Adapted from a sermon by Fr Samuel Fanous
Passage: Luke 9:10-17
The words of the Gospel today from Luke 9 begin with a realisation about something that’s happened. The disciples had been travelling with Jesus and multitudes had been following to hear him speak. And then it says, “when the day began to wear away” – when the people were exhausted and the day had come to its close, the disciples said to Christ, “Send the multitude away, that they may go into the surrounding towns and country, and lodge and get provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.”
You hear those words – “send them away” – and they can sound arrogant. It almost sounds as if the disciples are annoyed – that they’ve had it with these people that they’ve been with for an entire day, even days perhaps, following them, serving them, caring for them. So in annoyance, they say: “send them away”.
But one of the most remarkable this is that this is not how the early church read these words. St Cyril of Alexandria in the fourth century spent almost an entire homily talking about these words, “send them away”. He said
“[the disciples] seized with love toward the multitudes, and beginning to have a concern for the people…”
They were beginning to have concern for them.
When they say, “send them away”, they aren’t doing it out of annoyance or frustration or arrogance – they’re doing it because they’re starting to feel people. They’re starting to become sensitive to the needs of people. So they ask the Lord to send them away to the surrounding towns before it gets dark so that they can go and eat and sleep – because this is a deserted place. It’s likely the multitude themselves hadn’t realised it – it had just started to get dark, and perhaps they were distracted, unaware of their needs that would come in just a few hours. So the disciples start to become very sensitive – St Cyril is very specific that they “seized with love… beginning to have a concern for the people”.
St Cyril goes on to say,
“for to draw near, and make supplication on the people’s behalf, is an act becoming to the saints”.
To be sensitive to people and their needs is the beginning and act of becoming to the saints. So from here, Christ commands the disciples: “You give them something to eat”. Christ could feed the multitude, but he wanted the disciples to share in that. They told Him that they had no more than five loaves and two fish, so He takes those, blesses them and gives them out to people in groups of 50, to feed perhaps 50,000 people – an event which we call the Blessing of Multiplication or the Blessing of the Little – a remarkable miracle which would’ve reminded people of the days of Moses when Manna would come from heaven and the people would eat from it.
All of this comes first in the beginning of sensitivity. Sensitivity to others, and not myself. It creates the space in which God can work, can heal and can love through us. But that sensitivity requires me first to move out of myself. It means I have to move out for my own lusts, desires, ambitions – I have to see others.
If we do not see others, we cannot be sensitive to them. We can’t feel them or their needs. If we see ourselves, we only care for ourselves. This is actually where the word “narcissism” comes from – it’s a word that we painfully throw around at others who are quite self-absorbed – but actually, the word “narcissism” comes from one of the Greek gods in mythology, Narcissus, a handsome young Greek man who was being chased by a woman, the nymph Echo, and rejected her.
He didn’t want to be loved or to love somebody else. She wasn’t beautiful enough for him. One day after hunting he came before a pool of water, and he sat down in front of the pool, as he went down to drink, he saw himself. He looked at that image, and couldn’t stop looking at it because it was so beautiful. Eventually, after hours of staring at his own image in the water, he realised he couldn’t consummate his love. He couldn’t embrace the person. And so after gazing, enraptured in his own image, he killed himself – because he couldn’t attain the object of his desire. And that’s where we get the word narcissism – somebody that was so self-absorbed, all they could see was themselves.
Yet Christ is the exact opposite. Something that always strikes me in the gospels is that if you pay attention to the words carefully you see how many times Christ sees people. How many times, the evangelists stop to make a point that He looks and sees somebody.
“And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers” (Matt. 4:18). He saw Nathaniel, and said, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” (John 1:48). With the paralytic man, it says, “When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”” (John 5:6). In Matthew, Jesus “saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). When Christ sees the rich young man and is asked how he can be saved, it says, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (Mark 10:21). When Jesus looks up at Zacchaeus, it’s up in the sycamore tree, and he is hiding because he is so embarrassed as a tax collector to be seen by people. It says, “when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” (Luke 19:5).
These are just a few examples – the gospels are littered with them. Christ sees us. He is sensitive to our needs. He feels our needs. He looks beyond himself, He sees others, and so He is sensitive to our needs. Sensitivity to others is the beginning of saintliness. It is the beginning of drawing near to Christ and becoming like Him.
Many years ago, perhaps when I was in my first year of university, I didn’t attend university very much. I was a very poor student – I was probably attending about half an hour a week – so I had nothing to do and took up many hobbies that no 18-year-olds do.
One priest had asked me to help him – so I used to pray one liturgy every Thursday morning from 5-7 a.m., and afterwards I would drive around this elderly priest to help him give people communion, sometimes for four or five hours, sometimes until 2 p.m.
And every time after we’d finished the liturgy, I would watch this priest take the Eucharist and put on his head, and I’ve never seen anyone do what he does. He would refuse to drive – he let me drive – and he would sit in the car with the Eucharist on top of his head for five hours, going from place to place with incredible reverence. Often I would drive in silence for hours because I didn’t want to disturb him, until we’d visit the very last person receiving communion, after which, I would try to go to the drivers seat but he would refuse to give me the keys and let me drive, and say the exact same words: “before you drove because you were driving Christ. But now it is Yohanna, and I cannot allow you to drive Yohanna.” He would refuse to let me drive him, ever – but I could drive when Christ was on top of his head. This went on for a year, every Thursday, until one Thursday we came to the last communion. He told me to park the car and stay in the car, because the person he was visiting had a personal issue that he didn’t want anyone to know about except for his priest.
So as I went to park the car, I went straight into a brick wall and knocked off the bumper bar. So I sat there for a nervous half an hour trying to find the way to bring the bumper bar up, so the priest wouldn’t notice that I knocked off his bumper bar, until eventually, the priest came after the last communion as I was down on the ground trying to fix it, and in just one glance, he saw what the situation was and he looked away. I opened my mouth to begin to apologise – but he just laughed and said, “it’s nothing”. He went into his pocket and threw me the keys, and said “quick, let’s drive”.
For a year, he refused to ever let him drive him after communion, because I couldn’t drive Yohanna, I could only drive the Eucharist. But after I crashed his car with the bumper bar hanging off, he threw me the keys just so I wouldn’t be upset.
He was sensitive. Because he feared that I would become upset or feel guilt or shame because I crashed his car, he gave me the keys and let me drive him. In that moment, I possibly receive the greatest lesson of my life.
To become sensitive to others. To feel them. And that means, forgive me, we need to look very carefully at ourselves. Do I see others or do I see myself only?
How many times each day do I see others? Do I feel for others? Do I live for others? How many times a day, if at all?
And yet if I don’t go out of myself – beyond my desires, needs and ambitions, and I cannot see or feel others, I cannot be sensitive to their needs or feel for them. And if I don’t live for them, I don’t live for Him.
But if I see others, if I feel their needs much more deeply than they themselves feel their own needs, and I live for them, then I live for Christ. And that is why St Cyril of Alexandria says, being sensitive to others is an act of becoming of the saints. It was the entire beginning of the Blessing of the Multiplication story, with the disciples becoming sensitive to others.
So let us all, as one church, especially in the coming weeks, let us train ourselves to become sensitive to others. To see others and to feel their needs. To look beyond ourselves and our needs, but to see others.
Glory be to God Amen.