This sermon was preached at Church of the Redeemer in Greensboro, GA on Sunday, August 2, 2026. The lectionary texts were from Proper 13A (Track 2) and included Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21. The audio file is included below.
Tell and Show
Icebreaker before sermon: Who remembers the first time they ever did Show and Tell in school?
Jeanne Gibson, the woman who became Rosie the Riveter, died this week at 100. During World War II, while parents were off fighting or supporting-by-riveting the war effort, children continued to go to school. Early in the 1940’s, a new classroom tradition emerged: Show and Tell.
You know the routine…
Find an object of desire or allure.
Bring it to your classroom.
Show everyone.
Tell them all about it.
Adorable bunnies, ancient arrowheads, maybe even a terrifying tarantula or a slick, slimy, slithery snake to scare your teacher.
Things every child wanted to see.
But sometimes it could go horribly, horrifically wrong.
Maybe your personal story was one such time…
In 1984, a middle-school girl unknowingly brought classified documents from the Carter Administration for her show and tell.1
The FBI was called.
Awkward questions needed answers.
She still made a B on the assignment.
In 2008, an 8-year-old boy in Cape Cod wanted to impress his classmates.2 He searched through his grandfather’s World War II memorabilia for the perfect object.
What did he pick?
A medal? A helmet? A service flag? An old photograph?
Nope.
He chose a hand grenade.
All 400 students were evacuated. Emergency personnel were called in. Thankfully, it was inert, but parents received a stern reminder to check backpacks before leaving the house…
For the last 85 years, students across the country have grown up with “show and tell” as a mainstay in their early education.
Scripture operates along the same wavelength. In the Bible we find God speaking to patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and disciples – ordinary people like you and me – with similar tactics.
In our passage from Matthew, Jesus inverts the principle. Instead of “show and tell,” Jesus gives us “tell and show.” In our parable girl summer, he has been telling parables about how the very structures of the Kingdom’s economy are upside down and God-side up.
We have now moved forward in Matthew, leaving the verdant fields of parables behind (for now) and we’ve come upon a miracle. Before we can consider the feast of feeding his flock, it bears noting that the lectionary has sailed over the stories of Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth and John the Baptizer’s beheading at Herod’s bidding.
The lectionary has a bad habit of skipping the juicy bits.
Nazareth was Jesus’ hometown, the place where he was known. He should have been the local hero, but instead was treated like Brett Favre coming back to Lambeau Field after joining the Vikings. It was boos and jeers and nastiness.
Such is the reception of a prophet in his hometown, says Jesus.
Then Matthew takes us to John’s death. Actually, it’s the memory of John’s beheading inserted into the present moment. Matthew interrupts his own recounting of Jesus’ tell and show to describe what happened. This is the one who must decrease that Christ may increase. The forerunner, the preparer-of-the-way, the prophetic voice met a prophet’s end in martyrdom. Prophets without honor and all that… His role completed, the promise fulfilled, his faith maintained, now he is with God.
Why? Because upon hearing reports of Jesus’ deeds of power, Herod fears John has been raised from the dead. There is something special and significant about Jesus’ work in the region that gets the attention of this puppet-king. We cannot miss this as we move from parables to miracles.
Having finished teaching parables in the boat and unpacking them privately with the disciples, and upon hearing the news of his cousin’s execution, Jesus seeks solitude, silence, and stillness. He withdraws from the crowd and commotion, the noise and the nuisance. While Matthew says little, we can safely assume that Jesus is convening and communing with the Father.
This was his rhythm. Throughout the gospels, we encounter Jesus pouring himself out in ministry and then recharging through prayer-soaked presence with Abba.
Not sure who needs to hear it, but if you are feeling tired and worn out from constantly moving and doing…consider resting and recovering through prayer-soaked presence with Jesus.
But the crowds know he is gone.
They notice his withdrawal and they begin searching for him.
We can also safely assume that what they want from him is: More.
More teaching.
More healing.
More power.
Much more.
