Month: August 2026

The text: Matthew 16:13–20
Today we are faced with the most important question in life that any human being will ever have to answer: Just who is Jesus? Our Lord asks us that very question in our text – the fact that he asks it twice shows its importance. ‘Who do the people say that the Son of Man is?’
The disciples answer: ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ Some people thought that Jesus was John the Baptist, who had come to prepare the way for the Saviour. Others thought Jesus was one of many Old Testament prophets who had promised a Saviour would come. The people had many different ideas of who Jesus was, but none of them recognised Jesus’ divine nature. The religious leaders of the day even believed the opposite, claiming Jesus’ power was from the devil because he ate with sinners and did not give ‘good’ people their due recognition but challenged the religious establishment. Some thought he was a great teacher or a perfect example to
follow. That’s some of the things people say about Jesus today. Most people today believe Jesus existed – but they have very different ideas about his identity, such as the Christadelphians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims or Jews. They believe in Jesus; that is, they believe some historical truths about him. But James reminds us in a very chilling way that we are not to have a kind of historical belief in Jesus. James writes to the Jewish Christians scattered throughout the empire, and in chapter 2 of his letter says: ‘You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that
– and shudder’.
So Jesus says to the disciples: ‘Who do you say I am?’ He asks us that question too.
Peter answers, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’. The other answers had talked about a Saviour who was coming. But Peter saw Jesus as the Saviour who was right there with him in the present moment. Peter looked at Jesus and saw God standing before him; the living Lord who became truly human like us to be the
sacrifice to pay for the sin of the world, and to defeat death itself by rising from it.
Peter doesn’t just believe things about Jesus, he trusts in Jesus as his saving Lord in the present moment.
‘Who do you say that I am?’ Through today’s gospel reading Jesus is still asking that same question to you and me. ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Be careful how you answer! Jesus isn’t just asking: ‘Do you think I’m alive?’ Jesus wants to know: ‘Am I the living Lord of your life?’ There is a difference between believing things about Jesus, and trusting in him as the Lord of your life. ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Jesus asks. ‘Am I indeed the living Lord of your life? Or am I just some ancient dead guy whose body disintegrated long ago in the sands of Palestine?’
Jesus doesn’t only call us to believe stuff about him, but to daily trust in him as our saving God. There is a difference between believing things about Jesus and trusting in Jesus as the ever-present living Lord of every moment of our life. Luther’s explanation to the first commandment ‘You shall have no other gods’ attends to this distinction: ‘We are to fear (respect), love and trust God above anything else’.
This is an important point for all the commandments are related to this one. How we regard the commandments as God’s word and will, then, will reveal the level of regard we have for Jesus.
I think that one of our strengths as Lutherans is our focus on grace – that there is nothing a person can do to make themselves right with God or earn his love or forgiveness; that he loves us unconditionally and he has paid for our sins – through Christ alone. There is nothing I could do that would change his love for me.
Perhaps one of our weaknesses as Lutherans is our focus on grace – that is, when grace is our only focus. Perhaps we read ‘there is nothing I could do that would change God’s love for me’ as meaning ‘there is nothing I need to do’. Perhaps we hear that God loves us unconditionally and has saved us by grace as meaning ‘It really doesn’t then matter how I live’. But when we forget God’s law, we forget the specific ways in which we as humans sin. We fall into the temptation of explaining away our sin. ‘I was just having a bad day’ or ‘They deserved it’. Or we might relabel our wrongdoing in more acceptable language – for example, harmful gossip becomes ‘helpful information’, and jokes that put others down are ‘just a bit of fun’, while those who are offended should just lighten up – even though through the eighth commandment God calls us to defend the reputation of our brothers and sisters, congregational leaders, and even our pastors, whether they be in conversation down the street, our discussions around the kitchen table, or at a public meeting, and to explain their actions in the kindest possible way.
When we lose a correct focus on the gospel by focusing only on the gospel, we
can easily slip into the habit of justifying our sinful thoughts, words and deeds by explaining how it doesn’t matter if we’ve broken God’s commandments – and even to say they don’t apply to us in particular situations. As someone said to me recently: ‘I know it’s wrong, but …’ And I felt like saying, ‘You were going really well there until you said “but”’.
