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August 02, 2008
The 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Free Lunch?
There are two old sayings most of us may remember: No Free Lunch and The Best Things in Life are Free. The modern world, of course, would insist that the former is true: If you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it! The idealists among us, on the other hand, would claim that there is enough of everything for everyone to have at least a small portion.
Other idealists would add that material things are not necessarily the most precious commodities in life. So, how do the ideal and the so-called real worlds deal with these questions?
People who deal in the money and commodities markets will tell you that you have to take care of yourself: Get a job, save up, don’t waste your money, don’t run up your credit card balance. No one is going to bail you out.
For the most part, that’s how it is in the world today: You have to take care of yourself; you can’t depend on your neighbor. He or she may be kind, but kindness only goes so far. There comes a time when even kindness itself runs out.
Yet, here we have Jesus insisting in Matthew’s gospel that even if someone has only a few loaves of bread and a couple fish and decides to make them go around, they will go around even for a large crowd of people. It is also interesting to note that Jesus did not do the distribution in this case. He put his disciples to work, and, of course there was enough to go around. That little bit of instruction tells us that if we want to be declared disciples of Jesus we have to make material things go around. No miracles in this instance!
The second question is this: What is truly precious in our life? What is worth saving up? Isaiah the prophet asks the question: “Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages on what will not satisfy? Obviously, all of us appreciate a piece of bread for breakfast, a cinnamon roll with coffee. The better question is this: What could we describe as food for the mind, for the spirit? What will last, not just between breakfast and dinner, but rather what will give our total person the sustenance it needs between birth and death?
My sense is that it has to be something more than food for the stomach. I would suggest such things as silence, quietness, a comfortable place to sit and meditate, a book of poetry, a copy of the New Testament, some music in the background, a few moments in church on your way home from work, perhaps even an occasional visit to the museum or a night at the symphony. Obviously, these are not for free, but they will definitely satisfy our hunger for things of the spirit, the deep things in life, those that will finally give total satisfaction to the whole person.
Finally, one must still say that the best things in life are truly free if we can find a way to discern what they are; and when we do, we will never be hungry again.
The scriptures: Isaiah 55: 1-3, Romans 8: 35-37, Matthew 14: 13-31
Posted by Cindy Lentine on August 2, 2008 12:39 PM.
