Grace and Law – 13 September, 2026

One of the things that comes up time and time again in our language as Christians, is the contrast between grace and law. The words abound over and over again. You only have to think of such great hymns such as Amazing Grace to see that word contrast again.

Well, today is all about law and grace.

But before we get to the parable, there is an important point about Peter’s question and the answer. Peter’s opening bid for forgiving an offending brother “seven times” is intended to be a generous measure, but there is an implication of posturing (this is Peter, after all). When Our Lord responds with “seventy times seven” his point is not just that we should be more generous than we think, but to change the nature of the question. Our Lord’s response is intended to move the conversation from keeping score to asking what the nature or the challenge of forgiveness is. It’s also referencing an obscure part of Genesis.

You may remember the bit about the murder of Abel by Cain – Cain is then marked with a sign and the warning that anyone who kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance, (Gen 4:15). So here we have the seven that Peter uses. But shortly after in Genesis we have a descendant of Cain, Lamech. He says “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold (4:23b-24).” Here’s the seventy-seven.

The mathematics of the Gospel exchange may now be somewhat clearer. Just as Lamech’s seventy-sevenfold violence aggravates the situation that arose after Abel’s murder, or reflects yet a further decline into violence and retribution, the arrival of the community heralded by Our Lord as the reign of heaven means a new possibility of restoration and healing. Our Lord is not merely suggesting that Peter lacks ambition by undercounting occasions for forgiveness, but that the inauguration of this new community is something more than “doing better”—and after all, we know the Church and its members fail often enough in that regard anyway. It is more like the cancellation of debts, which was a common theme in movements against tyranny.

Our Lord suggests that the reign of heaven amounts to a restoration of what was lost to the world in the violence of Cain. This idea that history is being remade is woven through the New Testament; and the words that Luke uses of Our Lord on the Cross, that today you will be with me in Paradise, is a reference to the Eden, the original paradise, being restored. So there’s a reason for the seventy-seven.

But back to the Parable of Unforgiving Servant. In this parable the king forgives his first slave of an enormous amount, ten thousand talents; a sum that would goggle the imagination of those living. According to the historian Josephus, who lives at the end of that century, the tribute for that whole region was 800 talents, and the Romans were not doing Empire cheaply. So, it was a massive sum. No condition is put on the forgiveness; the slave is left to go free.

However, the slave then seizes and imprisons another slave who owes him only 100 denarii. The Good Samaritan in that parable from Luke paid the inn keeper two denarii for the board, so you get an idea that this was a matter of some thousands – a bad credit card debt in our terms. The king hears of this injustice by the first slave and summons him back and re-imposes the original debt and the punishment of torture.

Now this is a clear example about grace and law. The king had the right to imprison the servant because he could not pay. He didn’t. Instead, he forgave freely. Grace was given, instead of the Law.

Now before we go on with this parable, we should make one thing clear here. Don’t think the king is automatically God. This is part of our cultural blindness: we tend to read the Gospels seeing authority figures such as lords and kings as the good guys. After all, isn’t the old Bible often known as the King James version, a lovely way of sanctifying one of our kings. Well, let me tell you that the peasants of Our Lord’s times saw things a lot differently, with nasty characters such as Pilate or the Herods. Peasants of Our Lord’s time tended to see the authority figures as exploitative and vindicative, trying to extort money from them all the time. The king here is certainly not God, the king goes on to agree to torture the servant at the end. Our Lord is not simply putting the figure of the King as the figure of God. It’s a bit more subtle than that. Remember also the background reference to Cain and Lamech – both murderers. We are not dealing with nice people.

What Our Lord is trying to teach in this parable is that the way to live is important. We can live lives of grace, learning and giving forgiveness, or lives of law, demanding and been bullied.

To make it even clearer, Our Lord concludes the parable with the clear application: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

What Our Lord is teaching is that we have a clear choice as his followers. We can use his teaching to enter a new world, a world where we find the true nature of God, a God who cares and loves for us like the lilies of the field or the birds of the air. This is a world of Grace, unconditional love, so unconditional that God sends his only Son to live as one of us and die for us to show that love. The parables and the teachings provide an entrance into that new world.

