While even his closest associates would lean towards dismissing the people to fend for themselves, [Jesus] invites the community of the wilderness into a divine economy of care. Sharing, as a physical manifestation of that care, requires a suspension of the belief that scarcity is the only reality available in the moment of want.
The reign of God may be hidden, but it invites participants to risk much—even everything, to know the joy and treasure inherent in this alternative way of life in the world.
Remembering that our current lives are being lived during the time of the kingdom allows us the humility to see each individual moment as being equally beautiful, equally meaningful, and equally essential to prepare for the harvest.
Before the hope emerges, however, toxic dynamics and problematic patterns in inherited histories need to be excavated, named, and redressed.
Moral imagination, standing up even when afraid, is required to provide empathetic welcome to prophets, righteous people, and “these little ones.”
To be faithful to God’s promised covenant for communal flourishing, faith communities must reject the recycled rhetoric of “blood and soil” that is rapidly turning white supremacy into normalized governmental policy and practice.
Insiders and those most similar are invited into the movement first, and then, if meaningful and urgent enough to others expands to those beyond the insiders. The expansion of God’s Realm in Matthew is built slow and steady, an example we have much to learn from.
Jesus presents himself as a physician, and offers one of his most programmatic statements of ethics. The sick need a doctor, not the healthy. Why then does church seem designed for the already well?
For someone who grew up being told they barely count as human, the idea that God is specifically mindful of them is not a moment of little surprise. It is a life-changing claim.
Healing the wounds of the world begins at the tossing of seeds in the middle of a city, the falling of flaming tongues on the early church, and the persistent faith, hope, and love that community care provides.
Jesus offers power through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Rather than being consolidated in one place or in one person, this power is dispersed, establishing not a national entity but an ever-expanding community of belonging.