Sunday Sermon Manuscript – August 2, 2026

He Had Compassion

Matthew 14:13-21

13 When Jesus heard the news, he withdrew from there by boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard of it, they came out from the towns and followed him on foot. 14 When Jesus stepped ashore and saw the great crowd, he had compassion on them and healed those among them who were sick. 15 As evening drew near, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and it is already late. So send the crowds away to the villages, that they may buy food for themselves." 16 But Jesus said to them, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat." 17 They said to him, "All we have here are five loaves of bread and two fish." 18 And he said, "Bring them here to me." 19 Then he had the crowds sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, gave thanks, and broke the loaves. He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And they all ate and were filled. And they gathered up the leftover pieces, twelve baskets full. 21 Those who ate numbered about five thousand men, besides women and children.

(Scripture rendered from the 새번역 text; swap in your congregation's pew translation — NRSV or CEB — if you prefer.)

Jesus, Who Tried to Withdraw

1. The passage we read together today is one we usually remember as "the miracle of the five loaves and two fish." The story of feeding five thousand people with two fish and five barley loaves is introduced as one of the most exciting stories in our church school, and yet in the pulpit it seems to be a rather neglected story. In truth, when we consider the events set before and after it, the five loaves and two fish hold far more that is serious and worth pondering than can be captured by the single category of "miracle."

2. The text begins with the words, "When Jesus heard the news." The "news" here was the report that John the Baptist had been put to death, and the moment he heard it, Jesus moved to a quiet, secluded place.

3. John the Baptist was the one who baptized Jesus, and their mothers were distant relatives; and when we remember that Jesus began his public ministry at the very time John was thrown into prison, we can begin to guess why Jesus, at the news of John's death, would move away to a quiet place.

4. Seen another way, it makes me think that there may have been another reason for Jesus's withdrawal, beyond grief. When we look at why John was killed — whether because his popularity had become a burden, or because of his sharp criticism of the corruption of the leadership — it was because doing away with him was judged politically advantageous to those who held power.

5. And if that is so, then Jesus too — who moved among the poor and the suffering, ceaselessly proclaiming hope and joy — could just as easily have appeared a dangerous figure in their eyes. So there was good enough reason for Jesus to lie low for a while, or at least to be alone and tend to his own soul.

6. But that plan falls apart. Jesus's ministry had, it seems, already gone too deep. The crowds heard the rumor, streamed out from the various towns, and followed Jesus even on foot; and some, the text records, had gathered at the place before Jesus even stepped off the boat. Into the very spot where he had wanted to be alone, a great crowd came pressing in.

The Verb That Changed the Direction: "He Had Compassion"

7. Before these people who had come pressing in, we can read something that shows us the special heart of Jesus. In verse 14: "When Jesus stepped ashore and saw the great crowd, he had compassion on them." The phrase "had compassion" comes, in Greek, from a word rooted in the idea of one's inward parts being wrenched. It is not a sympathy reasoned out in the head, but a mercy that rises up from deep within, a love that aches in the pit of the stomach.

8. Jesus himself was sunk in grief, and perhaps trying to catch his breath and avoid danger for a moment; and yet, before all of that, he first gathered the crowd's hunger and sickness into his own heart.

9. In fact, Matthew has used this verb once before — the passage where Jesus looked at the crowds and had compassion on them, harassed and worn out like sheep without a shepherd. It was his aching heart for people crushed and neglected because of shepherds — leaders — who were incompetent or who only filled their own bellies.

10. In such situations, whenever this heart arose in him, Jesus revealed his power through his disciples. Earlier, he gave the twelve authority to heal the sick and to set free those who were oppressed; and in today's passage, he sets those same twelve as the servers carrying the trays of the impromptu banquet spread out on the grass.

11. In other words, whenever Jesus had compassion on those who were marginalized and endangered, he did not act alone but, we might say, built up that scene of mercy through a community.

12. There could be all sorts of emotions and reactions, so why does this verb appear here, in this place? If we were to put the gospel Jesus proclaimed into a single phrase, we could call it a "movement of the kingdom of God." The kingdom of God is not some far-off place we go to after we die; rather, to expect and long for the kingdom of God — God's presence and rule — to arise within our lives, that is the "kingdom of God movement," that is the gospel.

