In the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests the weight of history continues to bear down upon us and this week we observe memorials of the bombings and destruction of the cities of Hiroshima (Thursday) and Nagasaki (Sunday). We find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic with no real national leadership or plan, over 150 thousand Americans have died, hundreds of thousands have or have had the coronavirus. We are living in scary and uncharted times. And in the midst of these scary and uncharted times our God walks with us and promises that nothing, no thing can separate us from God’s deep and passionate love for each and everyone of us.
In the beautiful first reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear the call from God to come to the water, to receive grain and eat without paying — without cost we shall eat well; we are called to come and listen, that we may have life! All who hunger and thirst are invited, such generosity...an overflowing of abundance of God’s desire that our needs be met because we are God’s beloved!
We encounter this generosity again in the Gospel, known as “The Feeding of the Five Thousand”, but that is a misnomer, as it clearly states in the last line that only the men numbered five thousand. The women and the children were not included among the five thousand. The theologian Megan McKenna posits that the real number was much greater. If the majority of the five thousand men were there with their families, she says the number would quickly soar past fifteen thousand and maybe even twenty thousand! Now if we thought the feeding of the five thousand was astonishing, the feeding of the twenty thousand is “mind blowing”! Again, showing forth the lavishness of God’s care and love for us, for all of us, of every color, every race, every ethnicity, every gender, every orientation, every ability, every socioeconomic class, EVERYONE!
And it is our duty as “the beloved” to carry this message to the ends of the earth, not just with our words but with our actions. We must stand up against all forms of racism and bigotry. We must vocally call it out for what it is whenever and wherever we see it. Like the song says “change is gonna come” but only if, as John Lewis said, only if we get into some “good trouble”.
And so I close with John Lewis’ final words “So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”
Blessings,
Fr Tim
In the beautiful first reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear the call from God to come to the water, to receive grain and eat without paying — without cost we shall eat well; we are called to come and listen, that we may have life! All who hunger and thirst are invited, such generosity...an overflowing of abundance of God’s desire that our needs be met because we are God’s beloved!
We encounter this generosity again in the Gospel, known as “The Feeding of the Five Thousand”, but that is a misnomer, as it clearly states in the last line that only the men numbered five thousand. The women and the children were not included among the five thousand. The theologian Megan McKenna posits that the real number was much greater. If the majority of the five thousand men were there with their families, she says the number would quickly soar past fifteen thousand and maybe even twenty thousand! Now if we thought the feeding of the five thousand was astonishing, the feeding of the twenty thousand is “mind blowing”! Again, showing forth the lavishness of God’s care and love for us, for all of us, of every color, every race, every ethnicity, every gender, every orientation, every ability, every socioeconomic class, EVERYONE!
And it is our duty as “the beloved” to carry this message to the ends of the earth, not just with our words but with our actions. We must stand up against all forms of racism and bigotry. We must vocally call it out for what it is whenever and wherever we see it. Like the song says “change is gonna come” but only if, as John Lewis said, only if we get into some “good trouble”.
And so I close with John Lewis’ final words “So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”
Blessings,
Fr Tim
RSS Feed
