Toward Sunday.

We begin our 3 week series called Olympic Faith this Sunday.  We will reflect on Olympic Messes, Olympic Medals and Olympic Memories.

Two billion of us worldwide will experience this collective show of greatness as a salve to our minds and spirits, like when a few billion of us get to watch a solar eclipse together.  It is as though a hush falls over the whole world, like a mantilla, and then gasps of amazement, and gratitude to be out of the prison of our thinking and self-absorption and anxiety and greed.  Over the coming weeks we will watch these Olympics together, holding our one great human breath, cheering others on. (from a FB status update by Anne Lammott 7.19.12)

When you think of Olympic messes  what comes to mind?  

Barbara Brown Taylor said in a lecture (Festival of Homiletics 2011) that “the scriptures we turn to most often are those verses that describe for us our own situations the best.  Situations we find ourselves in as individuals and as groups.”   Our passage for this week is John’s version of the Feeding of the 5,000. How might this familiar story hold new meaning for us today? Read John 6:1-15.

In this passage Phillip and Andrew have a dialogue with Jesus regarding the crowd that has gathered. They realize that Jesus expects the crowd to be fed in spite of their perceived limited resources.

What realizations have you had as a result of following Jesus in which you too have felt limited in your capacities.  What did you do and what was the result?  How might this experience inform your desire to follow Jesus this week?