Trinity 9_2026

Readings:

• Romans 9.1-5
• Matthew 14.13-21

Sermon:

Come without money or price. This is an invitation from God. Good news – gospel – from God.

What a relief!

Or is it?

Do we come with suspicion to today’s readings.

Come you who are thirsty. Drink deep. You who have no money come buy and eat. Come without money or price. Don’t waste what you have on what cannot and does not satisfy.

Is it a scam?

It is so easy for us to put out our own world view – a constant sense that there just isn’t enough to go round. Someone’s always out to get us, trick us out of what is ours. Besides, the budget will not stretch to what we need. Whether for ourselves or our own congregations or our diocese or the Church of England or the world in general. We worry and mutter – There might be money hidden away somewhere but you’ll have to fill in forms in triplicate to be eligible for any of it. There won’t be any left for us.

It grows out of a deep anxiety that there just isn’t enough. Anywhere. For anything.

And we can so easily assume that God has the same tactic.

We create God in our own image.

But listen to this good news from God!  A God who is not transactional. Doesn’t demand tit for tat. This is not a scam.

For God offers undeserved grace, everlasting kindness, abundant provision, love overflowing.

This is a covenant God does not break.

Isaiah was speaking God’s message to people in exile, discouraged, far from home, feeling they’d lost everything. Listen carefully to me, that you might live. Know this – God has not forgotten you.  God’s provision is to be trusted. Not just enough to scrape by, but overflowing bounty.

Seven centuries after Isaiah spoke this message of hope to people in exile, another  group of hungry, weary folk were living in their own land but now under occupation. Living with a daily anxiety that  they cannot meet the payment for the Temple tax, or the tax to Rome or to Herod. So, they are hanging on the words of a travelling rabbi who speaks of a God who has not forgotten them, and of a Kingdom that they can together bring into being, poor though they are.

But the day is growing late. The followers of Jesus are growing anxious. They’re in a deserted place. The crowd is tired, hungry. They could become volatile. What if things become difficult? The disciples share their anxiety with Jesus. Advise him to send the crowds home, because there is nothing to eat.  

And Jesus says there is no need to turn anyone away. What do you have that you can share with them?

That’s the trouble with Jesus, his disciples think, he’s too generous sometimes. Doesn’t see the practicalities. Always wants to go just a bit too far.

We have nothing – they say – that’s their definition of what they have – nothing – well except these five loaves and two fish – but what are they amongst so many.

We sometimes have the same reaction. We have nothing – except perhaps this little bit – but its not enough. Not enough for us, let alone enough to share, or give away. Where will that leave us?

We can be tempted to look at the world’s need and wonder what we can possibly do – and therefore think there is nothing we can do, that there is nothing we can offer. We very easily assume a scarcity.

But God can do wonderful things with whatever we offer openly. God can turn our scarcity into something wonderful. Transform it by the abundance that is God’s nature.

It begins not in what we have, but in how we offer it.

Dare we learn to mirror that good news of abundant love? That generosity of spirit, an outlook that trusts in God’s provision? For then something wonderful happens.

We might not be able to explain it or make calculations on its outcome.

And it doesn’t mean that we live irresponsibly, careless with the world’s resources or our share of them.

It doesn’t mean being taken for fools and allowing the unscrupulous to manipulate us and misuse us.

It doesn’t mean coming up with a plan we think is good and then asking God to rubber stamp it.

It means being open to the movement of God’s Spirit in the world, in us, in the unexpected – apparently deserted places – and recognising when God is already at work, and where God calls us to join in the transformative life of the kingdom.

It does means unlocking the doors of our hearts, letting go of the anxiety that tells us there isn’t enough, and being free to offer what we know to be true.

It means daring to be hospitable, generous of heart, compassionate and open to possibilities of what God’s transforming love can do in us, and in our communities and in the world

Bring what you have, Jesus says, and allow me to bless it. And see what it becomes.

Jesus had compassion on the crowd. He met their need. It wasn’t about performing a miracle – look at what I can do, are you impressed. Well done me!

It was seeing people through the eyes of God who loves and cares, and an action of the Kingdom of God.

These readings are in a series on Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God.  And the Kingdom is a world view of generosity and compassion and sharing. That begins in us. Perhaps others could learn from us. Those carrying enormous responsibilities and weight of wealth and power could let go a little too, open hearts and minds and hands to feed the hungry and enable the poor to live.

That is God’s call after all.

And while we pray for that to happen it can begin in small ways in us. To believe that there is enough. And that God’s love and grace is overflowing and lavish and God’s covenant is everlasting. And that we can find a way to mirror that, reflect it to the anxious world in which we live.

The story of this community picnic is a foretelling of the Messianic Banquet, the Eucharistic feast. This is my body broken for you. Twelve baskets of broken pieces left over after everyone has had their fill.

My everlasting covenant with David, fulfilled here, in Jesus. Who calls us to be his body in the world.

So that one day all will be fed, and all our hungers satisfied. And all will be whole once more.

 Amen