Today's Gospel

People of Possibility

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we delve into the gospel, looking for a word or phrase or an idea to anchor our life in for this day for the experience and circumstances that we will encounter today. The reading today comes from the Gospel of Matthew 15:29-37. And Jesus went on from there and passed along the Sea of Galilee and He went up into the hills, and he sat down there. Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the mane, the blind, the dumb, and many others. And they put them at his feet, and he healed them. So that the throng wondered when they saw the dumb speaking, the maimed [hall?], the lame walking, the blind seeing, they've glorified the God of Israel. And then Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, "I'm filled with compassion for the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way." And the disciples said to him, "Where are we to get bread enough in the desert to feed so great a crowd?" And Jesus said to them, "How many loaves have you?" They said seven and a few small fish. In commanding the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up seven baskets full of broken pieces left over.

It's a story we've heard many, many times and an invitation to go deeper. And that's the beautiful thing about just looking for a word or a phrase or an idea each day is that we can hear the same reading dozens of times and constantly see it fresh, constantly experience it in a renewed way. What jumps out at you today? I'm always touched here by the compassion that Jesus has for the people. We overlook Jesus' humanity so often. And this is a very real expression of his humanity and his great concern for us as human beings. So he has this great compassion for the crowd. He looks at the crowd. He's got this great compassion for the crowd. And he basically says the disciples, "We've got to feed these people." And of course, the disciples are like, "That's impossible, Jesus." We see this often, right? The disciples pushing back on Jesus. That can't happen. That's impossible. How do we do that? We won't be able to do this. We experience that in the world today, right? We experience that in the church today. We've got people of impossibility, people who just say no to everything, people who think everything's impossible, people who are themselves the obstacle, because all they see is obstacles. And then, of course, we have the other type of person, which is people of possibility that people are filled with dreams and hopes, who want to make things happen, who want to recognize the obstacles, but find a way around them or over them or through them.

And so, we have this back and forth between Jesus and the disciples. And of course, their inability to really understand who he is and what he is really capable of. And he's teaching them this over and over again. But what jumped out at me today was that Jesus he broke the bread, He gave it to His disciples, and they gave it to the crowd, and the crowd ate and was satisfied. And so this passing along, this sharing is what jumped out at me today, because we are all called to that. We're all called to that sharing. We're all called to that passing along. We're called to share our things and our money.

And we're called to share our faith and the wisdom that God has given us and the faith resources that God has given us. I've been doing this for almost 32 years now. And one of the things that's been most inspiring to me over those 32 years is how willing people are to pass things along, to pass resources along. Today, people can forward an email with a resource. But the passing along of books, and when we had CDs, the passing along of CDs, was incredibly inspirational.

I see it even today. Bumped into an attorney the other day, and we were both getting out of our car in a parking lot, and he waved me over to his car. He said, "I want to show you something." And I went over to his car and in his trunk, he opened his trunk, in his trunk he had a case of books, Rediscover Jesus.

And he says, I always have a case of books in my trunk, and I take one to each meeting, and I look around a meeting, and I say, "Okay, who am I gonna give this book to today?" And it was just like, "Wow, that's powerful." In his own way, sharing the faith, sharing the resources that have touched him with other people. Let's get out there and share what we have with the world today, especially our faith. Have a great day, and remember, don't just be yourself. Be the very best version of yourself, all that God created you to be.