18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 6th August 2023
Lectionary Readings:
Isaiah 55 v1-5; Psalm 145 v8-9, 14-21; Romans 9 v1-5; Matthew 14 v13-21.
God’s Love and Loyalty.
Isaiah relays God’s invitation to the people of Israel, to ‘come to me and live’ (Isaiah 55 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.
King David says, You are merciful, Lord! You are kind and patient and always loving. You are good to everyone, and you take care of all your creation. (Psalm 145 v8, 9).
Isaiah agrees when he declares, God’s love for us is eternal. (Isaiah 55 v3b).
Hymn writer Joseph Hart writes of God’s love and loyalty. (Singing the Faith 67).
This, this is the God we adore, our faithful, unchangeable friend,
whose love is as great as his power and neither knows measure nor end:
‘Tis Jesus, the first and the last, whose Spirit shall guide us safely home;
we’ll praise him for all that is past, and trust him for all that’s to come.
Bible quotations are taken from the Contemporary English Version.