13. When theologians set out their doctrine of the church, they introduce the church as the very place where this kingdom of God is built. When we think of it this way, before the shape of "church," before our own understanding of the church, there was first the compassion that wrenched Jesus's insides, and that compassion immediately called the disciples into action — and it is with this that we ought to be able to explain the beginning of the church.

14. The action that begins from this one verb, "he had compassion," is precisely what the church is to do; indeed, we must remember this verb as perhaps the greatest and most basic energy by which the church itself is built.

Reading the Five Loaves and Two Fish Again

15. Now let us return to that scene we know so well. We call this event "the miracle of the five loaves and two fish," and we usually speak of it as the astonishing miracle of feeding five thousand people with two fish and five loaves. But since it says five thousand grown men alone ate, once we think of the women and children, we could well say that more than five thousand were fed.

16. When Matthew recorded the event of the five loaves and two fish, it seems that exactly how many ate and drank was not so important to him. So if we were to give this event another name, we might call it "the banquet that fed far more than five thousand."

17. What Matthew wanted to tell us, I think, was not that as many as five thousand ate, but the very meaning held in the fact that so many people ate and drank together.

18. As the disciples said, the place was a "deserted field," and the day was already late. It was a place with no way to find food. And yet the text says, "they all ate and were filled." Not that they barely quieted their hunger — but that they ate until they were full.

19. Since the leftover pieces filled twelve baskets, I find myself thinking of this not simply as an event that solved hunger, but as a festival, a banquet that Jesus spread out. In truth, to eat until one nearly bursts was something those Galileans of that day could seldom enjoy.

20. And so those leftover pieces gathered into twelve baskets feel to me like twelve tokens, pressed one by one into their hands, so that they would not forget this abundance.

21. When we eat together at church, worrying about leftovers is, I think, no way to treat church food. There must be extra, so that those who would take some home can take some, and so that we can share; we must not be afraid of having too much. The most frustrating thing is when there isn't enough. Open hands, a generous heart — this is not merely a matter of someone's temperament; church food should simply be this way.

22. How did so many people suddenly eat their fill? If we fix our attention there, the text loses its life. Jesus handed the blessed bread and fish to the disciples, and the disciples handed them out to the crowd. The disciples moved from this hungry body to that hungry body, meeting again and again the hope-filled eyes of those receiving the food.

23. And so this banquet was not an "abracadabra" trick, but a feast — a sharing — that flowed through human hands, through the hands of the church.

24. Back in Korea, since ours was a church on the outskirts of town and we could not put on much of a program for the children, we once made a modest plan out of a big dream. Let's go on a mission trip to Jeju Island! In those days, getting to Jeju was no easy thing. And yet, once we set our hearts on it, as if by a miracle the children boarded an airplane and arrived at the airport.

25. At that time our church had two groups of children. Alongside the group that had always been there were the children who had come to church when a low-income apartment complex went up next door — children whose clothes were different and whose school achievement was different, and knitting them into one was no small task; but as those children met Jesus, the light in their eyes changed.

26. Dreaming dreams and holding a vision, the church made a reckless plan for these children and swept them up into a vague hope. We prepared for a year, and for a year the children did their utmost to prepare and pray; and as they stood in line at the airport with their plane tickets in hand, one child said this: "Wow! This really is like a miracle! We held on to hope and did it together — and a miracle happened!"

The Church Is a Community of Feasting

27. This banquet of the five loaves and two fish can be read side by side with Herod's birthday banquet in the passage just before it. At that lavish palace banquet, with wine and dancing and applause going round, the head of John the Baptist was carried in on a platter. That was a banquet of power and death.

28. And now Jesus, in an empty field with nothing at all, opens a banquet of life together with the weakest of people. We can read here two shapes of banquet so utterly different that it feels almost embarrassing to call them both by the same word, "banquet."

29. People sometimes treat eating and drinking together at church as something quite trivial. It is easy to think that worship is what is essential, and that sharing a meal is just a side thing. But holding on to today's text, I want to say this to you.

30. The church is a place of feasting, where we eat and drink together. That is why the church is also called a "community of feasting." The Pharisees pointed their fingers at Jesus and called him "a glutton."

