All we need is at our feet Mt 14:13-21, Romans 9:1-5

St Matthew’s school performed the ‘Wizard of Oz’ as their end of year play, and it was really very good. The story of Dorothy’s journey to try and get back to her aunt, meeting good people and bad, but for a long time being unable to see that she had what she needed all the time. The shoes she had been given and told not to lose were magic and the way back to her home. She had been given the gift she needed but hadn’t recognised it.

But isn’t that such a common problem, we do not understand what we have; we get so overwhelmed by problems that we miss the simple truth.

If we take a quick glance at the gospel story, we may see our own lives mirrored in it. Our lives are too busy, no

time to think, it we can even remember what the question is we have no time to find an answer. In a way rather like my desk, piled high with pieces of paper I have no time to look at, and if I do look at them what do I do next?

So how were the disciples feeling, probably tired, hungry and cold, wanting some peace and quiet and Jesus tells them to give the crowds something to eat. What with only five loaves and two fish they answered. The disciples probably wished they could run away and hide.

But we can’t hide from God. The Wizard of Oz is a storey, fiction, magic, but God is true, He is the way and the Light. The disciples could not truly understand Christ’s power, how could all these people be fed, how could it be possible.

‘Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.’

Then and now we are so accustomed to thinking in terms of visual reality that we fail utterly to perceive the divine reality that exists right here among us, but hidden from sight.

Jesus, God the Son, handed over the problem to God the Father and what seemed an impossible problem was no problem at all. And yet for as much as we have grown up with this story and others like it we keep missing the answer, which of our problems can we not hand over to God in prayer, which dilemma is so great that we cannot trust God to help us through it. It may not go away but if we trust God enough he will help us find a way round it, so that we can move on.

Society today believes it is too sophisticated to believe in

miracles—to believe that God really is good and with us all the time; that the power of God can, in every instance, provide more than we can imagine. In a way society knows so many facts that it can’t see the truth.

In every situation in life, God is there and his power works toward lifting up whatever promotes love in that situation. Wherever there is injustice, pain, grief, hardship or hunger, God is there, for God is Life, God is Love, and as Christians we are called not only to show that love, but also to totally believe in it.

In today’s Epistle, Paul relates this truth to the Romans and to us in a very personal way, that we cannot be a Christian if we haven’t a loving heart.

If we go back to the beginning of our individual journeys of faith – why are we Christian, why do we have faith?

We may answer because we have always been; we were brought up in a Christian family. But I think it is more than that – it is because someone cared enough about us, loved us enough, to make sure we learned about God’s love for us, how Jesus died for our salvation.

Someone, or indeed more than one person, as some stage in our lives cared enough about us to share the truth with us in a way we could understand. In Romans Paul is showing how much he cares for his fellow Jews.

Very often you will hear someone say if a family member is seriously ill I wish it were me, I would rather suffer than see her/him suffer. Paul is showing how much he cared for his people, the Jews, so much so that he would be willing to be cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of his own people.

Paul can be seen as a strict disciplinarian, even perhaps bigoted but the truth is he cared deeply for people, and in the epistle today he is telling the Romans that his heart is bleeding for his fellow Jews. He has great

sorrow and anguish that his people had rejected Jesus of Nazareth as Saviour. Through his conversion he had come to understand what Christ was offering, and he had accepted it with all his heart, but the people of Israel had rejected it. And I think what upset him most is that he couldn’t think why they had rejected Christ.

As a Jew he knew their heritage, through adoption as sons; theirs was the divine glory, the covenants,

the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs were the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God. Jesus was one of them and yet they rejected him, and Paul, who had once wanted to kill Christians, knew now how wrong this was and how wrong they were and yet he couldn’t help them, save them and that hurt him.

Paul reminds us that in all things God’s goodness is sufficient to meet our needs. Right here and now, whenever. In the midst of who and what we are, God will provide, because God is good, and his promise never fails.

This does not mean, of course, that people of faith will

have no problems or misery. But it does mean that God will give us the grace and strength to bear the load as we overcome and cope with whatever problems life throws at us. Christianity is not a faith of easy answers and unrealistic solutions. Jesus was born into an earthly family and died on the cross for us, showing us that whatever we experience, in whatever the trouble or anguish, we need not fear because God is in it with us.

Our God is the God of today as well as yesterday and tomorrow, he is the eternal God who loves all his children, and providing we love him nothing can every separate us from his love. Even if we forget him as soon as we turn back to him God is there waiting for us, waiting for every body. There are no exams to pass, we are not asked to prove anything, God is waiting for the return of all people into his loving arms. That was what so upset Paul, he knew God was waiting for the Jews and he just couldn’t make them understand.

But Paul still loved the Jews and he didn’t condemn them or hate them, nor did he encourage the new church to do so.

All he wished was that he could do more, could bring them into the faith, he prayed for an end to hatred, that the Jews could be fed in such a way that God’s will would be accomplished. That must be our prayer that all people whatever their faith, nationality, whatever differences there are, may be drawn into the kingdom, that Christians share the gospel in such a way that, just as we were nurtured by people who loved us into faith, they too may be nurtured into the family of God.

As we are fed today let us pray that we have the grace to bring others to the table. Amen