The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 17B] - September 2, 2012 (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

 

On the one hand, I think it can be a little difficult for us in twenty-first century America to imagine and understand the religious scene of the world Jesus and his disciples inhabited. Like our own culture, Jerusalem and the surrounding Jewish territories teemed with different groups and races of people, many of whom were just trying to make a living and survive the policies and programs of whatever political regime was in office. However, at least in the towns where many of the people were Jewish, life was dominated by a long list of ancient codes that revolved around ritual cleanliness. Many of those codes and laws about ritual cleanliness were written in the Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Bible and our Old Testament—but many more were piled on top of those and recorded in various other books and scrolls that were pored over and memorized by the Pharisees and scribes.

Recent research has suggested that the ordinary Joe and Josephine, working to make ends meet in the market or in the fields, may not have been quite as keen as we have traditionally believed at actually maintaining ritual cleanliness, but the concern was still out there in society, wherever they went, and the Pharisees liked to remind people of it. The list of what could make one “ritually unclean” was quite extensive. Touching corpses, for example, could do it. So did coming into contact with most kinds of bodily fluids, including blood. Skin diseases, money, livestock…and the list goes on and on.

Mark the gospel-writer tells us about some of those rules and regulations in the reading this morning. True, Americans wash things they buy at the market in order to rinse off pesticide residue, perhaps, but not so some pastor can declare it safe. Ritual cleanliness, you see, wasn’t so much about preventing the spread of infection as it was about delineating who was in the community and who was out. It was about setting down some order amidst a chaotic existence: everything and everyone had its place. Ultimately, however, it was about declaring who was on the side of God’s good life and who was, at least for the time-being, cut off. The Pharisees would, among other things, make a big deal about washing their hands before they ate to underline the fact that they were “in,” and those who didn’t were “out.”

On the other hand, I’m not so sure our own society—religious and secular—is all that different in this regard. We may not use the words “ritually unclean” to describe many people, but we do pretty much treat them that way, often in the church. I suspect many people don’t attend worship in a church on Sunday mornings because they think they might be judged, or because they believe that don’t have the right clothes to wear, or feel their race or sexuality or past indiscretions make them unwelcome. Others may come once or twice to worship but never return, feeling we’re too obsessed with certain aspects of worship that seem pointless, like the correct order for lighting the candles on the altar (p.s.: there isn’t one), or the fact that you’re supposed to enter the sanctuary through the side doors and leave through the middle ones (you’ve all been doing that wrong since I got here three years ago).

Ritual and tradition, just like anything else, can become an idol. What really honks Jesus’ horn in this morning’s story from Mark is that the Pharisees and other religious types choose to follow certain rules and regulations that are not really written in Scripture and then create loopholes around other ones that clearly are. So he calls them hypocrites. Jesus does his part to dismantle the system of ritual cleanliness but he is also trying to point out the inconsistencies in their religiosity. They make a big show of washing their hands—maybe like a surgeon going into the operating room—and criticizing others who don’t follow suit, but then find no problem in circumventing more serious parts of the law that Jesus points out elsewhere.

In ancient Greek, “hypocrite” was another word for an actor, someone who played a part. When Jesus calls the Pharisees and the other rule-followers hypocrites, he is pointing out that they “play the part” of having faith in God by following through with certain showy traditions—but their skirting of other parts of the law reveals that they are only in it for themselves. In doing so, the Pharisees have essentially picked and chosen which rules and laws apply to them and which ones don’t, and their religion has become vanity. Early Church theologian St. Augustine put it this way: “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”^[1]

The Pharisees are easy boogeymen in the stories of Jesus. They’re the ones who get it all wrong, the judgmental, legalistic, power-hungry brokers of religion who attempt to keep the good, humble, righteous people down. But really, Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees and the scribes is a criticism of everyone who picks and chooses from God’s Word, who conveniently rejects the parts that make them uncomfortable and keeps the parts that make them feel good. Truth be told, at some point we all end up “playing the part” of someone who has it all right, who’s figured out exactly what God wants, of someone who knows exactly where those boundary lines are and on which side we stand.

Jesus’ relationship with and to God’s law as set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures has always been complicated to understand. We can run the risk of “playing the part” like the Pharisees, of boiling down our faith into rules, regulations and restrictions: Christians don’t do that. Christians don’t associate with them. Christians light the candles on the altar this way, not that way. Christians don’t vote for that political party…and so on. Yet, a relationship can never be reduced to just a set of expectations, of do’s and don’t’s, and a relationship is really what faith in God is about.

Likewise, followers of Christ have also been tempted to boil down faith in the other direction; that is, so that the practice and meaning of faith in God is just about some fuzzy notion of love. If ritual and laws can be so misused, then why not get rid of them altogether? And if Jesus can dismiss laws outright—like when he declares all food clean—then why not just ignore any old law that God issues? It really doesn’t matter what you do as long as love is there, however one wants to define it. While it’s true that Jesus highlights love of God and neighbor as the essence of all of the law and the prophets, he never intends to nullify all regulations and restrictions. Many of those laws help show us the shape love is to take, how our true faith and love is to perform. For example, we honor father and mother. We watch our speech and don’t take advantage of the poor and needy. As James points out in our second reading, true religion keeps our devotion focused on the  orphans and widows and others who are unable to care for themselves.

But God’s laws and words do another very important thing, as well. They reveal to us our persistent uncleanliness…and not type that can be washed away at the bathroom sink. Although Jesus pretty much does away with the various rules regarding ritual uncleanliness, he and his Father are still very concerned about inner cleanliness, the things that can really stain. Fornication, theft, murder, deceit, pride…they are the things that plague us all, elements of our putrid self-centeredness that keep us separated from the perfect nature of God.

