O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?
-- Matthew 16:8
We miss the point.
That's the point Jesus is making. In reality, it is an underlying theme of the Sermon on the Mount, many of Jesus' teachings, and his mission in general.
We tend to fixate on the temporal and miss the eternal. We stare at the surface and miss the depth. We focus on external and miss the heart... ours, others' and God's.
(Wow, I could go so many different directions with this... so at risk of chasing multiple rabbits, let's stick to context.)
The disciples think Jesus is chiding them because they have forgotten bread (again). Temporal... surface... external. It is easy for us, by the way, to disparage the disciples' short-sightedness. But we suffer from the same cataracts.
This Jesus who feeds tens of thousands with a Happy Meal is not limited by what we don't have. It is we who often limit ourselves by what we do have. We tend to believe God-sized results require (our) super-sized resources. And we are snared into thinking the primary gift we bring is our ability to be good enough, worthy enough, enough enough. (I've been asked if that's a typo. Nope - reread it.)
The disciples miss that Jesus is uncovering layers of dead religion. He is exposing what is false; that which so easily captures a heart and turns it cold. And just as he produces feasts from scraps, he brings life and vitality where oppression has suffocated.
He brings the eternal to the temporal. He brings depth to the surface. He brings heart to the external.
God, help me not to fixate on the temporal... the surface... the external.
For now...
D
That's the point Jesus is making. In reality, it is an underlying theme of the Sermon on the Mount, many of Jesus' teachings, and his mission in general.
We tend to fixate on the temporal and miss the eternal. We stare at the surface and miss the depth. We focus on external and miss the heart... ours, others' and God's.
(Wow, I could go so many different directions with this... so at risk of chasing multiple rabbits, let's stick to context.)
The disciples think Jesus is chiding them because they have forgotten bread (again). Temporal... surface... external. It is easy for us, by the way, to disparage the disciples' short-sightedness. But we suffer from the same cataracts.
This Jesus who feeds tens of thousands with a Happy Meal is not limited by what we don't have. It is we who often limit ourselves by what we do have. We tend to believe God-sized results require (our) super-sized resources. And we are snared into thinking the primary gift we bring is our ability to be good enough, worthy enough, enough enough. (I've been asked if that's a typo. Nope - reread it.)
The disciples miss that Jesus is uncovering layers of dead religion. He is exposing what is false; that which so easily captures a heart and turns it cold. And just as he produces feasts from scraps, he brings life and vitality where oppression has suffocated.
He brings the eternal to the temporal. He brings depth to the surface. He brings heart to the external.
God, help me not to fixate on the temporal... the surface... the external.
For now...
D
