St Clement Church Community 9th Sunday after Trinity Service 2026

ST CLEMENT CHURCH

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY COMMUNITY SERVICE

Good morning

The ‘Feeding of the Five Thousand’ – probably the most well-known of all the miracles. So well-known that we may almost not really listen when it is read. We know it! But, do we? Do we really think about what it is telling us?

My love to you all

Liz

Creating God, you gather us in this place to worship you.

The sun wakes and warms the earth. Wake us to your love, God.

The flowing rivers water the earth, Spirit of God, flow through us as we worship.

Lord, we come seeking your face.

Lord, we come to feel your embrace. Amen

We say together:

We meet together in the presence of a God whose love is freedom, whose touch is healing, whose voice is calm. We meet not in our own strength but in the knowledge that God’s Spirit abides within us, in our worship today and in our daily lives when we depart from this place. The blessing received is shared, in the hope that others might be drawn to the God we serve. Amen

Hymn: 73 Christ is made the sure foundation

Prayer of Confession

God of all ages, who from generation to generation has heard the cries of your children humbly seeking forgiveness, and has welcomed sinners back into your embrace, hear the thoughts of our hearts, examine our motives, and forgive us our faults. We ask this through your Son who died and rose that we might know the true cost of forgiveness. Amen

The Collect

Almighty God, who sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church: open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Readings:

Isaiah 55. 1 - 5

Romans 9. 1 - 5

Hymn: 51 Be thou my vision

Gospel: Matthew 14. 13 - 21

(Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Response: ‘Glory to you O Lord.’)

When Jesus heard that Herod had beheaded John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into their villages and buy food for themselves.’ Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’

They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’

And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’

Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

(This is the Gospel of our Lord. Praise to you, O Christ)

Reflection

Paresh, an Indian carpenter who was hired to restore an old farmhouse, had just finished a difficult and hard first day on the job. A flat tyre made him lose an hour of his work, his electric saw packed in, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start.

While the owner of the house drove him home, Paresh sat in stony, thoughtful silence.

On arriving, Paresh, in the way of all Indian gentlefolk, invited the owner in to meet his family. As they walked towards the front door, Paresh paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands.

When, opening the door to his home, he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned face wreathed in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss.

After a cup of tea, he walked the house owner back to his car. They passed the tree and the man’s curiosity got the better of him. He asked Paresh about what he had seen him do earlier.

‘Oh, that’s my trouble tree. I know that I can’t help having troubles on a job, but one thing for sure, troubles don’t belong in the house with my wife and children. So, I just hang them on the tree every night when I come home. Then, in the morning I pick them up again. Funny thing is,’ he smiled winningly, ‘when I come out in the morning to pick them up, there aren’t nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before.’

You may wonder what this story has to do with today’s Gospel reading – well, it may have nothing, or it may have everything – depends how you hear it.

‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ That’s what the disciples say when Jesus tells them to “give ‘the great crowd’ something to eat.”

Five loaves and two fish – I know what that’s like, and I’m sure you do too. In fact, I know what a lot less than that’s like. But, is this story just about a lack of food? I don’t think so. I have ‘five loaves and two fish’ days – days when I feel that I don’t have enough of what is needed to deal with what life throws at me. At such times, I become a ‘five loaves and two fish’ person.

Have you felt like a ‘five loaves and two fish’ kind of person? What events or circumstances have made you feel ‘there’s nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ What does it feel like? What thoughts run through your head on those days?

In the ‘five loaves and two fish’ times of my life, I feel overwhelmed, powerless, and hopeless. I feel that more is being asked of me than I can give or handle. I don’t know what to do or say. I’m afraid, sad, and exhausted. I’m lonely and in a deserted place. It’s getting dark and, just like the disciples, I want to “send the crowds away” to let them fend for themselves. It’s not just that I don’t think that I have enough, but I believe that I am not enough. I am not enough to make a difference and I am not enough to cope with what is before me.

Does any of that sound familiar to you?

