God asks us to love unconditionally, to love the unlovable, to love those who can never love us back: agape. But like Peter, most of us can only offer what we can offer right now. Mutuality. Reciprocity. Solidarity. The love most of us know: filial.
So many among us who confess to be followers of Jesus promise to offer what we actually do not have. We will volunteer our services when we get a vacation. We will give more support when we get a raise. We will serve the church and its ministries when our situation changes for the better. The future is in God’s hands. Not ours.
Only in John do we find the source of the five barley loaves and two fish that led to the feeding of the 5000. It was from a child. A poor and hungry child. One among the hungry multitude. The child offered what he had. Right there and then.
In Sunday's narrative, Jesus adjusts. He asks Peter for the best but when Peter could not give it, Jesus accepts what Peter could offer right there and then.
My friends, what we can offer right now is better than the best we can offer tomorrow.
What can we offer right now as expressions of our solidarity with our Palestinian sisters and brothers? What can we do right now to demand justice for victims of extra judicial killings and enforced disappearances? What can we contribute right now to aid relief operations locally and internationally?
What we can offer right now is better, much better than the best we can offer tomorrow.
Especially for a world, that is like sheep without a shepherd, that needs to be fed, to be given drink, to be welcomed, to be visited, to be clothed, to be set free, to experience justice, to hear the Good News that God has left heaven to be with us.
Love. Right now.
*Art, "Breakfast on the Beach" by Peter Koenig (available from the vanderbilt divinity library digital art collection).
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