“He sent and had John beheaded in the prison, and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. And his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus.
Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.” Matthew 14:10-13
The news hit him like a ton of bricks. He had to escape; get to a clearing somewhere and pray. Devastating events tend to affect us with an almost physical blow to the gut, and even Jesus wasn’t immune to the physical need for retreat. We know of other instances where grief struck Jesus in a very human way, but this time it was not sickness that killed, rather the hand of a wicked king willing to slice off a man’s head for no other reason than to please his dinner guests. Imagine being the bearer of that news. Perhaps the unwilling harold entered a room filled with the laughter of Jesus and his closest friends. He might have paused a moment to catch his breath, dirt still crusted under his fingernails, having just buried John’s headless body. Then the words, “Rabbi—John—your cousin—he’s…” The sudden silence in the room must have bored into his ears with such intensity that the words couldn’t have rung any louder. “…dead.”
What kind of special evil does it take for a thing like this to happen? As a child reading this story, I used to marvel at the appalling behavior of Herodias, who used her daughter to coerce Herod into murdering John the Baptist and serving his head on a platter. I didn’t have categories for this kind of wickedness in my own life. I was given the privilege of growing up with the love and protection of my family in a middle class neighborhood in suburban America. As I’ve grown into this life, and stepped outside of my home country, I’ve recognized the rare gift of being born into America in the late 20th century. As a child I lived in blissful ignorance of the historic and current evils in my own country and I certainly knew nothing of the world beyond our borders where war and corruption caused such suffering and death that my own generational counterparts were growing up to form unspeakably evil plots which would rival anything Herod and his insidious bunch had managed. So while this story shocked me as a child, it was always a distant, slight impossibility, meant only to make a point, a point which eluded me. The idea that it actually meant to hit home at the deepest core of human suffering would take at least a few years of my own suffering, and at least a little time in the grown-up chair watching it occur around me in an almost predictable cycle.
How can one cope with the anxiety and despair that accompanies this life? Evil men rule and accomplish horrendous acts for their own name. Shell-shocked little children sit in the back of ambulances with blood flowing down their precious cheeks, unaware that life was not created for this. Their perceived power taken, crowds of manipulated people charge lines of police, killing and destroying in hope that their demands would be granted; what they think they want justifying all their means. The song rings: “Hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.” National and global events notwithstanding, there are the personal ones in my life and the lives of those I love. A mother taken away so young. My years will surpass her shortly. Miscarriage, mental disorders, broken friendships, slander, divorce, mysterious unknown crippling disease–the list grows, and the suffering repeats.
Oh God, how do we cope with this?
The events after Jesus had received news of John’s death are perhaps the most significant because of what had just occurred at the hands of Herod. We often ponder the suffering of Jesus’ dying, but take note of how he handled suffering in his living! His response to suffering in this instance was not to go and raise the dead, as with Lazarus. His response was more human, even though this time, we don’t see him weeping. He did not summon a unique, divine energy to suppress the emotional toll that the suffering of life produced. On the contrary, Jesus, God in the flesh, shows the aching anxiety of suffering by retreating to a desolate place, away from all that pressed on him. While we don’t see him weep, we do see him grieve in that retreat.
The escape to an unpopulated area is the moment I had thought was the key to Jesus successfully dealing with his grief. Indeed, the application was simple: take my own retreats to maintain my sanity. No doubt, He withdrew to that desolate place to be with His Father. We see at other times this was his way. He often retreated to silence and solitude where he could cry out to the Father. He always went to those desolate places to focus his mind on the prize. Certainly, retreats for prayer reminded his frail body that the unity he had known with the Father for all eternity was still his. Like our own humanity, his humanity would not sustain him when the horrors of evil men were literally served up on a platter. He was fully God, but he also was clothed in flesh. And since He lived in the same kind of body you and I have; one that feels stress, anxiety, grief, pain, hunger, exhaustion, and illness, he needed to rest sometimes. He had a body that suffers. Chemical and electrical signals shoot throughout our members. When the emotion is strong enough, it can cause stress that physically damages our bodies. All of these things were true for Jesus while he was on earth. I imagine his body needed that retreat as much as his mind. In addition to the grief of this news, there were thousands of people following him around, all wanting a piece of his power. Some were angry with him, constantly hurling accusations against him. Others were mesmerized by him, always asking questions for which they were not ready to hear the answers. Now a close family member had been brutally murdered. Surely his body was in desperate need of rest. We can certainly learn from his example in this that going to a place of solitude is where he taught his body to submit to what his spirit had done from all eternity: fellowship with the Father.
Curiously, in this instance of personal retreat, the desolate place doesn’t give solitude. “But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.” This time He didn’t get away, and this is where we learn the greatest lesson, as his weak and weary disciples, who desperately want relief from the evils around us.