When we fall into this temptation, I think we risk regarding Jesus as little more than John the Baptist or one of the prophets, because, if we explain away our sin, we forget how urgently we need Jesus’ saving help. We make a Saviour out of ourselves by justifying ourselves. Today, Jesus asks us, in effect: ‘Who am I in your life? Even though you call me “Lord”, am I really Lord of your life?

The Text: Matthew 15:21-28

She was desperate. You could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. The urgency, the fear verging on panic, the despair. Her little girl was suffering from demon possession.
We don’t know more than that. How long had it been? What were the symptoms?
But our idle curiosity will not be satisfied. Matthew tells us only as much as we need to know. She was a desperate Canaanite woman seeking help for her daughter. Jesus was in town. He’d gone to the coast with His disciples, to the region of Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean. This wasn’t Israelite territory, it was Canaanite land. Ca- naanites were named after the descendants of Cain, the son of Adam who had mur- dered his brother, Abel. Canaanites were those people that were supposed to have been purged from the land under Joshua. Israelites hated Canaanites. The animosity was mutual. The Israelites called the Canaanites “dogs.” ‘Filthy dogs’, if you really wanted to drive home the point. We don’t know what the Canaanites called the Israelites.
She heard that Jesus had come to town. She’d heard the reports that were going around about His power to heal and cast out demons. There was a faint ray of hope.
She sees Jesus and goes running after Him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Son of David is an Israelite way of speaking. The Israelites knew that the messiah would come from the house of David to establish his throne. Son of David, she called Jesus. A Canaanite speaking like an Israelite. Maybe if Jesus mistook her for one of His own countrymen he would help her.
It’s kind of clever, actually. Talk like an Israelite and maybe Jesus will do you a favour.
Some people think in those terms. Do you? Some people try to transact with God in prayer, trying to negotiate a favour. Do you? People like to get all “religious” when they pray. Pile on those religious phrases higher and deeper, thinking God will be im- pressed and do what you ask. Do you?
Jesus meets her pleas with stony silence. “He did not answer her a word.” Nothing. Silence. And she keeps on calling out to Him, over and over again. “Son of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, have mercy on
me.” To the point where the disciples who are with Jesus say, “Lord, she’s driving us nuts. Tell her to get out of here!”
What would you have done? Jesus, your last hope, greets you with silence. He turns His back on you in your need. He turns a deaf ear to your heartfelt prayer. He slams the door in your face, and His friends give you a kick for good measure. What would you have done? Left? Maybe shoot an obscene gesture? Go and find another healer, another religion, or at least another congregation? What do you do with this sort of Jesus?
And then Jesus speaks. He doesn’t really speak to her directly. He just speaks, reminding her of who she is, and who she isn’t. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
Ouch! It doesn’t get much harsher than that, does it? Sorry, I’m busy. Sorry, I’m not here for you. Sorry, you’ll have to go somewhere else, I can’t be bothered with you and your problems. If His silence didn’t do the trick, that should have settled it for this woman. It’s a dead end. Jesus isn’t going to help you.
But she keeps persisting and pressing and praying. She comes up to Jesus, this man
 who had just said He hadn’t come for her, and she kneels down at His feet. “Lord, help me.” No more Son of David pseudo-Israelite talk. Just a simple prayer for mercy:
Lord, help me. It doesn’t get more basic than that. No religious fluff, no charades.
Jesus seems unmoved, hard, cold, uncaring. “It’s not right,” He says. “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” His silence was bad enough. His harsh statement about His being sent only to the lost sheep of Israel was even worse.
But this was worst of all. A dog. He called her a dog. A “little doggie,” yes, but a dog, nonetheless. She’d heard that slur in the marketplace, on the street corner, from the mouths of the Israelite men as they spit. But from Jesus?
And what about this Jesus? What do you think of Him? What would you have done if He called you a dog in your hour of need? This isn’t the kind of compassionate Saviour we picture in our minds and our hymns and our art. This Jesus is mean, uncaring, un moved. This woman isn’t even asking anything for herself, she’s asking for her helpless little girl. The only thing that Jesus seems to notice is that she isn’t an Israelite.
But she is undeterred. She won’t let Jesus off the hook that easily. His calling her a dog gives her the opening she is looking for. “Yes, Lord, Canaanite dog I may be. Call me whatever you wish. It’s true, there’s no way around that. I’m a dog. I’ll accept that.
Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters ’table.”
Did you hear that? Did you catch that unreasonable line of reasoning? She accepts Jesus’ word on her, that she’s nothing more than a yapping dog bugging Him on His way and that He really wasn’t even sent to the likes of her, and yet she finds in all that a handhold for faith. Even the dogs get to lick the crumbs off the floor. And what glo- rious and wonderful crumbs they are when they fall from this Master’s table!
The next word from Jesus is praise. He loves it. This is music to His ears. Faith talk! Trust!
“O woman, great is your faith.” No longer as a dog, now Jesus addresses her with dignity and respect. “O woman.” He commends her faith, in the hearing of HIs disciples who do not yet understand faith. They think they’re the big men hanging out with Je-
sus. They don’t get it. She does. Faith clings to Jesus even when Jesus seems to have turned His back on you. Faith clings to Jesus even when He looks you in the eye and says, “I haven’t come for you.” Faith clings to Jesus even when He calls you a dog.
Faith hears “yes” inside of God’s “no” and trusts. Faith holds Jesus to who He is Saviour and Redeemer. O woman, great is your faith.
This is not meant to get you to look at your faith and size up your believing. It’s intended to get your eyes off yourself and onto Jesus. Your faith is only as good and as strong as the Jesus it clings to. The woman’s faith, her trust in Jesus, was vindicated.
“Let it be done for you as you desire.” He is for her, and for her daughter, after all.
Though she’s a Canaanite, yet through faith she is a daughter of Abraham, as Paul explains in Romans. Jesus is Son of David, even for her. His Word is solid and sure. Her daughter was healed instantly.
Prayer isn’t like instant porridge. Some get put on hold. But when God puts you on hold, as Jesus put that poor woman on hold, it doesn’t mean He has abandoned you.
It might mean that Jesus wants to put your faith on display so that the world would understand what faith in Jesus looks like. It looks like a dog lapping up crumbs falling from the master’s table. And if that comes as a blow to your ego, good! Our ego, that old Adam in us, needs that. We call it repentance, that change in mind from self to God.
There really is no shortcut to faith like that of the Canaanite woman. There is only going off-road with Jesus, together with all the twists and turns that life under His cross entails. It may be the surprise of sickness, or demonized daughters, or silence, or a harsh “no”, or being humbled. It may mean waiting patiently for the resurrection while feeling like a dog most of the time. To the world’s way of looking at things, life under the cross of Jesus can be a dog’s life, but the crumbs that fall from that table are rich in-
deed His Body and Blood giving you forgiveness, life, and salvation. A dog never had it so good.
In the name of Jesus,
Amen

The Text: Matthew 14:22-33
Dear heavenly Father, send your Holy Spirit on us so when facing storms in our life,
we may have courage and not be afraid knowing your Son Jesus Christ is with us.Amen.
There are some things you can do.
There are some things you can’t do.
And sometimes they’re the same thing!
Now, before you think I’m talking in riddles (and perhaps I am), I’d like you to think how many times Jesus tells his disciples to do things they shouldn’t be able to do.
And then, even if they should be able to do what he asks, they often fail in their task.
For example, just before today’s reading Jesus asked the disciples to feed five
thousand men (plus women and children). The disciples naturally complained they didn’t have enough to feed them. It’s too hard. They can’t do it. It seems they failed Jesus’ test.
But in the next moment, Jesus blessed a small pile of bread and fish, gave it to the disciples to distribute it (after all, he told them to feed the people), and after everyone was fed, there were still twelve baskets of left-over food.
This is amazing! Miraculous! Unbelievable! Even though they couldn’t do it, with Jesus’ help, they did it!
Then, in today’s text (which comes immediately after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand), Jesus told them to cross over to the other side of the lake by boat while Jesus said goodbye to the crowds and went off by himself to pray.
But during the night the winds and waves came to torment his disciples while they were in the middle of the lake. Here in the dark they’re alone, afraid, and tortured by the scary and chaotic storm. Then, to top it off, just when they didn’t think it could get any worse, Jesus walks toward them on the water!
Now, before you criticise the disciples’ frightened reaction when they saw Jesus, what would you think?