However, God will never force anyone to choose. Our entry into that love must be our own choice, our own exploration. Our Lord contrasts this new world with that which exists, a world that is in the power of darkness and evil, a world of Law. In that world fear and retribution rule, and justice is used to create injustice, so the slave is imprisoned and tortured. That world works on fear and pain, and those who refuse to open their hearts to a new way of forgiveness are left in this system. That is what happened to the Unforgiving Servant – he did not enter the new world of grace and so was dragged back to the world he supported. It’s like Lamech carrying on from Cain.

Now to be fair, a lot of the Old Testament is about a world of Law. Yet even the Old Testament moves away from this idea. The great Book of Job, for instance, tells of the story of Job. God. for no reason but to test Job, makes him lose fortune, children and even all his camels, and is inflicted with sores, and then sits in the ashes with a potsherd to scratch himself. His friends come to console him and decide he must have offended God – Job instead wishes his life would be taken away but declares that he has done no sin. The Book ends with God saying to Job – gird up your loins and answer me – where were you when I created the world? The Book does not give an answer, just says that misfortune is part of God’s plan that we cannot understand. It is not the direct result of sin. There is no law that makes Job suffer.

Our Lord also teaches about sin and forgiveness. Firstly, in so many of the parables, he points to the world around. The rain falls on the good and evil alike. The birds of the air and the lilies of the field also point to a God who takes care of the world. The parables point to a God who knows and loves what is made and does not have a policy of immediate revenge and rewards. This is a God who offers love and grace.

The ability for us to face the demands of forgiveness as Christians, people who choose grace. is paramount. We are challenged directly whether we want the new world of grace or the old way of law. If we should not forgive, we are not part of God’s love, and instead trapped into the old way of the law of vengeance. Our Lord challenges us to this task. It is a hard task. The bitterness that people cause us, especially when it is unjust, scars the soul. But if we dwell on the injustice or hurt, we never learn to let go and move on with love. That is why we pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” every day. It is a lifelong challenge to be a Christian and mean those words. It is a lifelong challenge to live a life of grace and forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the mark of those who follow the Lord. It’s not easy, but the choice is whether we practise this and enter into a new relationship of grace and love, or we remain in a world of the law of vengeance instead. That’s what today’s parable is asking us.

Based in part on a reflection by the Rev’d Andrew McGowan.

The Shop of Crosses – 30 August, 2026

A hobby of mine is to go to the local auctions and op shops. It’s amazing what turns up. There is, of course, a large range of furniture and pictures and glassware and just junk. As a priest I keep an eye out for religious items, and some of the things in this church are from items I have bought over the years. 

However, as someone who is reasonably knowledgeable about religious items, I get annoyed when things are mislabelled. Icons are given to the wrong saint. Each saint has a clear symbol, and I don’t think it is that hard to work out who it is. But one thing that annoys me repeatedly, is when crosses and crucifixes and confused. Crucifixes have the little man on them I say, crosses don’t. But the catalogues still get confused.

There are a lot of crosses and crucifixes that turn up over time. Lovely big brass ones like the ones I use on the nave altar are rarer, only every couple of years. That was a good find. Then there are lots of little gold crosses and crucifixes. There are occasional icons of the crucifixion. Some are heavy, some are light. Some you wear, some you hang of the wall. Some are gold and some are wood. All sorts.

Now imagine that you could see all these crosses at one time, a whole display of all the sort of crosses that you could imagine. Now the question is, what cross would you take up? What would be your choice? Would you like something very beautiful or very light? Practical or wonderful? What would you take up?

There is a further condition – there is only one cross that is right for you. Now that makes it much harder, it is not only what you desire but what is designed for you. How do you work that out?

The stakes are very high. Consider Peter, in the gospel passage today, was the rock of the Church, for confessing that Our Lord was the Christ, the one chosen for salvation, as we heard last week. This week he is the stumbling block, because he does not want Our Lord to go to Jerusalem and be killed. He does not recognise that the cross that Our Lord must bear is one that comes with a price. To be a Christ is a fine thing, and Peter could see Our Lord going to Jerusalem and setting the world to rights, ushering in a kingdom, earthly and peaceful. He saw Our Lord with a winner, with a victor’s wreath. But Our Lord did not come for winners, Our Lord did not come for the perfect, he came for all those who struggle, fall and sin, so that he might lift them up and carry them. The price of being Christ was to bear a cross and die, so death would nail God and human together, and forgiveness would flow in blood, and our cross would be borne by his cross. The cross had a price that had to be faced. Peter, by trying to deny it, was a stumbling block to fall over, not a rock to build upon. There is no profit in gaining the whole world if one’s life is forfeit in return.