Casually, Matthew tells us that Jesus had compassion on the crowd. Earlier in his gospel, as an echo of Mark and on loan from Moses, Matthew tells us that Jesus had compassion on the crowd because they were “harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.”3
The word compassion is central to the scene. It doesn’t mean Jesus was moved to warmth or kindness or that he got watery-eyed at a Publix commercial. The Greek word used for compassion4 means to feel deeply in one’s gut or heart on behalf of another. Jesus is greatly moved by the growing crowd, such is our savior’s capacity to know us, get us, love us, and heal us.
He begins expressing his compassion by curing the sick.
This little phrase gives valuable insight as to why Jesus had compassion. The people brought their sick, lame, mute, deaf, and dying to him because they believed that he could heal them. It sounds a little too obvious, perhaps, but their actions embody their convictions.
When we go to the Lord in prayer for healing, for a miracle, for the seemingly impossible, or even with a complaint, we do so because we trust that Jesus can and will do something about it. It doesn’t mean that what we ask will come to pass, but it does mean that our prayers are praise in and of themselves.
Jesus’ curing of the sick is but the appetizer to the feast he has in store for his people. As evening settles, the disciples recognize they are in a deserted place with no Chick-Fil-A party platters to feed that many people fully and cheaply.
The land was desolate, dry and barren. If you were planning on feeding a group of people from scratch, this was not the place you’d want to be. And I think that’s the point.
The mention of a hungry, harassed, and helpless people in a dry and barren land should trigger our biblical memories. Think Israel wandering in the wilderness.
God is about to do something!
At first, the disciples only saw the problem:
It’s late;
The people were hungry;
They lacked funds.
So far so good…
But then they tell Jesus to instruct the crowd to go buy their own food on their way home.
Well, that’s certainly one way to do it.
Clearly the disciples weren’t bred with southern hospitality…
You have to love Jesus’ response: they need not go away.
YOU give them something to eat.
As in, it’s your problem to fix.
Not as a mission:impossible, but an invitation into his compassionate commission. Remember, Jesus has been teaching about the economy of the Kingdom: Mustard seeds, valuable pearls, leaven in dough, and abundant harvests. He has been telling all about the math of the Kingdom and now he is going to show them what it looks like.
Five loaves and two fish. That’s what they have.
For 5,000 men.
Potentially 14,000 people with children and women.
As the father of three young men, I can tell you that children EAT.
Again, I say, five loaves and two fish…
It’s not good. Not from our human standpoint. But when Christ is King, there is always enough. Jesus’ compassion extends beyond their diseases and infirmities to their very bellies. Nothing escapes his care and concern. Nothing.
This is the very foundation of our portion of Psalm 145, by the way. The LORD cares for his creatures, knows their needs, and satisfies them by saving them. And it all stems from the center of this Psalm, verses 8-9, where we are reminded that God is steadfast and compassionate.
Back to Matthew, then, as things get interesting.
Jesus has the crowds sit and he takes the bread and fish.
Looking heavenward, he blessed it.
He broke the loaves.
Then the disciples distribute the food to the crowd.
You know those words. You hear them every Sunday (you have a priest with you). They are the same four words which form the basis of our Eucharistic prayer. This is not an accident!
Matthew shows us that this miraculous meal is somehow tied to Jesus’ last supper. The feeding of the five thousand is bound up with the lamb’s high feast. The bread broken and blood poured out the night before his death is intimately connected to the bread and fish shared with the hungry flock in a dry and barren land.
Because in Christ’s Kingdom, miracles happen.
In Christ’s Kingdom, bread, fish, and wine are plenty.
In Christ’s Kingdom, the sick are cured, the hungry are filled, the lowly are raised, the crying are comforted, and death is destroyed.
This meal is but a foretaste of the eschatological banquet the Messiah will throw for his redeemed people at the end of the age.
But we don’t live at the end of the age, do we?
We live in between.
We live in the right-here and right-now.
In a time of food insecurity, poverty, and deprivation.
In Greensboro, the median income is $39,000 and the poverty rate is 21.4%.
Whatever are we to do?
Matthew shows us the way.
The miracle doesn’t end with the crowd consuming the bread.
Fragments were taken back up. These are not tiny pieces, these are substantial, upwards of half a loaf. 12 baskets are filled. The Messiah is gathering the twelve tribes to himself, feeding God’s people with bread just as God fed his promised people with manna in the wilderness.