Two weeks ago Melinda, the girls and I spent a week of vacation with the families of our closest friends and godchildren. We do this every year: we find a place that can fit us all and have a good time relaxing, cooking for each other, and filling each other in on the last year. This was our tenth summer trip, and we spent it in a distant cottage far back in the hills of southwestern Virginia. There were thirteen of us, in all—six adults and seven children, all under the age of 8 (Don’t it just make you want to go with us next year??). A fourteenth guest came along this year for the first time: a nasty stomach virus. And because we were all in such close proximity with each other—sharing those bronze kettles—well, you guessed it: most of us got to share that, too.

Let me tell you: I started washing my hands like a Pharisee, ritually, after I touched anything that might make me unclean. We went through an entire jumbo-sized container of Clorox wipes. I followed our daughters around, cringing every time they came into contact with something that might be infected (“Don’t touch that!”). But despite our efforts, by the time the last night rolled around, about half the group had come down with it.

Caroline, our two-year-old goddaughter started feeling ill right after our last supper together. In fact, she got hit the worst. Unable to keep anything down, she rolled around on the bathroom floor in agony. Caroline’s mother, who had plenty of other things to do for the family—run another batch of clothes through the laundry, pack the luggage for the long drive back to Wisconsin, dry her wet hair—decided the best place for her to be was on that bathroom floor with her. Clean and showered, and in freshly-washed clothes, Carla sat there the whole night right in the mess of it all, cradling her puking daughter who was unhappy, scared, and unsure of what was happening to her. Carla was not going to let the filthiness of her precious little one keep her—or her love—away.

That, my friends, is the good news of the cross. God is not going to let the filthiness and sinfulness of his precious ones keep him away. Rather than keep the distance, rather than devising new rules and regulations that might clear all this messiness up somehow, God decides to come down to the bathroom floor and be in the midst of it, himself. On the cross, God’s holiness encounters—and, in fact, embraces—our dirtiness, so that we may be brought through the long, cold night of loneliness and made clean.

You see, in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God finally accomplishes what the law first set out to do; that is, make us clean and reconcile us to the one holy God. No amount of hand-sanitizing or rule-following or boundary-drawing will do it. God doesn’t choose the parts of us he likes and then reject the rest! He takes us whole, cradles us there at the center of that eternal love, and in the holy waters of baptism, applies this deep cleaning to us all.

May this new relationship be the basis for your faith in a God who loves you. May you learn to honor God with your heart and your lips, and then may you be freed—freed to touch the world with compassion and mercy as doers of a word that heals and saves.    

 

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Augustine, Sermons

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 14B] - August 12, 2012 (1 Kings 19:4-8 and John 6:35, 41-51)

Bread that comes at just the right time.

Those who are familiar with the story of the bestselling book or blockbuster movie, The Hunger Games, know that is a familiar theme: bread that comes at just the right time. As I understand it, the book has been somewhat controversial. The plot is a bit violent, centered on the events of gladiator-type games wherein teenagers from different districts are pitted against each other in a survival-of-the-fittest contest. The circumstances are made even more harsh by the realities of its bleak, futuristic setting: there are pompous haves and humble have-nots, and, as the name of the series implies, there is barely enough food to go around. A disproportionately small class of eccentric elites callously exerts power and authority over the rest of the population who are divided into gulag-like districts. The name of this dystopian country, interestingly, is Panem, a made-up word that happens to bear a strong association with the Latin word for “bread.”

At several key points in the story, the heroine and main character, Katniss, is saved just at the most critical point by the surprise appearance of bread. One of those instances is when she, as a young girl, is essentially abandoned by the tragic death of her father and the ensuing despair of her grief-stricken mother. Forced at a young age into the role of breadwinner for her family, she has nowhere to turn. At one desperate point, she sits huddled in the rain outside of the town bakery at the point of extreme starvation, even contemplating death. Suddenly, without any explanation at all, the baker’s son (whose name also happens to be Peeta—another bread name) appears from the back kitchen door into the bleak mist with two burnt loaves in his hand. Katniss originally thinks the discarded loaves are intended for the pig slop, but then he reaches out to her, without a word, and places them in her hand. Charred on the surface, but still warm and steaming underneath, the bread is simple but delicious. Katniss wonders if he might have burnt them on purpose just for her. Whatever the motivation, whatever the opportunity for foreshadowing the gesture might provide, it is still bread that comes at just the right time. Later in the story, bread will appear, again, right when she needs it—only this time it will literally fall down from the sky by way of a silver parachute, a gift from a person outside of the arena of the Games who wants her to live.

For those of you who are not familiar with the story of Katniss and Peeta and the rest of The Hunger Games need look no further than this story of Elijah in our first reading to see and example of bread coming at just the right time. Fleeing for his life from the evil Queen Jezebel, Elijah takes off empty-handed into the wilderness for protection. He asks that he might die. Then—voila!—hot cakes and a jar of water. He continues for another forty days and forty nights, rejuvenated for his fight against injustice and idolatry. Nice books, Suzanne Collins, but the prophets of Israel played the original hunger games!

Come to think of it, the serendipitous appearance of bread—or whatever else it is we really need—is something we’re all familiar with: the seemingly random gesture of kindness from some stranger…the Facebook comment or message from a friend who happens to call to check in just when you’re at your lowest...the rainfall that staves off a record drought. I remember a colleague of mine telling me of a time when he was in seminary. Between the tuition bills and the costs for books and housing and health insurance, they were so destitute they couldn’t rub two pennies together. They opened up the refrigerator one night for dinner and all that was in there was a package of sliced cheese. Dejected, he shut the fridge door and instead went to get the mail. There, in the mailbox, was a simple check written for $25 from someone at their home congregation.

When we think about it, our lives are filled with these kinds of occurrences. Bread or some other form of sustenance often arrives just when we need it, or it is there all along and we finally wake up to it. The random graciousness of strangers and friends alike points us to the goodness of God.

