Our Lord is not bound by time. But he chooses to act in time – in his own good time. The deacon says quietly to the priest at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, “It is time for the Lord to act.” The Lord acts in time. He is acting here and now in this Divine Liturgy. However, it seems to us sometimes that he takes his time.

Not until the fourth watch of the night did Jesus come walking on the water to his disciples (14:25). As soon as evening had fallen, the boat bearing the disciples was beaten by waves – and the wind was against them all night long (14:24). But not until the fourth watch of the night does Jesus come to them and cause the wind to cease. He had been alone in the hills praying.

What are these watches of the night? In the custom of the Roman military, the night was divided into four parts by soldiers who stood watch in shifts. That way, everyone could get at least some sleep and also the watch was kept unceasingly. Each of these watches lasted 3 hours so that the four watches of the night together made up the 12 hours of night. So, the fourth watch is the last three hours before sunrise, or from about what we would call  3 am until about 6 am.

This is when Jesus comes to them who are in the boat, walking to them on the windswept water, after they had been fighting the wind and waves all night long. “They had been in danger the whole night,”[i] but the Lord comes in his own good time.

We also wait upon the coming of the Lord. And maybe we are tossed about by the disturbances and cares of the world, by unremitting temptations, and by demonic provocations, just as the disciples are harassed by the wind and the waves. But the Lord is coming in the fourth watch – in his own good time. He will return perhaps to a roving and shipwrecked Church, but he will return.[ii]

We must wait upon the Lord, and, at the same time, practice an awareness of his presence in every moment of time, even when it seems to us that he is distant. Even when Jesus was praying in the hills, he who knows all things knew of the disciples’ plight in the water. And he also knew they would be alright. So, he let them struggle a little while, as he does with us. St. John Chrysostom says that “He was instructing them not too hast­ily to seek for deliverance from their pressing dangers but to bear all challenges courageously.” We must have a little courage for this life.

It’s clear that for his own reasons, the Lord allows us, his disciples, to be tossed about a bit. And it’s also clear that he brings some good out of our time of struggle. Through it, he increases our desire for his coming, helps us remember him, and reveals to us our complete dependence on him.[iii]

We must have a little humility for this life. St. Peter, who was in that boat, instructs us from his experience to “humble [ourselves] under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt [us]. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:6). He will deliver us in time. We must have a little hope and a little trust and a little faith for this life.

St. Paul says to Timothy, that “the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ… will be made manifest at the proper time by the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen” (1 Tim 6:14-16).

As we wait upon his coming, let us paradoxically remember his constant presence with us. Every hour of the day and every watch of the night, let us wait and watch for the coming of the Lord. To help with this, in our Byzantine tradition, we have services of liturgical prayer for every time of the day and night.

One of our young parishioners recently asked me what are the times for prayer in our liturgical tradition. You can see in the bulletin, for example, that we often pray First Hour & Third Hour. You can tell that’s a reference to time, but to what specific time does it refer? In charts of Byzantine time, you can see that there are still four watches and 12 hours of the night and day. First Hour is the first hour of the day – so, one hour after sunrise – and it roughly corresponds to 7 am. First Hour is one of the morning prayers of the Church – the last one to develop, as it so happens. It is called First Hour simply because of the time of day we pray it. The psalms chosen for this service all make reference to the morning.

The times for prayer in our tradition begin with Vespers, which belongs to the time of the setting of the sun. “Evening came and morning followed, the first day,” we hear in Genesis. Days begin with sunset, not with midnight or with sunrise. Compline is next, which is prayed usually around 9 o’clock in the evening just before bed. And then Mesonytikon, which is the Midnight Office. That’s right! There is the tradition of rising up again to pray even in the middle of the night. Ancient peoples had no mechanical clocks and followed natural cycles, which often resulted in two sleeps. They went to bed earlier when it got dark, but rose for a time in the middle of the night before sleeping again until dawn. At dawn, we pray Matins – or Orthros as it is also called. Then there is the First Hour, the Third Hour, the Sixth Hour, and the Ninth Hour, each being that many hours after sunrise and so roughly corresponding to 7 in the morning, 9, noon, and 3 in the afternoon.

All this is to say, that all the time of the day and night is a time for prayer, for calling attention to the presence of the Lord in each time, as we wait upon the Lord to come to us in his own good time.

There was an elderly and saintly priest in the parish I grew up in whose sermons eventually got to the point of always being the same. In every sermon, every Sunday, he said the same things – perhaps in a different order, but there were several key phrases that always got said. One thing he said again and again was “…in almighty God’s own good way and in almighty God’s own good time.” Wisdom. This is a voice of experience, I believe. We must wait upon the Lord.

God will act on our behalf just exactly when he means to. We must trust in him and hope in him. As we are buffeted by the storms of life, let us wait upon the Lord, watch, and pray for his coming. He is coming and he will calm the storm in due time.

 

 

[i] Jerome

[ii] Hilary of Poitiers, On Matthew 14:14

[iii] Chrys.: “But He suffers them to be tossed the whole night, exciting their hearts by fear, and inspiring them with greater desire and more lasting recollection of Him; for this reason He did not stand by them immediately.”

