Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and God's righteousness,
and all these things will be added unto you.
Hallelujah.
As can it shall be given unto you, see can it shall fight.
Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Hallelujah.
We shall not live by bread alone, but by every word,
every word that proceeds from the vow of God.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Glorious God, your generosity floods the world with goodness, and you share our creation with abundance.
Awaken in us a hunger for food to satisfy both body and heart, then in the miracle of being fed we may be empowered to feed the hungry.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Psalm 145, 8-9, 14-21.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and His compassion is over all that He has made.
The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food and do season.
You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing. The Lord is just in all His ways, and kind in all His doings.
The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills the desire of all who fear Him.
He also hears their cry, and saves them. The Lord watches over all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy.
My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless His holy name forever and ever.
Let us pray. Holy God, we thank You for Your majesty in all creation.
We thank You for Your presence from everlasting to everlasting. We thank You for being here with us in this moment.
Lord, we know that You do see, and You do know the needs of the people that are listening here.
And You hear their prayers spoken now, silent or uttered or cried or groaned or celebrated.
Hear them, O Lord, in their time of need. O Lord, we know that there are those listening here now who are in terrible grief and terrible pain.
We have those listening whose hearts are breaking, who are worried over the illnesses of loved ones that are so dear to them.
And Lord, sometimes all they can do is stand by and be a presence of love there. But Lord, help them to realize how important being Your agent, Your vessel of love to people is.
And that over all You are a God of love and bathe the suffering in that love and ultimately have a dwelling place for us that is a place of love.
God, some who are listening are the caregivers and are worn thin from looking out for others.
God, give them strength and give them rest for their worryness. Refresh them with Your own spirit.
O God, we adore You. You are too mighty and wonderful for us to understand.
But do help us understand Your gift of presence that You give to us in all these trials of earth, even when we forget to say thank You.
We thank You that You gave us in Your Son, Jesus Christ, one who will be there despite the darkness and the fog in life that that Son, Your Son, Lord, will shine through and even the darkest and gloomiest of nights and the foggiest of days.
Thank You for giving us this path to follow. Thank You, Lord, for giving us Your Spirit, this Holy Spirit that comforts us in all our needs.
Lord, we also pray for DisciplesNed in its ministry. Please help us to share the gifts of ministry that we all have.
Help us to connect with people so that we may change inspiration through that sharing of the common bond of the Holy Spirit that You give us all.
Lord, all these things we ask now, in the name of Jesus, Your Son, who prayed this prayer.
Our Father, the Word of God, our Father, the God of the United Kingdom, for anything you know, I will be there on earth as it is in heaven.
And believe us, our heads, and as we believe in our heads. And believe us not into the nation, but as we live for us as one people, for the night is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever on earth.
This righteousness, we humbled Himself and carried the cross. Love's so amazing. Love's so amazing.
Jesus Messiah, Name of all things, Blessed Redeemer, Emmanuel, to rescue for sinners.
Ransom from heaven, Jesus Messiah, Lord of all.
His body, the bread, His blood, the wine, we're getting poured out, all of them, and all earth trembled, and the veil was torn.
Love's so amazing. Love's so amazing.
Jesus Messiah, Name of all things, Blessed Redeemer, Emmanuel, to rescue for sinners.
Ransom from heaven, Jesus Messiah, Lord of all.
Jesus Messiah, Lord of all.
After this, Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee, that is the Sea of Tiberias.
And a large crowd followed Him, because they had seen the miraculous signs He had done among the sick.
Jesus went up the mountain and sat there with His disciples. It was nearly time for Passover, the Jewish festival.
Jesus looked up and saw the large crowd coming towards Him. He asked Philip, Where will we buy food to feed these people?
Jesus said this to test him, for he already knew what he was going to do.
Philip replied, More than a half year's salary, worth of food wouldn't be enough for each person to have even a little bit.
One of His disciples, Andrew, that Simon Peter's brother said, A youth here has five barley loaves and two fish.
But what good is that for a crowd like this?
Jesus said, Have the people sat down? There was plenty of grass there.
They sat down, about five thousand of them. Then Jesus took the bread.
When He had given thanks, He distributed it to those who were sitting there.
He did the same with the fish, each getting as much as they wanted.
When they had had plenty to eat, He said to His disciples, Gather up the leftover pieces, so that nothing will be wasted.
So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves that had been left over by those who had eaten.
When the people saw that He had done a miraculous sign, they said, This is truly the prophet who's coming into the world.
Jesus understood that they were about to come and force Him to be their king.
So He took refuge again, alone on the mountain.
Today's story is one of the miracle stories from the Gospels.
To be sure the word miracle never occurs in the Bible, to describe when God steps in and does something which is not according to the natural order.
When God supersedes natural law.
It happens when God makes the day last longer in Joshua 10.
And it happens again when God made the shadow of the sun stay on the stairs longer than it usually did in Isaiah 39 and 40.
And it happened when Jesus turned the water into wine at Cana.
And frankly, every time it happens, every time the Bible talks about it, it makes some folks with modern sensibilities kind of uncomfortable.
One explanation that I remember hearing from way back when I was in Sunday school goes something like this.
What happened on that day on the hill was a greater miracle.
It's a miracle of people's minds and hearts being changed.
What happened was that a lot of folks actually brought stuff with them to eat.
And they were planning on keeping it to themselves.
But when people saw the generosity of the young boy, their consciences were pricked.
And they put away their selfishness and opened their supplies.
And in the end, there was so much more that after all the people had eaten, there was a whole bunch left over.