Now, if I stopped the sermon there, most of us would likely take home a good message today, one that might open our eyes a little more to the ways God is constantly providing us the things we need for life. It would be a nice reminder, perhaps, of the truthfulness of Martin Luther’s explanation to the first article of the Apostles’ Creed, as he writes in the Small Catechism: “I believe that God provides me richly and daily with all that I need to support my life, protects me from all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me.”^[1] Stopping the sermon here could provoke us to overdue thanksgiving, calling our attention to the many ways God our Father has always been laying down those cakes on the hot stone for us, often when we least deserved it. And, as I said, that would be appropriate and good thing to call us to do.

However, I’m pretty sure that is not the message that Jesus has for us this morning. The people speaking with Jesus in this sixth chapter of John are fully aware that God routinely provides them the stuff of daily bread…yea, even though the world often snatches those provisions away from us, and even though we misuse and mis-receive them in the first place. These folks know the story of Moses and the manna God provided in the wilderness. They know the story of Jezebel and Elijah and the hot cakes that give him strength for forty days. All those examples of bread—and those myriad ones we could add to it—are ways, you may say, of God drawing us to himself, of God drawing us to his great goodness that we may give thanks and praise.

But they are not the way our Father intends to draw us though Jesus. All those other stories do include ways in which a hunger was satisfied, often at the last minute, but Jesus comes to address a deeper hunger yet. Jesus, by contrast, has not come to draw us to God by handing out gifts, one by one, showing up as a surprise $25 in the mailbox, or as morsel of food at just the right time, or even as the man who can feed 5000 with five loaves and two fish. Jesus, rather, comes to satisfy a hunger for eternal life, a hunger for true union with the one who created us. Jesus comes to draw us to God by giving, yes, but by giving his life. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

You see, the kind bread that the Israelites ate in the desert may fill our bellies, but it is Jesus’ words of grace and forgiveness that God’s people may truly live on. They give us life because in them we hear that God loves us—indeed, that God loves the entire world. Love is what we’re created for—it’s what we’re created from—and is what our lives really desire above all else. Jesus comes to provide that, and like the hot cakes of bread that fuel Elijah for his escape from the vengeful Jezebel, the assurance of God’s love revitalizes us as we engage the world. Jesus’ words also bring love in the form of forgiveness, which satisfies the hunger caused by our sin. Like the character Katniss in her Hunger Games, we are ravaged by the brokenness of the world and our own sorry shortcomings. Appetites of selfishness have left us incomplete and starving. Only the One who created us can rescue us and set us free from sin...from outside our arena.

It is Jesus, then, who is then given at just the right time. On the cross we see that not just his words, but his own flesh, nailed to a tree, will be what rescues us from the brutal hunger games of our human existence. Provided at the point we are at our lowest, at the point the world is at its darkest, Jesus’ body on the cross becomes the guarantee  that God will never, ever, ever leave us hungry and alone. In this complete gift of Jesus—words and flesh—we are able to see the self-giving nature of our Father. No other demonstration of bread-giving in the history of time even comes close to showing the depth of God’s love as Jesus in his death. He is handed over, not just so that we may be saved from starvation, but that we may be saved from an eternal separation from God, that we may be raised with him on the last day. This is the message Jesus wants us to hear.

And we respond, as Jesus tells the crowd, by hearing and learning what this means. It is not always easy to understand, and I’m not sure we can ever completely learn what Jesus brings it in its entirety, but faith begins and is restored when the Holy Spirit prods us to wake up, see the cakes of bread beside us, and eat...to wake up and take the words of Jesus offered here…and feast. Then journey will then not be too much for us.

Over the next couple of weeks some of our Epiphany young people will make the trek to college. Those who just finished high school this past June will be going entering the college environment for the first time. As they leave us for a while, other college students will begin joining us here in worship at Epiphany as students at the University of Richmond or VCU. Jezebel won’t be chasing any of them—thank God!—but they will be entering a time of wandering and wilderness. It will be an exciting time of discovery and new beginnings, yes, but also a time of temptation, loneliness, and disorientation. They will encounter beliefs and ideas and communities that may challenge long-held assertions, just like we all do, from time to time.

Years ago I heard one ELCA pastor who has experience in campus ministry talk about this disorientation that college Christians often face in those first years from home. She explained how many of them felt as if their faith was even being dismantled, brick by brick. She urged them to watch for the gifts of bread amidst that feeling of falling and losing. Those gifts would be there, often just at the right time, but not to shun them, even when it all didn’t make sense. Hers was a reminder for them to wake up, make their way to a community that was gathered around the bread and wine of our Lord, to seek out periodically those people who were gathering around the living words of Jesus and learning to live by them.

Years before the trilogy of The Hunger Games was ever written, this pastor was offering advice about how to survive in a world that is simultaneously exciting and discouraging. Take the bread, she said, when the arms reach out to you in the rain. Take the bread, she urged, when the silver parachute descends on a Sunday morning at the nearby congregation. Take the bread, she advised, as the pastor offers it at the altar, for I do believe that is part of what Jesus is talking about here.

We will hold all of our students in prayer, but over the next few weeks in particular, just as we are aware of the perils and surprises of our own lives. Following that pastor's advice, and following the example of exhausted Elijah, we wake up and grasp at that life-saving morsel so that the journey will not be too much for us. A piece of the One who will raise us on the last day, it will often be coming at just...the right...time.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Martin Luther. Small Catechism

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 13B] - August 5, 2012 (John 6:24-35)

Every three years, the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the fancy name for the cycle of Scripture readings we use in our worship, features these readings from the 6^th chapter of John. Because the gospel writer John fashions the chapters of his gospel as single scenes or themes from Jesus’ ministry, with often one whole chapter devoted to a specific occurrence or teaching, we end up getting five weeks in a row of bread.