So what cross are we to select in this wondrous room of crosses, full of all styles. What one has been made for you? Which one are you to bear? Is yours to be one that can be quietly kept in a pocket to give you courage or one to be borne for the mockery of the world? What price is it to be bought at?

This is where discernment is needed. For many people take the wrong cross in life, and a life may be damaged by the wrong choice. The wrong cross can be too light, and be no true price worth the blood of our Lord who died to show us the price he was willing to pay for us. Great gifts can be given to people who waste them, never taking the cross that would stretch them, make them give the price that could buy the cross that would make their lives. Others have taken crosses that they were never meant to bear becoming bitter with burdens they attempt to bear. Save us from the trivial person, who only finds a light cross and fritters and never dedicates. Others take heavy crosses that consume their time and energy in a passive aggressive delight. Save us from the bitterness of those who whinge over crosses they delight in grasping, that they were never meant to take.

So, what is discernment, that ability to choose what cross to bear? It is prayer, it is time with our Lord, it is the gift of listening to God. Prayer often starts with words, but most move beyond to being with God. That is part of the story of our liturgy, why we use the same form over and over again, the same words over and over again, so our minds go behind the words and actions to being the actual prayer, having it in ourselves so we can listen to God. We have to be with God to find the cross we are meant to bear.

For all these crosses, big and small, golden or plain, are nothing but images of the one true cross, and the cross bearer himself, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is offering the crosses to us, waiting for us to come in and choose a cross that will suit us. Our Lord knows which cross will suit us, which cross is made for us. He knows which will fulfil our destiny, give scope to the skills we have, and carry the price that is right for us. It may not be the heavy one full of gold and jewels, it may not be the light cross we can hide in our pocket. But for each and every person there is cross, made and fashioned to suit each one of us, waiting for us, if we listen to the cross bearer, so we can take up our cross and follow him.

The Exercise of Power – 23 August, 2023

Looking at the Gospel today there are two things that strike me. First there is Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. Then there is Our Lord’s response, that lovely poetic passage, that Peter is the rock on which he will build the Church and Peter will have the keys of the kingdom of heaven. 

Let’s consider Peter’s answer. Our Lord starts out by asking, what are people saying about me? People in ancient times obviously gossiped about each other just as much as we do now. We know when we get a new work colleague or boss, we want to hear all the stories about that person. Well, Our Lord had been travelling around, he had been healing people like the Canaanite Woman’s daughter we heard about last week, and he had been doing miracles like feeling the thousands as we heard the week before. We can imagine that there was a lot of gossip about him.

Now the disciples give different answers. That’s the safety of gossip – you can give unattributed stories. You don’t take responsibility for the truth or even believe in them; you just pass on the gossip. But then Our Lord makes it personal: but who do you say that I am? One can almost hear the silence after the question.

But then Peter, good old impetuous Peter, gives the answer: you are the Messiah, which we would call the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Peter jumps the fence, and comes down to a profession of faith.

That’s always the hard one. We can report rumours, tell gossip, but in the end that’s not faith or even good leadership: in the end we have to be responsible for what we believe. Faith is like that: in the end we have to have a core of belief, we have to know that Jesus is the Christ our Lord and what that means. That’s one reason why the Creeds developed in the Church, starting with the Apostles Creed and going onto the Nicene Creed which we use every Sunday: we have to know what we believe in. We have to say who Christ is and that he is our God. Faith means a confession of who Our Lord is. That’s why the Apostles Creed is used at baptism since early times, it is the faith to which people confess. It is thought that in some churches they even baptised during the Creed, the priest said, for example, Do you believe in God the Father? and the person replied I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and then the priest did the first of the baptisms by immersing the person saying I baptise you in the name of the Father, and then going on with the second part of the Creed for the Son, and then the third for the Holy Spirit.