And the moral of the story is, well, shouldn't we soften our hearts and give what we have and we'll be amazed at the excess when we do.
It's true that God sometimes does rely on us to make things happen.
There are a lot of things that will only happen in this world when we pick up God's agenda and we act on it.
There are amazing things the church can do when we combine our seemingly small resources,
giving what we have, even when that appears completely inadequate, and we let God use it.
Whatever our modern minds are comfortable with,
John wishes to emphasize the divinity of Christ and the acts of God that are taking place.
In the end, it's not about solving our modern sensibilities.
It's about what God is doing in our world.
It's about focusing not just on the reasonable, not just on the basic needs, not just on the probability,
but on the possibility of multiplying resources so that we might experience a revelation of amazing grace.
The means and methods aren't really important.
What is important is that God will supply all your need, and not only just as much as you need,
but far more than you can even imagine or ask for or even conceive of, as Paul says, to the Ephesians.
Now, just as we should not underplay the miraculous in this story, we should not understate the motivations of Jesus.
It's kind of tempting to read this story as an example of Jesus' compassion.
And then it has a feeling of communion kind of added in for added benefit when Jesus takes the bread and gives thanks
and breaks it and distributes it among the hungry people.
It's not that those elements aren't there.
It's that there's so much more there aside from that.
John draws all kinds of traditions from his people in order to connect these things to the larger story of God.
Feeding the hungry masses, calming a troubled water.
That sounds kind of familiar.
And if you read through Exodus, Moses faced some similar problems.
In the wilderness he asked God, where am I going to get meat to feed all these people?
The Exodus memories are memories of liberation and freedom, memories of promise and new life.
But this story also connects with other Old Testament stories as well.
For example, someone looking at the barley loaves that are inexplicably multiplied would remind them of the story of Elisha in 2 Kings 2.
This has connections all throughout the Old Testament as John connects Jesus with all the prophets who have gone before him.
But ironically, the longing of the people, the longing for freedom from the empire that oppresses them leads them to set their sights too short.
It's certainly understandable and human that they would see Jesus the miracle worker as a potential king.
The desire for a king, however, is too small a dream.
It falls short of God's dream for God's people.
God is not looking to simply trade one ruler for another, better one.
God is looking not to rule nations, but to rule hearts.
We must be careful, lest we in our shortsightedness confuse what we think we need with what we really need.
And not allow God to provide what God knows we actually need.
Focusing on what this miracle worker can do for us skews the reality of grace.
And it seeks to make Jesus into a genie or an errand boy.
Jesus wants to give us what we don't even realize we need yet.
At least not consciously. God knows. God knows what we need deep down in our innermost authentic human selves.
And that's why in the end, this story is not just about providing food.
It's about grace. It's about abundance. It's about abundant living in every way, in everything.
Have we asked for too little when God can give us so much more?
Can we see beyond our immediate wants and expectations?
How else will we begin to see where God is leading us?
God wants to take the five loaves and two fishes of our lives and infuse them with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Multiplying them far beyond what we could even hope for or imagine.
To feed, to clothe, to heal, to nurture, until such things like feeding 5,000 people are so commonplace
because we're experiencing miracles on such a greater scale that that is simplicity in itself.
We'll see that when the realm of God has come in full, but we have a long way to go yet.
My friends, open your hearts and your minds to the possibility that the power of God flow through you.
And you will see a multiplication of resources that is nothing short of the miraculous.
God's grace, the thought, my heart to fear, and grace my fears to live.
How precious still that grace appeared, the hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, trials, and snares I have already come.
This grace, the thought, we say thus far, and grace will lead me home.
When we've lived 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun,
we know the taste to sing God's praise, and when we must be gone.
We come together today to celebrate a very special meal.
It's the meal at the Lord's table where all are welcomed, wherever in the world we're from, wherever in the world we're going.
All who seek to know God better through Christ are invited to this table.
We celebrate with very basic things, the bread and the cup that we share every day.
And as we share these together, we remember that we are all God's children, all invited to this table.
So whether you are eating or drinking or simply sharing in this time with us right now, you are sharing in this meal.
Will you pray with me?
God of Grace, we thank you for this invitation once again to come, to eat, to drink, and to be renewed by your presence, by your love, and by the power that you give each one of us to live in the name of your Son Christ.
We thank you for this holy mystery in which you've given yourself for us.
We ask that you would open our eyes, ears, minds, every sense to be aware of your presence once again and in a fresh way today.
It's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.
We remember that on the night when Christ gave his very life, he took the bread from the table and he gave thanks for it.
He blessed it and then he broke it.
He gave it to his friends, his disciples, saying, take and eat.
This is my body of the covenant broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way when the supper was over, he took the cup from the table.
He gave thanks and blessed it and he gave it to his disciples and said, drink from this all of you.
This is my blood of the covenant poured out for you and for many.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
For as often as we eat of this bread and drink of this cup, we proclaim his life, his death and his resurrection as he comes again.
So let us share this meal together.
Eat this bread, drink this cup.
After we have never been hungry.
Eat this bread, drink this cup.
Trust in me and you will not lose.
Go out into that world with your minds and your hearts open to the miraculous power of God intersecting your life sometimes at the most unexpected moments.
Not just hoping but expecting God to infuse every day and every moment with miraculous power.
Go in the grace of God knowing that you are loved by God and that God will be going before you and beside you and after you.
Go in peace, remember the poor, love one another.
Go out into that world with your minds and your hearts open to the miraculous power of God.
