Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Matthew 14:13–21

Video: https://vimeo.com/253853989.

“When the movement is strong. The music is strong.”

Martin Luther knew this intuitively in 1529 when he wrote “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” He wrote, “Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise.” He understood something about humans: when life becomes too important for ordinary speech, we must sing to know who we are and who God is.

On February 10, roughly fifteen hundred people gathered at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis after the killing of Renee Nicole Good at Portland Avenue and 34th Street. Of course, Lutherans can sing, but this gathering was much bigger than Lutherans. People came from every kind of community, every race, every neighborhood, and every political persuasion. A few weeks earlier, many of us had gathered outside this very church. It was six degrees below zero. We lit candles, tried to shield the flames from the wind, and sang together. We all sensed that something larger than ourselves was unfolding. The grief remained. The fear remained. But somehow people knew that silence was not enough.

Why is it that human beings make their song at the grave? Why do parents sing to their children? Why do people hum while washing dishes? Why did enslaved people sing in the fields? Why do people sing in hospital rooms? Why did thousands sing on Minneapolis sidewalks?

Today’s Gospel begins in almost the same place. Not with singing, but with grief. John the Baptist has just been murdered. Jesus hears the news and gets into a boat because he wants to be alone. Who could blame him? There are moments when sorrow empties us, moments when all we want is silence. But the crowds find him. Thousands of them. Hungry people. Sick people. People carrying their own grief and disappointment.

Matthew tells us everything we need to know in one sentence: “When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them.” The healing, the teaching, the bread, the miracle—everything begins with compassion.

The disciples, however, see the same crowd and reach a perfectly reasonable conclusion. “There isn’t enough. It’s getting late. Send them away.” Isn’t that the song the world is always teaching us? There isn’t enough. Not enough food. Not enough money. Not enough time. Not enough housing. Not enough compassion. Someone will have to go away. Someone will have to be left behind.

Jesus answers, “They need not go away.”

He feeds them.

Sometimes Christians have acted as though the spiritual life means rising above bodily needs. Jesus never does that. Hungry people need bread. Sick people need healing. Lonely people need community. Justice matters because bodies matter, and the God who created us loves us whole.

Isaiah understood that. “Come, everyone who thirsts. Come, buy and eat. You who have no money.” Come anyway. Isaiah imagines a world where God’s generosity is greater than human scarcity. Then Psalm 145 sings the same truth: “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. The Lord opens wide his hand. The Lord satisfies the desire of every living thing.” The psalm isn’t simply describing something God does once in a while. It is telling us who God is: gracious, compassionate, open-handed.

Then Jesus walks onto a hillside filled with hungry people, and he does exactly what the psalm says God does. He opens his hands.

I think we’ve often misunderstood this miracle. We spend so much time wondering how the bread multiplied that we miss the deeper question Matthew is asking. What kind of God stands before us in Jesus Christ?

A God who moves toward suffering. A God whose first instinct is compassion. A God who refuses to send hungry people away.

That’s the miracle.

The miracle isn’t simply that there was enough bread that day. The miracle is that, in Jesus, we finally see what God has always been like.

Which brings us back to singing.

Songs don’t replace justice. Jesus didn’t merely sing. He healed. He fed. He restored. But songs remind us who God is. They remind us that fear and scarcity are not the deepest truth about the world. They remind us that compassion belongs closer to the heart of reality than violence ever will.

In fact, that gathering at Central Lutheran raised seventy thousand dollars for the movement that night. It was only a fraction of the millions eventually given—five dollars here, twenty dollars there, fifty dollars somewhere else. Songs did not replace action. They gave birth to it.

That is why music belongs in worship. Not because worship needs to be prettier. Beauty is not an escape from the world. Beauty tells the truth about the world.

When Gloria Dei renovated this sanctuary and installed this magnificent organ, we made a theological decision. We named the campaign, “Rise, O Church, like Christ Arisen.” If this place exists simply to help us enjoy beautiful music for an hour every Sunday, we’ve missed the point. But if beauty helps us encounter the living God, if it forms us into people who are more generous, more joyful, more courageous, more compassionate, if it sends us back into the world ready to feed hungry people and welcome strangers, then it has become part of God’s mission.

David, in a few moments we will install you as Gloria Dei’s Director of Music. Your vocation is much larger than directing music. It is to help this congregation tell the truth: to give voice to lament when our hearts are breaking, to help us rejoice when joy surprises us, and to remind us, week after week, of the gracious and compassionate God revealed in Jesus Christ—not so that we stay here, but so that we leave here ready to live that compassion in the world.

Because that is how the story ends. Not with everyone admiring Jesus, but with twelve baskets left over—enough to carry, enough to share, enough for tomorrow.

Every Sunday we arrive hungry. Hungry for hope. Hungry for forgiveness. Hungry for courage. Hungry for bread. Hungry for one another. Every Sunday Christ does what he has always done. He sees us. He has compassion. He gathers us. He gives thanks. He breaks bread. Love can only be trusted if its shared.

And then we turn toward the doors that lead back into the world. One reason that wall is glass is so that worship never forgets where it is going. Christ has fed us not simply so that we may be satisfied, but so that we may become bread for others.

“Our neighbors need not go away.”

“You give them something to eat.”