Seeing with Eyes of Amazement
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Kings 4:42–44 / Psalm 145:16 / Ephesians 4:1–6 / John 6:1–15
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Reflecting on the Word
By Dr. Karla J. Bellinger
Grass? That word jumped out at me when I first read today’s passage from John. Grass? In Israel?
When I look out of my window, I see green. I see grass, rich green grass. I see the dark green of spruce, the rich green of maple, the forest of green in the woods of oak and walnut and cherry. The region in which I live is in the rain shadow of Lake Michigan, and bursts with the color green on the first day of August. Water is abundant. All is vibrantly green.
I don’t recall that depth of green when I visited Israel, especially not in unirrigated places. So it startled me to read “there was a great deal of grass in that place” (John 6:10). I asked a Palestinian friend about that. She said, “That would be very unusual. Maybe a few places in early spring?”
The author of John writes in multiple layers of meaning, often frolicking with witticisms that we don’t comprehend in translation. So why the “grass?”
I looked up the Greek word used for “grass” . . . and surprise! Grass wasn’t something that you mowed to play soccer. This Greek word means “fodder” or “hay”—something that you feed to animals.
Clever, isn’t it, that Jesus would tell them to recline on the “fodder” when he is about to feed them?
Our God is surprising. Philip did the math—a hundred days’ wages wouldn’t be enough. How can we feed these folks? (Elisha’s servant asks the same thing: “How can we do this?”)
Using Eucharistic language, the Lord’s abundance was unexpected. He worked through an unlikely person: an unnamed little boy. Jesus’s unwillingness to be king was unexpected, too.
When you look at grass, think how astonishing God is: “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs” . . . in totally unexpected ways.
Consider/Discuss
- As we head into a month of Bread of Life discourses, we will see Jesus continually doing the unexpected—feeding five thousand people, walking on water, ducking away from those who would make him king, calling himself the Bread of Life, making his supposed followers grumble at his audacity as they walk away. God’s ways are not our ways. Even more, God’s ways seem to be radically different from our expectations. How could we cultivate an “eyesight of amazement” this month, allowing the Holy Spirit to surprise us in ways that we might not expect?
- In what unpredicted ways has God met your needs or answered your prayers? Who has helped you to “pick up and get going,” even someone whose help you did not expect?
Living and Praying with the Word
Lord, what an adventure it is to follow you! You take us places we never imagined we might go. You have worked through people whom we never would have expected. Thank you for keeping us alert and attentive to your ways, always hoping, always wondering how you will feed us today. Give us this day our daily bread, with baskets left over! What are you going to do today, God?