What Are You Hanging Around For?
Psalms 17: 1-7 & 15
MATTHEW 14: 13-21
AUGUST 2, 2026 – THE FOCUS SERMON SERIES
Perhaps I need to define a difficult word for me this morning … it’s difficult for me because over the last several days it’s a personal reality that has been twisting in the wind and ever changing for me … it’s the word that I am associating with my sermon series that I hope to be sharing with you over the next several weeks …it’s a word that perhaps we often attempt to claim as a truth for one path of our life but when we admit the truth about who we are … perhaps only to ourselves … we understand that our reality is not aligned with who we claim to be out in the world or even who we want to be ourselves.
In this life we lead we do enjoy having a certain image … we make associations not because we are dedicated or aligned with those choices but because in making certain claims or joining with certain groups it enhances our image. This week the security guard at the Senatara Hospital in Virginia Beach somehow came to associate me with the Buffalo Bills … not sure how that happened and on the second day he directed me to one of the hospital’s volunteers whose home is in Tonawanda New York a 10-minute drive from my home in Western New York. I still find it amazing that he made this association, but I did try to get him to say GO BILLS and I am planning to gift this fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with a Bills item this week when I am at that hospital.
The word I am referring to and that this sermons series is being called is FOCUS … according to the MERRIAM Webster dictionary, FOCUS is a noun defined as “A center of activity, attraction or attention; a point of concentration.” Have you ever given serious consideration as to what your primary focus is in life … it might be a who not a what, every human has one … they can change but they exist.
Since at least for today, it is still my job to serve as a pastor … a pastor of this particular church that I love and I do love all of you … obviously or I hope it is obvious, I wish is that all of us could have as our center of attention … a point of our daily concentration … God. God the Creator … God whose existence cannot be denied even if we get really rational because as a homeless man told me once … “I don’t care if you get wrapped up in evolution or seven days of creation … there had to be a power who existed because something never comes out of nothing and that power is God; God has always been God.”
This past Wednesday before I drove down to Virginia, we had Communion here … you see I needed that specific Communion with God even though I knew that once again almost every single space in this sanctuary would be empty … churches have lots of empty spaces these days even on Sunday’s you know. I knew that on this past Wednesday that there would be people watching online because several of my friends worship with us via Facebook on Wednesdays as well as on Sunday’s and if they lived closer, they’d be here for Communion because it matters to them too. My message focused on Jon Bon Jovi’s “Soul Kitchen Restaurants” … reflections on how this rock and roll star has opened up a place where the homeless eat with millionaires. The Psalm of the day began with these words. ““Those who dwell on the far edges stand in awe of your acts. You make the gateways of morning and evening sing for joy.” And, our Gospel message had Jesus talking about the mustard seed from Mark’s Gospeln”What’s a good image for God’s kingdom? What parable can I use to explain it? Consider a mustard seed. When scattered on the ground, it’s the smallest of all the seeds on the earth; but when it’s planted, it grows.”
So, today and over the next few weeks can you consider with me whether your primary focus is on God … or at least one of your daily considerations is that you should be focusing in on God more? Or whether you don’t have an answer as to why you’re hanging around with any association with God at all. Let’s FOCUS together.
I am not in the least a Greek scholar but there is a Greek word that John uses in his first epistle that I feel weaves a connection that many Christians … church attending Christians … do not consider at all in their focus in life. This word sort of goes back to those Scriptures from this past Wednesday because I can ask from this pulpit that I still have … “ARE YOU IN AWE of God’s acts?” The psalmist says those on the edges of life … on the edges of the world … they find AWE in God’s acts. AWE by the way is defined as “an emotion combining veneration and wonder that is inspired by overwhelming greatness as in beauty, power or size.” As someone who is in church today or worshiping online … do you FOCUS in on God’s overwhelming greatness regularly or is God diminished in your viewpoint? Are you in awe of God?
In this world I know it is a challenge … to find God as anything more than a stop gap consideration but we need to FOCUS in on God so that we start to not only accept God’s grace but become fully aware of the ongoing reality of God’s grace that can carry us not only through our challenges but in our daily life’s mundane stuff.
