Reflection for Sunday – July 28, 2024

Nancy DeRyckeSunday Readings Homilies

Readings: 2 Kings 4: 42-44; Ephesians 4: 1-6; John 6: 1-15 
Preacher: Nancy J. DeRycke

How many times have you and I heard the Story of Jesus going up the hillside, feeding the 5,000?

So, we know it’s about generosity—ours and God’s.

As I think about it this time around, however, I feel like you and I are on a different hillside (actually a very tough mountain to climb!?), looking out at our country and world and church, seeing such great needs in our politically charged times—especially with recent happenings of increased violence and tension within and between parties and various groups. 

Perhaps we look out (if we’re honest, with much sadness, like Jesus) from our vantage point and see people who are hungry—hungry for clarity instead of half-truths in the media, hungry for peace instead of violent actions and reactions, hungry for a safe world in which to help our children and grandchildren deal with issues better.

There is a sadness, lack of hope, desperateness and impatience growing, maybe paralleling those feelings in Jesus’ time and world.

Scripture reminds us to trust in God no matter what, as Jesus did and as Paul did.  We need faith that God is with us and all will come to fruition in God’s time, especially during these turbulent, violent and uncertain times we are living through.  What did Jesus do in his turbulent times?  In this story, He didn’t give in to a doomsday approach thinking there was nothing that could remedy the hunger, fears and needs of so many (5,000, or more if they would’ve counted women and children!?)  He simply looked for any good in the situation and built on it.

Is that what you and I are called to do in our day and age?  Look for some basic goodness and foster it?  What is some goodness in our age or country or church these days? 

Jesus started with one seemingly insignificant kid who his disciples had written off and started with what he had to offer.  What is there in our day that we may be overlooking?  People who still try to sort out current events and not give up, who still pray and count on God, who still try to believe in the deep-down goodness of others, who are determined to listen respectfully to all sides of complicated issues, who try to consider all issues not just their favorite ones?  Can we, like Jesus, keep feeding one another? Can we be open to, and rejoice in being fed by each another?

Even though we may feel like Paul writing from prison in today’s second reading, can we have the courage to keep engaged, live boldly “in the meantime,” and pray what Paul urges Christians to do, that we may all:

  “…live in a manner worthy of the call you have received;
With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love;
striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:  One body and one spirit,
As you were also called to the one hope of our call…one God of all, who is over all and through all and in all.…”

And just as Jesus instructed them to gather the fragments left over, let’s be sure not to waste our time and energy and gifts (i.e., the food we have been given).    Let’s use our gifts to “feed” our world, our church, our country with hope and to be fed by listening to the wisdom of one another and our God, who never gives up on us. 

Nancy DeRycke
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