The Upload
Posted on Aug 01, 2014 by
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
Over the past month, our Gospel texts each Sunday have been filled with Jesus talking in parables as he attempted to explain what the kingdom of heaven is like to his disciples. The kingdom of heaven is like a sower who sows his seed, a mustard seed, leaven in bread; all of which have to do with how the kingdom might appear small, but it can, and will, do big and amazing things.
This Sunday, August 3, our children will be offering the word through music, and they will be sharing the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, so we won’t get to focus on the appointed Gospel text, Matthew 14:13-21. I am truly excited to hear and see our kids share the word with us, but as I read this Matthew text this week in my own devotions, I realized that, once again, the Gospel story explained the kingdom of heaven. This text shows that the kingdom of heaven is like a man who took five loaves and two fish and turned them into more than enough for over 5000 people. After several weeks of telling parables of what the kingdom was like, Jesus lived out a parable to show that the kingdom of heaven is already here.
After hearing that his cousin, John (the Baptist), had been killed, Jesus sought some time to grieve, so he attempted to go to a deserted place with his disciples to be alone. But when he got there, he discovered the crowds had also gone there and that they needed him now. In his own grief, we are told he looked at the crowd and “he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” The kingdom of heaven is a place where, no matter what, we are looked on with compassion and we are healed. Jesus, in his grief, helped his followers experience the kingdom of heaven in that act.
The kingdom of heaven is not some distant place. It is not a place we only get to go to when we die. No, the kingdom is here now, and we can partake in it when we live as Jesus challenged us to live. Jesus changed people’s lives in the here and now and in their death; remember Lazarus? We can be part of the kingdom now when we embrace our own call to cure and heal the lives of others. It is a call for us to get involved in the nitty-gritty of people’s day-to-day needs and problems. We are called to join Jesus in having compassion and in channeling that compassion into positive action on behalf of others.
When the disciples first saw that the crowd was hungry, they wanted to send them away, but Jesus showed them that, like the mustard seed and the leaven, as little as they had, they could do great things. The disciples were convinced they could not help the crowd, but Jesus said, “Bring me what you have.” And with the mere five loaves and two fish, like yeast or a mustard seed, he fed over 5000 people.
Like the disciples, we look upon a world full of problems, and we think there is nothing we can do or that what little we will do won’t amount to much. Too often, we want to send the crowds away. We think we can’t do anything about it because we don’t have enough money, enough time, enough…but the truth is, the church, which is you and me, is a community that brings all it has to Jesus and trusts that Jesus will use what we have, as little as it may seem, to bring about change, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to heal the sick, to bring good news.
Brothers and sisters, the kingdom of heaven is here now, and as little as we might think we are capable of doing, God is doing amazing new things through us.
Have a blessed week!
Shalom,
Pastor Dave