Now that Greek word is ‘koinonia’ … English does such a poor job of translating Hebrew and Greek, which makes it difficult at times to get the full OOMMPH in English that Scriptures offer. In the Bible sitting on my dining room table, the New English Translation, First John chapter 1 verse 3 reads … “What we have seen and heard we announce to you too, so that you may have fellowship with us (and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ). Now in the LIVING BIBLE … that I have here, I found this Bible from my high school days on a shelf in my office … you can look up in your Bible that you brought with you to church today First John chapter 1 verse 3 to see how it reads … this translation reads …
‘Koinonia’ is the Greek word that our word fellowship comes from. The English word fellowship doesn’t tell the whole meaning of what John meant. Those early Christians reading Scripture understood that we are to have a bond, a business-like partnership, a depth of relationship that goes beyond merely showing up once a week to spend an hour … no more just an hour … in connection with something or someone … it is essentially a word teaching that humans are to give their entire focus to a relationship with God, the Father and with Jesus Christ. In fact, early Christians used the word ‘koinonia’ as their word for the Sacrament of Holy Communion. We are talking intimacy with God … shutting down the world kind of intimacy to totally focus in on God … a relationship that requires ongoing work and connection and that is our first step in FOCUS. FOCUS requires change and dedication if we want to have a true relationship with God.
We aren’t talking a coffee and donuts type of relationship …. In fact, Jesus Christ is the one who strives to get humans to understand our need … not just to walk around saying we are Christians or to use our church attendance as the opening act in a Sunday breakfast experience … we need and have the opportunity to be in a life-changing … life-altering relationship with the Creator if we take on this intimate relationship with God.
This series on FOCUS I hope strikes home with each of us. Might even create some frustration with me from amongst the pews … if you pay attention to the words I am sharing. I know that as I have begun to prepare for this series and as life’s realities have rushed over me like a cold uncontrollable powerful ocean wave I have realized some of my weaknesses and needs too. My need to hold tight to God … to Christ … trying to find the Spirit … oh to find that Spirit.
Koinonia might be the theme but right now … I want each of us to pause … in the world of radio broadcasting you are never to have total silence but I want to give you a brief 20 seconds or so … talk to yourself inside your heads … remember when you came to believe in God and in Jesus Christ. It might have been at Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, at a Revival meeting … when you heard How Great Thou Art sung … because together we have been living in the AFTER I BELIEVE STAGE of life, which comes with expectations from God … lessons we are to be living out that came from Jesus … and our need to actually pay attention to the Holy Spirit, God’s gift to us. TWENTY SECONDS. … to think in silence … about when you can to know God and Christ were there for you.
Jesus famously told Nicodemus that God loved the entire world and that humanity is called to believe. Believe in Jesus … believe in God. So, do you believe in God just like you believe the lights will turn on when you flip a switch? I know we are going to spend time in Matthew’s Gospel but it’s important to understand our belief connection and Jesus spells it out in John’s Gospel when he tells those around Him, “I came so that they could have life — indeed so that they could live life to the fullest. I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
KOINOINIA … a focused relationship that leads to a better and more complete life … Communion is an essential part of it because we pause … an opportunity for restoration and renewal of our focus.
In our reading from Matthew’s Gospel for today … the disciples wanted to send everyone away. They wanted to make those hungry people fend for themselves. The disciples were selfish, but Jesus said, “THERE IS NO NEED TO SEND THEM AWAY!”
Jesus wanted those five thousand men plus the women and the children to be fed. To be focused on Him rather than in their personal struggles and hardship. Jesus listened as the disciples tried to come up with excuses whining to Him … about themselves and their limitations.
We often try to limit God … we try to push God and Christ off to a corner so we can satisfy ourselves … we find other priorities to focus in on … other realities in life that offer us momentary satisfaction of our personal priorities and needs, which end up leaving us without a relationship with God … with Christ … no ‘koinonia’ no fellowship just a place of being lost. Jesus took the bread and broke it and gave it to His disciples … sounds like Communion … sounds like God rescuing the broken … that is us … we need Communion … we need our primary focus to change because the world has other priorities it wants us to accept.
In the coming weeks we will come back to the feeding of the five thousand … we will come back to koinonia … but today what are you hanging around for?
I was at a meeting years ago when this card was handed out … EVERYBODY TELL SOMEBODY … it says “a faith worth having is a faith worth sharing.” A personal focus and dedication. It also shares Matthew 28 verse 19. We’ll talk about that too … but the last words from the first Gospel are words I need as I strive to focus in on how much God loves me. It’s Jesus speaking … “And, remember. I am with you always to the end of the age.” I am going to focus on those words … AMEN