Pentecost 8

Pentecost 8 (Matthew 14:13-21) He had compassion on them.

In Jesus God reveals that he is love. That love is universal and unconditional.

God has many attributes. God has power (omnipotence) but God is not power. God has knowledge
(Omniscience) but God is  not knowledge. The co-eternal Son surrendered all of his divine attributes when he became a human being. What he did not surrender and could not surrender is the divine nature. The divine nature is universal unconditional love. That is the Good News Jesus brings to all
people everywhere.

The great challenge religious people create for ourselves is a false image of God. That image of God derives from fear. Some people fear the world is broken and can never be healed. They want God to fix the world’s problems. They want to know and impose the right government and the right economic system.

Some people fear that there just isn’t enough to go around. They want God to give them what they need and deserve to live well.

Some people fear that God is a God of rewards and punishments. They need to know what they must believe and what they must do to earn God’s favor and avoid God’s wrath.

Some people believe that God not only punishes the unrighteous who fail to accept right belief and practice right behavior, they take it one step further and assert the fear that God will even punish the righteous who tolerate the unrighteous. They take it upon themselves to legislate on Earth what they believe to be divine law in heaven. They execute punishment upon the unrighteous lest God pour forth His wrath on them for failing to impose his Law.

The Bible says: perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love not only casts out fear, it transforms fear back into love by grace through faith.

How do we know this? How can we be sure? The answer is Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect love of God in human flesh.

God the Father instructed holy mother Mary to name her child “Jesus”, which means “savior”. God the Father also reveals to us that He has another name, an older name, a powerfully descriptive name for the Son. At the Baptism of Jesus and at the Transfiguration of Jesus, God the Father sends God the Holy Spirit to anoint Jesus and reveal that older more powerful and descriptive name. That name is: The Beloved.

In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for The Beloved is ‘O Agapetos. It is the word agape- steadfast, holy, unconditional, universal, uncrated, eternal love.

Jesus just doesn’t speak of this love. He just doesn’t demonstrate this love. He is this love.

Many people witnessed the miracles Jesus performed and concluded: he’s got the power. He is the one who will force the unrighteous to submit to divine law. He is the one who will give our nation military dominance over all other nations. He is the one who will bring us wealth.

The power by which Jesus performed his miracles is the power of universal unconditional love. It is the real presence of God who confronts scarcity and creates abundance, who meets sickness and manifests health, who transforms sin back into its original virtue by infusing the soul with the uncreated light and infinite compassion, who takes death into himself and transforms death into new unending life.

Jesus healed everyone who came to him. There were no exceptions. There were no preconditions.

Jesus fed everyone who came to him in a state of hunger and thirst. He did not ask which religious sect or political party they belonged to. If they were hungry- he fed them.

Jesus welcomed everyone who came to him with open arms. He turned no one away. He kept no checklist to exclude any group of people for any reason. Once, when his disciples attempted to prevent children from approaching Jesus he gently rebuked the disciples and said: Let the children come to me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus never practiced exclusivity, condemnation or separation. He taught: love your neighbor. When someone asked: who should I consider to be my neighbor? Jesus said: everyone. Everyone who comes to you in need is your neighbor. Everyone you meet who is in need is your neighbor.

Jesus even taught that how we treat those we consider least- least desirable, least worthy, least welcome is how we treat him. This is love- agape love. It is not the love we normally experience or bring forth in our lives. It is a love whose source is God alone. We can surrender our souls to God to be embraced by this love. We can ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to be channels of this love. We cannot produce agape by will alone.

Jesus reveals that God is agape love. That love is universal, unconditional and abundant. In the miracle of the loaves and fishes everyone is fed and there is more left over that what they initially had.

Somehow, it doesn’t seem reasonable. Somehow, it doesn’t seem real. Somehow, it contradicts everything we think we know about the world and society. It is the original pattern of our species that our first parents, Adam and Eve, rejected. It is the new life and the new way of living Jesus came to restore and continues to come to us to restore.

The blessed sacrament of Holy Communion is the divine abundance of grace Jesus pours into our souls to equip us to practice the new way of living. That new way of living is abundance for us and for all people everywhere through us.

What is the standard of this new way of living? Compassion.

What actions does this new way of living produce? Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Welcome the stranger. Care for the children. It is that straightforward and direct. It is that difficult and if we are honest it is that offensive. No one of us can do everything. Each of us can do something.

In the blessed sacrament of Holy Communion Jesus unites his body to our bodies, his blood to our blood, his life to our lives. He pours himself into our souls in the infinite abundance of divine love so we may pour ourselves out in compassionate acts of kindness to the people God brings into our lives.

Jesus is the compassion of God reaching out to the lost and suffering people of the world through us.