Sunday 18A, 2008
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After the Israelites settled into the Promised Land
that flowed with milk and honey,
they lived well under the direct leadership of God himself.
Then people wanted to experiment with something else
and asked God to let them be ruled by a king.
This experiment ended a few hundred years later
in their complete separation from God.
The second king, David created a united, strong kingdom
and his son Solomon made it famously wealthy.
The other kings that followed them fought and quarrelled, squandered and abused their powers,
splitting the country into two weak kingdoms,
leading the people astray, away from God and his commandments.
There came a time when an entire generation had never heard of
the Law of Moses.
God continuously sent his prophets to them alternately warning them
of the dangers inherent in their conduct and begging them
to listen and to pay attention to him.
In the reading that we heard today, he promised
that the hungry and the thirsty would be satisfied
and that
they would live if they would only listen and pay attention to God.
In the gospel, the teaching of the five thousand and
their subsequent feeding made that promise a reality.
The people were hungry and thirsty for the word of God
and Jesus gave it to them and he fed them with bred and fish
until they were satisfied.
While doing that Jesus put aside his own needs, feelings and concerns.
That morning he heard the tragic news that his relative, friend and the herald of his ministry, John the Baptist lost his life.
He was shocked and concerned for his own future and so were
the disciples.
They needed to be by themselves to grieve,
to gather their thoughts and their strength and to pray.
However the needy people found them and Jesus put aside
his own needs and ministered to them.
He left us a strong example
of ministry beyond the call of duty, a ministry motivated by love.
St. Paul must have known the love of Jesus from experience
for he declared with complete certainty that the love of God is ours always;
and that nothing can ever separate us from it
not even ourselves.
We must believe St Paul
and rest secure in the knowledge of the love of God
and live our life to the full. >
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