 In Matthew 14:16 Jesus said to his disciples: “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”
Yes, our call is not to send the crowds away, our call is to participate in God´s miracle feeding them. Our call is not to avoid the problems, our call is to face them and solve them with the help of Jesus. Are you afraid of that? How can we face challenging situations? How can we solve big problems? How can we overcome pain and sorrow, loss and illness? Where can we find the strength to do all these things? Jesus answers that in the two fish and in the five loaves of bread. Yes, the solution is in what you have with you right now, not in what you want to have. You can only participate and experience the miracle if you are ready to be part of the miracle. Yes, you are part of the miracle, you need to be part of the miracle, you need to go to Jesus with your poor resources, your limited forces, your ill body, your age, your knowledge, your background, your limited time, yes, your five loaves of bread and your two fish. You have to go to Jesus with that and say to him: okay, Lord, I will not send these people away; okay, Lord, I will not avoid facing this challenge; okay, Lord, I will not turn back and ignore this need; okay, Lord, I will not say not to my neighbor or try to ignore the crisis around me. No Lord, I will not do that, I will bring these issues to you and I will bring also my five loaves of bread and my two fish. The disciples had five thousand problems, or maybe more, five thousand men, maybe other five thousand women, and, let´s think, maybe other five thousand children. They had fifteen thousand problems to solve that morning, and they thought that the only solution was to send those problems away. But Jesus taught them that the solution was not to send these fifteen thousand problems away, but to assume that these problems were also Jesus´ problems, and when Jesus is involved in something there is always space for a miracle. Yes, if you invite Jesus to your fifteen thousand problems, and share your only five loaves of bread and two fish solution, then be ready, because you are inviting Jesus to do something extraordinary to solve your extraordinary problem.  In Matthew 14: 29-31 Jesus said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
When my mother was hospitalized and I stayed with her during the night, I could not sleep and just observed her sleeping. Every hour I took a walk to the lobby and observed that the nurses were very busy because many patients could not sleep and were afraid of closing their eyes due to the possibility of not opening them again. The nurses of the station close to mom´s room knew that I was a pastor, sometimes they asked me to say a prayer for the patients, some others for them. I asked my mother how she could sleep so easily when others could not. She answered: “because we pray before closing my eyes and I know God and you will stay with me during the night.” Mom and I always prayed psalm 91 every night stressing the verse: “You who live in the shelter of the Most High, you will not fear the terror of night.” We can be dominated by our fears and anxiety unless we put our fears and anxieties in front of the altar of God in prayer and faith. The gospel story today expresses this truth with the words of Jesus: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” You also need to “take heart” to understand how God wants to manifest God´s power to you. God can break your mind and your logic, God can break your own interpretation of how God can act. When God comes to you, God uses signs that can break your mind, because God never acts necessarily according to our parameters but according God´s own parameters. Jesus answered: “Come”. Just one word, just one call. Like saying to Peter: “do you want to experience the miracle, okay, come and experience the miracle. Just come, and you will experience what it means to be with God.” “Come and walk on the sea with me,” says Jesus. Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. Wow, the sign and the wonder appeared and Peter was experiencing the power of Jesus walking on the sea in the middle of the storm. I think that if this story is about miracles, faith and power, the author should have ended the story at this point. It could have been a wonderful ending, Peter recognized Jesus, walked on the sea and met his Lord in the middle of the storm, and both went back to the boat showing the power of Jesus and the amazing faith of Peter. If the story had ended here, Peter would have been portrayed as a great example of faith in front of the storms. But, as you know, the story did not end here. “When Peter noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” We can be like Peter, we can recognize that God is coming to us in a miraculous way, we can recognize that God is in control of the situation even when the storm rages, we can ask God for protection and believe firmly in our hearts that a sign and a miracle will happen to deliver us, and we can also start experiencing the miracle and the wonder in our life, step by step, and then, we also can succumb like Peter and deny with our reason, and fear what is taking place in our present. We can deny the miracle even when we are experiencing the miracle. We can deny the possibility of freedom and peace when we are receiving the freedom and the peace from God, because we can succumb to our fear to believe that something like that is possible. Peter was not a hero of faith in this story, he was only a man of little faith full of doubts. These are the good news according to Matthew, people with little faith and full of doubts can be rescued by Jesus in the middle of the storm. People that experience the power of God and suddenly lose their faith and sink in doubts and fears can be rescued again by the word of Jesus. This is the gospel, a message that a person full of brokenness and fears, a person with little or no faith -persons like Peter that experienced God´s power and then denied the miracle- are people that fail and sink. These people, people like any of us, can always receive the words of Jesus and be liberated from our fears and anxieties. Normal people like us, these are the heroes of faith, because God can make the broken healed and fill with courage and faith the one who is living in doubt and fear.  