Matthew 22:15-22

A lot of people had the day off this past Monday for Columbus Day, which is still a Federal Holiday although a growing number of businesses and institutions no longer observe it.  Some people are now observing Indigenous Peoples Day instead, in honor of the original inhabitants of the North and South American continents who were displaced by European immigrants.

Which day do you observe?

Last Monday was also the anniversary of the first time the Pledge of Allegiance was recited in the public schools.  On October 12, 1892, several thousand students in the New York Public Schools system started their school day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance which had been published a month earlier in The Youth’s Companion magazine.

The pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian Socialist, who was removed from his pulpit in Boston for proclaiming that Jesus was a Socialist and for preaching against capitalism which he said is essentially evil because it is based on greed.  Interestingly, he later went to work in advertising.  Bellamy believed in the absolute separation of church and state and he intentionally did not include the phrase “under God” in his pledge.  Those words were inserted at the urging of President Eisenhower in 1954 during the Cold War.

Not everyone likes the Pledge of Allegiance.  The Amish, the Mennonites and Jehovah’s Witnesses have always refused to recite the pledge, insisting that all our allegiance properly belongs to God, so in 1943 the Supreme Court ruled that students could not be forced to participate in the pledge.^[1] Not everyone abstains from the pledge on religious grounds.  Some have refrained from reciting the pledge for reasons of civility and inclusivity.  Both the Rotary Club and Kiwanis Club of Palo Alto and the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce voted in 2019 to forgo reciting the pledge  so as not to offend noncitizens or others in attendance who might object.

How do you feel about the pledge?  Do you recite it or do you abstain?

What about having a flag in church?  Are you in favor or opposed?

Which side are you on?

Do you lean right, or do you lean left?

Do you favor autocracy or democracy?

Are you a Republican or a Democrat or a Democratic Socialist or a Libertarian?

Are you aligned with the Progressives or the Conservatives?

Are you Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

Do you support the separation of Church and State or are you a Christian Nationalist?

I don’t know about you, but questions like these make me itch.  These are loaded questions.  Binary questions.  Sorting questions.  Questions like this have an agenda and they are as old and merciless as politics.

In today’s gospel lesson, we get a terrific example of a political sorting question calculated to get Jesus in trouble one way or another. The really fascinating thing about it is that the Pharisees and the Herodians, two political factions who usually wanted nothing to do with each other, came together to ask this question.  That’s how much they wanted to discredit Jesus. That’s how much they wanted him out of the way.

After buttering him up with a compliment about his impeccable impartiality they drop their bomb, their loaded question:  “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

The particular tax they were asking about was the Tribitum Capitis, a tax of one denarius per year levied on every adult man and woman in the empire who was not a Roman citizen.  This tax was first administered in Israel in 6 CE when Judea was officially annexed as a Roman province.  Its specific purpose was to pay for the occupation and administration of Rome’s conquered territories.

The Herodians were big supporters of Herod Antipas and Herod Antipas was a big supporter of Rome, so the Herodians were all in favor of the tax as a way to help pay for what they saw as the many benefits of being part of the empire—good roads, improved trade, aqueducts, strictly enforced law and order, and so on.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not enthusiastic fans of their Roman overlords and were not at all happy about the tax that paid for the soldiers who filled their streets so that a foreign power could dominate every aspect of their lives in their own homeland.  They also had a very serious problem with Roman money.

Roman currency was not just money, it was also political propaganda.  Every coin served as a reminder that Rome had complete control of the economy.  On one side of the Roman denarius was a portrait of the emperor to remind everyone that just about every aspect of public life was governed by the emperor and his tyrannical hierarchy of officials.  The other side of the coin depicted Pax, the goddess of peace, to remind the people that Rome kept the peace… with swords and spears.

To devout Jews like the Pharisees, the images stamped on these coins were a kind of idolatry.  But worse than the images was the inscription on the coins: Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Pontifex Maximus.  The coin proclaimed not only that the emperor was the son of a god, but also the high priest of the empire’s religions. All of the empire’s religions.  Including theirs.

