In our passage today it’s so easy to forget Jesus. There’s just so much stuff everywhere. There’s the fish and the loaves and the crowds and all their need. There’s the disciples and the wilderness and the illnesses and brokenness. And we sort of forget Jesus. I mean, we remember the superhero, defy the laws of physics Jesus who can make food somehow appear out of nowhere, but we so easily forget the one who has come out of nowhere, out of a nowhere town, from a nowhere family, with a nothing education, and a nothing bank account. And he’s just received the worst news of his life thus far. His cousin has been killed. Beheaded. Served on a platter on the whims of a jealous woman, her teenage daughter, and the cowardice of puppet-ruler named Herod. Served on a platter to these guys because they can’t think of anything else they might possibly need. And Jesus has just learned that his cousin, only six months his elder, who probably shrugged his shoulders with the same kind of shrug, and his eyes wrinkled in the sun with the same kinds of wrinkles, whose hair was just as wild, whose call was just as radical, has been put to death, essentially for doing the same thing that Jesus has been doing. Wandering around with a whole lot of nothing, offering healing, demanding repentance, overthrowing corruption with radical words and radical grace. Jesus has to be asking himself, “Well, am I next?” And this very human Jesus is not only mourning the loss of his cousin, but he sees the road ahead of him, and it looks a lot like prison, and puppet kings, and the power of the Roman Empire, and death. The loss of everything.
And so Jesus is tapped out. He’s done. He’s hit the wall. He’s at the end. He’s got nothing left, and he doesn’t know what to do. All he’s got is his empty hands and his broken heart, and so he takes them out into the wilderness, where more nothing abounds.
And the crowds follow. They chase him down with their own empty hands and broken hearts and limping hips. They chase him down with their own nothing.
And Jesus sees them in their need, in their own empty handedness, and he starts to heal them out of his own woundedness. He starts to speak to them out of his own emptiness. He offers them his nothing. And they’re healed. And when the crowd realizes the gnawing of their stomachs, the emptiness of their lunch pails, and the nothing in their hands, Jesus has nothing to give them. Only his own empty hands and a command to the disciples to do something about it.
And if Jesus has nothing, then the disciples have even less. “You give them something,” Jesus says. And the disciples pull their pockets inside out, they dump out their satchels, check their credit reports and un-crumple their bank statements and come up with…nothing. Or at least almost nothing. Enough that it might as well be nothing. Five loaves and a couple of fish. Enough nothing to make a sick joke at least.
Now the reality is that most of us in this room don’t have nothing. We have a whole lot of everything. In fact, most of us, including yours truly living on a pastor’s salary, most of us are members of the top ten percent richest people on this planet. We’re like Jacob in our first reading today, who is in the middle of a frantic race to save all his stuff, because surely his brother, Esau, from whom Jacob stole his birthright, is coming, and surely, Esau is gonna be pissed.
So in a last ditch effort to save his family - or maybe to just save himself - he sends them all across the river with all of his stuff and camps out alone. Where, somewhat strangely, he starts wrestling with some guy. And like a honey badger, Jacob keeps at this guy even after he’s been struck in the hip. Jacob is so worried about stuff and flesh and food and more stuff, he won’t let go until this guy blesses him. He thinks he needs more. What is Jacob expecting, I wonder? More wives? More children? More cattle and camels and goats? What does he need that he doesn’t have already? What do we need that we don’t have already?
Jacob is scrambling to save all his things, all this stuff that he has, and he demands more. What more could Jacob need? Whatever it is, Jacob doesn’t get it. Instead, he simply gets a new name. He wants to know the name of God, but Jacob gets the name instead. And a limp.
Struck in the hip, the tendons and sinews stretched, the ball pulled out of its socket, Jacob asks for a blessing and gets…essentially…nothing. Nothing more than who he is already. Nothing more than his brokenness. He gets less than nothing. He gets a limp and name. That’s it. A limp and a name that means “to struggle with God.” God blesses him…with nothing.