I mean, if you’ve been taught your whole life to be afraid of the sea because it’s a chaotic place filled with pagan gods and demons and evil spirits, and you believe you’re under demonic attack by these chaotic winds and waves this whole night, and then, you see a man walking toward you on those waves, what do you think your reaction would be like?
Maybe you’d squeal like frightened little girls like they did! They thought Jesus was a ghost or a phantom walking toward them to finish them off!
But then Jesus spoke to them. The words he spoke are good to memorise and
paste on your walls at home.
Unfortunately, the words he spoke are often watered down a little in our
translations. Literally, Jesus says something like: ‘Be encouraged’ as if he’s
commanding courage to fill their frightened hearts so they can stand firm in the face of evil and chaos. We too wouldn’t mind a bit of courage to stand firm in the face of persecutions and struggles at times.
He also says: ‘I am’, echoing the holy name of God of ‘I AM WHO I AM’ as once
announced to a frightened Moses before he led the Israelites out of Egypt. This is the same ‘I Am’ who is the Bread of Life, the Light of the world, the Good Shepherd, and the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This is the One who says ‘I Am with you to the end of the age’ at our baptism.
And then he says: ‘Don’t be afraid’ as if to order their fear to stop, just like he soon orders the wind and the waves to stop.
Wouldn’t it be good to not be afraid of what people think, or to not be afraid of
failing, or to not be afraid of what people will say or do to us, or to not be afraid of the troubles we face in life, or to not be afraid of sickness or death?
So, in their distress Jesus tells them: ‘Be encouraged! I am! Don’t be afraid!’ These words are a command, an assurance, and a promise of salvation despite the storm.
Now, coming back to doing what we can and can’t do at the same time, Peter
has the nerve to ask Jesus to command him to go toward Jesus on the water,
thereby doing what only Jesus as Lord of heaven and earth could do.
Now, you’d think this is something Peter can’t do. Even though Jesus seemed to defy the laws of nature, a human can’t walk on water!
Yet Jesus gave him a simple command: ‘Come!’
Amazingly, miraculously, and unbelievably, Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus! He shouldn’t be able to do it, but he was doing it!
Wouldn’t you have loved to see the faces of the other disciples!
But again, we can’t do what we can do. Peter is soon distracted by the wind and sinks. He calls out for Jesus to save him as the chaotic sea begins to swallow him up. Jesus reaches out his hand and saves Peter before commenting on his little faith and doubt.
In a sense, Peter is a symbol of all believers.
You see, we’re at the same time we’re full of faith and unfaith. We can both do
wonderful things, yet we also completely fail at times. We can love exceedingly generously and graciously, and yet we can viciously hate and abuse each other.
We can be incredibly selfless and yet be extraordinarily selfish. We can be filled with hope and joy and yet flounder in the despairing depths of hopelessness. Even the strongest person of faith will also experience times of doubt and fear.
Therefore, the cry of Peter to Jesus: ‘Lord, save me!’ is the cry of both the strong disciple who can do miraculous things, as well as the miserable sinner who struggles with doubt, despair, and confusion.
We cry out to Jesus as the only One who can save us from sin, from the devil, and from death itself. Even when we can’t reach out to him (because it’s something we both can and can’t do for ourselves), he’s the One who reaches out to us. In this way, instead of us being able to cling to him, he’s the One who clings to us and holds us safe.
In our world today there are many things which torment us in the storms of life and faith. We need his encouragement, the assurance of his presence, and for him to calm our fears.
The storms we face (which often make us afraid) could come in the forms of
school studies or excessive workloads. It could come from peer pressure or bullying.
It could come from unrealistic expectations of ourselves or from those around us. It could be the upheaval from changes in our circumstances.
It could also be struggles with family, friends, or even church members. It could be coping with human frailty as we get older and fear being a burden on others. It could be political or economic struggles as we face the storms of dissent or deception as we make a stand for God’s view of marriage or gender over public
opinion. It could even be the inevitable storm of death – either our own or one of our loved ones.
All the time we may struggle with what we can and can’t do.
While we all know we can look to Jesus Christ alone for strength, for hope, for life and salvation, we struggle to do this. It’s both something we can and can’t do!
