Sunday, November 10, 2024  

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Today's Scripture
Matthew 14:13–21

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for 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.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (NRSV)

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Reflection

You relate to the disciples in this story, I bet. You’ve faced down problems that are much bigger than you and that reduce your positivity and your commitment to nothing, challenges on such a scale that you can only conclude that you have “nothing” with which to combat them. That member of your family who resists everyone’s efforts to save them. The people you pass by whose struggles reach far beyond the change they’re asking for. Climate change.

“We have nothing.” These are the first three words of the disciples’ response to Jesus’ instruction to feed the crowd they’re so concerned about. They wanted Jesus to shift the problem elsewhere, to send the crowd away to buy food for themselves, but Jesus told them that wasn’t necessary; they had all they needed to feed the crowd already.

It strikes me what they didn’t say. Not “That’s great!” or “Really? Where?” Not even “But how?” No wonder, no curiosity, just certainty that what they have amounts to nothing compared to the need.

To be sure, five loaves and two fish are not enough to feed a crowd of over five thousand. But it’s something. It is not nothing.

The good that is ours to do is not nothing. Whatever generosity we can offer to the people standing directly in front of us we should offer. We should tamp down that cynical voice that says it is worthless or that our giving is thinly veiled hypocrisy meant to slake our guilt most of all, and we should give it as the disciples gave their loaves and fishes, by bringing it to Jesus.

Generosity offered in a Christian spirit trusts God to sanctify our giving to God’s purposes and to apply it in ways that bring about God’s kingdom — and those are not our ways. We don’t know what God may do with our offering. We can’t know. But — and this is where faith comes in — we trust that God may do things with it that are greater and more lovely than we would have ever conceived and which we may never know.

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Prayer
Giving God, we entrust to you all that we have, and we offer it generously and with courage, trusting you to bring the good you desire out of it. And so we give with gratitude and with wonder. In Christ’s name. Amen.

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Written by Rocky Supinger, Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry and Worship

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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