Well, that’s one way to put it. Really what we get is five weeks in a row of Jesus talking with various crowds and his disciples about the bread of life. It’s a fascinating and meaningful episode of Jesus’ life and teaching, but, used in worship so repeatedly, it does start to feel like bread, over and over again. It’s like going to a restaurant on several Friday nights only to discover the same bland thing on the menu. This theme actually began with our gospel offering last week. As some of you may remember, we heard the story of Jesus’ miraculous sign in which he multiplied five loaves of bread and two fishes to feed 5000 people. Those crowds follow after Jesus and his disciples and pretty soon this long conversation ensues about why Jesus performed that sign and what it all means. It will continue for a few more weeks…so prepare yourselves!

Here’s the funny thing: we pastors notoriously complain about these five weeks of bread talk. It’s like carb-loading, homiletically-speaking. If you think it’s bland to hear so much on one topic for five weeks, just imagine preparing sermons and choosing hymns for it. Nowhere else in the lectionary (that I know of) do we spend so much time on one chapter and motif. And, yet, as I reflect on it—on this overabundance of bread readings—there seems to be some wisdom to it, and maybe a bit of prophetic justice, too. Who am I to complain, for example, about five straight weeks of talking about Jesus as the bread of life when most of the world must subsist on nothing but bread? Who am I to demand some variety in church Scripture readings…or in the words of the hymns…or even in my own preaching…when most of the world has absolutely precious little variety in much of anything?

We live in a corner of the world where just about any amount of any kind of food we can imagine is but a five-or ten-minute drive away. Many, however, still live in places where the energy of each day is literally given to making sure the belly doesn’t grumble too loudly at night. The focus on bread here in our worship these weeks could, in fact, mirror the real world’s focus on real bread, spurring us to consider how we view food and how we might share from our abundance. Furthermore, a steady diet of the same thing might force us to come to terms with how necessary we really think Jesus is for life, or how central a choice he is on our busy menus.

You see, the people who followed Jesus in his day and age probably had the same type of relationship to food and bread as those who live in developing nations today. There’s rarely enough to go around, and you have to work hard just to get that. They encounter Jesus as he miraculously feeds a multitude—or maybe they just hear about it—and he is instantaneously popular. In fact, in the portion just prior to today’s reading, they try to make him king. He manages to escape that plot, but they track him down, no doubt looking for more bread. It is easy to understand their M.O.: if this man can provide it so easily, then they need to find a way to keep him around.

In fact, this whole episode reminds them of the days their ancestors trudged through the wilderness and survived on the bread their leader, Moses, provided bread for them. It was a constant, never-failing supply, this strange manna. They didn’t really know what it was, but they learned to receive it and live on it. Each morning they would walk around picking it up, using just what they needed that day because if they tried to collect more and save it, it would get wormy. The manna got them where they needed to go, a day at a time.

Granted, it was not always delicious. It was nothing like the sumptuous selections they supposedly fondly remember from Egypt, but the manna was always there, and they didn’t have to do anything to receive it, other than follow God’s instructions. And although they probably could not explain why, they knew it satisfied them.

So it appears to them that Jesus can provide the same kind of sustenance that Moses did, the same kind of hope for survival, but it also appears they are missing the point on at least two accounts. You see, Jesus has not come to give God’s people the kind of bread that Moses did. In fact, Jesus has not come to bring us bread at all. Jesus is here to be bread. God has rained him down on us from heaven so that we may have life. His words, surely, are something for us to live by, but it really goes beyond that. His actual life is what humankind longs for: that is, a perfect devotion to God our Father, as well as a pure compassion in community with each other.

Sin has left us empty, starving. Jesus will be the feast that fulfills us at all times and in all places…even when we betray him, when we turn our backs on him, when we look elsewhere for spiritual nourishment. The crowds want him to given them this bread always. On the cross, he will even die to make sure that will happen.

The second point they are missing is that they don’t have to do anything to receive this bread of Jesus. It is human nature to make faith into a work: to think that we must do something to deserve the goodness of God. In this case, the people want to know—thinking of their ancestors with those baskets—what they need to do for this bread to be theirs. Do we need to perform daily devotions? Come to worship each week? Perform a good deed each day? Say prayers every night? Get the kids in Sunday School? What can we do to ensure we’ll get our share? What’s our end of the bargain and how can we control, contain, commodify this bread that will never leave us hungry?

The feeding of the multitude

In the questions of the crowd, we hear our own deductions about how God works, that there is some hidden this-for-that that we haven’t considered. But Jesus promises them that’s not how his bread works. God simply provides it. Out of great love and a desire that we flourish, God provides his Son, that we may have life. Trust in him is what follows on our part—but it never depends on it. We don’t love Jesus and follow him for the things he can provide us. We are to love and follow Jesus because he alone is exactly what we need to truly live. Like the bread and the fish that multiply without explanation, life with this person is so much greater than without him, and we can’t always explain why.

The crowds misunderstood Jesus and the bread he gave and therefore wanted a way to keep him around so that he could keep on giving. Little did they know that he would find his own way to stay present, tangible, real, right at the heart of their community. They could gather and share another set of loaves. Again, inexplicably, he would be there, multiplying forgiveness and love like he did the night before he died.

We have just had a week where and awful lot of attention was given to eating. In this case, it two pieces of bread with a piece of chicken in between. Next week it will probably be something else. People assigned all kinds of social and political meaning to the decision to eat at Chik-Fil-A or to boycott their food because of the actions and words of the owner. Trust me: I am not going to wade into those dangerous waters today or any day and tell anyone which restaurants they should or should not patronize, but one thought did cross my mind.

