Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 13A
TEXTS: Romans 8:26-34; Matthew 14:13-21
And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. (Matthew 14:20)
Sometimes I feel our thinking in the church is too sophisticated. Too often, we miss straightforward truths, stated plainly and simply—what some would call the “old time religion.” That’s one reason I appreciate it so much when I hear the “God is good” chant at the start of a worship service; because it expresses a simple truth. When the preacher shouts, “God is good,” the people reply with enthusiasm, saying: “All the time!”
This is a wonderful way to express the truth we know about God’s power to provide for his people—and this is a fundamental truth of what we call “good news.” From today’s gospel lesson, we learn once again that God is God—that God will provide what we need. We re-learn, in the midst of the Body of Christ, that God will lift up amongst us resources to accomplish his holy and life-giving purposes.
In Matthew, chapter 14, we encounter people who, having followed Jesus into a desolate rural area, now find themselves hungry. The disciples suggest that Jesus send them away to get something to eat. But Jesus has something else in mind. Maybe it was his way of saying, “God is good.” But the disciples did not know how to reply, “All the time.” So Jesus told them to feed the hungry people themselves:
Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” (Matt. 14:16-18)
He was saying, “You don’t think there is enough for this great multitude, but there is enough—because God will provide.”
This miracle—where over 5,000 people are fed with five loaves of bread and two fish—is a kind of “acted out” parable. It reveals how God can raise up in the midst of his people just exactly what they need. How? Well, we don’t know how. But we do know why. It’s because God is good—all the time.
This miracle can give us hope and direction—if we can see that everything is possible with God; if we can see that looking to love—the love that comes from God—can be the key to meeting the needs of our brothers and sisters.
Sometimes we are too sophisticated to believe in miracles—to believe that God really is good—all the time; that the power of God can, in every instance, provide more than we can hope for or imagine. Sometimes we know so much we cannot see the truth when Jesus faces us down with the familiar, “You!”
“You give them something to eat.”
And yet, the goodness of God assures us that God’s love, moving in us and overflowing from us, can provide what his people need—because God is good, all the time. In every circumstance of life, God’s power works toward lifting up whatever promotes love in that situation. Wherever there is injustice or pain or grief or hardship or hunger, God is there. Why? Because God is good—all the time.
As the apostle Paul says so majestically in his Epistle to the Romans: “… in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). Paul reminds us that in all things God’s abundance will, in the final analysis, be sufficient to meet our needs. Right here, right now—in the midst of who and what we are—God will provide; because God is good, all the time.
This does not mean, of course, that Christians will be without problems or suffering. No. But it does mean that God will give us the grace and strength to bear the load as we overcome and move through whatever misfortune may befall us.
Ours is not a faith of easy answers and unrealistic solutions. But Jesus entered our human life and died upon the cross for us—and by doing that, he demonstrated something. He showed us that—in whatever we experience, in whatever may trouble us, in whatever distress or threat we feel—we need not despair, because God is in it with us.
God will lift up in our midst exactly what we need to make it through. Why? Because God is good, all the time. And because God calls us to demonstrate goodness—and courage, and compassion, and faith—all the time. And maybe—in that call of God—we find humanity’s only real hope for peace. Just as on that day so long ago, Jesus took the little bit of food his disciples had and multiplied it fantastically, so on this day, I believe, he is asking us to offer him whatever scraps of peace—of goodness—we have. And if we offer it, he will multiply it.
As someone once said: “Peace has to start somewhere.” And given the violent history of the human race—and the conflict that is so pervasive in our society—I think it goes without saying that it has to start small. Looking at how the efforts of governments have failed—from the League of Nations to the United Nations to NATO—it should be clear that the big solutions do not work very well.
Peace, I think, is a grass-roots process. It has to start small. It has to begin with small actions—lots of them—by people like you and me. People who look for places where peace is absent—in their communities, in their schools and workplaces and homes—and who offer in those situations whatever small portions they have of the peace of Christ.
If we do that, our Lord will multiply what we offer.
God is not far away and aloof from us. In his life and death and rising, Jesus shows us that God does not stand outside of life, but is right here with us—beside us—in our broken and troubled and suffering world. As Paul said to the Romans, “[nothing] in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:39b)
In whatever crisis or issue we face in life, in whatever trouble may come our way, the power of God’s love will provide us with what we need. From the midst of the Body of Christ, God will lift up the resources to accomplish his loving purposes.
Why?
How?
Because God is good, all the time.
All the time, God is good. Amen.