The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Jesus Serves a Gentile Crowd:  Mt.15:29 – 39

^15:29 Departing from there, Jesus went along by the Sea of Galilee, and having gone up on the mountain, he was sitting there. ³⁰ And large crowds came to him, bringing with them those who were lame, crippled, blind, mute, and many others, and they laid them down at his feet; and he healed them. ³¹ So the crowd marveled as they saw the mute speaking, the crippled restored, and the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel. ³² And Jesus called his disciples to him, and said, ‘I feel compassion for the people, because they have remained with me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.’ ³³ The disciples said to him, ‘Where would we get so many loaves in this desolate place to satisfy such a large crowd?’ ³⁴ And Jesus said to them, ‘How many loaves do you have?’ And they said, ‘Seven, and a few small fish.’ ³⁵ And he directed the people to sit down on the ground; ³⁶ and he took the seven loaves and the fish; and giving thanks, he broke them and started giving them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. ³⁷ And they all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, seven large baskets full. ³⁸ And those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. ³⁹ And sending away the crowds, Jesus got into the boat and came to the region of Magadan.

Though this might sound strange, Jesus has threaded into my spiritual life a connection to Mexican people and culture.  When I committed my life to Jesus, I was a junior in high school.  I had been drawn to Jesus because three Christian friends reached out to me quite a lot while my family was unstable.  One of those three friends invited me to come with him to a church, where for 8 – 9 months where I learned about Jesus from the Gospel of John.  Then I went with a group from that church on a spring break trip to Mexico.  The poverty in the town we visited struck me with incredible force, because I had never seen poverty like that before.  We hung out with children there, played sports and told them stories.  At the end of that week, I committed my life to Jesus because I recognized that he was the only one who could make this experience – and my life – meaningful.  Then, when I went to Stanford, I volunteered to be a tutor to Mexican kids in East Palo Alto, which was a short bike ride away.  After I graduated from college in 1994, I became more involved in the Mexican immigrant community in East Palo Alto through older Christian mentors, Jose and Jennifer Espinosa.  I played guitar for a small Spanish speaking bible study that the Espinosas led.  In 1995, I moved into one of the apartment complexes to get to know more of the people the Espinosas knew and ministered to.  Most of my neighbors were from Michoacan, Mexico.  Though they had very little materially, they were extremely generous towards me with their food and themselves.  I felt almost adopted by the family right next door to me in the apartment building. 

Until this point in the story of Matthew’s Gospel, the disciples had served people who they knew, for the most part.  However, at this time, Jesus had them serve Gentiles.  Though that’s not explicitly mentioned in the text, Matthew seems to assume his audience would know that.  Several clues indicate that to us:  (1) the fact that Galilee has already been called ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ back in Mt.4:15; (2) the fact that the people here glorified ‘the God of Israel’ (Mt.15:31), which wouldn’t normally need to be said if they were Jews; (3) the fact that Jesus had just ministered to the Canaanite woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon, to address his Jewish disciples’ racial prejudices against the Gentiles (Mt.15:21 – 28); and (4) the fact that they were near Magadan, called Dalmanutha by Mark (Mk.8:13), which leads scholars to think this was on the western side of the Sea of Galilee – Gentile lands.  It’s one thing for Jesus to help us care for our current friends in a different way, his way.  It is another thing for Jesus to lead us in caring for people who are not currently our friends.  But Jesus wants to reach them through us nevertheless.

I wonder how the disciples felt towards this crowd?  Jews during this period did have an expectation that the Jewish Messiah would bring about the obedience of certain Gentiles, and the destruction of others who did not obey him.  They believed, fairly uniformly, that Israel would enjoy special privileges under Messianic rule.  But they did not expect to serve and disciple the Gentiles.  This is what Jesus was teaching the disciples.  As with the feeding of the five thousand, they must have realized that Jesus had a strategy for bringing about the gathering of the four thousand Gentile men, plus their families.  These events were no accidents.  Earlier, Jesus had taken his disciples to cast out demons from men in Gadara (Mt.8:28 – 34), also on the western side of the Sea of Galilee.  After Jesus had sent the demons into the pigs and destroyed them, ‘the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him, they implored him to leave their region.’  Maybe they felt nervous that Jesus valued their pigs so much less than they did.  But when other people in that region realized that Jesus might heal their friends who were ‘lame, crippled, blind, mute,’ then their posture changed.  They came for him. 

Jesus also had a strategy for developing his disciples.  Right before this episode, he had led them to serve the Canaanite woman, to expose their prejudice and challenge it.  This was an important lesson, for they had not really served a non-Jewish person or community before.  Then, in this episode, he ‘felt compassion’ for the four thousand (Mt.15:32), the very same compassion that he did for the crowd that included five thousand Jewish men.  Did the disciples see the compassion in his face, hear it in his voice, or read it in his body language?  Do we see that in Jesus?

My journey of learning about Jesus’ compassion has been similar.  When I committed my life to Jesus as a junior in high school, Jesus began changing how I cared about my dad, mom, and sister.  They were not Christians, and I recognized that this was an important responsibility for me.  And then I had to care about my current friends – mostly Asian-American like me – in a new way, Jesus’ way.  That was different, but didn’t stretch me that much.  But in another few years, because I had a Jewish roommate my freshman year in college, Jesus led me to care for the Jewish community and the historic injustices Western Christians have dealt them.  Then he led me to care for Mexican immigrant families as I mentioned earlier.  Then he led me to care for African-American families along with issues of racial history and oppression in the U.S.  Currently, I’m in contact with Jamaicans, Haitians, African-Americans, and Vietnamese in my neighborhood, and many other types of people who are students at campuses in Boston where I do campus ministry.  Jesus has drawn me into caring about people I wouldn’t naturally.  I wouldn’t have guessed years ago that my life would look this way, but looking back, I see that Jesus has led me step by step into his care for more and more people through his own compassion.  That is the most exciting spiritual dynamic in my life now.

One student I work with asked me, ‘I’m at an Asian fellowship.  My roommate isn’t Asian.  What if they don’t feel comfortable here?’  I appreciated the question, and my suggestion was this:  ‘Don’t make the decision for them.  Just introduce them to Jesus.  If it helps them to come to the Asian fellowship, let them make that choice.  After all, there is no single "Christian culture."  So perhaps they would be interested in how Jesus redeems not just Asian people, but Asian cultures.  Let it be a missional question, even if they are not Asian.  Or, if it helps them to look elsewhere, help them get plugged in somewhere else.’  While I think it makes sense for certain fellowships or churches to have a focus in their outreach, Christians are not reducible to just one fellowship or church.  We are part of the kingdom movement of Jesus to reach the whole world.  So our perspective and relational networks always need to be larger than our particular church or fellowship, because it directly reflects our understanding of Jesus being the compassionate lord of the whole world.