September 4, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, ‘This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.^‘ In the same way also He took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.^‘  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death  until He comes.” (1 Corinthians 11.23-26)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

The message is pretty clear: the death of Jesus is critical to our understanding of faith community. I read recently an article written for the sole purpose of making sure the readers understood history is filled with stories of those who died and rose again. Their agenda was to promote the antithetical proposition: it wasn’t only the Judeo-Christian Jesus. The effort to reduce a fact to story was pivotal in their argument for self-reliance. What they missed in their examples from literature and mythology was the reason, the meaning and the purpose of “the story” of Jesus’ death and resurrection. For the mighty ones of God who are followers of Jesus, the reason and the meaning and the purpose is clear. He died for us not so that He might live again but that we would live forever in God’s favor. Paul began his first letter to the faith community in Corinth, “We preach Christ and Him crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1.23) We know, mighty ones of God that if there was no substitutionary sacrifice, He for us, there would be no hope of surviving in this world and complete the journey through the valleys of the shadow of death to rise up on the other side. Without His “descent” into death, there is no “ascent” into the eternal House of the Lord. Yes, we know of the resurrection and the power of faith. We can thereby grasp not only the significance of His death as an atonement for our sin but focus on the portal which it created to enter a new life. Authentic forgiveness is the foretaste of a glory divine. That glory divine is dwelling with God forever in favor and everlasting peace. There there is no more striving to please God or earn our way through life in this broken world. There all things are made new and the journey by which we come before the Lord is seen with 20/20 hindsight. It will all make sense.

How does it make sense? We dare not look back upon that journey and allow our first thoughts to be “God why didn’t you just…?” The reality is that God wouldn’t have had to do anything if “we hadn’t just….” There has to be an awareness of righteousness, right relationship, before we can truly appreciate it. We do ourselves an injustice if we think that all is meant to be bliss and mindless existence. In such a framework, we are merely consumers. I watch as adult birds parent their offspring. The intent is to get those little ones strong and skilled to leave the nest. It isn’t a selfish motive. It is for the welfare and benefit of the little ones to grow up strong and capable to live in the world without becoming a part of it. I am not a bird whisperer so I cannot know the mind of birds concerning their future. Jesus says they do not worry about it because they know their future is provided for. He equates that same sentiment to the lives of believers. God sees the sparrow of the air and lily of the field and provides for them in their simple splendor. If He does that, then how much more will He do it for us. What separates us from the birds and plants? We are created in God’s image and with a mind and spirit to connect consciously to the creator. We are created to become intertwined in the beauty of creation and to sustain it recreating the meaning and purpose of a creative life. We are created not to do it for ourselves but for the welfare of others as if they are our “little ones.” We are created not to do it for ourselves but for the glory of God making it evident to all that we understand whose we are as His “little ones.”

God is not a consumer. He didn’t make creation for Himself to take it all in with little to no regard for its future existence. Such consumerism is focused more on “take what you can get, get all of it you can until there isn’t more and then move on.” That is the way of locusts! Little wonder why the images in both the Old and New Testament of the enemy find themselves more expressed as locusts who devour one field and move on to another. We are not locusts! We are the “little ones” of God. When the people sought to bring their “little ones” to Jesus for blessing, healing and restoration, the disciples wanted to turn them away. They saw only the inconvenience, to them, and tried to pass it off as being mindful of Jesus’ well-being. We heard a similar mindset expressed when Jesus was teaching on the hillside across from Capernaum. Thousands gathered there to hear and experience Jesus and His truth. As the day progressed so, too, did the numbers of people. The crowd expanded from a gathering around Jesus and the disciples near the top of the hill all the way down to the Sea of Galilee. The disciples transferred their own literal hunger to an assumption of inconvenience. They only had enough food for themselves. They knew well enough that Jesus would be seen as the host of this gathering and thus responsible for the feeding and care of it. They asked Jesus to dismiss them back to their homes and they could meet another day. What the disciples wanted was to eat (be consumers). What they didn’t want was to be consumed (providers). Isn’t that the way we feel about a time of “inconvenient service”? We feel like we are being consumed, drained and taken advantage of. The crowd was seen by the disciples as locusts and they were the wheat field about to be stripped of all they had. Jesus knew what needed to happen. In order for the disciples to grow, they had to stop being little ones. He changed their perspective. For the adults who brought the children for blessing and healing, Jesus told the disciples to be like them “do not hinder the little ones to come to Me.” In the King James translation, Jesus says “Suffer the little ones to come unto Me for to such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The disciples, as were the adult caregivers, should prioritize sacrifice of self for the blessing of others. Did you ever hear that in the story when it was told to you? The disciples had to “die to self, to live for others.” What of the feeding of the 5000 [more like 20,000]? Jesus challenged the disciples saying “You give them something to eat!” They knew, and He knew, they did not have enough provisions to accomplish that charge. Except they did. They just hadn’t realized it yet because their discipleship journey was still as a consumer and not as a producer. The time had come to kick the “little ones” out of the nest. They had been given the words of life by Jesus Himself. In that moment, He demonstrated their own ability to fly, if they only would. At that moment, a boy offered up his family’s provision in response to the challenge presented to Jesus by the disciples. He opened a basket filled with a few loaves of bread and some fish. The disciples presented it to Jesus as evidence of the meager fare in the face of so great a challenge. Jesus instead accepted the challenge to make things “fair.” As Jesus blessed the loaves, He broke them into pieces to be shared with the crowd. I wonder if He did not also say to the disciples, “As you share these, do so in remembering Me.” In a similar fashion, He took the fish and began to divide it as well. I have no doubt that most everyone, though not all, had brought some provisions for a short stay to hear Jesus. The rippling effect of what Jesus was doing with what had been offered by the boy and his family gained momentum. As the disciples were sharing the blessing of “the meal,” they found there was more and more. When the feeding was done, and the greatest lesson taught, there were twelve baskets of leftovers when the crowd returned home. A miracle? Indeed it was; however, the greater miracle to me was that of compassion and community. The people “died to self” and “lived in community.” They, in that moment, had all things in common and shared in what could have been their own last supper. Trust me, when they sat down to “break bread” after that, they remembered Him.

Do we, mighty ones of God, remember Him when we are in communion at worship? What do we take to offer to others. I say this as a conviction statement of my own self. God speaks even now as I put words to screen to share in this reflection. Are we consumers at worship? Or producers? For large congregations, there is no passing of the bread and cup. It seems impractical and time consuming. There is that word again. Shouldn’t we rather see the investment of time “served” instead? What needs to die before we can experience new life? Let’s reflect upon that and see what God will provide for His little ones tomorrow as we consider further the didache of the sacrament of communion.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.