Sunday, August 6, 2023

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Revised Common Lectionary passages for the Lord’s Day are:
– First Reading: Genesis 32:22-31
– Psalm 17:1-7, 15
– Second Reading: Romans 9:1-5
– Gospel Reading: Matthew 14:13-21

The liturgical color for the day is: Green

They got hung up on how little it was.  They panicked and they could not see beyond those five loaves and those two fish.  That was all there was, and it was not enough.  It was meager. 

It is about the disciples themselves.  They see themselves as meager.  They see themselves and hold themselves up against that crowd of 5,000 and they see themselves as inadequate, as small, as tiny, as nothing—they see themselves as meager.

We do that.  We are those disciples.  We hold ourselves up the enormity of the struggles of our future.  We hold ourselves up to the enormity of the struggles of our community and country and family.  We hold ourselves up to the enormity of how to live in a pandemic and we end up with the same conclusion again and again.  “I’m nothing in the face of it.”

But Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”  How is that?  How is that possible?

For the miracle to happen they had to step out of their over-focusing on the meager in order to hear the vision God had for them.  They had to hear the vision and present themselves as the resources and then miracle comes about.

Those disciples—they had to realize that in that meager of what they have…oh, contained in that meager is eager.  That word eager is in the word meager.  And the eager part had to take precedence over the meager.

And when the eager takes precedence over the meager—ah, see that is where the miracle happens.  When they became so eager for the vision which Jesus put before them, and when they stepped forward in faith with all they had—the miracle comes about. 

When we let our eagerness for God’s vision grow beyond our meagerness…the miracle…  The miracle happens.

—

Rev. Dr. Daris Bultena
General Presbyter and Stated Clerk