18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2nd August 2020.
Lectionary Readings:
Isaiah 55 v1-5 God’s invitation
Romans 9 v1-5 God’s choice of Israel
Matthew 14 v13-21 Jesus feeds 5000+
God’s Love and Loyalty.
The prophet Isaiah relays God’s invitation to the people of Israel, to ‘come to me and live’ (v3). God promises them his eternal love and loyalty in return for their help in calling out to others nations, inviting their peoples to come and know the one true God.
But as the Bible records, time and again, the people of Israel ignored God’s invitation and sought to go their own way, with disastrous consequences.
The apostle Paul is heart-broken. Ever since his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul has known that the people of Israel have taken a wrong path. Their zealous obedience to the Law of Moses has blinded them to the love of God shown in Jesus. Paul longs for his people to recognise Jesus as their Messiah, God’s chosen one, the Saviour of them all.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus too is heart-broken, over the death of his cousin John. He leaves the crowded west side of the lake for the less populated east side, seeking some solitude in his grief.
But the crowds follow him. Jesus sets aside his grief and takes pity on them, healing their sick bodies and feeding their hungry souls with the good news about the kingdom of heaven.
The physical feeding of the multitude seems to me to be just another aspect of his love for them. In action, reminding us of God feeding the people of Israel at the time of the Exodus; and in words, reminiscent of the Last Supper, Matthew tells us that Jesus sought God’s blessing upon them, before breaking the bread and distributing it to the crowd.
Matthew draws attention to the twelve large baskets of left-over food, reminding us, his readers, of Isaiah’s prophecy about God’s offer to feed the people of Israel (The twelve tribes of Israel) as we read earlier in Isaiah 55 v1.
As Isaiah says, God’s love for us is eternal.
As Paul says, Jesus is all the proof we need of God’s loyalty to us.
We are blessed indeed.
Bible quotations are taken from the Contemporary English Version.
Thanks to Mike Peck for submitting these reflections