Namely, what if people of God on all sides of any issue were not primarily known by their participation in or absence from a meal at a fast food chain, but instead by their association with this meal? What if people of faith on either side of this issue made a bigger deal about showing up for sustenance here, taking a place at a meal that reminds us all of true freedom? Forget about the social or political statements we make by eating or not eating at Chik-Fil-A. What about the bold statement you proclaim weekly that you come here and nowhere else for nourishment, for forgiveness, for hope? The world is often a wilderness, with people taking sides, pointing fingers, sitting in judgment, and looking in all sorts of places for the bread that lasts. Yet every week you line up to “eat more Jesus,” and declare to the world that the bread of life has been given for you.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 12B] - July 29, 2012 (John 6:1-21)

Loaves and fishes.

Every once in a while, if you are paying close enough attention, you will see the stories of Holy Scripture written directly into your life. I’m sure it happens more often than we ever notice, our egos and our agendas normally crowding out any chance at recognizing the many ways the Holy Spirit swoops down to draw us into God’s story. Yet that is precisely what I found happening to me last week while I was with thirty-six members of the Epiphany Youth group and chaperones at the 2012 ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans. Our denomination of the Lutheran Church, the ELCA, holds national youth gatherings every three years, and typically when I attend these huge events I am so busy and tired and sleepy and hungry that I can’t stop and enjoy those moments of the Holy Spirit and see my life through the prism of Scripture. But last week it happened at least once (that I’m aware of), and the story that I found my life momentarily mirroring is this very account from John’s gospel where Jesus feeds the multitude, the story of the loaves and fishes.

The day was Friday, the third day of the Gathering. Friday was our “easy” day when we didn’t have to be anywhere at any specific time. Many other youth groups had planned something exotic and expensive and very touristy to do on their easy day. Some had paid high-dollar for swamp boat tours, while others had paid premium prices to go to a museum or the aquarium. Already close to the squeaking point on our budget, we had not scheduled any of that, and, to their credit, there was no grumbling from our youth.

What we had left open, however, was the possibility to visit an Epiphany member out in the St. Bernard Parish in the Arabi section of greater New Orleans. Joe Wall is a New Orleans native and is currently restoring an old home there that has been in his family for four generations. It had sustained some damage in Hurricane Katrina, but was now in its final stages of refurbishment. Before we actually left for New Orleans, Joe had figured out the youth Gathering was going to coincide with his own visit to check on his property, and he invited us out to see a real historical New Orleans home. He also wanted to take us to lunch at a littlesandwich shop/food mart down the street that supposedly sells some of the best oyster and shrimp po-boys in the entire city.

So this little expedition is what we decided to do on our “easy day.” It was nothing too fancy or elaborate, yet it exposed us to something interesting and authentically “New Orleans” outside of the downtown bubble we had been in. In terms of the Scripture story, you might say we had travelled to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Joe was a gracious and wonderful host. When we showed up at his house,  the bottom had fallen out of the sky and we were looking like drowned rats but he didn’t hesitate to welcome us right in and show us around. We also took in a few of the sights of the humble but very tidy neighborhood right along the levee that holds back the Mississippi, including the remains of the oldest plantation house in the city. Joe was, however, a little taken aback by the size of our group. I don’t know how many he expected, but he seemed a little concerned that the little sandwich shop might not be able to handle thirty-seven people. In fact, he was concerned enough to call the shop ahead of time and ask them if they—get this—had enough French bread on hand to make that many po-boys. I had seen the place as we’d driven in. Hand-painted sign, pay-at-the-cash-register kind of place…to call it a “restaurant” was a bit of a stretch. In fact, it calls itself a food store. Suffice it to say that because it was so far off the beaten path, and especially because we were arriving after the lunch rush, that shop might not have but a few, say 5, loaves on hand. I was a little worried where we’d get food for our entire group if this option didn’t pan out. But the owner told Joe on the phone, “We’ll make it work.”

So we trudged down the street in the rain, literally crowded ourselves into this little food mart, and all of us—well, just about all of us—ordered po-boys. We took up every seat in the place. The kitchen help fired up the fryer again full-speed, and the waitress and the young bus boy, who couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12 years old, both worked diligently to make sure everyone was comfortable. But just before the food began to come out, someone requested that I say a prayer. The whole place stopped talking, and the employees paused in their tasks. Suddenly I realized that I was praying for the whole establishment, which is something I’ve never done before. I’ve prayed in restaurants before, for a table or two of people here or there, but never for an entire eating establishment. So I gave thanks. Then the food was delivered and, as you guessed, it was absolutely delicious. There was more than enough for all, and I’m pretty sure I saw some people leaving with doggie bags.

So, there you have it: life mirroring Scripture. Loaves and fishes. French bread loaves and shellfishes. Jesus said, “Make the people sit down—“we’ll make it work.” So they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; also the fish, as much as they wanted.”

A miracle—a sign of God’s presence—happened to us in that little food mart that day. I’m not saying that the kitchen staff somehow miraculously transformed 5 loaves of French bread into thirty-eight po-boys, but we did experience a hospitality and and a feeding of our souls that went far beyond what I think any of us expected. In reflecting upon our trip as a whole, many of the youth lifted up the day we spent at Joe’s house and in the Arabi Food Store and Café as one of the highlights of the trip. It was a humbling reminder to me that wholesome learning experiences do not always come with a high price of an admission ticket or with elaborate planning. A component of grace, they just come, and often without warning.

When Jesus Christ is present in the breaking of bread and the sharing of gifts, any ordinary situation can become a feast of heaven. And in this occurrence of life mirroring Scripture, Joe, the other adult leaders, and I all served, if only for a few moments, as the worried disciples who wondered whether any feast could take place at all, especially with so many hungry people and in a place with such an apparent shortage of resources. The youth and the workers at Arabi Food store, however, supplied the firm if not quiet faith that God was indeed going to provide everything we’d need: the po-boys, for sure, but also the sustenance of an experience where relationships were formed and gifts were blessed, from the bread in the kitchen right down to the labor of the bus boy.

