The first time I went to college, I arrived with little cash. I had a check to start a checking account, but it was a three day weekend, and everything was closed.
I was on the university’s meal plan, but to get the meal card, I had to visit the office… which was closed, because it was a three day weekend.
So I spent three days with little to eat.
On Tuesday, after the office opened, I got my meal card. It was too late for breakfast, so I waited for lunch. The meal was Chili Joes: sandwiches of chili on hamburger buns.
My digestive system wasn’t quite ready for that.
Let’s go to God in prayer.
God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.
Amen.
People have different ways of understanding today’s reading from Matthew. For some, it is important that it is a miracle. The power of the Son of God created more food. For some, the five loaves and two fish began a miraculous communal sharing that fed everyone, with food to spare.
However we understand the mechanism behind the story, there is also a message:
If people are sick, heal them.
If people are hungry, feed them.
In the Epistle of James, chapter 2, starting at verse 14, we read
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them,
“Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,”
and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
James w:14-17, NRSV
I grew up with the teaching that faith alone saves, that all I needed was a personal relationship with Jesus. It is a typically American, self-sufficient, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps teaching born of colonists and people on the frontier.
Except that it is all wrong.
No colonist survived alone in the new world. In fact, even in communities, many died young. People on the frontier, though their properties might be large, came together to help each other with farms and herds.
And the story about pulling one’s self up by one’s bootstraps: It had been used in a story and in a physics illustration of something impossible.
And it’s not what Jesus teaches.
The feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. In Matthew and Mark there is also the story of feeding 4,000 in an area of Gentiles, starting with seven loaves and a “few” fish.
Stories of miracles are important in cultures that rely on miracles, and maybe somewhat less persuasive in a culture where many miracles are based on science.
But if we’re going to be followers of Jesus, we need to do more than just say “Jesus is Lord!” We need to do the work.
We’re a small church, yet we do a lot to help. We give to Food for People, to the TAY center, and other good causes. We have had free community dinners. The Little Free Pantry out front feeds people without judgment:
- no one checks eligibility
- there is no employment verification
- no substance tests.
Even better, the food we put in encourages other people to give as well, so the giving is multiplied by the community, kind of like the miracles of feeding the 5,000 and the 4,000.
We need to keep looking for ways to care for others.
Do we need a Thanksgiving dinner for the community? Or is that sufficiently covered? What about community cookouts or picnics? Should we let the community know about our coffeehouse Sundays, inviting people to share food and worship with us on those special four or five Sundays a year?
We’ve gathered clothing for people in need. Should that be a more regular activity, especially for winter clothing? Can our creative people make hats and scarves for those in need?
What other ways can we use the resources and talents we have to meet the needs of others? Sometimes it takes very little on our part to make a big difference in the lives of others.
So my challenge this week is for us to think about how we can create our own miracles, meeting the needs of others.
It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture.
It doesn’t have to take a lot of money.
Sometimes the smallest effort on our part can begin something large and beautiful.
Amen.
Let’s sing NCH 321 Break Now the Bread of Life
* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.
Leave a Reply