We read in James 5:7-10 “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” I discovered the beauty to be always traveling with God, the beauty that you discover when you can enjoy the journey and not only be worried about when you will arrive to your destination. This is exactly what James is trying to share with us today, we need to enjoy this time, this journey, enjoy what we have here, enjoy every day and rejoice that we have an opportunity to discover God´s presence even in the worst moments and more dramatic times in history. Yes, God is here close to us during this journey, and God is inviting us to enjoy it, to be patient. James says: “The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.” This is a natural process that we need to accept. Advent is preparation and reflection, it is an opportunity to enjoy and rejoice in the presence of God, but we cannot force Christmas, we cannot accelerate the moment of Salvation, we need to learn the importance of the time before Christmas as an opportunity to discover the incredible power of what the Incarnation of the Son of God means. When I was a child I always wanted to celebrate Christmas and open my presents at midnight. But then I discovered that I was more interested in the Christmas eve-Christmas Day experience that I did not enjoyed the Advent Time, the days before Christmas, and, as soon as Christmas Day was over, people run again to store the Christmas lights and the Christmas tree. Later, I discovered that there are twelve days of Christmas to enjoy and not only one night and one day. I learned that the four weeks of Advent are very important because they help me to appreciate the time of waiting for the Lord, and that the twelve days of Christmas are important because they help me to remember that there are twelve more months to live the blessing that I received on Christmas Day. This is the natural process of life! Do not try to rush and do not try to stop it. Use these beautiful days of waiting to practice patience and to rejoice in the good things that God brings day by day into your life. Even in the most difficult times, trust and be patient because the God of Advent and the Lord of Christmas is there traveling with you. Please enjoy your journey in the company of God.
Amen.  We are called to live in hope. We hope that the coming of Christ will bring a new world and a new understanding of our role as human beings in this creation. We do not see the day of judgement as something bad, we are invited not to be afraid because we know that the Lord who is coming is the same one who died for our sins and brought us back from death to life into theEaster morning. People without hope are afraid of the end because the end represents the end of their security and the power of this world, the end for them is the end of their power and corruption. The disciples are not afraid of the end because for them the end it is not judgment but the plenitude of the redeeming love of God for us. The end for us is joy and liberation! Jesus said: For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Noah´s society was corrupted, people were evil, injustice and violence were the rule and that system and society was completely in decay, but the people did not pay attention to that, they just lived their life in complete selfishness and insensibility. Do you think that because you only live your life without paying attention to the decay of the world you are keeping yourself safe from the judgment? The mortal sin of Christianity is indifference; it is to use the routine of our daily life as a pretext to ignore the sin around us. The mortal sin of Christianity is to justify and rationalize what God considers sin and evil and pretend it is not there. The mortal sin of Christianity is to see sin and evil in front of our eyes and turn our sight to the other side and choose indifference in place of action and compassion. The mortal sin of Christianity is to call good and acceptable what is clearly wicked and inhuman. The mortal sin of Christianity is to sanctify what is evil per se just because we don’t want to have problems with the system.The mortal sin of Christianity is contemplating the world and doing nothing to denounce and stop violence and crime, it is to see our neighbor´s suffering and close our eyes and continue with our life trying to believe that our ignorance has the power to eradicate the suffering and discomfort. The mortal sin of Christianity is to live in sin ignoring it, renouncing to do what is good and surrendering to the power of sin without fighting or protesting it. We cannot confront sin and evil with indifference. Neither will we do it with violence. Indifference and violence are the weapons of the world not ours. We need to stand and confront sin and evil with the Word of God and the life of discipleship. We cannot wait for the Lord of Advent closing our eyes to the needs of our neighbors. We are here to bring hope. Hope that is a transformative spiritual power that can inspire us to be the voice of the voiceless, the tender hand that comfort the broken-hearted, the prayer voice that intercedes for the one that does not know how to pray and to be the brother and sister that will be the family of faith that will be bringing hope to the one that doesn’t have it now. The sin of the generation of Noah should not be our sin, because we are here to be the cure not to be part of the disease of this world.