The question is: how many instances like this will need to happen before we realize that this is how our God operates, that God does not function on an economy of scarcity? How many times will our lives need to mirror the stories of Scripture before it finally dawns on us that God’s grace permeates even the ordinary Arabi Food Store experiences of life? How many occurrences of God’s surprising grace will it take to convince us that Jesus is often quietly at the middle of everything, blessing our meager gifts and our inexpensive easy days and then multiplying God’s goodness so that there is enough for all.

The sign that those disciples experienced that day beside the Sea of Galilee was designed to prove just that: that Jesus is God’s amazing grace and that he is given for the life of the world. This kind of thing is what he does, not just for our bellies and our bodies, but for our souls as well. Our lives will be far more with him than without him. And as we feast on his word in Scripture, as we gather weekly with other people who are hungry for a word of hope and comfort, as we take our place at this feast each week, Jesus Christ shows up and promises, against all odds, that he will be enough, that his own body will be blessed and, on the cross, broken for the life of the world.

A further challenge involves not just seeing that this is how Jesus Christ graciously interrupts the normal flow of  human existence to provide enough for all, but to then model that ourselves as his disciples. God calls us to be the bus boys and the waitresses, the cooks and bread bakers who see our lives transformed by Jesus’ power and then go out to see where loaves are broken and blessed for the life of the world. Strengthened time and again by the experiences like the youth had in New Orleans, or the volunteers at Vacation Bible School, or even by our worship here, we become able to see the scope of our lives written into Scriptures story where people meet Jesus daily and join in his mission, where see the death of Good Friday give way to the news of Easter morning.

Our call to pull up a seat and be fed turns into a call to go gather the leftovers and be prepared to feed the world.  One of the speakers we heard at the Superdome, Shane Claiborne, said that we often look at all the injustice and suffering and inequality in the world and often say, “God, why don’t you do something about all this?” And God says, “I did. I made you.”

And when we doubt whether our meager lives, our meager gifts and talents, our meager faith are enough to be broken and blessed for Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes, then perhaps we should arrange a trip with Joe to Arabi Food Store and Café in St. Bernard Parish for a refresher course, Or, better yet…no need to go anywhere at all. We can simply grab a seat and arrange ourselves here at the Lord’s Table, where there is always plenty for all, the body and blood of our crucified and risen Lord, the bread of life.

And, by the by, see every moment of our lives—life, death, and life again—written into the story of God.

Amen.

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 8B] - July 1, 2012 (Mark 5:21-43)

Health care has certainly been the talk of the week. Everyone around has been anxiously awaiting word regarding the validity of a recent campaign that promises health and wholeness to all people. People have even been assembling on the streets in some places, some of them voicing protest and others offering support. In and amongst them are plenty, I’m certain, who are just curious and want to be in on the action. Questions have abounded as the controversy reaches fever pitch: will quality health care be a privilege of the rich and well-connected or will there be access for the poor and anonymous? Who can count on getting attention in a system of care that is much larger and more complex than anyone realizes? What is the value of human life?

And throughout the whole episode, we’ve heard of desperate cases and extreme examples, those who are at the end of their rope and have nowhere else to turn. All in all it’s been a very sticky situation; one leader in particular finds himself walking a tightrope of legal restrictions, interpretations of codes and statutes that few common people can follow, much less understand. What will be the outcome? They tell us the whole thing is historic. It could change the future of everyone’s welfare. After all, Jesus of Nazareth might only pass through this town once. If you are in search of health and healing, you had better push and elbow your way into his presence and use any connections you may have to get his attention.

Jesus heals hemorrhaging woman

The scenes from this morning’s gospel lesson rivet us, and if they don’t, they probably should. Something monumental is happening. Jesus is back on the more Jewish side of Lake Galilee. The crowds are mobbing him. They know he can heal because he’s performed some miraculous healings, but many are probably equally fascinated by his teachings, which is why they are calling him teacher. Teachers of the law are supposed to follow the law, and that means staying away from things like bodily fluids and corpses. And yet Jesus, the teacher, doesn’t. It’s all quite riveting. In one episode, he is both approached by a synagogue leader named Jairus whose young daughter is near death and also accosted by an unknown woman who has been bleeding for twelve years.

Although few details are given, it is safe to assume that both of these people come from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. One has likely been on the fringes of society, the realities of her condition making her ritually unclean. Kids these days might call her a creeper, someone who lurks around in the crowd, never directly confronting the object of interest. However, being a woman marked by the religious authorities as dirty, she had no other option but to creep up on Jesus.

"Raising of Jairus' Daughter" Ilya Repin (1871)

By contrast, the other person apparently has an entourage. Jairus would have been well-known in the community. In Mark’s gospel, we only know the name of one other person Jesus healed. As a synagogue leader, Jairus would have been well-versed in the law, as well. That he would approach Jesus, this controversial upstart from Nazareth, is no small thing. Few Jewish religious leaders would embrace Jesus’ ministry, but I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures, and his daughter is dying.

Two different folks, two different circumstances, but one clear message that God is concerned for the welfare of all of his people. Like many of other miracles in Jesus’ early ministry, these actions demonstrate God’s desire to free people from the powers of sin and death. This is God’s individual mandate: powerful redemption for the whole world.

Our response to this good news is faith. That is the other important thing that both Jairus and the woman with the hemorrhage illustrate, and it is ultimately what Jesus wants to show us in performing these healings. Jesus is not just a wonder-worker who is here to do our bidding; rather, he is the Savior of the world who wants us to receive his kingdom message in faith. Jesus is not just a healer of medical conditions, but is the one who embodies the very compassionate heart of God, who desires all people to trust in God’s mercy and lovingkindness.

