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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
The story in this morning's Gospel doesn't really begin with the story in this morning's Gospel, so we're going to go back a little bit and give some context. It actually doesn't begin at the feeding of the 5,000. It begins with a birthday party. You may not have caught this. Herod, Antipas, the empire's ruler of Galilee, threw a birthday banquet for all of his friends, for the powerful, for the wealthy, the important, right? This is actually where the story begins. And at this birthday party, a young woman dances, a king makes a reckless promise, and the head of John the Baptist is served to the king. This is where we pick up in this morning's Gospel. Now you can see how that would make some difference, right, in why Jesus withdrew. Jesus has just learned that his cousin, his beloved John, has been murdered by the king. And this is why he seeks some silence and rest so that he can pray and grieve. And this is a well-known pattern that we pick up in the Gospel of Matthew because every time the empire steps in and strikes in this way, Jesus pulls back to grieve and to rest. But the crowd wouldn't let him go. They followed him to this deserted place that he tried to seek some solitude. And they followed him to that place, and he came ashore and saw them. And Scripture says that in the midst of his grief, mind you, Scripture says that Jesus had compassion on them. And even in his profound loss, he was healing their sick. Evening came, the disciples, they started thinking practically, Lord, we should probably send these people away. We don't have anything to feed them. We don't have enough. And Jesus says to them, they don't need to go away. You feed them. The story just gets interesting and more interesting, right? We might hear that as our, this is what the Gospel is going to be preached today, that we should feed them, right? That's our commission. Jesus turns to us and says, you, you go fix the problem. You do it. But Jesus isn't handing off the problem. I think it would be a mistake to read it that way. Maybe you've heard it preached that way. Jesus instead invites the disciples into something that he's already doing. And he tells them, put what you have in my hands. Essentially. They had five loaves, two fish. He took them. He looked up to heaven. He blessed them, broke them, and gave them. That's a familiar pattern. It should be for us, right? When we come to this table, we hear the same thing. Those four verbs took, blessed, broke, and gave. And later in Matthew's Gospel, those four words will appear in that same order at the Lord's table at the last supper. Matthew wants us to know that this is that meal. This is that same Eucharistic meal. It's just in a field this time with 5,000 people. But this is the meal. This is the table that Jesus is setting on that day. And at that table, thousands were fed. There was even leftovers. I love leftovers. But there was like 12 baskets left over. Because at Jesus' table, there's always abundance. There's more than enough. Isaiah, we heard his prophecy. This is exactly the table he was foretelling. Come, buy, and eat without money, without price. There's a table that operates on a different kind of economy than capitalists are used to. It is a gift economy that the Lord operates on, fueled by the generosity, the overabundance of God. And the effect is not only this generosity that we receive from God, but it actually does something to us. And we become perhaps generous to our neighbor as well, who is also included. This table that the Lord sets before us, friends, there is enough for you, so much so that you can trust that and not be scarce and fearful and think, I've got to get mine. There's enough for you and for your neighbor, for all people. This is wonderful news. And our neighbors we share with because we know that God is good and that there will be enough for me. And so we freely share and we freely give because God loves us and we love God and we love our neighbor and so does our God. Do you see how that works? This is a completely different sort of economy. We may hear about Jesus' table and consider it, I think even when, if I was sitting there listening to a priest talk about this, I'd say, that's sweet, Sean, but that's totally impractical. Like, how is that going to work? Is this maybe just one of those spiritual ideals that the church throws around and we're supposed to let sink into our hearts, but then we get back to real life and do the real thing that actually makes a difference? Is this just one of those warm blankets of theology for us to just get comfortable in? I don't think so. I think it actually puts us in a very uncomfortable sort of place if we take it seriously, and we should, especially while the world carries on at Herod's table. These two tables compete for us. Herod's table is a place very unlike the Lord's table. It's a table of injustice, of cruelty, and selfishness. That's what Herod's table is all about. And we recognize seeing the Lord's table, seeing Herod's table side by side, we can see the difference, can't we? We can tell. We recognize the tension that even we, who may even love the Lord, still find ourselves in this tension between these two tables. We live in a world of Herod's table, but desire and know we get all that we need from the Lord's. It's especially difficult, if I could just sympathize for a second, for us who have to inhabit and exist and make our way in a world in which Herod's table is the thing that operates, right? It is what dominates. How do we resolve that tension? I don't know. