Daily Devotion for Lent 2019 - Day 21

Scripture Reading: Matthew 15:29-39 (NRSV)

This seems like round two or more of the same.

We have already seen lots of healing and we have even seen a bigger feeding.  Why does Matthew seem to elaborate the point?

I believe that we pick up where we left off yesterday.  In hindsight, I should not have broken up the reading in chapter 15 but in order to make it through Lent there have to be some concessions!

Sometimes we are like the dog

when it comes to grace.  We don't

realize we have our own plate.

Jesus heals the Gentile woman who reminds him of his own compassionate stance.  Today he continues to heal the Gentiles that come before him.  We see the fantastic results of life that follow wherever Jesus goes.  We see importantly the second piece of verse 31 where "they praised the God of Israel."

Then we have a second miraculous feeding.  This time we see seven baskets left over.  While the earlier feeding had twelve, this was to represent the Good News reaching out to all of the tribes of Israel.  Seven seems to represent the blessing coming to all the Gentile nations.  Seven was the number of nations in the Promised Land that the Israelites displaced as recounted in Deuteronomy 7:1:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you—the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you     (NRSV)

What is interesting is that Jesus now reverses the stance against these nations.  Verse two of Deuteronomy seven goes on to state, "Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy."

And yet we remember the words of Jesus, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy."

This would not have been a popular stance in that day.

Some would have surely claimed, "We can only be merciful when we can afford to show mercy!"  As a subjugated people, they may have thought, "Let us become stronger first and then we can be more generous."  This seems like a natural instinct.  It has to do with protecting our own before sharing with our neighbors.

As we stress over our resources, what if we never have enough?

Can we go through all of life with an attitude that we will someday share but not today?

It reminds me of the sign, "Free hamburgers tomorrow."

Jesus seems to be saying, "Tomorrow has arrived!"

What if this were true?

Prayer for the day:

God, we like the idea of abundance.
We relish the sense of grace that emerges from our faith in Jesus Christ.
We are even bold enough to embrace the forgiveness we receive.
But sometimes, we want to close the store after we've claimed all the bargains for ourselves.
We can't imagine that the shelves will be re-stocked.
Give us a larger sense of grace so that we recognize there are seven baskets left over.
Amen.


Photo by Albert Mock via Flickr.com.  Used under the Creative Commons license.