When the Pharisees and the Herodians team up to ask Jesus their loaded question, they think they have him trapped.  If he says, “No, it’s not right to pay this tax,” he will make the Pharisees and a lot of others in the crowd happy, but he will be guilty of sedition against Rome, and the Herodians won’t waste a minute bringing it to Pilate’s attention.  If he says, “Yes, it’s perfectly fine to pay the tax,” then he will disappoint the crowd and give the Pharisees ammunition to discredit him.

But instead of falling into their binary yes-or-no trap, Jesus exposes it.  He makes it clear that he is aware of their bad intentions and he makes the crowd aware that there is no sincerity or honesty in their tricky question.  He reveals their malice and antagonism with a very straightforward question of his own:  “Why are you trying to trap me, you hypocrites?”

Jesus probably could say a lot more about their hypocrisy and attempted entrapment, but like all good rabbis, he knows a teaching moment when he sees one.  “Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says.  It seems clear that he doesn’t have one.  That’s an important detail that should not be overlooked.

Jesus does not have the coin.  But someone does.  Someone, probably one of the Herodians, hands him the silver denarius, and Jesus, holding it up for all to see, asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”  “Caesar’s,” they reply.

I imagine this was a tense moment.  I can imagine him holding that coin in his hand, evaluating the stamped metal portrait in his palm for a long moment before he hands the coin back to whomever gave it to him and says, “Then give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

When they heard this, the text says, they were astonished, so  they left him and went away.

What exactly was Jesus saying?  What does it mean to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s?

On the face of it, it sounds easy.  On the face of it, it sounds like another simple binary division, like we can divide life into two compartments: on one side of the line are the things that belong to God, spiritual things, and on the other side of the line are secular things.  Like politics.  Or economics.

If only life were that simple.  But it’s not.  Life is complex and complicated.  Sometimes we struggle to find a path that doesn’t compromise either our faith or our alliances and allegiances or our obligations.

What really belongs to Caesar?  Does his own likeness?   Genesis tells us that we were created in the image and likeness of God, so in that sense, isn’t Caesar’s own likeness something that, in the end, belongs to God?

Does the silver in the coin that bears his picture belong to Caesar?  He may be in possession of it or exercise some control over its distribution and its value in the marketplace, but isn’t God the one who brought into being both the silver and the man whose image is stamped on it?  Long after Caesar has been gathered to his ancestors, the silver will pass to other hands and be melted down for other uses and only God will know where it is.  Psalm 24 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”  So when all is said and done, doesn’t everything belong to God in whom we live and move and have our being?

When Jesus says, “Give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” he is asking them to locate themselves in the tension between Caesar’s dominion and the reign of God.  And he is asking the same thing of us.

The coin that was used to pay the tax in question was a perfect symbol of empire’s dominance.  With the emperor’s likeness it proclaimed his singular sovereignty.  With its depiction of the goddess Pax, it proclaimed the empire’s definition of peace, a peace obtained and maintained by violence and force.  With its inscription that asserted the divinity of the emperor and affirmed him as Pontifex Maximus, it declared the empire’s control of religion and made a claim on everyone’s faith. And the fact that this silver denarius was the standard day’s wage throughout the empire made it the symbol of the empire’s vast economic power.  It was, in and of itself, a statement.  It said, “If you’re going to participate in the economy, you are participating in empire.  If you buy or sell anything, you are participating in empire.  When you go to the market to buy olives and flour and oil and fruit and lentils, the basic necessities of life, you are going to have to compromise your religious principles because you are going to use the empire’s coin to do it.”

And this is where it is important to remember that Jesus did not have the coin.

Jesus did not have the coin.

What side are you on?  In a world that confronts us with so many binary choices, how do we decide where to stand?  Is there a way for us to speak truth like Rabbi Jesus without carrying the coin of someone else’s agenda or dominance?

“Give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

It seems so simple, but it’s not.  It is, in fact, immensely complicated.  Like life.

When Jesus tells us to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s he isn’t sidestepping the tricky tax question.  Instead, he is asking us to do some serious thinking.  Philosophical thinking.  Theological thinking.  And practical thinking.  He acknowledges that we live with difficult questions and he asks us to not simply settle for clichéd or easy answers.  He asks us to think about what’s best not just for ourselves but also for our neighbors who live with us in the interconnected religious, social, economic and political webs that both enrich and complicate our lives.

What belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God?   Jesus won’t answer that question for us in advance because there is no easy answer.  There is only your answer.  And my answer.  And the way we answer that question shows us the shape of our faith.  You might even say it’s the currency—the coin–of our faith… in Jesus’ name.

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^[1] West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

Matthew 16:13-28

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”… Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.  From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.  –Matthew 16:13-20

This is the turning point in the Synoptic gospels.  In Mark it comes in chapter 8, almost exactly in the middle.  In Matthew and Luke it doesn’t fall at the midpoint of the literary structure but it is, nonetheless, the turning point in their telling of the Christ story because this is when Jesus turns toward Jerusalem and the cross.  It is also a turning point in the disciples’ understanding of who Jesus is and what he is about, a moment in which they begin to see him in a new way, a moment when they begin to wrestle with their commitment to him and their own decision to follow him.  It is the beginning of their transformation.  And it all begins with the question: “Who do you say that I am?”

You are the Messiah,” said Peter.  

And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone.  Why?  Because he knows that even after all this time with him they don’t really have a clue what God’s Messiah is all about.  He knows that their whole religion, their whole culture, has a very, very mistaken idea of who the Messiah is and what the Messiah will do.  He knows that they’re expecting Power and Domination and Armies of Angels.

But this is a turning point.  So he tells them what’s going to happen in Jerusalem.  He spells out for them the reality of what it means to be the Messiah under the heavy political hand of the Empire.  He reminds them that empires do not have much patience for messiahs.  He tells them that it’s going to be very, very bad and brutal.  He tells them that the empire going to win, but in reality they won’t win anything because what the empire thinks is the end of the story will be, in reality, a new beginning.  But it’s not going to happen with Power and Domination and Armies of Angels.  It will be Power and Domination and the Army of Empire who nail him to the cross, because that’s what Power and Domination and Armies do. On that cross Jesus, Emmanuel, God with Us, will not display Omniscience and Omnipresence and Omnipotence—on that cross God in Christ will eschew every power except love.  Because Power is always coercive and corrosive.  And peace and transformation that comes through coercion is no peace at all.

Jesus tells them that it’s going to be ugly.  So Peter rebukes him.  At least Peter had the honest frankness to tell Jesus to his face that he didn’t like what he was hearing.  How often do we  do that?  How often are we so straightforward with Jesus?  How often are we simply passively resistant to Jesus or even passively aggressive in trying to reshape him to fit our belligerent agendas?  How often do we just discard Jesus altogether and put up a kind of pantomime Jesus behind a wall of carefully cherry-picked Scriptures which rarely, if ever, actually include things Jesus himself said because we want to summon the powerful political forces of our religion’s tradition and use them as a Billy club against a changing world that makes us squirm with discomfort?  And how many times, when we do that, are we actually putting ourselves in opposition to what Jesus is doing?  How many times do we end up opposing the Holy Spirit’s own work of transformation with our false Christ because the real Jesus just won’t be who we want him to be or say what we want him to say?

How else do you explain Christian Nationalism?  How else do you explain advertisements for a “Christian” Assault Rifle, an AR-15 with a Knights Templar cross on one side of the magazine and Psalm 144:1 on the other: Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.

Get behind me, Satan.  You’re setting your mind on human things instead of divine things.  

What does the cross mean to you?

If you put aside all the official church answers—all the Sunday School responses, atonement theories, confirmation lessons—what does the cross mean to you?

What does it mean to you when Jesus says that if you want to be his disciple you have to shoulder your own cross—carry your own cross?

Jesus was carrying his cross during his entire ministry.

From the time he first stood up in the synagogue and read from Isaiah—“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…see, the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed and set the captives free and to announce that now is the time of God’s favor” he was making himself a target.

From the moment he began to announce that the Kingdom of God—the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy—was at hand, was arriving, was within reach he was setting himself in opposition to empire and standing starkly silhouetted in the empire’s crosshairs.