Every time we attempt to keep our attention firmly fixed on Jesus Christ alone by our own powers, we find ourselves distracted by all the fears and problems of this world. In some ways, fear drives us to Jesus, but fear can also drive us away from
him. Now, of course we can always pray that God would take our storms away so we could live in peace and harmony now and into eternity, but he doesn’t always do so.
While the winds did die down when Jesus got into the boat, the storm was still
raging while Jesus and Peter walked on the water. God also chose not to remove the storm of the cross from Jesus either. Jesus walked through the storms of apathy, ignorance, abuse, whippings, beard pulling, and death in order to give us forgiveness, peace and life.
While God doesn’t always take the storms away, he promises to be with us in those storms. As we face the waves of hostility, the winds of guilt and shame, the howls of health problems, and even the final storm of death, Jesus calls out to each of us:
‘Be encouraged! I am! Don’t be afraid!’
The great ‘I AM’ of the Old Testament is here with us. Just like he was with those troubled people of the past who both could and couldn’t do what was required of them, he is also with us.
By ourselves we can’t survive the storms of life without fear, or have faith in a loving God who allows trouble to visit us, or even love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind or strength. You can’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s impossible.
But Jesus comes near to give us courage to endure those storms. Not only this, but through faith he empowers us through his Spirit to do what we can’t do by
ourselves.
Jesus comes near to assure us the ‘I AM WHO I AM’; the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Elijah; is here with us and won’t let us face our battles alone.
He comes near so that, even if the storms rage around us, we’re no longer afraid of them. Even if we feel ourselves flounder, Jesus is the one who reaches out to save us and restore us through his forgiveness, grace, mercy, peace, and life.
While we can’t cope and do all these things alone, with God’s help we can. We
can endure courageously. We can have faith. We can have peace and hope in
the face of life’s storms and evil and death.
Yes, there are many times we’ll feel we can’t live by faith alone, and those storms will blow fiercely and we’ll be afraid, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, who is the presence of the living Lord Jesus, we can endure. It’s something we both can and can’t do at the same time.
Therefore, no matter what storms any of us are facing at this time, let’s keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Let’s be encouraged. The ‘I AM’ is with us. Don’t be afraid.
And it’s in this way that the peace of God, which surpasses all human, will continue to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen

The Text: Matthew 14:13-21
What do you have? Do you have a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, clothes
to wear and food to eat? Do you have a car or have access to some form of
transportation? Do you have a bank account and does it have any money in it?
What luxury items do you have and what other odds and ends are lying around
your place? Could you pack all of your possessions into a suitcase or would you
need a removalist van to make a shift?
In 1964 Donald Horne, a Sydney journalist, referred to Australia as the ‘lucky
country’. This phrase stuck and has since been used to describe everything from our
weather and wide-open spaces to our overall quality of life. Many don’t realise
Horne’s quote has been taken out of context. He actually said: ‘Australia is a lucky
country, run by second-rate people who share its luck’.
You may sometimes think the people running our country are still second rate, but
most of us would agree that we are blessed to live here. Australia consistently ranks
in the top countries in the world in terms of our quality of life. It has always been
seen as a land of opportunity, a desirable destination for migrants and refugees
alike who are seeking to start a new life.
But there are still the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ in our society. The gap between
the richest people in the land and the poorest is significant. Where do we see
ourselves on the wealth spectrum? Is it easier for us to focus on what we have or on
what we do not have?
Our Gospel reading deals with the very well-known incident in the life of Jesus where
he miraculously fed a crowd of thousands. It features in all four Gospel accounts –
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which is why it is very familiar to us.
Jesus had just heard news of the death of John the Baptist so he had withdrawn to
a remote place to regroup and grieve. But the crowds came from the surrounding
towns and followed him out there. Despite his grief, Jesus had compassion on them
and still set about healing their sick. The day passed and evening came. Jesus had
met their needs and it was time for the people to go home and get some dinner.
But Jesus said they didn’t have to go away and he instructed his disciples to feed
them.
The disciples didn’t have the resources to feed this large crowd – 5,000 men, with
the women and children to be added to this number. In addition to this, it wasn’t
actually required. You could see this as an ‘unnecessary miracle’. This wasn’t a life
or death situation of poverty-related hunger. The people could easily go and get
their own food.
No one asked to be fed. No one expected to be fed. There was no need.
