Ninth Sunday after Trinity 2024 St Andrew’s Milngavie
Today we celebrated the ninth Sunday after Trinity accompanied by Alison.
We have been informed from the diocese that the Electoral Synod will meet on 21st September to discuss the process to select the next bishop. There is a sheet of paper on the notice board where you can put one word suggestions for qualities you would like to see in your next bishop. This needs to be completed within the next few weeks.
This Week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room.
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House
Readings for next Sunday – 10th Sunday after Trinity – Exodus 16:2-4,9-15 Ephesians 4:1-16 John 6:24-35
Today’s readings – 2 Kings 4:42-44, Ephesians 3: 14-21, John 6:1-21
In difficult times we may find ourselves experiencing a mix of emotions; fear, anxiety frustration, hope and despair. And so, we console ourselves with prayer, our daily routines and whatever may bring us comfort and hope, in the same way I suspect as those who have gone before us.
The people of the OT especially in difficult times, like those of the exile, longed for the Messiah to come but they expected only prophets, because they were all that God had sent them so far.
Elisha had provided for God’s people through miraculous deeds as we hear in today’s reading as he feeds one hundred people during a famine with twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain.
Numerous other prophets like Isaiah and Hosea had drawn people back to God when other diversions had arisen and they had taken other paths, mostly leading to conflict and pain.
In the period of Roman occupation people had run to John the Baptist for reassurance and evidence that God had not forgotten his people, but then John was killed.
So, they turned in expectation to Jesus who seemed so much more than just another prophet. Here was someone who could rescue the diseased from their ailments, who offered reassurance of God’s love for them and security to those rejected by the religious authorities as unfit for temple worship. And Jesus fed them. He fed their minds with the truth, fed their hearts with the compassion he preached and lived, and fed their bodies with nourishment created by a miracle as we heard today in the feeding of the five thousand.
The crowds ran to this man expecting a prophet of old, but because they were prepared to believe, they received the gifts which only God could give them. This was the God whom Jesus referred to as his Father, and who then proved through Jesus that he was indeed the Father of all.
Later, with his friends away from the crowd, Jesus would also demonstrate his power over the rough waters of the lake as we read about him walking on it towards his disciples in the boat.
So, for the time being the disciples had received what they needed: the reassurance that, in spite of all that had gone before and the Roman occupation, God had not forgotten them. Their continuing faith brought this man to them and his availability to them in their need was that proof.
Where do we find our comfort, in times of uncertainties as we feel our way through the vicariousness of our earthly existence endeavouring to navigate the pitfalls which life throws at us? We now know more about God than the crowds fed by Jesus because our knowledge is filtered through the wonder of the resurrection.
We know what God is really like because Jesus told us and showed the extent of God’s love for us throughout his ministry in his teachings and miracles which we read about in the gospels. No longer is God to be the stern and authoritarian patriarch of the ancient times, one who filled with the world with awe and anxiety. God became the person the unsure might find comfort, the weary would find rest and the hungry would be fed.
While remaining the Lord of all creation, in majesty and power, God demonstrated a loving presence more encompassing than anything we could even imagine, nurturing and giving hope to all who turn to him.
Since Jesus we are no longer alone. Our strength comes not only from bread, hope and guesswork. We have seen the face of God, and the actions of the Almighty, in the person of Jesus. To know him is to know the extent of God, to have the totality of God and the Kingdom of heaven among us.
Paul in his letter to the Ephesians prays that his readers may be strengthened by this belief. Paul tries to put into words the full extent of the love of Christ for his people, glorying in its width length, height and depth. Eph 3:18
Human words cannot adequately express this love and yet it is available in all its fullness to those who put their faith in Jesus Christ. We need to discover that God can do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” Eph 3:20
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…….” Eph 3:16
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…..to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Eph 3:20-21