From the moment he began to teach he was carrying the burden of trying to teach people to understand the world in a new way, to see it in a new way, to see each other in a new way he was conspicuously wading against the stream of the status quo.  

He was carrying his cross.

When he preached the beatitudes to show them—to show us—how we’re supposed to treat each other and how things are supposed to work in this God-made, God-beloved world

—when he spent time with all those outsiders that “nice” people didn’t associate with, all the “sinners” and tax collectors and prostitutes and Samaritans

—when he healed on the Sabbath and challenged the Pharisees and Scribes and taunted Herod

—when he asked them to open their eyes to see what their privilege was costing their poorer brothers and sisters

—when he said things that challenged tradition and infuriated people so much they wanted to throw him off a cliff

—he was deliberately risking the fire of their animosity by confronting all the hypocrisy of their religious and political systems, all the little compromises they made with themselves and with the structures of society to make things run smoothly and preserve their comfortable lives.  He was calling into question all the things that made them feel right, and safe and secure, and sure of their place in the grand scheme of things.  

Long before he stood before Pilate, long before they laid the wood across his shoulders, he was carrying his cross.  

And he didn’t do all this just to be the sacrificial offering in some mythic deal with God so he could magic away our sins.  He did it for exactly the reasons he announced when he read from Isaiah: To announce good news to the poor.  To open the eyes of people blinded by their habits and assumptions.  To release people from all kinds of things that oppressed them or held them captive—even things like their own greed or self-interest or ruthless ambition.

He carried the burden, the cross, of risking people’s anger and violence, knowing full well that it would end in a real cross, in order to show them a better way of being in the world.  

And the crowds followed him because his words were filled with promise and joy and love and gave them hope for a better life.  And love and compassion that flowed from him like living water had the power to heal.  

But he wanted them to understand that to do the work he was doing what was needed was not crowds but disciples.  Followers who would really take what he was saying to heart and live it day in and day out just as he was living it.  

He wanted them to know that following in the crowd and being a disciple are two different things.   

And he wanted them to know it wasn’t easy to be a disciple.  That it came at a cost.  That there was a cross to carry.  That they would be misunderstood.  That even people who claimed to be reading the same sacred texts and worshipping the same God would bristle when the liberating Word of God pushed on certain sensitive topics or challenged their thinking.

He wanted them to know that being a disciple isn’t safe.

There’s no shame in being in the crowd.  The crowd has its role and its place.  Jesus has compassion on the crowd.  He feeds the crowd.  He cares for the crowd.  But it’s the disciples who he calls to help him do the work of making God’s reign a reality on earth as it is in heaven.  The crowd are consumers.  Disciples are providers.

So he wanted them to know they had a choice.  

You have a choice.  You can be in the crowd.  Or you can be a disciple.  And I hope you do choose to be a disciple because the only thing that’s going to change the world, the only thing that’s going to heal the world is if enough of us stand up to confront the world with love. 

If you want to be a disciple…if you think Christ is calling you to be a disciple think long and hard.  Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the desert thinking about it before he picked up his cross.

And that leads us back to where we started.   If you are a disciple, where is love leading you?  If you shoulder a cross, whose burden will you carry?  Whose load are you lifting?  Who are you freeing—and from what?  Who will you protect?  Where will you take a stand?  Where will you put your life on the line for the life of others?

What does the cross mean to you?

There’s no such thing as nothing.

Matthew 14:13-21

In this Sunday’s gospel reading Jesus feeds more than 5000 people with five loaves and two fish, so of course I’ve been thinking about quantum mechanics.  Bear with me here.

There are six accounts in the gospels of Jesus feeding multitudes of people from almost nothing: two accounts in Matthew, two in Mark, one in Luke and one in John.  The stories are similar in most details.  In each one Jesus is moved by compassion for the crowd and uses the very meager resources at hand—five loaves and two fish in some accounts or seven loaves and a few fish in others—to provide so much food that baskets of leftovers are collected afterward.  In the synoptic versions the initial loaves and fishes are something the disciples already have on hand, but in John’s version, the loaves and fish are provided by a young boy who has been watching Jesus from the edge of the crowd.  