The second point from today’s gospel is Our Lord’s reply to Peter’s confession:

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Now this has been a passage that has a long history. Is Our Lord giving the keys to Peter personally or to the Church that will be built on that reply? Now we have a hugely divisive history on that. On one side we have the extremes of Roman Catholicism, and the other side we have those who hold to no authority outside a congregation or even a personal faith. A lot of this comes down to what you think the Church here on earth is. Is it the local congregation? Is it the local diocese gathered around the bishop? Is it a universal Church gathered around a Pope? Now we, as Anglicans, have experimented with all these types of structures. We have tried popes wanting uniformity and power. We have tried dioceses believing that they are the definers of what is right in ordination and marriage and ignoring all other Christians. We have tried mega churches being the absolute churches and calling all other Christians lost. There just isn’t an easy answer as to what the best church structure is. There just isn’t an answer to what Our Lord exactly foresaw as the Church.

But Our Lord did say quite a bit about how authority is to be exercised. The Gospels record that immediately after this passage Peter gets things wrong and is rebuked. So being a rock does not make you perfect. People in authority don’t know everything. Our Lord also warns his disciples about the bad examples in the world and that we are not to exercise power as the world does. In St John’s Gospel, which seems to have issues with the model of Peter, the confession of Our Lord’s divinity is done by Martha, a woman, a person of lower status. Furthermore, in that Gospel we have the story of Our Lord washing the feet of those he leads as an example to them of how authority is to be exercised. The Gospels each present a fairly cautious attitude to how authority is to be exercised. The early Church took a lot of time also working it out. From the early times it had bishops, but often it was just for small groups until the faith spread so we had a bishop over all the Christians in a city. But working out how bishops related to each other took another few centuries, not until the peace of the Church and the first council at Nicaea in 325 do we get some sort of structure with the great cities of the Roman empire of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem holding a greater authority.

Mostly since then the Christians who have held to things like tradition and the Creeds have preserved some sort of structure with bishops. We Anglicans tried a cautious structure with the Archbishop of Canterbury being a figurehead without power. Well, it’s hard struggle for us trying to stay united. For the last century or so we have a group meeting of all the bishops every ten years, the Lambeth Conference, so called because that is the place where the archbishop of Canterbury lives in London. They are not always easy. Last week in Melbourne we also had our General Synod, the Synod responsible for the whole of the Anglican Church. Structures are not fun or easy.

But in that passage, there is one last final reflection. The gates of Hades will not prevail. So often we think of the Church as a besieged city, with the evil pounding on our gates. But Our Lord did not say that our gates will not fail, he said that the Gates of Hades will not prevail. One of the best reflections of the Vatican II Council of last century, the great gathering of the Roman Catholic bishops, was that the Church is not a besieged city, but a pilgrim people on the way to salvation. So, our wanderings, our failures will not stop the gradual spread of what faith is. We will walk into the Gates of Hades, and those gates will not prevail against our little selves. That’s terribly consoling. We are all Peters making our confession of faith and then getting it wrong, but we have been entrusted with the power of Our Lord to tell the story of faith, even to the Gates of Hades. And we do prevail somehow, not by our own strength, but because God is on our side. That’s immensely comforting.

Peace and Calm – 9 August, 2026

The image of Peter walking, and not walking successfully, to Our Lord on water has become so much a part of this story of Our Lord, the disciples, and a storm, that it is hard to imagine it otherwise. But let’s think about Matthew’s specific intention about this text and Peter’s role.

Last week with the miraculous feeding and now again here, the Gospel according to Matthew offers stories of Our Lord’s power which are intended to teach, more than just to astound. Some may be inclined to disbelieve this ever happened (even though sometimes people do seem willing to believe anything…), the mere fact of multiplying loaves or walking on water may seem too startling, or entertaining, for us to get past the surprise, to the heart of the matter.

In Our Lord’s time the idea of walking on water represented divine power, but the desire of human rulers to do so was a symbol of arrogance, and of tyranny. The Second Book of the Maccabees (you will find that in the strange middle section of the bible, the Aprocrypha), written very not long before Our Lord’s time, refers to the tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes, defiler of the Jerusalem Temple, who thought “in his arrogance that he could sail on the land and walk on the sea” (2 Macc 5:21). A bit later, between the time of Our Lord’s ministry and Matthew’s composition, the notorious Caligula had a temporary bridge built across the Bay of Naples, 50 km long, to enable him to cross on foot— since it was more appropriate for a god to walk over water rather than to wallow in a boat.

