10 Pentecost

August 2, 2026

 Matthew 14:13–21

 So, as I’ve shared with many of you, I read a book a few months ago that blew me away.

 It was not a book I would’ve expected to do so.

 It’s a well-known book, but one that just never piqued my interest.

 And then it started gaining a bunch of buzz on social media.

 So, I reluctantly picked it up and started reading it.

 And was blown away!

 It was none other than. . . .Lonesome Dove.

 If you haven’t read it---read it!

 It’s not just another Western.

 Well, my reading the book opened up for me the world of Larry McMurtry and I have come to really love him as an author.

 I ended reading the two recent biographies of him, which are fascinating.

Larry McMurtry

 Just to give you an idea of who Larry McMurtry was, he was much more than the author of Lonesome Dove.

 His first novel, Horseman, Pass By was published in 1961 and was, in 1963, made into a movie and renamed. . . Hud, with Paul Newman and Patricia Neal.

 If you’ve never seen Hud, see it!

 It’s an amazing film!

 He also wrote The Last Picture Show, about growing up in Archer City, Texas in the early 1950s, which was made into a classic film by Peter Bagdonovich and won multiple Oscars.

 He also wrote Terms of Endearment, which also was made into an Oscar-winning film

 And, along with Diana Ossana, he wrote the screenplay for the film Brokeback Mountain, which also won multiple Oscars.

 (He didn’t write the short story though—that was Annie Proux)

 One of the areas in his life I was especially amazed by was something that happened to him in 1991.

 About a week before Labor Day that year,  as we he was driving from his home in Archer City, Texas to his ranch house to watch the sun set, he accidently hit a cow with his car.

 The cow walked away.

 And McMutry drove on to the ranch and watched the sun set.

 But the next morning he woke up not feeling well.

 He was coughing.

 He felt rotten.

 So he went to the doctor in Wichita Falls, who informed him in no uncertain terms that he was having a heart attack.

 The medical authorities informed him that he had to have quadruple bi-pass surgery immediately.

 McMutry, who was finishing his novel, Texasville, a sequel to his amazing novel, The Last Picture Show, told them he was going to finish his novel first.

 So, he continued working on his novel from September until December 1.

 On December 2, he had the bypass surgery.

 And he came through with flying colors.

 However, int eh months that followed, he simply lost himself.

 He stopped reading.

 He stopped writing.

 He just. . .stopped.

 He would say later, my personality died on the operating table.

 His soul died on that operating table.

 He said, the person I was before that operation was not the same person I was afterward.

 And I didn’t know who I was afterward.

 Eventually, he made his way back, but until the his dying day, he truly felt his very personality had died in that surgery.

 I think many of us have experienced similar moment sin our own lives.

 As most of you know, I certainly went though something very similar when my mother died.

 Some part of myself that I was before died the day she died.

 In fact, a few months after she died, I was driving back from the Cities on Highway 10.

 I stopped, as I often do when I’m driving that road at a particular truck stop in Motley, Minnesota.

 I’ve always loved stopping there to pick up a Diet Coke, look at he live bait in the back of the store and just stretch my legs.

 That day when I walked in there after my other died, I suddenly had this realization that the last time I walked through those doors, my mother was alive,

 But somehow, deep down inside me, the voice in my head said clearly, “the last time I walked in these doors I was alive.”

 And that statement felt just as true.

 That’s how grief works sometimes.

 When people we love dearly die, a huge part of us dies with them.

 There’s just no getting around that fact.

 And it’s terrible.

 The reason I bring all of this up is that I think a similar situation happens in our Gospel reading for today.

 In it, he hear that John the Baptist has just died.

 Before we hear anything about bread or fish or crowds, we hear that Jesus has received devasting news.

 And Jesus does what any of us would do in that situation.

 He withdraws to a deserted place, seeking, perhaps, the same thing we seek when grief comes into our own lives.

 Silence.

 Time to mourn.

 But, of course, he doesn’t get that.

 The crowds of course find him.

 What always strikes me about this passage is that Jesus does not ignore his own sorrow, but neither does he allow it to close up his heart.

 He may have felt like he lost a bit of himself when John died, but he never loses his love for others.

 Matthew simply tells us that he “had compassion for them.”

 Even while carrying grief himself, Jesus remains open to the suffering of others.

 Which is important to us as well.

 It’s a good reminder that compassion doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine.

 Compassion is allowing our own wounded hearts to remain tender enough to notice someone else’s need.

 Most of us know what it’s like to carry burdens that no one else can see.

 We come to church with losses, with worries, with disappointments, and, more often than not, with our unanswered prayers—or rather praters that were not answered in the way we wanted them answered.  

 We come to church often feeling as though our very personality has died.

 And no one else knows or even notices how deeply profound that death is to us.

 But it’s important to remember that just because we’re struggling, it doesn’t mean we have nothing to offer anyone else.

 Jesus shows us another way.

 Sometimes the deepest ministry is offered by people who know what real sorrow feels like.

 A sorrow that essentially is a death of our very self.

 And let’s face it, those of us who have been comforted by God in our own lives often become the ones through whom God’s comfort is given.

 God sometimes uses our wounds—our often unhealed wounds—to heal  other people’s wounds.

 The feeding of the multitude is certainly a miracle.

 But perhaps the greater miracle begins before the bread is ever broken.

 It begins when Jesus refuses to let grief become isolation.

 He continues even in his sorrow to love.

 He continues to heal others.

 He continues to welcome others.

 That is the pattern of life for all of us who follow Jesus.

 We don’t need to wait until life is perfect before we become people of mercy.

 If we do, we’re missing the point.

 We can’t wait until every question has been answered before we love our neighbor.

 We need to just follow Jesus, trusting that God’s grace is present even here, in the wilderness, here in the valley of the shadow of death.

 The crowds came to that deserted place expecting very little.

 They left having discovered that Jesus’ very  presence was enough.

 God worked even through that sorrowful presence of Jesus.

 That remains true for us as well.

 Whatever we have brought with us this morning—our joys or our sorrows, our faith or our doubt, our hope or our weariness—we bring it into the presence of God in Jesus.

 And it is there we discover again and again that God never abandons us.

 We are not dead.

  Our personalities are still alive.

 Jesus is still present in us, his people.

 And we, because of that presence in our midst,  we become the presence of Jesus to those who need Jesus, right now, right here, in this place.

 That’s how the Reign of God becomes truly present.  

 Amen.