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure. I think it takes a lot of discernment, a lot of practice, probably a lot of failure, but mostly it takes the help of God. But I do know that the tension that we experience and the grief that we may experience in the midst of that tension is something. It tells us something. Just as Jesus grieved when He heard the news of His cousin, so too we grieve when we honestly hear any of the news lately. We know that grief. And that grief, friends, I just want to, as an aside, say, that grief is not a sign that you are losing your faith or that things are falling apart or, you know, this is hopeless. I think that grief actually can be a sign that you do have faith, that you have been to the Lord's table. You know what things ought to be like. You can tell the difference. After all, His table is made by something so much more beautiful than the tables that the world operates on. The Lord's table is made by self-sacrifice, not by sacrificing others, right? Jesus' table is made by self-giving love and grace, not selfishness and violence. Amen? Jesus' table is ours not because we bought it or we deserve it, but because God freely gives it, even at great cost to God's self. God gives it, and He does so joyfully. Why? What kind of economy is generated? Like, what motivates someone to act like that? Love. God loves us so incredibly much. Now, compare that table of the Lord with Herod's table once again, because it's still persisting and impacting our lives. And I feel like, instead of just sort of talking in generalities, part of the church's job is to put the finger on the thing and say, this is the wound. We have to name some of these things. And just as in another side, I know I'm giving you a lot of caveats here, there's a tendency to take these parables or these stories from Scripture and make them about us and our soul, our inner spirituality. And there's times to do that. That's fine. But when you have something that is just so obviously economic and public and involves society and powers and governments, the way to read Scripture is on those terms and not just jumping to an individualized, privatized spirituality. Does that make sense? In fact, I'm highly suspicious when we take stories like this and say, now give to your neighbor and be more generous in your heart. That's not what this is talking about. And I think that there are forces that have formed us to look the other way from criticizing things like our government and the powers at play. But not the church, right? We'll speak to it. Last year's budget, we get right down to it. The one the authors call the big, beautiful bill, Lord have mercy, has the largest single transfer of wealth from poor to rich in the history of American law. Congress is just or is actually just working on passing, proposing a $95 billion package to fund our Defense Department, our military and intelligence, while stripping environmental protections, slashing funding for national parks and WIC, which even our family has benefited from in the past. WIC, I don't know if you know, helps nursing mothers feed their infants. It's being cut. Had its fruit and vegetable benefit was cut from $54 a month, which is not much, to $13. Free school lunches are a fiction now, right? That is what Herod's Table produces. These are real things that have bearing on our lives. Abundance for some and scarcity for the rest. And if we're honest, both tables are present in our lives too in small ways or in other ways. There are moments when we give freely, trusting in the abundance of the Lord that has met us. And there are moments when we hoard and we protect and we get our own and calculate whether or not we're going to have enough before we can even consider sharing. Herod's economy runs through us too. The question is, which table are we going to decide to orient our lives around? Which economy are we going to practice? And I try to name all this plainly, not from a place of despair, and I need you to hear me on this. This is not why the church names these things, so that we can say, throw our hands up and say, well, you know, that's just the way it's going to be. Not from despair, but from a place of confidence. We have tasted and seen how good the Lord is. We have been to this table over and again. You know what God does at this table for you. We are not witnessing to merely a spiritual ideal that has no bearing on real life. No, that's not what we're doing. We have experienced Jesus' forgiveness and His grace and His mercy for us at this table for ourselves. We have experienced this. We know this. We have come to this table again and again. We have shared this table at our homes and our pubs, because it's not just here, by the way, but it goes into the world with us. The Lord's table lives with us, with our neighbors, at our workplaces and our families and friends. That economy, that grace freely given, it flows through you and into this world. In Jesus' table, the reason we drag ourselves out of bed on Sunday mornings every Sunday when we could sleep in or just, I don't know, do something else, go to brunch, I've heard people do. I don't know, I haven't done it in a long time. Amen, right? Kind of nice every once in a while, I bet. Somebody's got to tell me how good it is. The reason we come again and again to this table is because Jesus feeds us in a way that no other table can feed us. That hunger deep in our soul that we try to medicate or numb out or indulge with other things just keeps coming back. That burden of sin that we carry around, that narrative of shame that weighs so heavy on us, there's only one table, friends, that we can come to and our wounds would be healed and we would be set free and forgiven. And not only that, not just patched up, but filled up to the brim, renewed, grounded, brought home. You know what I'm talking about. This is why we come again and again to that table. Beloved, with all the tables, Herod's, the Lord's, many, many others like Herod's shouting us, shouting at us to give us all that we have, to dedicate our lives, to wrap our lives, to live our lives in reference to these other tables. They all shout at us. Many of these tables exploit us and exploit our neighbors, even just for a little bit of satisfaction from us, a good feeling. They make promises of happiness and meaning that they always, you know this, leave us empty and fall short on. But friends, in the world of tables, in a world full of noise, shouting at us, the good news is there is a table where all are welcomed, all are fed, and all are made new. That's why we're here. This table didn't just appear out of thin air. This table was made by self-sacrifice, a sacrificial love for you, by Jesus Christ, our Lord. The Lord's table operates on that same economy, that grace. It liberates people. It provides for us even when we don't have anything to give. It restores human beings and restores communities. That's what this table does. There's no table like the Lord's table, friends. So may we live our lives not only in reference to this but being fed continually by this because our Lord loves us and we need that care. We need that food. We need that life. Amen?