So the scene where Our Lord walks on water would have reminded ancient readers both of the prerogatives of divine power, and of human presumption. As to the first, divinity is also invoked by Our Lord’s response to the fearful disciples, “It is I.” While this phrase could be Our Lord just saying who he is, it is the same as the “I am” that appears in the Old Testament as divine speech, and more clearly in John’s Gospel as a divine self-announcement. The disciples acclaim Our Lord as “Son of God,” this doesn’t come from nowhere.

The Our Lord who walks on water is not only a “Son of God,” but a more legitimate ruler than Antiochus or Caligula. This is clearer in Matthew than in our lectionary excerpts; we have jumped over another story of tyranny, of Herod Antipas (son of that other Herod from Matthew’s nativity) and the death of John the Baptist (14:1-11), which set up a contrast that Our Lord fulfilled in the miraculous feeding story, a compassionate leader juxtaposed with a greedy self-serving one. So when Our Lord, immediately after that story of violence, multiplies the loaves and now walks on water, Matthew shows him to be as a legitimate, effective, and compassionate ruler for Israel, in contrast to the oppressive conduct of the Herods and to the pretensions of Antiochus or Caligula.

The walking on water story is not just a demonstration of power over nature then, although it is that; Our Lord is pointing towards the true Messiah, whose rule promises plenty and freedom in place of the familiar exploitation and war. The stilling of the waves represents power over nature, but also the promise of care for God’s people.

Matthew is also giving special attention to Peter, given the apostle’s subsequent role in the earliest Christian movement. The disciples and the twelve are presented as a group growing in faith and understanding. The growth is not easy, there is no simple walk to wisdom or strength, and crises a-plenty are still to come— but they progress in being called to follow, trust, and participate in what Our Lord is doing. The disciples function within the narrative itself as the key audience to the Gospel, modelling how readers might respond to the message of the reign of heaven in Our Lord as they did. Despite the most monumental failure still to come, they will ultimately receive the task of Our Lord’s mission.

This story is the first time Peter becomes a sort of representative disciple, providing what is needed when the reader might be asking “what do I do?” Something similar—again not idealizing him at all—will recur in the Transfiguration story and in the prediction of the Passion. Peter is emerging as personal embodiment of what the disciples have been learning across these events, parables, etc., inexpert as he may be. His suitably inexpert walk on the water shows that Christian discipleship, like the disciples’ participation in the feeding story (14:19), means imitating Our Lord in his own self-giving love.

At the end the disciples “worshipped him.” We badly misuse this word. Worship doesn’t actually mean waving hands around or lots of words, it doesn’t mean musical performances – it means devotion or obedience. However, sacramental worship, the mass, has a particular claim to being “worship” because we do this in obedience to him. 

In the boat however, the disciples are not curating, nor performing, nor undertaking ritual; the word prosekunēsan translated here as “worship” means they are prostrating themselves. Flat on their faces, they embody their own dim but growing understanding of this mysterious one who controls even weather, and whose service is not ecstasy or ritual but justice. It must have been a funny sight in the floor of a boat. Their joy as well as their apprehension anticipates their future as actual “worship leaders,” that is, people who will serve him in building community, proclaiming the reign of heaven, and giving themselves for his sake and for the sake of the world he came to rule and save. Sometimes they too may even walk on water.

Based in part on a reflection by the Rev’d Andrew McGowan.

The Lord of Miracles – 2 August, 2026

Sometimes we hear stories such as, “so-and-so were in a car accident and should have died, but they walked away without a scratch. It’s a miracle. God must have been protecting them for some purpose,” or “I prayed that the cancer would go away and it did. It was a miracle,” or “Please God, grant us a miracle and help the Port get into the finals.” Such stories reveal a worldview in which God sometimes acts exceptionally outside of the ordinary: and only for those who have enough faith. But this way of interpretating miracles is not what our Christian miracle stories, like the feeding of the more than five thousand in our Gospel today, are about.