But Jesus insisted. He took the food they had – five loaves of bread and two fish –
and miraculously turned it into a meal that fed all of the crowd of thousands. There
were more leftovers than what they had to begin with. So what is the moral of the
story?
Is it a call for us to meet the needs of our hungry world – ‘you give them something
to eat’? When you think of what we do have here in Australia then it is easy to see
this miracle as an encouragement to share what we have with those less fortunate
than us.
It is easy to use this account to focus on what we have, to be reminded of how
richly blessed we are in comparison to elsewhere in the world. The moral then
becomes one of counting your blessings and sharing your blessings. No one is going
to arc up about such a conclusion. It’s only fair and reasonable to expect us to give
from what we have, whatever that is.
Only…that’s not our text! It is not how the story played out.
What did the disciples have? They had nothing really – only five loaves of bread
and two fish. And in John’s account we hear that even this meagre amount wasn’t
what they had at all. It belonged to a boy (John 6:8-9). This miracle is not about
getting us to give from what we have. There is nothing especially miraculous about
that. We do that all the time to varying degrees: depending on our generosity and
on the perceived need.
Most of us are moved to give from what we have when we hear about an urgent
need: a severe famine in Africa; a child requiring life-saving surgery; a natural
disaster that devastates a community. We respond to these crises and so we should!
But again that’s not what our text is on about.
In the Old Testament book of 1 Kings (17:7f) we hear of how the prophet Elijah
miraculously provided oil and flour for the widow at Zarephath [pronounced Zar-eh-
fath]. On that occasion, the life of the widow and her son were at stake. With the
feeding miracle in our Gospel account there was no such crisis; no life was at stake.
There was nothing urgent or special about the situation.
As the disciples said: the crowd ‘can go to the villages and buy themselves some
food’. It is because the miracle is so unnecessary that you start to wonder why Jesus
did it and what is he trying to teach through it.
The natural order of things is that we take care of ourselves. We try and get
ourselves to the point of self-sufficiency; to the point where we have enough. If we
have more than enough for ourselves then we can share. But this mindset and
natural order of things is such a limiting one really. It is limited not only by what we
have but also by what we are willing to release, to let go of what we have. And we
are notoriously bad at doing that.
This miraculous feeding occurred once the disciples realised what they didn’t have;
that they had nothing to offer. In Matthew’s Gospel account, we see the greatest
miracles occur when people bring with them the least. It isn’t what we have that
makes us effective disciples in God’s kingdom.
Earlier the religious leaders presented their credentials to John the Baptist by saying:
‘we have Abraham as our father’ (Matthew 3:9). But John wasn’t overly impressed
with that, telling them that God could produce children from stones. It isn’t about
what we have but about what God can do with what we don’t have.
We see this throughout Jesus’ ministry. He was brought those who had diseases,
those who had severe pain, those who had demon possession, those who had
seizures, those who had blindness and those who had paralysis (Matthew 4:24;
15:30). It is not the greatest list of attributes to bring to the table; and yet Jesus
healed them all.
For, what did Jesus have? In the world’s terms he didn’t seem to have much at all.
He told his followers: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has
no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). So he didn’t have a roof over his head.
And when he came to Jerusalem to claim his throne as king all he had was a
borrowed donkey (Matthew 21:3).
But he did have authority: he had the authority to teach the truths of God’s
kingdom (Matthew 7:29) and he had the authority to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6). And
in the lead up to this latest miracle we see that he had compassion on the large
crowd that had come out to see him (Matthew 14:14). We have a God who loves
us and cares for us. We have a God who wants to give us each day our daily
bread. We have a God who wants to heal our hurts and bring us life and make us
whole. It turns out that he doesn’t need a whole lot or even anything from us in
order to make these things happen.
So what do we need to have? We need to have ‘ears that hear’ (Matt.13:43); that
is, the ability to perceive that God’s kingdom follows a different pattern to that of
the world. And we need to have ‘faith as small as a mustard seed’ (Matt.17:20).
And God has provided even these to us because we don’t have them naturally. For
even when we have so little (or nothing at all) God can still move mountains. God
can use us to feed the hungry and heal the broken through what he provides,
rather than through what we have. God will see to it that his kingdom comes, on
earth as it is in heaven. Amen.