 

Sermon on Matthew 14:14-22 

“I have compassion on the crowd” (Matt 15:32; Mark 8:2; cf. Matt 14:14). I once heard a preacher who would begin his sermons this way. Looking out at the congregation he would say, “I have compassion on the crowd.” These are the words of Jesus when he sees the assembled thousands in their hunger and in their illness. He sees the five thousand men, the probably twenty thousand people, the great throng, and he has compassion on them. He heals their sick and satisfies their hunger. It strikes me as bold of that preacher to identify himself so closely with Jesus in this way – using his words from this context. On the other hand, we are to be like Jesus in this way.

The word compassion comes from Latin and it means to suffer with. To feel the others’ pain. It’s a good translation of the Greek here, but it’s an abstraction of something more physical, fleshly, and poetic. The meaning of the Greek word here seems alien to us. I even find it difficult to say: σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomai) which we translate as “compassion”, more literally means to be moved as to the bowels. Where we would sometimes refer to the heart, the ancients refer to the bowels, which they regard as the seat of the more intense emotions. In other words, to feel it in your gut.

Like when sometimes we wince ourselves when we see our child fall and scrape his knees. We know what that feels like. So when we see someone else – especially someone we love – experience that pain, the memory of it is sharp – we can almost feel it ourselves.

And there is no more beautiful image of compassion than that of a nurturing mother toward her newborn baby, crying again in the night. She can almost feel his hunger and is driven by it from her own sleep and her own comfort again and again to comfort the helpless baby.

When we love someone, their pain hurts us too. This is the opposite of sadism or schadenfreude, which is taking pleasure at the pain or misfortune of others.

We sometimes mistake the pleasure that someone gives us for love, but true love is not just a gushy feeling. Love must include compassion. This means that there isn’t going to be any such thing painless love in this life – not until that blessed day when we will see our loved ones in a heavenly Jerusalem, when the Lord “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, and neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore” (Rev 21:4). Then our love will be painless. But now it is not.

Jesus himself, who has loving compassion on us, encounters death. He mourns. He cries. He feels pain. Today, Jesus’ love for the crowd is not painless. One verse prior to today’s gospel reading, he had been attempting to withdraw from the crowds to a lonely place apart, to be alone to mourn, because he had just heard news that his cousin and forerunner and baptist John was beheaded by Herod. Jesus, like any of us would, wanted to go and mourn his departed friend for a while in solitude. Jesus often went off to be alone, to rest, and to pray.

But finding a place to be alone in Galilee was no easy task. Josephus, the Jewish historian, claims that Galilee was densely populated at this time – with more than 200 towns, each with no less than 15,000 inhabitants. So that’s more than three million people in a small region. So it’s not too surprising that Jesus has a hard time finding a solitary place, and that the crowds from the towns quickly hear where he is and follow after him. Crowds tended to follow after Jesus, because great power went out from him and all were healed by that power. They would press in on him and try to touch him, because his touch and his presence was healing to all. This must have been exhausting for him, especially when he was overcome with his own grief. So Jesus seeks solitude and rest. He does teach us by example to care for ourselves as well as for others. He gets into a boat to escape the crowds… and then on the other shore there is another crowd of thousands waiting for him. How exasperating that must have felt. Some of us may have shouted, “Just leave me alone!”

But in addition to teaching us to care for ourselves, Jesus also teaches us to deny ourselves. And today, despite his exhaustion and despite his grief and despite his desire to be alone, he looks out at the great throng and sees their suffering, and he has compassion on them, and he heals their sick.

It must not have been easy for Jesus to add the pain of the multitude to his own pain. But that is what he does. He denies himself and takes up his cross and invites us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him.

Sometimes he calls us to set aside ourselves, our heartaches, our exhaustion, our obsessions, and to focus on the needs of others for a while. This is sacrificial love offered in imitation of Christ.  He shows the crowd compassion, and then he invites us, his disciples, also to show them compassion.

The disciples were also aware of the people’s need. They too are compassionate. They see that it’s getting late and that the people will soon be hungry. They bring this concern for the people to Jesus, along with a suggestion that the crowds should go off and fend for themselves. This is familiar: when we see a need, our first response is often that someone else should do something about it.

Feeling the others’ pain, sensing their need is the beginning, but not the end, of compassion. Jesus, by his own compassion, invites us to compassion. He says to the disciples, “They need not go away, you feed them.”

Jesus’ response here might remind some of us of what happens when we have a great idea for some service or activity that the parish ought to be providing. We take this idea to the priest, only to hear him say, “Thank you for volunteering to lead the effort!” The needs that we see are often the needs that Jesus is calling us to provide for.

But the disciples have only two fish and five loaves. It’s a meager offering, but they offer what they have.

The truth is, we really can’t do it alone. What we have to offer really isn’t enough. We really do need Jesus’ help. If I have compassion on the crowd, it is only inasmuch as I am in Christ and he is in me. The disciples offer what they have, but they need the power of Christ to take their poor offering and make it sufficient for the needs of the crowd.

Jesus takes the spark of compassion in the disciples and he multiplies it, when he says to them, you feed them. Jesus is a multiplier. He multiplies the five loaves and two fish and he multiplies our compassion. He shows us that love can grow. It isn’t ever necessary to run out of love.  Love isn’t like money. Love is not finite. Rather, paradoxically, you have what you give away.

So, whatever small and seemingly inadequate gifts we have to offer, these we offer together with our prayers to Christ for multiplication and he will make them grow to abundance. Not only will it be enough, there will be twelve baskets left over.