After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus withdrew from Galilee by boat to a deserted place (Matthew 14:13) – that would probably indicate somewhere just to the east from Capernaum, over the Jordan river into Syrian territory: right next to the Sea of Galilee (14:22) but near enough to the province of Galilee that a crowd could follow him on foot (14:33). It was a big crowd – about five thousand families, men with their wives and children (14:21). Jesus taught them and then wanted to feed them, though the disciples figured that it would not be possible: they urged Jesus to send the crowd out to buy food for themselves (14:15). The disciples barely had enough to feed themselves, just five loaves and a couple of fish, but Jesus said “Bring them here to me” (14:18). He broke the loaves, and the disciples distributed the food, enough to feed everyone. What a miracle!

We read next about a trip well outside the bounds of Judah and Galilee, north into the region of Tyre, featuring an interesting conversation with a woman from that area (15:21-28). Jesus then moved south again, back to the hill country on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee (15:29). Matthew’s audience would probably reckon that a month or two had passed since the miracle of the feeding – it’s hard to tell exactly, because Matthew did not always emphasize giving a careful chronological listing of events. Nor did he provide lots of specific geographical details, and so Matthew’s audience would not immediately be sure whether the return trip to the Sea of Galilee took place on the east or west side of the Jordan River: that is, on the Galilean side of the border, or on the Syrian side. But Matthew did provide a couple of clues to help us recognize that Jesus was on the Syrian side of the border for the next couple of incidents.

First, he reported that great crowds came to see Jesus as he made his way south, bringing all the sick for Jesus to cure. When he did so, “they praised the God of Israel” (15:31). We might note that that’s especially what Syrians would say, describing miracles performed by a Jewish prophet; in contrast, Galileans would be more likely to just “praise God.”

Then Jesus again wanted to feed the gathered crowd. If my assessment of the geography is correct, they would have been in the same region as the previous time of feeding the multitude, on a hill just east of the Jordan River, overlooking the Sea of Galilee: quite possibly in the very same place as before. You might expect the disciples would be all excited: Jesus is about to do that feeding miracle again! But instead they seem to have been baffled: they objected that there was no way to get enough bread in the desert to feed all these people (15:33). An early reader of Matthew would have to wonder why the disciples were baffled: they were right in the same region where the miracle of the feeding had happened, just a month or two earlier! And then that reader would have realized the answer: it’s because this time the crowd was Syrian.

The disciples had not expressed any vocal objection when Jesus the healer decided to work healings for Gentiles like the Canaanite woman (15:28) and for mute and maimed Syrians (15:31). But it seems to have been impossible for the disciples to imagine that Jesus intended them to eat with these outsiders. In much the same way, we today might see ourselves contributing to a clinic that offers medical services to the poor or to the refugees, but it would be harder to imagine that we would become friends with those people, eating at the same table and sharing the same bread. It’s a hard lesson to learn, isn’t it?

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You love all the world, Lord: the people we like, and the people that we don’t feel so comfortable with. It is hard for us to get the lesson that we need to love all the world, too. Teach us to see all the needy with your eyes, with your compassion, and to set our hearts to love them just as you do.