The story I began with, does that now make any sense? The wisdom of Paresh to have a trouble tree - I realise that I need one. I know we can and should offer our troubles and inadequacies to the Lord, but, I am a visual person; at times I need a clear picture, a tangible way of coping. To be able to physically ‘off-load’ all my troubles and inadequacies, if only overnight, makes sense to me. There is such a thing as self-compassion. How often have I found that ‘I needn’t have worried?’ How often have I wasted time and effort when I didn’t need to? How often have I nearly been destroyed by the stress of inadequacy? For me, a trouble tree would help.

To go back to the Gospel reading - what are we to do in the ‘five loaves and two fish’ times of our lives?

Well, what should we not do? We shouldn’t sit around waiting for Jesus to magically give us more bread and fish. Let’s face it, that’s not going to happen. Besides, the problem isn’t really a lack of bread and fish. It’s a lack of vision for our lives, the great crowd, and the future. It’s a lack of imagination for what could be. It’s a lack of compassion for others and for ourselves.

We need to learn to see in a new way. We need new eyes and new vision. That’s what Jesus is saying when he tells his disciples, ‘You give them something to eat.’ He’s asking us to change the lens through which we see, gain a new vision, and see with new eyes. He sees and trusts that we already are, and have enough food to feed the great crowd. Maybe that’s what we need to see and trust about ourselves and each other.

So, today’s Gospel reading is really more about eyes, than stomachs. It’s more about seeing rather than feeding. It’s more about compassion than bread and fish.

Jesus and the disciples see the same great crowd but they respond very differently because they see differently. The disciples see the crowd and focus on resources outside themselves. They’re trying to figure out how to feed more than 5000 empty stomachs with five loaves of bread and two fish. The maths is not on their side. They’re right in saying, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ That is not enough. And there’ll probably never be enough as long as we’re doing the maths.

Jesus focuses on the resources within Himself. He sees the crowd and has compassion. He experiences their need at a gut level. He feels their hunger as His own. He sees Himself as one of them. Compassion is always the lens through which Jesus sees. His compassion lets Him see the five loaves and two fish not as a limitation but as a possibility. He’s not calculating and doing the maths, He's imagining the possibility of the impossible. He has no need or desire to send the crowd away. Instead, He makes room for them. He’s seeing with the eyes of His heart and not just His physical eyes.

I wonder what keeps us from seeing and living like that? What if we see with the eyes of our hearts? What if compassion becomes the lens through which we see ourselves and one another.

A professor came to a tutorial one day and gave his students a surprise test. The students skimmed through all the questions but were surprised to see the last question.

The question was: What is the first name of the woman who cleans your staircase?

The students were confused seeing the question and thought that this might be some kind of joke. The students took the test but all of them left the last question blank.

After finishing the test, one of the students got up and asked if the last question would count towards their final grade. The professor smiled and said, ‘Absolutely!’

Another student said, ‘Sir, I have seen her many times but how would I know her name?’

The professor said, “In your lives and careers you will meet many people and all of them are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘Hello’…”

The students learnt a very important lesson that day.

When we see the hunger, pain, or needs of another with eyes of compassion, our priorities change, we imagine new possibilities, and resources are multiplied. Compassion calls us to speak up for and to reach out to another. It means saying yes even before we’ve counted our loaves and fish.

I want to trust that my five loaves and two fish are enough and that they will make a difference. I want to believe that I am enough and that I will make a difference. I want to see you, the world, and myself through the lens of compassion. And, I want to act on that compassion, don’t you?

What is compassion asking of us today? How will we act on it? To whom will we reach out and for whom will we speak up? If we look with the eyes of our hearts, we’ll see who that is. Imagine what our lives might become and we’ll know what to do.

What can you or I do with our five loaves and two fish? We’ll never know until we start feeding the great crowd. We might just be surprised at what we’re capable of. So, let’s stop doing the maths and set the table.

Look! Look around! Dinner’s ready.

Amen

Hymn: 89 Come down, O Love Divine

Our Intercessions

Dear Father, as we bow our heads here in this little church of St Clement, we still the turmoil of our minds and calm the busyness of our lives. We bring before you the needs of friends and loved ones.

So, loving our neighbours as ourselves, we offer our thanksgivings and our petitions on behalf pf the Church and the world.