Seventeenth Sunday of the Year

Today’s psalm sets the tone for all the readings: ‘You open wide your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.’ It reflects God’s presence, justice, abundance, and generosity. It is a gesture of welcome and sharing in contrast to the closed hands that reflect individualism, negligence, and violence. There are six versions of the gospel story. Despite variations, each version contains the story of a community sharing resources and the centrality of resource sharing in the early Jesus movement. John’s emphasis is on a young child who shares what s/he had, which Jesus blessed and where there was enough for all.

The readings suggest how the impossible is made possible when we bring out what we have and what we are. The first reading and the gospel are similar. Both Elisha and Jesus respond to the needs of people before them, both are confronted by ‘facts’ and bewilderment by those they enlist for help. In both cases, it is the poor – the farmer and child - who provide food. Rather than hoarding, Elisha receives resources and shares them. These stories reflect real-life situations today where hunger is an everyday reality.

In recent weeks, we have focused on the image of shepherd and prophet. Today, we see the prophet who is embodied in Jesus, who looks out at people, understands their needs, and responds to them. The prophet looks outward to see people, listen to them, and respond by being in solidarity with them, calling for their care and for them to care for one another. It is noteworthy that the people were not told to line up for food, but to sit down where they could get to know each other, learn from one another, build trust in order to share what they had. The sharing by the child set off a chain reaction of sharing among the people. Such action is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Little is much in God’s hands. Too often we let a ‘scarcity mentality’ contaminate our responses as did Philip when he asked, ‘What good is so little among so many people?’  We focus on the problems, the impossibility, and scarcity. The uppermost question is a perennial one: ‘where will we get enough food/medical care/housing for this crowd?’ We could ask, ‘what good are a few doctors in Haiti?’ or in ‘Africa’? or ‘Asia?’ or ‘a few individuals speaking up for justice and peace?’ We often fixate on the great need and scares resources ignoring that the problem about will and distribution. Think of Sudan, Ethiopia, and Palestine! Our contemporaries present as being ‘realistic’ and others as ‘naïve.’ Jesus sees the same hungers knowing that change will occur only through us. He appeals to our hearts and our humanity. Failure of occurs not because something is not possible, but because there is no will. Changes are required to respond to disproportionate and unequal consumption of the earth’s resources that leads to extreme inequality. Many fail to see the despair and fear brought on by hunger. They cannot see the causal link between their own privilege and the suffering of the dispossessed. The beginning of overcoming the divide between the well-fed and the starving is to first acknowledge that it exists.

This miracle of sharing in the gospel is upended with attempts of possession and power as people seek to take Jesus and make him king. Here is a prophetic warning against the temptation to co-opt religion – the Christian community – in the service of political power. Powerful Christians have been complicit in seizing power by cooperating with harmful social and political structures that are rooted in distinctions of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and more.  Jesus is used to gain political power. However, the Jesus who rejected power is ignored. Pastor and US senator, Raphael Warnock said a few years ago, ‘You are not following God when you allow your profit motive to silence your prophet motive.’  That profit motive is not just about money, but also power.

We must allow ourselves to be confronted by how we use the stories of Jesus. Do we use them to oppress or to support and bring liberation to people considered ‘the least of these?’ Jesus’ presence and compassion made him sensitive toward the hungers in people which led to liberation and healing.  Jesus’ teaching fed people hungry for the truth; his compassion fed the sorrowing; his mercy fed the marginalised; his caring fed the sick, the dying and the lonely; his love fed each person’s hunger for acceptance and love. Jesus’ action stands out and challenges us as disciples. At the end of John’s Gospel, at a lakeside breakfast, Jesus looks at a weak and wounded Peter and three times tells him: ‘Feed my sheep’ (21:15, 16, 17). Jesus looks at each of us and calls us to ‘Feed my sheep.’ It is up to us to find the way. It may be the neighbour we listen to; it may be the grieving parent; it may be the homeless person who needs to be acknowledged and fed. When hungers are acknowledged and tended, God becomes present both to the hungry and to those who share, present in the eating together, present in the broken body of Jesus on the cross, present in each one of us who brings the empty vessel of our lives and allow God to fill it. Today’s gospel cannot be isolated from the John’s account of the washing of the feet at the Last Supper: ‘What I have done, I command you to do. Serve one another. Pour out yourself in love for one another.’ It is also communion. Without that communion or service of others, the communion of the Eucharist is robbed of its fruit in one’s life. We hear church leaders accusing people for politicising the ‘eucharist.’  If it is not political, leading to action, then the eucharist can have no transforming impact on our lives. If our participation in the eucharist does not impact the stranger on our doorstep; the homeless child; the person who is suffering domestic violence; the woman or man on our streets; on our contribution to peace our community, then what is the point?

Let us allow Jesus to feed our imagination. Look at his life. As Jesus awakens our consciousness, let us encourage others to do the same. Let us strive for a paradigm shift in thinking and seeing our problems from the perspective of those who are dying every day and are languishing among us. This is where miracles happen if we want to believe in them. They only seem to happen in situations of scarcity rather than plenty. There is no need for them where there is plenty. Let us remember the normally forgotten people, near and far, who have little to eat – and those forced to move because they have little to eat… and those deliberately deprived of food and other aid in Palestine.  Our world hungers for peace, security, community, meaning and wholeness. Can we make a difference? Can we touch peoples’ hearts, minds, and wills? Can we believe that we have the power - a few loaves and fishes - to make a difference? Withholding our gifts or mocking the smallest efforts of others could mean we miss seeing a miracle. Our refusal or inability to respond ‘eclipses’ or hides God’s presence from our world? It has been eclipsed by the oppression and domination in church and society throughout history; the abuse of power and wealth; the complicity in crimes against humanity; and by silence.

In a cartoon, a character tells a friend that he questioned God on what was being done about the world’s problems. God’s response was, ‘I made you’. May the words, ‘You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing’ which reflect God’s abundance and generosity, become part of our everyday living.

Holy One,

Come to us.

Fill us with your fullness.

Remind us that our desires are good

and that love and abundance are present in our lives.

Gently reveal to us the deep desire of the world.

What is our part in fulfilling such hunger, such longing?

Show us your five thousand,

that we may feed them.

We hunger to do justice.

We hunger for mercy.

We hunger to walk humbly.

Root us and ground us in your love

Sustain us in our work

Amen.

OutinScripture