1 Corinthians 1:10-18
St. Matthew 14:14-22
St. Luke Orthodox Church, Abilene, TX
We sometimes get so caught up with our own
schedules and problems we forget who we are, where we came from, and how
closely we are connected spiritually even to people whom we have never
met. Today is “St. Timon Sunday Day” in
our Diocese, when we remember Timon, one of the seventy apostles sent out by
Jesus Christ and one of the original deacons mentioned in the book of
Acts. He became the bishop of Bosra in
Syria and eventually became a martyr. All
Christians are in his debt as a pillar of the early Church. He converted many Arabs to the Christian
faith , and especially we Antiochian Orthodox should remember him with great
appreciation. For he played a crucial
role in building the mother church of which we are a part and of evangelizing
the part of the world where our faith began.
So it
is fitting that in the last few of year s our Diocese has established “the
Hauran connection,” a way for us to help our impoverished Orthodox Christian brothers
and sisters in southwestern Syria. I
actually visited there briefly when I was in Syria for a conference a couple of
years ago. Life was very hard then, with few economic
opportunities and a Christian population of no more than 10%. Life is impossibly hard now for everyone in
Syria. In a revolution or civil war, it
doesn’t matter what you call it, everyone’s life is at risk. The situation is especially complicated for
Christians who have been protected by the Assad regime and typically fear what
the future will hold for them. Along
with people of other faiths, many of our Orthodox brothers and sisters are now
refugees.
I am
obviously not a politician and none of us has much influence over world
events. If anyone has a good solution
for Syria’s problems, I’ve not heard it yet.
So it may not seem like there is much that we can do. The collection that we take up here at St.
Luke each summer for “the Hauran Connection” may seem small. We are a sister parish to the parish of the
Dormition of the Theotokos, a community of twelve families whose church temple was
under construction when last I heard.
They sound a lot like us. We pray
for them every Sunday and make a small monetary donation to them each year. We do what we can to make life a little easier
for them. I hope that you will
prayerfully consider putting an offering designated for the Hauran Connection in
the collection plate in the next week or so.
Our
little parish’s connection to another
little parish in Syria reminds us of the five loaves and two fish that the
disciples collected to feed thousands of hungry people in a deserted place at
the end of a long day. It seemed crazy
to think that such a small amount of food could have any importance at all in
that situation. It was enough food for
one person, not for a big crowd. And the
disciples knew that, so they asked Jesus Christ to send the people away to buy
their own food. But He challenged them
to feed the people instead with what they had.
Looking
up into heaven, the Lord blessed, broke, and gave the loaves back to the disciples,
and they in turn gave them to the crowd.
And everyone had more than enough to eat; twelve basketsful of bread
were leftover after several thousand people had had dinner. What seemed so small, so insignificant, so
inadequate, was more than enough because of the blessing of our Savior.
So much
in our lives is like that, a seemingly insignificant offering such as a little
bit of money and weekly remembrance in prayer for a small parish in Syria. From time to time, our parish gives a few
dollars or a bus ticket to a needy family.
We donate to “Food for Hungry People” during Lent and to Pregnancy
Resources of Abilene. Our members make
offerings through their commitments to teach Sunday School, chant, serve at the
altar, clean the church or the yard, host a coffee hour, bake holy bread, visit
someone in a nursing home, or give someone a ride to church. We set aside time and expend the energy to
pray, to fast, to come to church, or to mend a broken relationship. In the larger scheme of things, all of these
acts seem small and incapable of meeting the great needs of those around us. Perhaps they seem barely worth mentioning.
But we
have to remember that the point is never whether we have the power or ability
to feed thousands or fix the world’s problems.
We’re not that great. We’re
neither God nor the rulers of the world.
We probably struggle enough just to deal with our own problems, much
less to set the world right. All that we
are called to do is to be like the disciples, to offer what little we can to
the Lord for His blessing and trust that He’ll do the rest.
That
kind of offering is at the very heart of our worship in the Orthodox Church,
for our spiritual fathers have always seen the Lord’s miraculous feeding of
thousands with the loaves and fishes as a sign of the Eucharist, of Holy
Communion. A couple of loaves of bread
and a cup containing wine and water. By
themselves, they might make a decent snack, but not even a full meal. They couldn’t satisfy those of us gathered
here today as dinner, much less a crowd of thousands.
But in
the Divine Liturgy, we pray for God’s blessing upon the bread and wine. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they become
the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the menu of the heavenly banquet. We receive more than a mere meal, but the
forgiveness of sins and life eternal in our communion. We are nourished with heavenly food and raised
to the life of heaven in the Eucharist. That’s far more than we could expect from even
the finest gourmet dinner.
But
have you ever noticed that human beings have to supply the bread , wine, and
water for the Liturgy? God works
miracles upon the small gifts we offer Him , but these offerings are essential. He requires that we do our small part; we
have to make the offering. And then He
does the rest, which makes of our tiny gifts far more than they could have been
on their own.
We
often say in the Church that we are not simply to attend the Divine Liturgy,
but to live it. All of our life should
be an offering to God. We should
participate in heavenly worship with every thought, word, and deed. But sometimes we honestly wonder how we can
ever do that. We have a thousand things
going through our mind at once. Our
thoughts, words, and deeds often seem out of control. Very often we would rather do just about
anything else other than pray, worship, or serve God and our neighbors.
When we
feel this way, we should remember that small offering of loaves and fish. The Lord blessed this tiny gift and
miraculously multiplied it to feed thousands.
Perhaps we are barely able to offer God anything. Perhaps we wonder if our offering of prayer
or fasting or service of whatever kind really matters. Maybe we are tempted to think that it’s so
insignificant that we shouldn’t even bother.
Yes, that is a temptation, for our
Lord has always worked through what is small and seemingly insignificant to
bring salvation to the world. If we’ve
read the Bible, we know that God has always used imperfect, conflicted people
like us to do His work. He calls us,
like He called them, to be as faithful as we can right now. He accepts whatever offering of time, energy,
and other resources we able to make. And
how He blesses it is more His business than ours. So in the spirit of the loaves and fishes, let
us continue offering our lives and resources to the Lord as best we can,
trusting that the same God who make much from St. Timon’s ministry in an obscure corner of
the world will do the same with ours to His glory. And let us remember all the people of Syria
in our prayers and do what we can to ease the suffering especially of those in
the Diocese of Hauran.
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