Give Us This Day: 2 August, 2020
Matthew 14:13-21
King Herod threw a party with a closed guest list, the best of everything, and in his own honor that ended up in violence. These things always do. The kings of this world must defend their thrones with violence. . . . Maybe it’s not always as obvious as the head of an enemy on a platter, but violence is in the air around kings.
King Jesus threw a dinner party as well. His party was marked by an open guest list, a guest list formed through the compassion of Jesus and the yearning in the hearts of those who followed so close by his side. His party was not to celebrate his own birthday or to impress his power and magnificence upon the guests. His party’s purpose was to meet a need. This party had no entertainment and clearly did not have an A-list menu. Five loaves and two fish. The kind of thing that Herod would have left to the servants to eat after his own party. Table droppings.
As the crowd was fed and as we are fed . . . we are provided with an alternate model of what it means to be king. Inviting and responding with compassion. Healing and care provided for all who have need. Giving while knowing that repayment could not possibly be made. Provision made for our true needs and not our felt desires. Our daily bread given to us. –– Seth M. Moland-Kovash
Isaiah 55:1-5
This passage from Isaiah begins with extravagance and abundance. Food and drink without price and available to anyone who is thirsty or hungry casts the invitation widely. One wonders whether the privileged will take up such an invitation since it allows all the wrong people to come.
The invitation moves to a promise as it throws open something much more radical. Sitting in exile, the people addressed by Second Isaiah wonder how the house of David shall stand again. Will a descendent rise again? Isaiah seems to offer something beyond imagining. The covenant with David becomes part of the fare offered at the banquet. The exiled, the ones who can’t pay a thing, will indeed be the way that God continues to bless the people and the nations beyond them. –– Timothy V. Olson
Romans 9:1-5
These verses . . . set the stage for what Paul has to say about Israel. The situation of Paul’s kindred is apparently the cause of not only personal sorrow, but anguish over the separation in general. Verse 4 leaves no room to believe that Paul sees God turned away from Israel—all that was given is still in place. In addition, they have blessed the world by being the source of the Messiah. The end of verse 5 presents a difficulty, mostly due to punctuation. We can on the one hand read that Paul is equating the Messiah to God, or on the other, break before the reference to God and see the blessing as a separate benediction. Since no sources supply a clue to the punctuation, either is possible, but it seems more Pauline to see the break and benediction. –– Timothy V. Olson
Seth Moland-Kovash is a co-pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church, ELCA, in Palatine, Illinois.
Timothy V. Olson is the pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Ankeny, Iowa.
Homily Service 38, no. 8 (2005): 47-57.