9 Pentecost B/Ordinary 17/Proper 12 July 26, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
2 Kings 4: 42-44 + Psalm 145: 10-18 + Ephesians 3: 14-21
John 6: 1-21
We bless you, God of Seed and Harvest, provider of our daily bread. And we bless each other, that the beauty of this world and the love that created it might be received in our hearing and expressed in our living. Amen.
A wise young woman once said, at least in a movie, that there is no place like home. She was right. I am glad to be home and glad to be back with you all. Time away, for refreshment is good for body and spirit….but there is truly no place like home.
With that said, I need to offer something in the way of confession about our travels to the hot, humid deep south. It’s entirely possible that I am guilty of one of the so called seven deadly sins. That being the sin of gluttony. I ate with great enjoyment barbeque and fried catfish and country ham and green beans that had been cooked for days in fatback. Those green beans were so good I wanted to cry. And I drank sweet tea that arrived in that sweet state when I just ordered iced tea. But without a doubt, one of my favorite southern foods are biscuits. Southern style biscuits. They make my mouth water and eating one hot from the oven can make even the most cynical person forget their troubles.
So when I returned to the church this week and saw that for the next five weeks our Scripture readings are all about bread….well, I was fairly certain it was a sign that God is actually a middle aged southern woman who appreciates a good biscuit, fresh from the oven.
The story from John’s Gospel this morning, that we often call the feeding of the 5000, is the only story to be found in all four Gospels. And a similar story is in 2 Kings, which was our first reading today. It’s one that we often take the details from one or the other and knit them all together into one story. There were the large crowds following Jesus and the disciples. There was the lack of food to feed them because apparently someone had forgotten to plan ahead. That would seem to be the presenting problem in this story. There is not enough food. Except, as it turns out, there was.
So what is it in this story that makes it so critical to an understanding of what it means to follow Jesus that all four of the Gospel writers tell it? Because this is certainly not a story of Jesus as the magic multiplier of food. If we only look at that as the point of the story – that somehow everybody gets to eat, then we are faced with the problem of the hungry in the world and in our neighborhoods.
No, I am certain that this story invites us to a closer reading and a deeper understanding.
When Jesus asks Philip, “where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?: the text says that it’s basically a trick question. Jesus already knows what he’s going to do. But what Jesus WANTS from Philip is for him to think about the problem at hand and to offer some creative solutions. And all Philip can come up with is a declaration of the hopelessness of the situation: “Six month’s wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little” And then Andrew chimes in with the almost as grim news that one small boy has a little bit of food – five loaves and two fish. And Andrew adds, “but what are they among so many people?”
Andrew and Philip were caught in the scarcity of their own thinking. We don’t have enough! Even if we had six months wages we still wouldn’t have enough. All we have is this fish and bread.
Several years ago this congregation had a summer, much like this summer, when we were privileged to meet our neighbors who were hungry. And out of those relationships came our Operation Lunch Bag program, that continues to this day. We realized that we didn’t have the means to feed ALL of the hungry people in the world or even in Seattle, but with what we do have, we feed our neighbors.
We looked at what we had – how it could be shared – and every single day it means that the hungry are fed.
I believe that one of the reasons we are able to do that is because we have heard this story read in this place for well over 60 years.
How then, do we take this lesson and use it in other challenges that face us? How does Jesus’ feeding the hungry folks on that hillside equip us to face racism, intolerance, violence, economic disparity, climate change or homelessness? Because those feel like BIG problems to me….even if I had six months wages….God, it would never make a difference.
Living out here, in the progressive, tolerant Pacific Northwest, it’s very tempting to think that we no longer need to address such matters. But sisters and brothers, if I had a dollar for every confederate flag I saw flying over the last two weeks…. Bruce and I drove through Chattanooga just hours after the shootings of military personnel by a young man who happened to be Muslim and what we heard being said on the radio brought me to hopeless tears. Even if I had six months wages, God….
The Word of God and the teaching of Jesus call for us to respect the dignity of every person and of this earth God has created. They also call for us to advocate and serve on behalf of the oppressed, the poor, the homeless, and the hungry. When we read of Jesus’ life and ministry we most often find him with those that the society of his time had pushed to the margins…with tax collectors and lepers and prostitutes and children and women who are bleeding and the mentally ill and thieves. Every time Jesus is with the religious authorities they are trying to trick him and every time he is in the temple he is not taken seriously. Jesus does his work on hillsides and beside wells and in fishing boats and on the beach.
What we learn from this story is that the work Jesus gives us to do might well seem as impossible as feeding 5000 hungry folks with a couple of biscuits and some fish. It might seem as impossible as putting an end to racism or working for equal rights for all people. It might seem as impossible as advocating for more reasonable gun control that will protect innocent people – all innocent people. It might seem as impossible as saving the earth when the majority of the country doesn’t even recycle. It might seem as impossible as removing a flag that has flown over government buildings for far too long. It might seem as impossible as all of this until we remember that Philip and Andrew thought there wasn’t enough….and Jesus knew better.
Friends in Christ, there are voices in our world who are calling themselves Christian and speaking words of hatred and exclusion. And so we must speak love to that hatred….we must speak truth to power….we must speak of the radical welcome of the Gospel to voices who call some outsiders…..we must speak of the plenty of the Gospel in the midst of the challenges that face God’s Creation today. And then we set to work, one relationship, one person, one task at a time.
That flag might be flying off of pickup trucks and homes, but it isn’t flying over government buildings anymore. Part of the reason it was removed is because Republican State Senator Jenny Horne had the courage to offer an impassioned speech to her colleagues. She knew what she had to say. She knew that it would not be easy. And yet she spoke love to hate.
Marriage equality is the law of this land because Jim Obergefell allowed his personal struggle to be listed as the surviving spouse on his husband’s death certificate to be a public lawsuit, which eventually landed on the docket of the Supreme Court.
People in our neighborhood have food in their stomachs because someone in this congregation said….we can feed them. We can’t solve world hunger in one fell swoop, but we can feed our neighbors. And we can love them. And welcome them. All of them.
Do you remember what phrase is the most frequently spoken throughout Scripture….both the Old Testament and the New Testament? Here’s a hint: Jesus says it to the disciples in the boat at the end of our Gospel reading today. The phrase is “Do not be afraid.”
Do not be afraid.
Sisters and brothers – there is much to do. And we have, oh, something like a couple of fish and some bread. But we have a couple of fish and some bread. Let us live boldly into the Gospel, confident that God has called us to this work, that the Spirit equips us for it and that Jesus stands with us when the storms are raging and says “It is I; do not be afraid.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.