And yet in both cases, we see a wavering of that faith and trust. Once the woman is healed, she is overcome with fear and trembling.At first afraid to own up to her pushiness, her sneaking up behind him, she finally confesses how she pressed in on him so close that she could touch his clothes. In the case of Jairus, his supporters initially give up on Jesus’ ability to help after Jesus is detained by conversation with the woman. The daughter is already feared dead. Once Jesus arrives at his house, Jairus’ friends laugh when Jesus suggests that the girl is not dead but sleeping. Fear and laughter. Anxiety and mocking. Unwavering trust and belief are not the reactions that Jesus’ presence and actions produce, at least in these two. Even these models of faith show some vacillation as they learn to trust Jesus’ power. The promise of new life in Jesus is never first based on our faith or our power to believe to begin with. That’s why it’s called grace.

This past week, while the rest of the country was in the grips of the ruling over health care, I found myself at the Virginia Synod Kairos youth event at Roanoke College, in the grips of almost two hundred teenagers who were learning to articulate God’s loving care. During some of our large group sessions in the chapel, seniors are invited to sit before the whole assembly and give what they call a “faith testimony.” They sit on a stool in front of everyone and read aloud a statement they’ve written and agonized over which attempts to describe how they’ve felt God moving and working in their life.

As you can imagine, often these testimonies contain stories of trials and suffering, secret and shocking pain that often go unshared until they come into the presence of their peers. I consider it an honor to hear these stories and testimonies. One youth shared his fear and turmoil over a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy and what that might mean for his future. I was particularly moved by the testimony of one young man who openly confessed to everyone that he didn’t think he was a “good Christian.” He went on to explain how faith was something he never could get a handle on. Just when he thinks his understanding of God is deepened, at that moment he realizes it could be so much stronger yet.

At this point I’m unable to remember the exact words he used when he spoke to us, but rather than speaking of faith in terms of an object or tool which he might use to get what he wants—which so many of us often do—he spoke about it almost as if were the hem of a garment that slips from his hand just as he begins to grip it. His faith, he said, was more like a set of questions and hopes that he brings before God, a journey that he never can define or fully describe. In his testimony I could hear the echoes of both Jairus and the bleeding woman, a longing to be close to the Lord but also a fear that things won’t always work out like he hoped, that his failings and brokenness might somehow invite God’s wrath rather than God’s compassion. I heard him speak about feeling at times unworthy, ungrateful, unwilling, and I wanted to tell him that the fact that he acknowledges he is not a “good Christian” actually makes him a great Christian. I could hear an understanding that Jesus does not respond to our faith, but that faith is a response to what Jesus has done. But most I heard this young man’s thanksgiving for what he had already received from the hand of a loving and healing Savior, and his expectation that there was more of it to come. A common theme in all testimonies—his and the others—was that faith somehow made them well. It sometimes eluded them, often surprised them, but always, in the end, made them well. What about you? What words would you give to describe your faith? What actions in your life press you closer and closer to the man from Nazareth?

In the end, that is where this relationship of trust is aimed: God makes us well. And no matter where we are in life—and no matter what the world’s state of health care is—there will always be something healing, something truly life-giving about a relationship with Jesus that cannot be found anywhere else. There will still be something saving about seeking to know and—more importantly—being known by God. There will always be power in his cloak, if we can but touch it.

As we press closer to him, as we continue our questions of discovery, as we thrust onto God our pain and suffering, we learn that Jesus will not primarily free people from the powers of sin and death by performing miraculous healing. He will primarily do this by succumbing to the powers of sin and death himself. He is here, in our midst, not simply to command his power over everything but to give up that power and enter into the weakness of human experience. On the cross, Jesus touches…grips…is nailed to…all that separates us from God and, in his rising, conquers it.

Brothers and sisters, this is historic. It affects the welfare of everyone in the entire world.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 6B] - June 17, 2012 (Mark 4:26-34)

So, Jesus likes agricultural metaphors, does he? Mustard seeds…birds nesting in branches…farmers planting things and then picking the crops. Perfect! This stuff is right down my alley! Some of you might know that I have a small vegetable garden in my backyard and that I’m more than a little obsessed with it. In fact, I have become the butt of many jokes in my family. My father, who was raised on a farm but raised his own children in the suburbs, probably thinks I’m trying a little too hard to get back in touch with our agrarian roots. Melinda, my wife, has complained I’m neglecting her in favor of the sugar snap peas and the cucumber vines. I have been known to arrive home from work in the afternoon and go around back to spend a little time with the plants before I go in to say “hello” to her. In fact, she has said more than once that if ever a garden grew from someone just watching it, it would be mine.

The truth is I really don’t know what I’m doing and I worry like crazy about it. This is the third year I’ve really ever tried to grow vegetables, and I’m convinced they’re all going to die and all that time and effort will just dry up to a crisp in the hot July sun. In addition, the other pastor here is pretty competitive when it comes to tomato growing. I’ve been feeling the pressure to produce. Maybe at the end of the summer there’s going to be a big “tomato-off” or something. Nevertheless, I still don’t really know what I’m doing, and so I watch it…vigilantly…as if I will catch the tiny green leaves in the very process of unfolding.

And, to tell you the truth, sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I check the strawberries and find nothing ripe enough to pick. I’ll walk away for five minutes to study something else and come back and, what do you know? One of those strawberries got just a little redder while I looked away! And then I pick it to find that it’s mostly still white. I was just over-anxious.

