Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Year A
August 3, 2008
Isaiah 55:1-5
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21
The first congregation where I
served after I was ordained was a large suburban congregation on the west side
of
During my time there, we
established a relationship with an “inner city” congregation named
“
Reformation Lutheran was (and still is) a congregation deeply committed to serving its neighborhood and caring for the needs of the people there. It was a rough place. Lots of poverty, drugs, crime and hopelessness.
But in lots of little ways, the congregation was making a difference in people’s lives… and I learned a lot from them about what community ministry was all about.
But it wasn’t always that way.
For many years, all Reformation had was a food pantry. Congregations like the one I served would collect the food, and bring it into the city. They had a big room with shelves and twice a week they would open the doors and let people come in a fill a grocery bag with whatever they needed or wanted.
The problem was, they kept seeing the same people coming back year, after year, after year. Even worse, it seemed like there were more and more people coming all the time.
The people at Reformation started asking some hard questions about their food pantry and about their neighborhood.
“Why do we even need a food pantry?” They asked. “What’s going on here, that people don’t have enough food?”
And, most important:
“What can we be doing to address those underlying problems?”
Those questions started the congregation on a real journey.
It would have been easy just to keep handing out food.
It would have been easy just to say, “obviously these people are too lazy, or stupid, or whatever, to get themselves out of trouble.”
But they knew that they couldn’t do either one of those things. What they knew of God’s love and grace wouldn’t allow it.
They knew God would guide them, direct them and most of all work through them… but they needed to do some work.
So, they started looking harder at what was going on in their neighborhood.
They saw substandard housing being rented for huge monthly rents by absentee landlords… …so they started a Habitat for Humanity program.
They saw the high rate of unemployment and realized all the good jobs had moved out to the suburbs and most people had no way of getting there (they didn’t have cars and the buses stopped at the county line – miles from where the new jobs were). So, they petitioned the city to extend the busses, partnered with congregations like mine who were attended by the employers, and arranged carpools. They sponsored job training programs and parenting programs and other educational events at the church.
And they kept handing out food.
But now, they worked hard to get to know the situations and concerns of the people who came to the pantry. No one was turned away, but everyone had to sit down with a counselor and talk about what was going on in their life and what they might need to do to fix it.
They changed people’s lives.
They started, slowly, to change their neighborhood.
God did amazing things through them.
In our Gospel lesson today, the
disciples are dumbstruck when Jesus tells them to feed the thousands of people
standing along the shore of the
All they could think about was why they couldn’t get the job done.
All they could see was an insurmountable problem.
Their resources were just too limited. Besides, why was it their responsibility – shouldn’t the people have been smart enough to pack a lunch? Were they too lazy to fend for themselves? Excuses were easy.
“Send them away.” Was the best they could come up with.
And so often that’s exactly what we do.
And Jesus’ words still echo through the centuries: “YOU give them something to eat.”
There is no avoiding the issue. As Christians, as disciples of Jesus Christ, WE have the responsibility to feed the hungry multitudes of our world.
WE have been given the responsibility to ask the hard questions and be a part of the solution.
WE need to bring the loaves and the fishes for Christ to bless and break and multiply.
Throughout the whole bible -- in both the Old and New Testaments – God’s people are commanded to care for those in need and roundly condemned when they fail to do so.
It is one of the biggest moral issues in the bible!
But the task is a daunting one. Hunger is a complicated issue involving so many different problems.
But we need to start somewhere.
Start by bringing something with you to church each week and putting it in our food pantry basket.
The social ministry committee has been talking about an idea that came out of the Lutheran magazine:
Getting people to commit to eating rice one meal a month and donating what you would have normally spent for that meal to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal.
I think that’s a terrific idea!
It’s easy and, as you can see from the bulletin insert, it doesn’t take a lot to make a big difference.
It’s loaves and fishes all over again!
Speaking of the World Hunger Appeal…
Did you know that the ELCA along with its partners around the world is actively working to combat hunger, and has been for a long, long time?
Lutheran World Relief along with the World Hunger Appeal are among the most respected international relief programs on the planet!
Not only are they involved in direct aid (which is often necessary, especially in a crisis), but they are also deeply involved in programs to help people learn how to feed themselves.
Even more, our church is at work trying to address the causes – social, cultural and even political – that perpetuate poverty and hunger both here at home and around the world.
If you want to know more, just check out the World Hunger Appeal website at elca.org!
As a congregation, we need to continue to support local efforts like Food and Shelter for Friends, East Main Place and other programs in Norman that help people in need.
But, I think we also need to ask the same kinds of questions that were being asked at Reformation Lutheran.
Why, in
And even more, what can we as Jesus’ disciples today, do about it? What loaves and fishes do we have for him to bless and multiply?
If you would like to talk some more about that, and about what we might do as a congregation to address some of these issues – let me know. I’d like to get a group together to see how we might expand what we are doing in the community.
Toward the end of his ministry, Jesus told his disciples that, when they feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give a cup of water to the thirsty, they are, indeed, doing it to and for him.
Today, he invites, encourages, and calls us to do the same.
And he promises to bless our efforts and multiply them – more, much more, than we can ever imagine.
Amen.