But let’s think about miracles. Miracles happen around us still in different ways. A dead man rose again; people marvelled. By contrast, numerous babies are born every day, and no one marvels. If only we would reflect upon life more carefully, we would come to see that it is a greater miracle for a child to be given existence who before did not exist, than for a man to come back to life who already existed. People hold cheap what they see every day of their lives, but suddenly, confronted by extraordinary events, they are dumbfounded, though these events are truly no more wonderful than the others. Holding the universe together, for example, is a greater miracle than feeding five thousand people with loaves of bread, but no one marvels at it. People marvel at the feeding of the five thousand not because this miracle is greater, but because it is out of the ordinary. Who is even now providing nourishment for whole world if it be not the God who creates a field of wheat from a few seeds?

But back to the Gospel. The Gospel miracle stories are not about showcasing Our Lord as a man with special powers. Instead, they show the coming of the kingdom of God. Yes, Our Lord acts in miraculous and non-miraculous ways, just like other wonderworkers. However, unlike many others, Our Lord’s miracles point beyond themselves. They point beyond him. They express a God-centric, not Jesus-centric, worldview. Our Lord himself is God-centric: always looking to God, praying to God, and following God’s call to him. Miracle stories do not typically happen as a reward to someone’s faith. Instead, they make the presence and power of the kingdom of God visible to everyone, whether they believe the story, or not.

A few important points about how these stories operate in the gospels. First, the people for whom Matthew’s gospel was written were expecting the end of time to happen soon: within their lifetime. Miracle stories here were told in part as a manifestation of the fulfillment of such expectations. Secondly, each miracle portrays an act of God in Our Lord to deliver humans from something posing a threat to authentic life: to restore the person to the state God had intended in the creation of birth. In this, each miracle exposes a separation from God, from our truest selves, and the need for salvation of many kinds: from sickness, thirst, hunger, demonic possession, being without purpose, natural disasters, and of course from sin and death. Finally, each miracle tells us something about the life, death, and resurrection of Our Lord and holds this up to us in a shining, concise narrative. Think about it. It is breathtaking.

We can see this in our Gospel story today. Our Lord withdraws to a deserted place by himself, but the crowds follow him. Our Lord has compassion for them and cures the sick among them. Here, he delivers a multitude of humanity from sickness and returns them to their true selves: healed and restored to community. This takes a long time. So long that the hour is late and the disciples want to send the crowd off.

Our Lord surprises them by saying, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Isn’t that interesting? Our Lord does not say that he will give them something to eat but tells the disciples “You give them something to eat,” thus inviting the disciples into this miracle as well, knowing that God provides for human life. It does not matter that these people are poor, desperate, tired, and do not have much to offer in return. The disciples are tasked to give food to everyone, regardless of social status. It is not a transactional relationship. God asks nothing in return.

The disciples are like the children who go into the kitchen, open the refrigerator and say, “There’s nothing to eat!” So, Our Lord takes the five loaves and two fish and he focuses on God. He looks up to heaven, the place of God the Father; he blesses and breaks the loaves; and he gives them back to the disciples. The same actions we will do today at the altar. Then the disciples give the bread to the crowds, where everyone eats their fill, with twelve baskets left over.

Our Lord calls the disciples, and us, to dream bigger. He entrusted the disciples to work together to feed the crowd, and he calls upon us to do the same.

“You give them something to eat” is the heart of this miracle. Our Lord is saying those words to us today, just as clearly as he said them to his disciples on the deserted shores of the far side of the Sea of Galilee all those centuries ago. There is a hungry world out there, and it is our responsibility, our duty, to feed them. This hunger is both spiritual and physical. And although it may look like there’s not enough bread to go around, the miracle we recounted today teaches us that, in fact, if we should open our eyes, we will see that there is enough – that God has already provided enough bread to feed every last person on earth. It just depends on how you divide it up.

We are invited into this miracle story. We are reminded yet again that God provides for human life, and we must respond.

How many times have we been given blessed nourishment, salvation of some kind, and not passed it along to people who needed it? Our Lord passes the bread to the disciples, who pass it on to the crowd, and then the miracle happens.

As often as we take the Eucharist, we re-enact Our Lord’s feast on the lakeshore. Just like on that day, Our Lord takes our bread, blesses it, breaks it, and shares it with all who are hungry. And he is calling us to do the same with our lives – take the blessings God has given, break them open, and share them with others. 

Our Lord is holding the loaves and fishes out to you. Someone is waiting for you to share the blessing, to be invited into the miracle.

What will you do?

Based partly on a sermon by the Rev’d Danae Ashley of Seattle.