I know what I would do in this instance. I do it many days to my kids when I try to escape their constant neediness by sneaking a minute behind the closed door of my bedroom. When they find me, and little sticky fingers reach blindly under the door, as if physically laying claim to the room beyond grants them reign to enter, I get angry. And some days I wind up in the closet behind two closed doors, just to avoid the prospecting fingers. But Jesus didn’t hide and he didn’t get angry. “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” When his body was weak, feeling the pressure and anxiety and pain of what had just happened with John the Baptist, he welcomed the crowds anyway and gave them himself.
How could he do this? Of course we might point to his deity, and rightly so. But too often we do not stop to think on his humanity, before we shift our attention to his power. He was clothed in flesh, like us. Hebrews says, “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (2:17-18). His flesh was weak, as ours is weak. The temptation to get angry and feel wronged by all those who were so inconsiderate of his exhaustion; the grief felt when the evils of life threatened to choke out joy; these were his too. But thankfully he upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3), including himself. Which is why he taught the disciples the best lesson I think I can ever learn as a follower of Jesus.
Think of the scene. His disciples must have been just as weary as Jesus. They had been with him when he was rejected at Nazareth. They had been with him when John’s disciples came with the tale of John’s death. You can imagine their own confusion over the murder and their own need to take a moment to sort through things. They must have been hoping for their own minute to breathe and process life. But then the crowds.
“Jesus, they need to eat. There’s too many of them. Send them away.”
But Jesus–oh the wisdom and love in his words!—Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.”
He had to be kidding.
“Just like that, Jesus? All we have are these five loaves and two fish.” I can imagine the disciples standing there blinking their eyes at him, trying to figure out the angle he was trying to play. But he didn’t make them wait long. He had told them to feed the people (all five thousand) and he fully intended to supply what they needed to do it.
“Bring the food here,” Jesus said. The disciples handed over the five loaves and two fish, still confused. Jesus looked to heaven, reminding them of the source of their sustenance, said a blessing, and then started breaking the bread and giving it to the disciples to pass out. Of course they never ran out. Of course five loaves and two fish was more than enough when the King of the universe had touched it!
I think of the crowds who followed Jesus to his desolate place. They were looking for deliverance. Many of them didn’t know what they longed for exactly, just that Jesus might bring the answer. So they invaded his desolate place, bringing their suffering with them.
Today the crowds are still chasing for the answer. There are billions of people in the world, all knowing suffering, yet more than two-thirds of them don’t know that suffering has met its sure end in the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus. Right now it doesn’t seem to be, but that’s because while suffering’s end is sure, it is still a little while longer before we see it. And Jesus points to those suffering hoards and says to the third of us who are his followers, who have their own load of suffering to deal with, “You give them something to eat.”
He fully intends to meet that command with a full supply of his power for those who would bring their loaves and fishes to him. The power that sustained him on earth is ours too if we are his. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) He gives us his sustaining power and commands us to “feed them” with the gospel—really, with Himself—the good news that He has come to bring life, and life to the fullest. The good news that death has lost its sting and evil will be fully put in its place in a little while—He will return to snuff it out with the breath of his mouth, vindicating every ache of suffering with justice.
He fed the five thousand right after that awful instance of suffering to show us that he gives to us all that we need to keep going and feed the world with himself. He was weary, he grieved, and he showed us that in our weariness, crying out to Him is the way. He told his disciples before he was crucified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” (John 16:23b) He was sent into the world, clothed in the weakness of humanity and with his divine power he defeated the power of sin and death over our humanity. Now he sends us, still in our weakness, yet no longer under the power of sin and death, so that his power might be shown to be perfect. (2 Corinthians 12:9) He spoke to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18)
When I reflect on these truths, the griefs seem a little lighter. Still heavy, but less overwhelming. I have found a strange power to move forward. When Jesus says, “You give them something to eat,” he will not leave us lacking. He got his sustenance from the Father while on earth, and he gives to us as the Father has given to him so that he can send us as the Father sent him.
When Jesus says, “You give them something to eat,” he will not leave us lacking.
So when you feel heavy with sufferings, whatever they are, look on a grieving Savior. He showed his followers how the impossible ought to meet the suffering soul: The suffering soul does the impossible through Him. Know that you have been sent into the world weak, as he was, but with the power that raised him from the dead at your disposal. And when you hear him say, “you give them something to eat,” offer up your loaves, or even empty hands with joy, knowing that He will make it more than enough. Plant your face into the Father and get your power from him, and then go into all the world and give them something to eat. Give them Jesus.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)
Kadie McCaleb 