Remember that time when you were on your knees, begging God for something? When you had all the things but they weren’t what you really needed? When you pleaded with God to give you just that one thing…and then…nothing?
You walk with a limp now, because of that gift of nothing. I know I do. I have limps and scars and cracks and cavities and empty hands from all the times that I begged God for something, and was blessed with a whole lot of nothing.
It’s important to note that both of our stories today happen out in the wilderness - the wild “out there” where rebellion and wrestling with God happens. Both of our stories happen out there in the desert, where there’s a whole lot of nothing.
Psalm 78 asks, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?” In the place where there’s nothing. Where nothing grows. Where nothing stays alive for long. Where nothing thrives. Where there’s nothing but searching and fear and brokenness and barren land? Where there is nothing but emptiness and lack? Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
This miracle story, the only miracle story that is included in all four Gospels answers, “yes.” Yes. God can spread a table in the wilderness. But not without us. Not without our nothing. Not without our lack and our flesh and our mess and our limping hips. Not without these two empty hands.
Jacob wrestles with God, sees the face of God, and ends up with nothing but a bum hip. He asks for God’s name, but instead, God gives Jacob a name - Israel, which means, “One who struggles with God.”
The disciples follow Jesus around, they see the face of God, they call to Jesus to fix it, and Jesus turns it back on them, gives them the responsibility, tells them to do it.
“When you see my face,” God says, “you’ll struggle, you’ll probably fight, or argue, or look at me incredulously, and then you’ll walk away broken, limping, with “nothing” to offer.” And then God says, “ok, now, feed them.”
Feed them from your lack.
Feed them out of your pain.
Feed them in the desert.
Feed them with your stories of heartache and hunger and feelings of rejection.
Feed them with the measly ration of five loaves and two fish and a bum hip.
Feed them with your nothing.
Because we are the hands and feet of Christ.
We are the holes in his hands and his feet.
We are the broken hips and the bruised ribs and the bleeding temples of Christ.
We are his cry to God, “Abba, Father! Why have you forsaken me?”
We carry with us the stories of heartache and pain and grief that are the flesh and blood of Christ.
And we offer that Christ to each other. And it is the face of God.
Our nothing, when it is a part of the Body of Christ, when it is blessed and broken - yes broken - is enough.
Jesus comes to us, is broken for us, becomes nothing with us, and saves us with his empty hands.
That’s the resurrection.
We want our need and our pain and our bum hips to go away. We want to get past it. We want to ignore that we were ever hurt. Or that we ever failed. Or that we walk with a limp. We want to be able to say that we can’t do anything because we have nothing. Or we don’t have enough. Or we’re not prepared. Or we don’t have the skills. Or we’re not good enough. Or that the world just doesn’t want what we have to offer.
So we don’t show up. We don’t share our nothing. We pass the buck, thinking surely somebody with more can handle it better. But guess what y’all? We’ve all been blessed with nothing.
But because of who Jesus is, because of Jesus’s nothing, we are changed. Because we have wrestled with God, we are different. Our name has changed. We have been marked. And we can never take it back. We’ve been given a whole pile of nothing, and then told to feed them all.
Jesus says, don’t wish the need and the lack away. Don’t wish for your struggles to vanish. That nothing is enough. That nothing is exactly what you need to get the job done. Jesus wants us to draw closer to it. Live in it. Share it. That is wholeness.
When you carry the scars around with you and you are no longer ashamed, when you can say, “come, touch the holes in my hands, place your hand in my side, see, I’m a little like Christ, I’m part of the body of Christ, and I’ve got a whole lot of nothing, but Jesus broke it and blessed it and now there’s so much food. And here, have some bread,” that’s wholeness. That’s what God calls us to. That is redemption and resurrection and freedom.
Come, bring your nothing. Bring your brokenness and your heartache and your limp. Come before Christ. Demand a blessing. Wait and see what happens. He’ll tell you to pack up your nothing and get out there and get to work.
Let’s not forget Jesus, and his nothing. His nothing that is everything. His nothing that saves us.
Thanks be to God.
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