Homily 607 – 8 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
August 18, 2024
Epistle:  (124) 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 and (213) – Galatians 5:22-6:2
Gospel:  (58) Matthew 14:14-22 and (10) – Matthew 4:25-5:12

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God.

The reaction of the disciples to Christ’s command in today’s gospel lesson is priceless.  They, being the good followers of Christ, noted that the people who followed them might be getting hungry.  They did what many of us would do – they offered a suggestion.

“Send them away to find food,” they said.  And Christ said something incredible.  Something so amazingly simple yet absolutely countercultural.  He said, “You feed them.”

You feed them.  You see the problem, now fix it!

And the disciples, ever the pragmatists, said “We don’t have enough to feed this bunch!  We barely have enough for ourselves.”

We know what happens next – Jesus takes five loaves of bread, and two fish, and feeds 5,000 men and the women and children with them.  Lest we think a little did a lot, the Gospel account puts it plainly.  Everyone ate and was satisfied.  And there were twelve baskets of leftovers.

One for each of the apostles!

What can we learn from this?  The answer is not to keep your mouth shut when you see a need.  The answer is not to feed yourself first.  The answer is not to continue to pray that the manna might fall from heaven to feed the multitude.

The answer is very, very simple.  But so difficult to do.  Give of everything you have, to the needs of the ones around you.  Hold nothing back.  Give it all, so that in doing so, you may meet not only the needs of others, but your own needs as well.

When we offer everything we have to God, He multiplies it.  We won’t always get a return of a basket of food each, but we will have what we need.  And it will be a miracle to us.  Unexplainable.

The most significant aspect of God that we seem to miss today is that God will take care of us.  The idea of the American Individual, bootstrapping their way to wealth, has been part of the American myth from the beginning.

I say myth intentionally.  Even in the founding and expanding of our country, the individualist was revered, but didn’t really exist.  There were very, very few people that went out into the woods, hunting and fishing for their food, making their tools, building their shelters.

Even homesteaders who settled west of the Mississippi, like here in Iowa, brought things with them.  They were given land – and yes, we have to acknowledge the land was taken from the people who dwelt here before us.  But they were given land, and they were given seed, and they had food to tide them over until the first crops appeared.

Heaven help them if there was a drought or storm that took out their crops.

But they also had community.  Their neighbors might be a distance away, but they had the support of others who would come to help if needed.  If injury or illness prevented planting or harvesting.

They had a community of people around them with shared skills – a blacksmith, for instance.  A leather goods maker.  Some things they could do – perhaps every home had a seamstress to make clothes.  But someone had to make cloth, and thread, and needles.

The idea that we should be self-sufficient is nowhere in the Gospel.  In fact, the opposite.  In His Sermon on the Mount, Christ tells us to abandon our concerns for what we will eat, where we will sleep, or what we will wear.

The opposite of self-sufficient is what the Gospel proclaims.  The Gospel proclaims we rely on God to meet our needs.  So, what does that look like in our lives?

It means that we go about doing our work.  Without concern about how we will live our lives tomorrow based on what we do today.  Trusting that God will provide for our needs.  We live within our means.  We give God the first part back, recognizing that He is the one who provides.

More importantly maybe is that we only pursue our needs – not our wants.  We don’t pursue a luxury home, we pursue shelter, knowing that God will provide.  We don’t pursue a new car, we pursue transportation to move us around as we need to.  We don’t pursue fine dining, but rather we pursue the food necessary to support our mortal flesh.  We don’t pursue elegant clothing, but rather clothing necessary to hide our nakedness, as did Adam and Eve when they were stripped of the raiment they had before the fall.

And if we have more, we use that to help care for the needs of others.  Our families, our parents, our children, our friends, our neighbors.  Even strangers.  All who have needs that we can meet.

Now God doesn’t promise us a basket full of leftovers.  But He does tell us that we needn’t worry, because He will provide us sufficient for our needs.  Which is, truthfully, a lot less that we may imagine it to be.

What God does ask is that we give what we have.  We can’t give what we don’t have, obviously.  God doesn’t expect us to give what we don’t have.

In pursuing a life according to Christ, we pursue Godliness, charity, love.  If we live that way, pursuing Christ and His presence, and not the self-reliance of the world, we can indeed expect an abundance.

Not of material wealth – this isn’t a prosperity gospel.  But wealth nevertheless.  Peace.  Joy.  Love.  Salvation.

The things that truly matter in life.  The things that endure beyond this life.  The things that are of the Kingdom of God, and not of this fallen world.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ.