Union Church

Matthew 14: 13-21.
Jesus has just heard about the mindless murder of his mentor, John the Baptist by Herod.
In his grief, he seeks solitude.
In his grief, he tries to slip away to a lonely place.
But the people find him. And yet, even in his grief, he has compassion for them.

We know what it is like to lose someone significant in our lives.
And we just want to grieve alone for a little while.
We want to get away.
But somebody comes to us in need and in our grief we are still able to respond.

Jesus sees that the people are wounded and bewildered.
Most of them have been turned off their land by the new Roman order.
They are ill, depressed, and dispossessed.
hey are dazed and confused.
In the midst of his own grief, Jesus has compassion for the people.

As the day wears on towards evening, after many healings and teachings, the disciples want to send the crowds away for it is a lonely, isolated place.
Jesus rejects this idea.
He tells them to provide for the people’s needs.
The disciples come up with 5 loaves and 2 fish.

Jesus employs the institution that we are all so familiar with in Holy Communion: He takes, blesses, breaks and shares the bread.
And the people receive what they need.
In fact, there is more than enough - there are leftovers.

Scholars tell us that this story is positioned in the gospels as a metaphor for the early church grieving the loss of Jesus, their Lord. They feel abandoned, dispossessed, weak and vulnerable.
And yet, the story tells us, through the Spirit, they discover there is enough.
They have what they need as a fellowship of believers.

As a matter of interest for some of the detail people in our midst, the 12 baskets represent the 12 sons of Israel who become the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples who become the 12 apostles who represent the new church.

Today, this passage tells us that in the midst of our own grieving for what the church once was, and the frenetic attempts to keep the structures going,
we need to have compassion for the needs of society;
a society that is blindly trying to fill a black hole of need.

Many of us in the church feel abandoned, dispossessed, weak and vulnerable.

One of the reasons for this is that most of us live our lives in states of busyness. Society tells us that we must do and we must acquire in order to be valued.

Another reason for this is that society insists that bigger is better. So we measure ourselves against numbers from the past.
When we do these things we miss Jesus’ call to feed and heal and create a safe place.

We expect that the blessing of God must be big or spectacular or busy.
And so our 5 loaves and 2 fish appear inadequate.

Like the disciples, we are driven by the scarcity model.
And this doesn’t help.
For we fail to see the blessing that is available in what we have.

So Jesus has to access the blessing for the disciples.
He has the people sit down.
Quiet down.
Slow down.
Come together.
He takes what the disciples have to offer.
He seeks God’s blessing and there is enough.

There is enough.
We have enough.
God’s blessing is always here, always has been.
When we seek blessing through the Spirit,
there is enough for our church to be faithful,
there is enough to be filled,
there is enough to receive what it needs to witness in the world.

In fact, there is more than enough today.
There is enough for the future.

The blessing of God is right here, right now.
We just need to sit down together, with who we are and what we have.
We need to let go of our quick fix expectations.

We need to stay with the process,
until the vision clears,
the dust settles
and we discover that we are in the presence of God always.

God’s grace is always available.
It takes a while to unwind;
to unwind from doing things, from our anxieties,
our fears, from our oversized expectations,
our old habits, and our busyness.

It takes time to unwind and become aware of God.

It takes time to see the subtlety of God’s blessing in our world.

And as we settle down together, as we share,
we discover that oh so subtle blessing of God, which more than meets our needs.

As we settle down together, as we share and as we care, we find that the blessing of God has been quietly with us all along.

We realize that God’s blessing is more than enough.