with the crowds, but we read in verse 15 that when evening came the disciples approached Jesus with concern for the crowds. They say to him
This is a deserted place.
This is a place where nothing can grow and nothing can thrive. This is a barren place.
Send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and find food for themselves.
Pay attention to these locations.
In verse 13, where does Matthew tell us that the people come from to meet Jesus?
(wait for it)
Right, the towns. They come from the towns out into the wilderness, and where do the disciples tell Jesus to send them in verse 15?
(wait for it)
Right, the villages.
As best as I can tell, a village is part of a city, and it’s not clear why Jesus uses two different words, but the larger point is that the city – the place where the people come from and the place that the disciples want to send the crowds back to – the city is the opposite of the deserted place – the place where the crowds come to meet Jesus.
When the people are in the cities and the towns and the villages they mostly know what to expect. Their homes are there. Their synagogues are there. They can buy food there. It's where they live and work – in the cities and villages and towns they have a routine – their lives flow in a relatively predictable pattern.
But the barren places are different. They're unfamiliar, unpredictable, perhaps even uncomfortable. Most people don't spend any significant amount of time in the barren places because, well, they're barren. Nothing grows there or thrives there. They might even feel a little scary.
But our story tells us that God is not only in the barren places but that God does God’s best, most awesome, most faithful work in the wilderness – in the barren places. When the Israelites traveled through the wilderness – the barren lands – from Egypt to the Promised Land, God was with them every moment – in a cloud by day and fire by night, sending just enough manna to get them through the day. Elijah escaped to the barren places to get away from evil Queen Jezebel when she threatened to kill him. He thought he was going to the barren places to die, but he laid down for a nap and when he woke up there was bread and water waiting for him – just enough to give him the strength he needed to run a little more. Jesus went to the barren places for forty days where he was tempted by Satan, and after those forty days the angels came to feed him.
Things are predictable in the cities and towns and the villages, but the barren places – the places that appear God-forsaken – are the places where anything can happen.
In the wilderness, what appears to be God-forsaken might actually be the place where we experience God’s kingdom.
The disciples tell Jesus to send the crowds back to the villages not because the crowds are troublesome but because the disciples are truly concerned about what the people are going to eat. Like my grandmother, who couldn’t sit at the table for five minutes before she started looking around at everyone’s plate. Every plate would be full – like, food falling over the sides – and she’d still ask, “What do you need?”
They were truly concerned for the well-being of the crowds, but Jesus says to them
You, you, give them something to eat.
For me, this World Communion Sunday is a reminder that Jesus asks us – his disciples – Jesus asks us to remember – and not just to remember but to witness – to the promise that Jesus does his best work in places that look God-forsaken. And that sometimes, Jesus asks us to use his power in places that look lifeless.
You, give them something to eat.
Pay attention to what happens. The disciples locate the food. The disciples bring it to Jesus. Jesus blesses it and then he gives it back to them. And the disciples give the food to the crowds. They bring Jesus what they find, he blesses it, and then they share it with everyone.
Jesus isn’t just feeding people in the wilderness…there is not a word in the story about anyone being hungry. Jesus is showing the disciples what’s possible even in a place that looks barren. Even in a place that looks dead. Jesus prompts them to imagine – don’t do the predictable thing just because it’s what you’re used to. Don’t jump to the solution that you have relied on in the past. Stay in the barren places for just a little while longer and see what God might do. What God might ask you to do. What God might ask us to do.
So often we assume that if a place is barren or dry or if it feels too unpredictable or unsafe then it must be God-forsaken. We are so used to looking for God in the usual, predictable places that we miss the opportunity to experience some of God’s most faithful work in the places that feel forsaken. This story reminds us that God is there, too, and that sometimes God invites us into that faithful work.
The staff was discussing this worship service over the past few weeks, and talking about the different kinds of bread that we were going to have, and listing off who was bringing what, and someone asked the question, “What will we do with all the leftover bread?”
I didn’t have an answer. I said that I suppose that some of the people who brought bread might want to take it home. But other than that, I figured, if we just make it available, who’s going to turn down fresh baked bread. And the more I thought about it during the week I thought, we’ll just offer it to you, to the church.
Friends, right here on this table is God’s abundance. Right here on this table is more than enough. Right here on this table reminds us what Jesus gave us out of the depths of his hospitality, even as he was in the wilderness of his own death.
You are Jesus’s disciples, and so this is yours. You can keep it if you need a reminder that Jesus is present with us in the wilderness of grief, of betrayal, of sadness, and even in the wilderness of death. Or you can give it away to someone you know who may need a reminder of the depth of Jesus’s love for us and presence with us even in the barren places.
You, you decide. This is God’s abundance, given for you and for me and for the whole world. And there is always, always enough.