I usually end my reflection with questions but today I want to start with a question: When was the last time someone told you that everything you need is already here, that you don't have to earn it, that it is yours without price and without condition? Because that is exactly what God says to us today through the prophet Isaiah. "All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat!" No waiting list. No application. Just come, as you are!
That is the daring generosity at the heart of today's Word, and I think we need to sit with it for a moment before we rush past it, because we live in a world that tells us exactly the opposite.
Our world says: you get what you earn, you deserve what you pay for, and if you don't have enough, that is probably your own fault. The market decides who eats and who goes hungry, who has shelter and who sleeps outside, who belongs and who gets sent away. And the truth is that logic has seeped into our politics, into our public life, and sometimes even into our Church conversations, in ways that should unsettle us, deeply.
We are living through a moment of real strain in this country. You feel it. I feel it. The political divisions are deep and they are bitter. Policies are being debated and enacted that directly affect the most vulnerable among us: the working poor who cannot make rent, the immigrant families living in fear, women whose dignity and full humanity are still contested in law and in culture, people of color who carry the exhausting weight of systemic racism, refugees who fled violence only to be met with suspicion and rejection at our borders. These are not abstract policy questions. These are our sisters and brothers. Many of them sit in this very church.
And into all of that, God speaks through Isaiah with something that sounds almost reckless: "Why spend your money for what is not bread? Your wages for what fails to satisfy?" In other word, you are pouring your energy into systems and ideologies that are leaving people empty. Come to something that actually nourishes you. Come to me!
Then we get to the Gospel, and Jesus puts flesh on that invitation in the most concrete way imaginable.
Jesus has just learned that his cousin John has been killed. He is grieving. He gets in a boat to find some solitude, some quiet, some space to breathe. And when he gets to shore, there is a crowd already gathered to greet him. Thousands of them. And Matthew tells us something important about what Jesus did in that moment. It says his heart was moved with pity. In the Greek, the word is something closer to being moved in your gut, a visceral, physical compassion that you feel before you think it.
Jesus sees the crowd and he does not see a problem to be managed. He sees people, human beings. And he heals them, and
he feeds them, and he refuses to send them away. He encounters them as they are.
Notice what the disciples say when evening comes. "This is a deserted place and it is already late. Dismiss the crowds." Isn't that a familiar response? This is too big, it is too complicated, it is too late in the day. Let them figure it out themselves. Send them away.
And Jesus says, no. "There is no need for them to go. Give them some food yourselves."
Give them some food yourselves! That line should stop us cold. Because we are the disciples. We are the ones standing there with five loaves and two fish looking at a problem that seems impossibly large. The hunger in our county and nation. The fear in our immigrant communities. The poverty that never quite makes the agenda. The exhaustion of those who are never really counted, those who are never really included. And it is tempting to say, Lord, we only have five loaves and two fish. This is not enough. We cannot possibly fix this.
In 2020, when the number of families coming to our parish food pantry blew up from 250 to 750, virtually overnight, believe me when I say we said, “Lord we only have five loves and two fish” we can’t do this…and we didn’t, all of you did…you stepped in, the local community stepped in!
Jesus doesn’t ask us to fix it on our own. He asks us to bring what we have to him…bring it here to me. And then watch what happens.
Because here is the good news…the genuinely joyful news that I want you to carry out of here today: the way of God is not scarcity. The way of God is abundance. When we place what we have, however little it feels, into the hands of Jesus, something happens that we cannot manufacture by ourselves. People get fed. Everyone is satisfied... and there are twelve baskets left over!
That is not a fairy tale. It is a description of what happens when communities of faith take seriously their call to share. We have seen it here in this parish. We see it in our partnerships with organizations like SEEC. We see it in the quiet generosity of this parish week after week. When we stop calculating whether we have enough and start trusting that God will multiply what we offer, the math changes.
St. Paul understood this. That is why he could write from prison, with such incredible confidence: "What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?" He lists everything that the world throws at the most vulnerable, and then he says: none of it. None of it separates us. We are not promised an easy road. But we are promised that the road does not run away from God. It runs toward God. And nothing, not political chaos, not systemic injustice, not the cruelty of the powerful, not even death itself, can cut us off from God’s love.
So here is where I want to land…we live in a hard moment. The problems are real and the suffering is real and the anger and fear is real. And it is okay to name that. But we are not a people of despair. We are a people of hope who believe that five loaves and two fish, placed in the right hands, can feed a multitude. We are a people who believe that the hand of the Lord, as the psalm says, is open, and that it satisfies the desire of every living thing. Every living thing. Not just the comfortable. Not just the documented. Not just the powerful. Every single living thing.
Our job is not to solve everything by lunchtime. Our job is to show up, bring what we have, and to let our hearts be moved the way Jesus' heart was moved, and to trust that God is ultimately in control, and that God deeply and passionately loves you just as you are!
