17th Sunday of Ordinary
Time – July 25, 2021
As the day went on, according to our gospel reading
for next Sunday, it’s obvious that Jesus
isn’t paying attention to the details,
because the time is getting late and Jesus hasn’t even
considered how all these
people are going to get their supper. The disciples, being the rational,
realistic bunch they are, bring this point up to Jesus, and he says to them,
“You give them
something to eat.” Jesus obviously hadn’t learned his
multiplication tables yet. Doesn’t he
know there are only five loaves and two
fish? Not enough for thousands of hungry people!
Children do not feature too often in the
gospel story, but when they do, they tend to appear
in a very positive light.
Notice that a “boy” is mentioned in Sunday’s gospel reading. I never
paid much
attention to the very brief mention of the boy. I focused on Jesus, his
disciples,
and the hungry crowd. Yet, the boy with his five barley loaves and
two fish is, in many ways,
the key to what happens. He is referred to by Andrew
in a way which suggests the boy’s insign-
ificance, “There is a small boy here
with five loaves and two fish; but what is that for so
many?” However, unlike
Andrew, Jesus does not consider the presence of the boy with his meagre
resources to be insignificant. He knows that if the boy is prepared to part
with his precious
little supply, great things can happen. Indeed, according to
the gospel reading, Jesus goes
on to satisfy the hunger of the crowd with the
five loaves and two fish. Perhaps we can never
know what exactly happened on
that day, but the gospel is suggesting that the Lord can work
powerfully
through very meager resources. Our human resources, inadequate though they may
be,
matter a great deal to the Lord. If we offer our own meagre resources to
the Lord, if we place
them at his service, he can work through them beyond our
expectations. All the Lord asks is
that we are generous with what we have,
little as that may be, and he will work with our gene-
rosity in ways that will
surprise us. The Lord’s way of working is different to how the world
works. On this
occasion, the Lord worked powerfully in the service of a large crowd through
a
small boy who was generous with his small resources.
Let’s stop for a minute. Yes, the disciples
are frustrated at Jesus, They are tired and hungry,
too, but there’s no need to
cuss and use profanity like they did. Did you hear it? That word,
“only.”
That’s a four-letter word when it comes to faith. I wonder how often we use
that word.
“I only have a few minutes.” “I’ve only read the Gospel once in a
while.” “I only have a little
time for prayer.” The disciples use that bad word
as an excuse, as if to say, “Well, if that’s
all we have, then we can’t do
anything.”
Our God can turn “only” into abundance. Our
God takes what we have, no matter how small, and
turns it into something we can
share. Our God says, “You give what you have and let me worry
about the
distribution issues.”
Even if you are 99% sure things will not go
well, there’s still that 1%. “You give what you
have and let me take care of
the rest.” “But God, I only have a little faith, hope, patience,
courage.”
Whoops! There’s that word again, “only.” If we believe in a God without limits,
who
can turn a small snack into a banquet feast, why would we limit our
understanding of what God
can do in our lives? We often choose to live with a
mentality of diminishment instead of a me-
ntality of abundance.
Jesus couldn’t have multiplied the bread and
fish had they not been given into his hands to
bless, break, and share. The
disciples could have hoarded what they had, which would have en-
sured two
things: (1) they would have had something to eat, and (2) no one else would
have.
No one can guarantee that God will fix things the way we want them. But
we can guarantee that
God can’t work with what we’re not willing to give.
Fr.
Don, cp