How Is the Feeding Going?

Based on Matthew 14: 13 to 21.

It sounds as if the Disciples got a dose of the lesson of when we point one finger out, three point right back at us. "It's your responsibility." "You should be doing something?" The answer they got was: "You give them something to eat?" Like most of us, the Disciples thought the "too little" they had was "too little" for God. Once again, God is placed in a Pandoras-Box. However, God is not happy with letting the box stay closed. God wants God's followers to open up the box and let God do God's work through our limitations. Our limitations do not limit God.

This particular idea never ceases to be more clear to me than when we attend the Eucharist. As the Priest offers up the prayers of the people gathered at Mass the most incredible thing happens. God who cannot be contained in time or space, who is not limited by height or depth becomes present in bread and wine. Jesus Christ, the Son of God becomes our food and drink and wants to become part of us. In so doing, Christ wants to come into our very limited humanity and infuse it with his divinity and make us into the very Body of Christ. When Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist, God has done something incredible. In Holy Communion, God extends God's self with us, that we may learn to extend beyond ourselves.

The feeding of our souls is not meant to be an isolated event. As we have been nourished with the Presence of God, so we need to be the nourishing Presence of God with the world around us. When Jesus asks his Disciples to share of their five loaves and fishes, he is not just asking his followers to feed the physical bodies of the five thousand people. Jesus is asking them to share the presence and power of God by meeting the hungry souls at the point of their need. As followers of Jesus Christ, who is the perfect revelation of God we can do no better service to Christ than to be his hands, his feet, his heart, his mind and extend Christ to others through loving and sacrificing service. Everyone is to be included in the feeding and everyone is to be included in being fed. The hungry, homeless, hopeless, the marginalized, the forgotten, those sick without health care, the homosexual, bisexual and transgendered person. All of these share in the call of service and to be served.

If the followers of Christ wish to be examples of the compassionate God, then everyone who goes by the name of Christian needs to be outward looking in order to heal what we do not see within. We want the Church to united and yet Christians divide the Church over issues, many of which are resolved by listening, thinking, reasoning and dialoguing.

Sex abuse scandals are not solved by pointing the finger of accusation towards pornography or homosexuality. While pointing those fingers outward, they fail to see the interior corruption of Clergy poorly formed in how to build healthy relationships where appropriate intimacy for the opposite or same sex could heal so many of their own.

Heterosexual marriages are not made healthier by voting against same-sex marriage. Healthier heterosexual marriages will be healthier when the world rids itself of heterosexism. Heterosexism says that only heterosexuality is healthy, normal and proper, while homosexuality or bisexuality is somehow unhealthy, abnormal and inappropriate. There are many closeted gay men and lesbian women who are married in heterosexual marriages. Many of those men and I would guess women, spend many "secret" hours on gay sex lines trying to seek someone of the same sex to love them, saying they are unhappy in their heterosexual marriage, but just do not know how to get out of it. They are scared. They are lonely. They are not able to love and be loved openly and honestly. They wonder how they can ever be who they really are. Are these marriages really healthy? I would say no. Passing same-sex marriage laws including over turning the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and replacing it with the newly introduced Respect for Marriage Act, will give States and our nation the opportunity to finally make heterosexual marriages real. This idea has already borne fruit in the State of Massachusetts where same-sex marriage has been legal for a number of years.

How is this related to Jesus feeding his people? Because when we feed people with a healthy understanding of themselves, we feed them with the Bread of Life who is Jesus. Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist as we are, with our limitations and loves us as God created us. Jesus does not look at people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered as unlovable, unable to obtain holiness and goodness through the Holy Spirit. Jesus does not with hold God's love and salvation from LGBT people "unless they change" as NARTH (The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality), Courage, Exodus and Focus on the Family suggests. God looks upon everyone including black, white, red, whatever color, nationality, race, class, sexual orientation and/or gender identity/expression, gender, challenge, ability, ordained or laity with love, acceptance and full of hopeful goodness. God does not look upon God's own with contention. God does not look upon those hungry for God's love with contempt or disgust. God looks upon those who hunger for mercy, goodness and grace with a desire to meet us at the point of our need. If we are lonely, despised, rejected, unwanted, unloved, broken, grieving, Jesus comes to us to be our companion, healer, lover and consolation. It is NOT our place to keep Jesus from feeding his broken people due to our prejudices and lack of good reason.

So how are we doing with feeding people with the Presence of God that we receive? Are we willing to be the answer to the prayers said at the Eucharist? Are we letting the Holy Spirit sanctify us and use us for the glory of God? When we pray to God asking God to relieve those who are hungry are we willing to allow God to use our limitations to be God's answer?

To close this blog I want to pray the Prayer of thanksgiving that we pray at the end of every Eucharist. I think this prayer puts my point into it's perspective.

Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart; through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, Page 365).