And there is still bread leftover!
Bread left for those who weren’t in attendance.
Bread available for the hungry, the poor, the needy.
Bread on offer to all who needed it.
That’s how the Kingdom works.
That’s God’s economy in action.
Isaiah tells us as much in chapter 55.
By this point, Israel is in exile and Isaiah prophesies hope rather than warning. The promised people are returning to the promised land after years of captivity, devastation, and lack. Even as they return, however, things are different after exile.
God’s presence no longer fills the Temple.
Israel is no longer a military power.
The people no longer rule themselves.
And it is in this veritable dry and barren landscape that God announces a bounty of plenty. Won’t he do it!
Come to the waters if you’re thirsty!
Everyone was thirsty.
Come buy bread without money!
The people had no funds.
Listen to me and you will live!
Like Sinatra, Israel tried doing it her way.
And it was an abject failure.
God’s provision is not based on Israel’s merit but on his mercy.
His bounty is abundant because that’s who he is: Slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and compassion!
The physical is a tangible expression of all he has guaranteed.
A sign and seal of his promises.
And he pledges an everlasting and unbreaking covenant. Not that he would ever break it, but Israel did time and time again as repeat offenders, perpetually rejecting YHWH with divided hearts in turn and in favor of false gods. The living God of Israel promises to feed his people, quenching their thirst and satisfying their hunger, and to glorify them.
He is telling them what he is going to do.
And when Jesus starts feeding great crowds without money or many morsels, he is showing them the promise.
Beloved, God has been in the tell and show business since the beginning:
He told Adam and Eve there was a solution to their sin problem;
And then he showed them by covering them with animal skins.
He told old-Abram and barren-Sarai they would be a vast nation;
And then he showed them by giving them Isaac.
He told Moses to instruct Pharaoh to let his people go;
And then he showed his mighty hand and outstretched arm.
He told his chosen people that he was their king;
And then he showed them by coming down from heaven and climbing up on a cross, with a crown, as the crucified king.
God loves a cosmic tell and show.
Matthew is describing, therefore, what it looks like when parables become reality, when God’s Kingdom breaks into the right-here and right-now, when the God of all compassion and steadfast love provides for his people.
Where does that leave us?
With a choice to make and a mission to join.
I don’t presume to know where everyone resides within the zipcode of faith. You may be in the town center or on the outskirts. What I do know is that this morning you have been presented with the picture of God’s powerful provision on behalf of his people and it can be yours through faith in his name.
What Jesus shared with the crowds in the dry and barren waste land, he shared powerfully and poignantly with his friends in the upper room before he died. He shares it with you, today, as we come to the Table. If you have not yet believed in his saving work, that is the choice you can make, now, because Christ is calling.
The mission we have been given is simple: tell and show.
Notice I said simple, not easy.
If we pay attention to the ending of Psalm 145, we discover the response to God’s showing is humanity’s telling: My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD.
Think of Mary: tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord.
The woman at the well told everyone she could about Jesus.
Those who encounter Christ are sent out as transformed individuals to tell everyone they know all about him. I promise you that some portion of those 14,000 who received bread and fish from Jesus went home and told their neighbors everything. You have seen the love of God in Christ, you have been transformed by that power, and you are now to go from this place on a telling-mission.
Tell them who God is.
Tell them everything Jesus has done.
Tell them who they are in Christ.
Tell them God loves them more than they’ll ever know.
And then show them.
It will not do for our proclamation to be words only. We must enact, embody, and enflesh the kingdom as the hands and feet of our Savior. Taken, blessed, broken, given, gathered up – that’s not just a recipe for Eucharist, that’s a blueprint for living.
Use your words to announce the goodness of the Lord.
Let your lives be living sermons to a hungry world.
Tell and show Christ’s deeds of power. Amen.
NOTES
- https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government-district-of-columbia-classified-documents-ronald-reagan-50e221ea424392b3582cd0d305cab0ee
- https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2008/04/09/show-tell-hand-grenade-evacuates/52454866007/
- Matthew 9:36, Mark 6:34, Numbers 27:17
- Splanchnizomai