31. They criticized him for always eating and drinking in the company of tax collectors and sinners. And yet I find myself thinking that this very accusation, turned around, is the most accurate testimony to who Jesus really was. Jesus truly dreamed — not of a banquet of death, but of a community that is a banquet of life.

In the Face of Hunger

32. These days hunger is not something we can easily experience or witness, and yet today's text lays real, hungry people before us. Someone once described hunger this way: "It is truly relentless." "Fill it, and it clamors again to be filled, so there is no escaping it."

33. Right after today's passage, Matthew tells us once more of feeding "far more than four thousand people," and I think this quietly tells us that hunger is not something that ends once you have dealt with it, but something that keeps coming back.

34. So the compassion we must understand is one that must not let go just because it looks endless; and we must remember that God is building up the church with the longing that, through this mercy and wisdom, it would remain with this earth without ceasing.

35. Then what is this miracle in today's text really trying to say? Its heart is not that Jesus fed more than five thousand people in some astonishing miraculous act; rather, I find myself thinking that this feeding of the crowd until they were full, in an empty field, reveals not only the depth of Jesus's compassion but also his remarkable courage.

36. In those days, feeding a hungry people was the business of power. Rome at that time would hand out grain and loudly advertise, "We are the ones who keep you alive." And so for one man, out at the edge of the empire, in a wilderness with nothing at all, to feed such a great crowd until they were full — this was to show people who lived under oppression exactly where true hope comes from.

37. And precisely for that reason, this kind of ministry of mercy is sometimes criticized, and even treated as dangerous, as if it were a crime. In some worlds, compassion and pity are regarded as truly dangerous things. But what we must remember through this event is to keep on asking: "Where does true hope come from?" and "Is the church truly being built in such a way that it can carry this true hope?"

Compassion Is Not Something to Boast About

38. At a church I once served, the men's fellowship carried out a homeless ministry once a month. We shared food, and when winter came we would join together in a large fundraiser and hand out sleeping bags to people without homes. But what I felt each time was that it seemed we were doing it in order to feel the satisfaction of having helped the homeless this much — as if we were self-satisfied and shrugging our shoulders: "We served this much, we helped this much."

39. Nowhere in it could any mercy or compassion be found; it was almost as if, by doing such work, we were proving to ourselves that we were people who believe in Jesus…

40. The truth is, these can be seen as the most basic ministry the church ought to carry out. Jesus moved his disciples and did the work of showing mercy. This means that even now Jesus calls us and uses us to do the work of showing mercy to this world through the church.

41. And so showing mercy, healing the sick, feeding the hungry — this is not something we do especially well and can therefore boast about, but simply the basic thing that we who follow Jesus ought to place at the very center of our lives.

42. God's mercy already came toward us before we had done anything at all; and we simply dip ourselves into that stream of mercy that has begun to flow ahead of us, and become its hands — that, I think, is all it is.

The 40th Anniversary: Becoming a Community of Compassion Again

43. Beloved members of Yeolin Church, I love you. This year our Yeolin Church marks its 40th anniversary. Over these forty years there have truly been all sorts of events — joyful things, and painful things. And if there is something we must build up again, must recover, and must keep on doing, I believe it is this: to be restored as a church community that reveals "the mercy of God."

44. There can be many different thoughts, and many different practices. And I hope that each of you, in the place where you can reveal this mercy, will strive to do so in your own way. I am not saying you must do it alone.

45. Just as Jesus, whenever he felt that compassion, called the twelve disciples, the church will help together and walk together. So take courage. Let us pour out our strength, together, into the work of revealing the grace of God.

In Closing

46. And so what I earnestly want to ask of you is this: let us not grow lazy in eating together, drinking together, spreading a banquet. Let us never treat it as something small. For upon that table where we sit down together, the kingdom of God is quietly coming, even today.

47. We pray for the hungry. And we feed them. Perhaps that, in fact, is how our prayers are answered. Jesus, who withdrew swallowing his grief at the death of John the Baptist, saw the crowd pressing in and had compassion on them until his very insides were wrenched — and at once, borrowing the hands of his disciples, he turned that empty field into a place of banquet.

48. I long, with all my heart, that this same compassion would begin again in us today, and that this compassion would become the banquet that opens the next forty years of our Yeolin Church.