This miracle story was clearly an important event in the memory of the early church which may be why there are six versions of it.  Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Jesus really did feed multitudes on multiple occasions.  It would be such a Jesus thing to do.

It’s very tempting to try to find ways to rationally explain the miracles of Jesus, especially the miracle of feeding a multitude with such obviously inadequate resources, but if we go wandering down that rabbit hole we’re bound to miss something important.  Some think that the people in the crowd were so inspired by seeing Jesus and the disciples passing out their measly 5 loaves and two fish that they all decided to share the snacks they had stashed away in their sleeves.  Sure.  That works.  Maybe.  I suppose it would be a small miracle in its own way and certainly a good example of sharing what you have to make sure everyone has something.  But the Gospel writers don’t even hint that that’s what was happening in these accounts.  They seem to think that something much more impressive happened. 

I, for one, have no problem believing that Jesus made food appear where none had been before.  After all, God has been creating something out of nothing since the beginning of . . . everything.  

“Nothing” seems to be God’s favorite material to work with.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  Emptiness is meant to be filled.  And nothing is not nothing—it’s always chock full of potential.  

Here’s what the science says:  In quantum mechanics, absolute nothingness cannot exist because empty space is filled with zero-point energy.  That means that the lowest possible energy state still holds a baseline of irreducible energy and movement that cannot be removed.  Even in a vacuum there are fluctuations of energy because “empty” space is actually filled with active quantum fields.  In other words, “Nothing” is actually full of Something and that Something is Possibilities.  In quantum mechanics, “Nothing” has the potential to be Anything.  Loaves and fishes, for instance.

So, was Jesus manipulating quantum fields to feed the multitude or was something else going on?  We’ll probably never know.  And is there really any point in figuring it out?  I think we lose something if we try too hard to demystify the mystery.  Plus, the whole point of the story is that Jesus found himself surrounded by hungry people so he fed them.  More specifically, he had the disciples feed them.

There are a lot of similarities in the 6 miracle feeding stories, but the context for each one is different, and the context is particularly important in Matthew 14, so let’s go back to the beginning.

When the disciples of John the Baptist came to tell Jesus that John had been murdered by Herod Antipas, Jesus “withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.”  It’s easy to imagine that Jesus wanted some privacy for his grief, some time to pray, some time to think about what this meant for the message of the kingdom of heaven that both he and John had been proclaiming.  But when he got to that lonely spot at the end of the lake, instead of a private retreat there was a multitude waiting for him.

When the crowds heard that John had been killed, they went looking for Jesus.  John had been important to them, and if anyone could speak to their fear, their loss, their broken hearts and their shattered hopes, it would be Jesus.  “They followed him on foot from the towns.  When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.”

When Jesus saw the crowd, in spite of his own fatigue and sorrow, he went to work.  He prayed.  He laid hands on the sick.  He hollowed himself out so all the power of the Holy Spirit could flow through him.  

And he let himself feel their hunger.  Spiritual hunger.  Intellectual hunger.  Hunger for a better life.  Hunger for justice.  Hunger for independence. Hunger for healing.  And just plain, old physical hunger for food.  He felt all of it.  From all of them.  A great chasm of hunger from the thousands on the hillside in front of him.

Standing in the vortex of all their hunger he loved them, and his compassion moved him to do the impossible.  He took what he had, five loaves and two fish, which by every worldly measure was obviously insufficient, then he looked up to heaven, and he blessed it.  Eulogesen is the Greek word in Matthew’s text.  It quite literally means that he said good things about it.  “Thank you.  This is good.”  Then he broke the bread and told his disciples, his students, to hand it out to the crowd, trusting that in this God-made, God-blessed world, on that God-blessed hillside with all its God-blessed hunger what they had to share was good, and that by God’s power and presence and grace there would be enough.  More than enough.

“And all ate and were filled,” Matthew tells us, “and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

Jesus fed five thousand men, besides women and children—such a weird way for Matthew to tell us that there were whole families there on that hillside but women and children were not included in the head count.  Jesus fed all those people from five loaves and two fish, but the food that fed them wasn’t the only thing that Jesus created out of almost nothing that day.  He also created a community.  A community of companionship.