God´s Hope be with you. Amen.  Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” John 18:33-37
People around the world have been shocked by the news and images of the terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut. People and families of the victims are grieving the loss of family members and friends in France and Lebanon and as a community of faith we should keep these nations in our prayers. When we think about the meaning of the kingdom of God and the presence of the kingdom of violence, we can see that the kingdom of terror that criminal organizations like ISIS or others alike are trying to establish, are not isolated cases in human history. The fight against the kingdom of this world is an old fight, and the radical moment of this fight was the confrontation between Pilate and Jesus. Jesus´ dead on the cross was a demonstration of an act of extreme cruelty and abuse of power executed by the kingdom of this world visible on those days under the form of the Roman Empire. The fact that an innocent man was executed with cruelty to create fear and to silence the voice of God, was the intent of the kingdom of fear to silence the call of God to everybody everywhere to repent and convert. I remember my own experience suffering the oppression of the kingdom of terror during my years in High school, College and professional life. Car bombs exploiting in front of restaurants, banks, public and private offices and malls. Police officers and military personal kidnapped and executed with cruelty, shootings on the street, blackouts after terrorist attacks that destroyed the power lines. A complete set of actions with only one goal: to keep you under fear to control you physically and spiritually. One night many years ago, during the years of the war against the Shining Path terrorist group in Peru, I went to pick up Lucy after she finished her day of work teaching at a Language Center near downtown in Lima. We use to take a bus at the bus stop across from a Government building, this was located two blocks from her working place. But, that night, we decided that the night was beautiful and we wanted to walk a little more and go home taking another direction. After we walked four or five blocks, we listened and felt the blast of the explosion of a car bomb at the bus stop where we normally waited for our bus. The terrorists targeted the Government office front killing all the people waiting at the bus stop and destroying the whole front of the Government building. That night, if we had just followed our normal routine, we would have been killed. But we made a decision, the unexpected decision to have a walk going to the opposite direction, and we survived that night. After an act of complete terror and cruelty like the one that happened that night in 1992, you are never the same. The goal of the kingdom of terror is to create fear and change our hearts to control us through fear and hate. That is why the kingdom of terror tries to kill the good inside us, destroying our faith in love, forgiveness and peace, and moving us to be afraid and to hate like the terrorists hate us. But we were not created to live under the control of the kingdom of terror, we are children of God and we were called to be citizens of the Kingdom of God. The kingdom of terror wants to steal your joy, but the Kingdom of God is always reminding us that Jesus is our joy. Now that we see that the kingdom of this world or the kingdom of terror are here to steal what God has given us as a gift, we can resist the violence and hate with the power of our faith in the resurrected Christ. The Kingdom of God invites us to share our life and our possessions with generosity. It is not like the kingdom of terror that wants to destroy or steal our life and possessions. Both kingdoms are fighting to control our life. This is a fight that fundamentally takes place in our soul. Jesus’ invitation guides us to a complete change of direction, to a complete new way of thinking. This is the meaning of the Kingdom of God. A new direction, a new way of thinking, a new form to live and to relate with others. A kingdom of love. This kingdom is always under the attack of the kingdom of terror. But we know that the final victory is the victory of the Kingdom of God. We need a God´s Kingdom thinking for that reason. We need to practice the values of the kingdom every day. There are many challenges, there are many attacks to our faith, there is pain and there is terror in the world, but the victory of the Kingdom of God is firm because our King has raised from the dead and has won everlasting life that wants to share with all his disciples. Do not be afraid and trust in the power of our King and his Kingdom.  They said to Jesus: “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat. ’” 32 Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
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AuthorPastor Jose Luis´reflexions. 
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