Yes, Jesus’ agrarian metaphors and parables about growing things are right down my alley. The only problem is that the seed planter in his parable is the opposite of me. His garden grows whether he is vigilant about watching it or not. In fact, it sounds like he’s downright nonchalant about its well-being. “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” No pacing around its perimeter, no daily monitoring of its progress. This garden just grows, producing what it needs to regardless of how conscious he is of it. Granted, he has work to do, but the gardener in the parable seems less concerned with how to measure it and how to tweak it and certainly less concerned with how to worry about it and more concerned with trusting that it will do what it’s supposed to. Yes, it has more to do with a faith that, in time—with the flow of seasons and the sunlight and the rainfall—things will grow and flourish just like God wants them to. With that in mind, I think of the Epiphany Gardeners here at church, who plant and work mainly on the odd weekend and afternoon, but otherwise leave it to itself. They know to wait until the strawberry is ripe before they go in with the sickle.

Yes, gardening may be right down our alley, but appreciating the growth of God’s kingdom is not right down our alley much of the time. And on some level, I find it easy to resent this simply little parable. Because—let’s be honest—when it comes to faith and mission and service to neighbor, we like to measure it. We want to see growth happen in the process. We want to catch, for example, the new believer’s life unfolding in faith before our very eyes. We want to be a part of the exciting new ministry that feeds the homeless, the Youth trip to New Orleans, or the invigorating Sunday School class because those are the times we’re sure the kingdom is breaking in all around us. We can just feel it, see it.

But what about the day-in, day-out duties of prayer and devotions? The commitment to weekly worship? Extending hospitality once again to the Sunday visitor? Practicing routine forgiveness with the people you’re living with?  Those things not so much. And what about, in the midst of everything, trusting that God’s kingdom is truly unfolding, doing what it’s supposed to do, as all these more mundane, run-of-the-mill activities take place? That’s perhaps the trickiest part of it all.

Jesus’ lessons to his disciples about the kingdom are often very tricky. In the first place, they’re tricky because they’re trying to explain something that is essentially impossible to picture or place. Even Jesus himself seems to search for a worthy metaphor—“Hmmm…with what else can we compare the kingdom of God??”—choosing never to lecture or hold forth with some long-winded theological description that would probably bore everyone to tears. No, Jesus gives experiences, speaks in images. And in this morning’s first parable, God’s kingdom can best be described as a growth that happens mysteriously and is never entirely dependent on the work of you or me.

This is something his disciples will need to know before they go much further. Right here at the beginning he’s telling them, “When you’re out there ministering to people, doing the work of grace, spreading the news of God’s love, don’t get distracted by the mechanisms of how it’s all supposed to work. That’s not necessary for God’s kingdom to appear amongst you. In other words,” Jesus tells us, “Don’t constantly pace the perimeter like that silly Pastor Phillip, clinging to every leaf and blossom.” Do what you can and let the rest take its course.

And, above all, don’t be too obsessed with grandiosity. That is the lesson of the mustard seed. Don’t be obsessed with grandiosity, because God’s not. What may look tiny and insignificant or ugly or paltry boring at the beginning is still the perfect place for God to get a foothold. God is not obsessed with grandiosity. And we know this as the Christian’s journey begins with just a simple bath of water and the words of forgiveness. Jesus knows that we often seek after the big and the great and the impressive, sometimes building enormous cathedrals and dreaming up all kinds of flashy, fancy schemes. But God isn’t obsessed with grandiosity, choosing to gather us for nourishment each week with a small chunk of bread and a cup of wine. As his disciples venture forth, they will need to know this because the world, by contrast, is quite taken with the powerful and take-them-by-storm approach, and it will be difficult in the church to fight that urge.

Yet, no matter how well they keep these lessons at the back of their minds, they will never quite be able to predict just how unimpressed with grandiosity and—on the other hand—utterly fascinated with the weak and downtrodden Jesus’ Father actually is. At the cross, we all will see just how God can use the weakest, ugliest, most insignificant of beginnings to grow the grace of his kingdom. And, like the birds of the air, all God’s children may come to roost in the branches of this tree.

My uncle, who is pastor at a congregation in South Carolina, told me a story while I was in seminary of something that happened to him a good twenty years after he was ordained. He had already served as chaplain in the US Army for twenty years, having been stationed in three foreign countries and at least twice that many US States. He had finally moved back to take a call at this church in the Columbia area. One day, he was in the check-out line at a grocery store when the guy in front of him turned around and said, “Are you Vicar Bob?”

Surprised, my uncle responded, “Yes, although he hadn’t been called “vicar” since those days in seminary. My uncle didn’t recognize this person, but deduced that this man must remember him from over 20 years before. He started to rack his brain, but he admitted he didn’t know the man’s name or even how he might know him. The younger man said, “You were my youth director at church.”

My uncle said he racked his brain again. He could only remember being a youth director one time—it was for a brief 4 months interim period at a rural church that happened to be within a few miles of that grocery store during his first year of seminary. It had been such a short, almost meaningless job at the time that he hadn’t really considered himself an official youth director, much less a vicar. He vaguely remembered there had a been a handful of youth there, and he had signed up for the position to get class credit before he went away on internship. My uncle said something like, “Oh, yeah, OK. I remember now. That was a long time ago.”

The man then went on to say, “You were great with us. I will never forget the time you spent there. I still live around here, and am still at that church and am so thankful you got me involved with those silly games you taught us to play.”

My uncle thanked him and continued to bag his groceries, and then they parted ways. Bobby told me that on the way out to his car he began to recall in those short days at that rural church a particularly messy-haired kid who never really fit in with everyone else, who he thinks might have attended once or twice. That was the man in the grocery store line.

You just never know, do you? God is not obsessed with grandiosity…at least not at the outset. In fact, it’s almost like God is obsessed with the insignificant. And there is no need to pace the perimeter to check and measure the growth potential of every little action and word. That was just the story of one pastor. Imagine the breadth of your own ministries and interactions! The kingdom can begin and grow right here, among us. Day in and day out…we just never know how.

But God does. As it turns out, this kind of gardening—these kinds of holy and blessed encounters, sprouting from what looks like nowhere but nevertheless reaching up, up, up to include all kinds in his embrace—is right down God’s alley.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.