Oooooh, SLAM!

By Matt

1. "You too? Are you being willfully stupid?" (Matthew 15:16) - Jesus doesn't seem to have any patience with a rather slow Peter here. He's not getting what Jesus said about the Pharisees and Jesus calls him out on it, rather harshly. "You too" groups with with the Pharisees and then being willfully stupid . . . well, that just hurts.
2. "Don't you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated?" (Matthew 15:17) - Yeah, I suppose I've heard of that in Biology class . . . But seriously, Jesus has a great point here. We do need to be careful of what we take in because it's going to have consequences. Everything we take in, comes out. So, we need to be careful with what we take in so that it will come out the right way. This could be movies and music, but it could just as easily be sermons and theology. We just need to know ourselves well enough to know how we will react and then stay away from the stuff that will be bad for us. And if we don't know these things, we need to avoid them completely. Too put it plainly: a movie isn't either moral or immoral. It's what happens in our head and how we twist and manipulate it that gives it its morality in terms of us. That's why we need to be careful.
   
3. "How much bread do you have?" (Matthew 15:34) - This one kind of hits a little close to home. As you can probably guess, this is Jesus about to perform the miracle of feeding the multitude. With these fateful words he's inviting the disciples into his scheme. This is the second time it happens in Matthew and the disciples are clever enough to just tell Jesus how much they have and not comment on how little it is (they made that mistake last time). The big idea behind all of this is that Jesus can take our little and make it huge. This applies to all sorts of things: our money, our time, our talents. If we're willing to give it up to him, he'll take care of it and do far more than what we could have ever done or ever dream of doing. This story doesn't specify the origin of the fish and bread but, if it's anything like the other stories, it came from a little boy. He had little, but he gave it all. When he gave it up to the disciples, was it not an act of faith? How was he supposed to know what was going to happen with it? The disciples take it for themselves and he didn't get anything? That was a real possibility. But, he didn't worry about it. He gave and he gave freely.

This hits close to home for me because I have gotten out of the habbit of making regular contributions to the church and it's something I feel bad about. But, I'm also worried enough about my own financial state that I'm terrified to give anything. But here we have a story of a very brave young man who gave everything. I can at least give something, it might not be the whole 10% yet, but I have something to give. It will be an act of faith, and I'm scared to do it, but this story is a great reassurance that Jesus can do much more with it than I ever could and there are people out there who need it a lot more than me.