"We Who Are Many" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | August 2, 2026
Sermon Preached: Sunday, August 2, 2026 at Trinity on the Green
Proper 13a: Isaiah 55:1-5 | Psalm 145: 8-9, 15-22 | Romans 9:1-5 | Matthew 14:13-21
May I speak in the name of God, who is to us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What does 5,000 people look like?
5,000 people would fill up the seats of a medium-sized college basketball court.
If you filled up five trains on the MetroNorth, that would be the equivalent of about 5,000 people.
The town of Deep River, Connecticut boasts a population of almost 5,000.
For some of us, the best way to envision 5,000 people might be the record-breaking pizza party that took place on the New Haven Green last year, on September 12, 2025. During the New Haven Grand Prix, New Haven partnered with the Big Green Pizza Truck to feed 4,525 people, breaking the record for the world’s largest pizza party. Imagine the New Haven Green full of people– that is what 5,000 looks like.
In today’s Gospel reading, we hear about one of Jesus’ feeding miracles: the feeding of five thousand men, alongside even more women and children. While this story ends with thousands of people, it begins with just one. As the scripture says, “Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.”
It seems pretty clear that Jesus wanted to be alone. If we look at the timeline of the Gospel of Matthew, and what happened before this, we realize that Jesus had just learned about the death of John the Baptist, his friend and partner in ministry. And right before that Jesus had made a trip to his hometown of Nazareth, and was disregarded and rejected by all the people there. No wonder Jesus wanted to get away. These events must have shaken his faith– not his faith in God (after all Jesus was one with God). No, they must have shaken his faith in humanity. The people who knew him the best either rejected him, or were themselves subjected to persecution and death. Jesus was mourning his friend. He was mourning his connection to his hometown. And in the midst of this grief he wanted to be alone.
Then come Jesus’ followers. Not one. Not two. But thousands of people following Jesus; stalking him from the shores of a lake. This is not the day that Jesus was prepared to have– either emotionally or practically speaking. There’s not enough fish and bread to feed all of these people. And emotionally, Jesus must have been running on fumes.
Nevertheless, Jesus has compassion for the crowd. He cures the sick people among them. He stays with them until the evening. And when there is not enough food for them to eat, Jesus and his disciples find five loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus blesses, and breaks them. And somehow, everyone in the crowd is fed with extra baskets of food left over.
All of that from five loaves of bread, and two fish, and Jesus— Jesus who was spent and grieving and wanted to be alone.
While this story begins with solitude, the feeding of the five thousand is a reminder that none of us is ever truly alone. None of us is self-sufficient. No matter how well you prepare; no matter how solitary and stoic you are; no matter how lonely you may sometimes feel– none of us is alone. And none of us can move through this life alone. I can imagine the person who brought those loaves of fishes deciding not to offer them up to Jesus. Deciding to hold onto them, just for themselves. They came prepared– shouldn’t the other people in the crowd learn that they need to be prepared too? Isn’t the only way to do that to let them go hungry, just for one night? Just for a few hours? Instead, those who came prepared decided to share their food with those who had none, and Jesus made it more than enough.
One of the greatest gifts of Christianity is the awareness that we are never alone. As Christians we trust that God is always with us– Jesus is right there beside us. But perhaps even more importantly we remember that Jesus makes us part of the Body of Christ– part of a network linking the whole human family to each other so that we are never alone, because our lives are always endlessly interconnected with every person we meet; every person on the face of this planet. We are never alone because we are part of this fabric of humanity. The story of loaves and fishes reminds me of this interconnectedness. And it’s an interconnectedness that we re-enact every time we followers of Christ gather around the table for communion, and say these words: We who are many are one body, for we all share in the one bread.
We are never, ever alone.
Why then, does Jesus go off to a deserted place by himself? And why do we also seek solitude?
It might not come as a surprise that varying personality traits are not a sin. Some people are introverted. Some people are extroverted. We have days when we long for company and days when we need to be alone– some of us, more than others. Here, it is helpful to remember the traditions of solitude modeled by Christian mystics over thousands of years, and modeled by Jesus himself. According to the mystics– those wise, contemplative saints like Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, and Thomas Merton– when we go off to be on our own it isn’t for the purpose of abandoning humanity, but rather entering humanity more deeply. As Jennifer Wojciechowski writes in her book, Tending the Garden: A History of Christian Mysticism, “Even the most reclusive of the mystics, who were making a conscious choice to withdraw from the world, were concerned with their neighbor’s well-being. Desert monks trained eager novices, anchorites gave council from their cells, monks and nuns did a great number of works of charity, and many mystics wrote about their experiences to inspire and teach others. Christian mystics were propelled by their religious experiences to seek greater engagement in the world after building up their relationship with God” (Wojciechowski, 12-3).
We see the same pattern in Jesus– Jesus, whose interrupted retreat from humanity was also the fuel he needed to heal many, and feed thousands of people. Jesus may have been profoundly frustrated with humanity after rejection in his hometown, and the tragic death of his friend. But Jesus never abandoned humanity. He only entered deeper and deeper into it.
When I listen to the news, when I scroll through social media (spending much more time in the comments than I know I should), there are many times when I wish that I could somehow escape from humanity. Disconnect myself from the brokenness. Divest myself from this human family that carries so much conflict, so much guilt, and so much capacity to do harm. But then I remember that Jesus didn’t divest himself from humanity. Instead, Jesus invested in our humanity. Jesus was born a human, lived a human, and died a human– all for the love of this complicated, blessed, and broken human family. What an incredible, generous gift. Jesus doesn’t just give us loaves and fishes. Jesus gives us his life: complete solidarity with all that it is to be human.
Perhaps our task, as followers of Christ, is to become more human. To sink our feet deeply into the fabric of creation. To nurture our awareness of the ways that all life is sacred– and to let that awareness change how you live in the world. Being more human doesn’t mean being more perfect, at least in the ways that we understand perfection. Being more human means being more perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Reaching a more perfect union with the world around us. Loving our neighbors as if they were our own selves. Remembering that our common life depends upon each other's toil, as it says in a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer (134). Remembering that our sadness is connected to other peoples’ sadness; and that our joy is connected to other people’s joy.
What is one thing you can do today to connect more deeply with the world around you? Perhaps God is calling you into the crowd: into the crowd to listen, into the crowd to speak, into the crowd to share whatever loaves and fishes you have to give. Or perhaps God is calling you into solitude today: inviting you to take a minute or an hour to yourself to sit on a bench; to listen to the sounds creation; to let the wind blowing through the trees be a reminder of the ways we are all connected.
Whatever you do today, may it deepen your awareness of the Body of Christ. And consider taking these words with you, breathing them in and out:
We who are many are one.
We who are many are one– in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Works Referenced:
Wojciechowski, Jennifer Hornyak. Tending the Garden: A History of Christian Mysticism. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2025.