18th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Mt. 14:13-21)

            Living in the Spirit.  Sometimes that seems like a cliché. When we hear someone is "living in the Spirit", we might think of someone being carefree as they go through life.  We might also think of someone being spontaneous about everything. But that isn’t what living in the Spirit means in a religious sense.  Jesus shows us what it means to live in the Spirit in the Gospel today.

                On April 11, 1970, an event took place that captivated the world. Apollo 13 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert on board. The intent of their mission was to land a third set of astronauts on the moon.  Six days later Apollo 13 splashed down.  The men never landed on the moon.  The mission was a failure.

                56 hours after the flight launched there was an explosion on the spacecraft. An oxygen tank blew up in the service module.  The ruptured spacecraft survived, but vital gases escaped.  The mission was aborted.

                NASA had to calculate how to get the space men home. And there was a real question as to whether the astronauts would survive. Many were resigned to the fact that they would die.  Problem after problem had to be solved.  In one instance, the carbon dioxide in the space capsule became dangerously high.  The scrubbers that cleansed the air were overloaded. The astronauts were slowly suffocating. The engineers on the ground were challenged to design a temporary air purifier in a matter of minutes.  A square filter had to be inserted into a round container.  At first, it seemed impossible, but the engineers examined all the things that were on the spacecraft. Using random supplies like a hose from a space suit, the cardboard cover off a flight plan, duct tape, cellophane and other odds and ends a new air purifier was designed. In the end, the space travelers found out they had just what they needed when they needed it.

                When we read the story of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes we might see a parallel to the Apollo 13 story.  Thousands of people follow Jesus out into the countryside to hear him preach.  The people were far from town.  The Apostles were alarmed because people were famished, so they come to Jesus with the problem. His response seems crazy.  “You give them something to eat,” he says.  The apostles felt that to feed such a crowd was impossible.

                Jesus says, “Look again.”  “We have only five loaves and two fish”, they say.  Jesus says, “You have all you need. Make it work.”  When the apostles leave pessimism behind, and when they begin to pass out the food, they inexplicably have more than enough to feed the people. Twelve baskets are left over.

                If we live life in the Spirit, our first response to crisis isn’t, we are lost.  No, we respond by looking again at the problems we must solve.  Christians aren’t pessimists.  No, we are people who trust, so that we can solve tremendous problems. We have faith that God has given us what we need to make it through difficulty.

                We can especially say that as we live together in a church community. As a pastor of many years, I have witnessed how very challenging issues can become manageable.  A parish may have a new ministry that needs to be launched.  Maybe there is a building program that needs to be completed.  At such times the first voices can be those that say, "We can’t succeed".  "We don’t have enough people."  "We don’t have enough resources."  "We tried that before."  If church leadership listens to such talk, they retreat from challenges.  If church leaders creatively approach problems, many times, if not most times, great things can be accomplished.  Jesus’ voice is the one that says, “You have what you need.”

                Could it be that we have more solutions than we think?  If everyone wanted to make peace, could we lay down the weapons of war? Would there be enough resources in the world if we shared them?  If we started conserving things, what could happen? We have what we need to solve our problems.  What we need is to listen to the Master’s voice.  Jesus taught that we need only to begin to treat others the way we want to be treated.  We need to love our neighbor as ourselves. We can say, "That will never work".  We can label Jesus’ voice as naive. Or we follow his directions and live.