Meals were not merely utilitarian in first century Palestine.  Sharing a meal was a way to affirm kinship, friendship and good will. Sharing a meal was also a way to affirm or elevate one’s status in a world where status was important.  To put it plainly, it was a way to show that those gathered together for the meal recognized each other as “acceptable” in a world where all too often some were regarded as “unacceptable” or “unclean.” 

Jesus, had been criticized by some Pharisees for eating with “sinners” and tax collectors, people considered unacceptable in good company.  But in this feast on the hillside at the end of the lake, he included everyone, regardless of their social standing or ritual acceptability.  In that great crowd of all kinds of people, no one was turned away.  No one was excluded.  Everyone was equal in their hunger.  Everyone was equal in being fed.

In the book After Jesus Before Christianity, the authors tell us that meals were the primary social engagement for the early followers of Jesus.  During the first two centuries, the people who were loyal to Jesus commonly organized themselves into something that would look like supper clubs to us.  They would gather once, twice or even several times a week in someone’s home to share a meal, to sing, to pray together and to remember the stories of Jesus. 

In an era when the Church is in decline, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we followed the example of those early Jesus people today.  What would happen if we transformed our pews into long tables and benches and converted our sanctuaries into dining halls then gathered each week to throw open our doors and invite our neighbors in for a hearty meal, some prayer and some singing?   Who knows what kinds of hunger we might feed?  Who knows what kind of emptiness Christ might fill?

In a world where 645 million people will go hungry today^[1]—48 million^[2] of them in our own country—in a world where 45% of all child deaths are caused by hunger or hunger-related illness, these stories of Jesus feeding multitudes serve to remind us that we have a responsibility to feed a hungry world and we’re not doing a very good job of following his example.  

Hunger in our world and in our country is a solvable problem.  The US Department of Agriculture estimates that 120 to 160 billion pounds of food is wasted every year in this country alone—that’s 20 to 40% of the entire US food supply being dumped into landfills while 48 million people go hungry.  

Each of the Miraculous feeding stories begins by telling us that Jesus was moved by compassion for the hungry crowd, and I can’t help but think that maybe that’s the thing we’re missing when it comes to feeding our hungry world.  When grain shipments bound for food-insecure nations are blown up at the dock by the misguided missiles of a needless war, it’s hard to believe that food production is the problem.  When voices in Congress are trying to reduce or eliminate the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, it’s hard to believe that inflation of food prices is the main reason people are going hungry.  When 67 counties in our country are food deserts that don’t have a single grocery store because the big grocery corporations decided that a supermarket in those counties would not be profitable, it’s hard to believe that the high rate of food insufficiency in those same 67 counties is because people are uninformed about the importance of healthy nutrition.  When the Orange County Register reports that hunger in supposedly affluent Orange County, California, a county with 58 million-dollar zip codes, is worse now than in the Great Recession of 2008^[3], it’s a sign that something is seriously out of balance in our nation, our culture and our world.

The six gospel accounts of Jesus feeding thousands of hungry people are a clear invitation for us to consider how we are or are not following his example in feeding hungry people today.  Remember, after Jesus blesses the loaves and fish he hands them back to the disciples and says, “You feed them.”

Those of us who come to church come with hungers of our own.  We also come to share a meal— a meal that reminds us that we are in Christ and Christ is in us—a meal that fills us with Christ’s compassion as we taste and see the goodness of the Lord.  We come to share a meal that calls us to trust that in this God-made, God-blessed world, that in this God-blessed place with all its God-blessed hungers what we have is good.  We come to learn again that we can share what we have even when it doesn’t seem to be enough, and that by God’s power and presence there will always be enough.  More than enough. 

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^[1] https://ipes-food.org/un-hunger-report-2026-global-hunger-remains-stubbornly-high-as-another-food-price-crisis-looms

^[2]  https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america

^[3] ANDRE MOUCHARD | amouchard@scng.com | Orange County Register

PUBLISHED: July 30, 2026 at 5:21 PM PDT | UPDATED: July 31, 2026 at 6:45 AM PDT