Jesus Is the Subject

The most important thing that happens is that we are fed by our Good Shepherd Jesus with His Word and with His Supper. Receiving. Without receiving there will be no giving.

There are pastors and churches around today who would view church as a kind of Amway multilevel marketing scheme and worship as a pep rally for the sales force, corporate rah-rah to get the sales force pumped up to hit the streets and sell the product. And you’d be challenged to bring in the numbers. How many people did you bring to church this morning? How many people did you evangelize this week? How many lives have you transformed lately? You’d be challenged, and we like challenges, don’t we? At least some of us do until we’re burned out being challenged. You’d be organized and mobilized and put to work building the kingdom, though it wouldn’t be the kingdom of God you would be building because man doesn’t build God’s kingdom. Jesus does, with His incarnation, dying and rising. And He’s finished with it.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t all sorts of stuff to do, but in kingdom terms it amounts to five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand. But it’s Jesus who multiplies, Jesus who feeds, Jesus who takes what little we have to offer and like a shepherd feeding His flock gives to us what we could not supply for ourselves.

– Rev. William M. Cwirla, Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Mark 6:30-44), 2012