Pressed down, running over

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 28, 2024

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Pressed down, running over

A man came to Elisha with twenty barley loaves. “Give it to the people to eat,” Elisha said. There were more than a hundred people. When they had eaten, there was some left over, as the Lord had promised …

Andrew said to Jesus, “There is a boy here with five barley loaves and two fish.” Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed them to the thousands in the crowd. When they eaten his disciples gathered twelve wicker baskets full of leftovers from the loaves and fish.

I haven’t been hungry for awhile. There is always enough food for me to eat. Margaret cooks something nearly every day. Sometimes a little goes a long way. I’ll never forget my first day with Creative Community Project in Berkeley, when we sat at round tables and everyone broke their sandwiches in half and gave each half to the person next to them.

Thinking of these miracles of provision, I appreciate Clarence’s poem:

Busy

It’s nice to sit in silence

soaking in the beauty, resting in peace,

receiving the love that it may spill out.

But sometimes the sink is full of dishes,

the clothes hamper is overflowing

and there is nothing to eat for breakfast.

There too is God, in the busyness, if we but open ourselves,

rolling up sleeves, getting ‘er done.

Sometimes the path to the peaceful place is through.

So I suggest that you take God with you there and everywhere,

and stop along the way as life allows.  – Clarence Heller

 There may, these days, be more people throughout the world enduring hunger and thirst than ever before. The weather is warming. Populations do not stop exploding. Water in Arizona and the rest of the west has become an ever more precious commodity. I am grateful for what I have but don’t want to take it for granted. Jesus and Elisha fed hundreds and thousands from nearly nothing.

Of course we send money, sometimes out the car window to a person on the street in Austin or Champaign, and sometimes through our church to far off countries in Africa and Asia where, for example, normal growth is stunted in 22% of the children.

Since Jesus knew they were coming to carry him off and make him KING, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

Jesus wouldn’t feed those thousands every day. In The Chosen, Jesus said simply, “It doesn’t work like that.”

How it does work, perhaps, is expressed well in Luke 6. “Give, and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

That the poor often give a far higher percentage of their wealth than do the wealthy surely does not negate Jesus’ promise. Although I don’t have statistics or even logic to prove that.

Paul’s words in today’s Second Reading prove it for me. As he says often in his letters, we are one people. As Thomas Paine also said, “We must hang together, or for sure we will all hang separately.” So each of us has this call: to hang onto one another. Paul’s beautiful insistence on this rings in my ears:

Brothers and sisters:

I, a prisoner for the Lord,

urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,

with all humility and gentleness, with patience,

bearing with one another through love,

striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:

one body and one Spirit,

as you were also called to the one hope of your call;

one Lord, one faith, one baptism;

one God and Father of all,

who is over all and through all and in all.

 (2 Kings 4, Psalm 145, Ephesians 4, Luke 7, John 6)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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