Weekly Greeting - November 21, 2025
What an amazing weekend we had at Bethlehem United Methodist Church! It’s almost enough to make you want to shout Hallelujah!
While I am so disappointed that I missed the packing of the boxes on Saturday, I am so grateful for all of the work that went into feeding our neighbors! I know that it was exhausting work, but I also know that it was Kingdom work. How blessed are we that God invites us to do the work of the Kingdom in our own backyard?
As I am preparing to preach in the coming weeks I found myself reading O. Wesley Allen’s commentary on Matthew’s gospel. Matthew 14 tells the story of Jesus feeding a multitude in Galilee (5000 men, Matthew says, and that doesn’t even count women and children!).
Allen says about this story,
“Since the disciples serve in Matthew as representatives of the church, this is essentially an ecclesiological story [a story about the church]. What Jesus provides, the church is to distribute to the masses.”
He goes on to say something incredibly important
“We must be careful not to flip this message over and say the church is able to meet all the needs of the masses — this simply does not match the reality of poverty and suffering in the world alongside the existence of the church. Instead, as with the disciples in the story, we are not left to our own resources. Whatever we offer the world is more than we have to offer because God takes it and blesses it.” (Matthew, by O. Wesley Allen, Jr.)
I don’t know about you, but that brings some clarity to the struggle to understand why there is still hunger and poverty in a world where the church exists. While Jesus gives the church responsibility for using what we have for the Kingdom, ultimately it is God who takes what we have to offer and makes it a miracle. We are called to be faithful to the Kingdom, but we do not create the Kingdom. That is God’s work, and we are invited to be helpers
It is a true gift to be part of a church that understands its role in the Kingdom — to take what Jesus provides and make sure that it gets to the people who need it most.
What a joy and privilege to serve Jesus alongside you,
Mary Beth