Amen.
Blessings,
Fr Tim
That is the daring generosity at the heart of today's Word, and I think we need to sit with it for a moment before we rush past it, because we live in a world that tells us exactly the opposite.
Our world says: you get what you earn, you deserve what you pay for, and if you don't have enough, that is probably your own fault. The market decides who eats and who goes hungry, who has shelter and who sleeps outside, who belongs and who gets sent away. And the truth is that logic has seeped into our politics, into our public life, and sometimes even into our Church conversations, in ways that should unsettle us, deeply.
We are living through a moment of real strain in this country. You feel it. I feel it. The political divisions are deep and they are bitter. Policies are being debated and enacted that directly affect the most vulnerable among us: the working poor who cannot make rent, the immigrant families living in fear, women whose dignity and full humanity are still contested in law and in culture, people of color who carry the exhausting weight of systemic racism, refugees who fled violence only to be met with suspicion and rejection at our borders. These are not abstract policy questions. These are our sisters and brothers. Many of them sit in this very church.
And into all of that, God speaks through Isaiah with something that sounds almost reckless: "Why spend your money for what is not bread? Your wages for what fails to satisfy?" In other word, you are pouring your energy into systems and ideologies that are leaving people empty. Come to something that actually nourishes you. Come to me!
Then we get to the Gospel, and Jesus puts flesh on that invitation in the most concrete way imaginable.
Jesus has just learned that his cousin John has been killed. He is grieving. He gets in a boat to find some solitude, some quiet, some space to breathe. And when he gets to shore, there is a crowd already gathered to greet him. Thousands of them. And Matthew tells us something important about what Jesus did in that moment. It says his heart was moved with pity. In the Greek, the word is something closer to being moved in your gut, a visceral, physical compassion that you feel before you think it.
Jesus sees the crowd and he does not see a problem to be managed. He sees people, human beings. And he heals them, and
he feeds them, and he refuses to send them away. He encounters them as they are.
Notice what the disciples say when evening comes. "This is a deserted place and it is already late. Dismiss the crowds." Isn't that a familiar response? This is too big, it is too complicated, it is too late in the day. Let them figure it out themselves. Send them away.
And Jesus says, no. "There is no need for them to go. Give them some food yourselves."
Give them some food yourselves! That line should stop us cold. Because we are the disciples. We are the ones standing there with five loaves and two fish looking at a problem that seems impossibly large. The hunger in our county and nation. The fear in our immigrant communities. The poverty that never quite makes the agenda. The exhaustion of those who are never really counted, those who are never really included. And it is tempting to say, Lord, we only have five loaves and two fish. This is not enough. We cannot possibly fix this.
In 2020, when the number of families coming to our parish food pantry blew up from 250 to 750, virtually overnight, believe me when I say we said, “Lord we only have five loves and two fish” we can’t do this…and we didn’t, all of you did…you stepped in, the local community stepped in!
Jesus doesn’t ask us to fix it on our own. He asks us to bring what we have to him…bring it here to me. And then watch what happens.
Because here is the good news…the genuinely joyful news that I want you to carry out of here today: the way of God is not scarcity. The way of God is abundance. When we place what we have, however little it feels, into the hands of Jesus, something happens that we cannot manufacture by ourselves. People get fed. Everyone is satisfied... and there are twelve baskets left over!
That is not a fairy tale. It is a description of what happens when communities of faith take seriously their call to share. We have seen it here in this parish. We see it in our partnerships with organizations like SEEC. We see it in the quiet generosity of this parish week after week. When we stop calculating whether we have enough and start trusting that God will multiply what we offer, the math changes.
St. Paul understood this. That is why he could write from prison, with such incredible confidence: "What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?" He lists everything that the world throws at the most vulnerable, and then he says: none of it. None of it separates us. We are not promised an easy road. But we are promised that the road does not run away from God. It runs toward God. And nothing, not political chaos, not systemic injustice, not the cruelty of the powerful, not even death itself, can cut us off from God’s love.
So here is where I want to land…we live in a hard moment. The problems are real and the suffering is real and the anger and fear is real. And it is okay to name that. But we are not a people of despair. We are a people of hope who believe that five loaves and two fish, placed in the right hands, can feed a multitude. We are a people who believe that the hand of the Lord, as the psalm says, is open, and that it satisfies the desire of every living thing. Every living thing. Not just the comfortable. Not just the documented. Not just the powerful. Every single living thing.
Our job is not to solve everything by lunchtime. Our job is to show up, bring what we have, and to let our hearts be moved the way Jesus' heart was moved, and to trust that God is ultimately in control, and that God deeply and passionately loves you just as you are!
Amen.
Blessings,
Fr Tim
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