Monday, July 27, 2015

Feasting on the Fragments

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July 26, 2015
John 6:1-15
1After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." 8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, 9"There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" 10Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."
15When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Sermon: “Feasting on the Fragments”

I think about that kid a lot.  The one with the lunch to share in our story.  How did he get there?  Was he just swept along in the crowd on a boat across the Sea of Galilee, following this powerful teacher?  Did he set out on one of those childhood adventures, packing a couple of fish and some bread and maybe his favorite slingshot, deciding to explore on his own?  Did his parents know where he was?  However it was he got there, this little boy is the heart of the story of feeding the five thousand. 

Without him, people would have been hungry.  Of course, if everyone had shared what they had, that might have been another sort of miracle. 

But as it is, we have one dreamer of a little boy, who brings his lunch to Andrew, offering it freely if it will help.  He just wanted to help.  Kids often do.  But like frequently happens, Andrew doubted how much that little boy could do.  He assumed it wasn’t enough, and perhaps he told the little boy like he told Jesus that there was no way this would be enough food.  An adult would know that.  But this story didn’t need an adult.  It needed a kid.

We adults often sell kids short.  We tend to assume they don’t understand how the world works, and see it as our job to enlighten them on how hard a place it is.  We push them to fit into our understanding of what success is, testing them mercilessly, categorizing them as “achievers” and “underachievers,” often before they even reach elementary school. 

There are lots of miracles in this story in John, but chief among them is that God in Jesus Christ took that kid seriously.  He freely accepted what that boy had to offer, whether it made sense or not.  It’s sad that this has to be a miracle, but so many kids don’t have this.

I met lots of kids at Camp Monroe last week as the Camp Pastor.  Some were from supportive families, others felt alone at home.  Some were struggling with parents or grandparents going through cancer treatment.  Some had just lost pets, and gravitated toward my dog Fifi (okay, they ALL did that).  Some resented being away from their video games for a week, while others were return campers who reveled in the actual games, crafts and activities. 

But all these kids had something in common, something I think all children have in common: they wanted to be treated like they mattered.  They wanted to know they were important, and not just an afterthought who only gets attention when they do something wrong.

That’s why camp is so very important.  It’s also why this story from John is so important.  You’ll notice that Jesus didn’t let anything go to waste: not the boy’s generous idea, not the fragments of bread leftover.  Everything was valuable.  But the crowd saw Jesus as the most valuable.  When the people experienced the miracle of all being fed, they immediately wanted to make him king.

Isn’t that how we grown-ups work?  Give us what we want, and we’ll follow you, until you don’t.  But Jesus withdrew from the crowd before they could do this.  I think he did this for lots of reasons.  He never came to be the king of any earthly kingdom.  He didn’t want the tribute lowly citizens pay to a king; he wanted the worship children of God freely give to their Creator.  But perhaps most importantly, I think Jesus didn’t want the focus to be on himself.  I think Jesus knew the kid was the star of that story, even if no one else realized it.  

I believe Jesus is calling us to recognize what kids offer, in ways that we grown ups simply can’t.  We’re too caught up in our agendas and egos and logic to share ourselves as freely as that little boy did. 

At Camp Monroe, more than anything else, I wanted those kids to know, deep in their hearts, that they mattered.  For our last evening worship together, I decided to share with them the Top 10 Things I Wanted Them to Know.  I’ll share them with you now, because I think they apply to kids of all ages.  But I also share them in hopes that they will inspire you to take the dreams of children seriously.  When we do, there is more blessing than we could imagine, even fragments leftover to feast upon.

So, here are This Preacher Lady’s Top 10 Things to Know:
10.  You matter.  Sometimes adults and definitely other people your age are going to try to suggest to you that you don’t.  You might have someone laugh at your idea, or ignore you entirely.  You might have someone tell you you’re stupid or fat or annoying or too quiet.  Their words don’t matter.  YOU DO.  God made you to do something with your life, not in some astrophysicist sort of way (though, maybe), but in an everyday way.  To be kind.  To be forgiving.  To treat other people like they matter, even when they don’t return the favor.  You matter.

9.   God matters.    It’s completely impossible to narrow down who God is into a few words, but I’ll give you this much:  God is love, wants you to love, and showers love on you in ways you’ll probably never understand.  I still don’t, though I happen to think it’s a lot of fun to try to understand God.  But you don’t have to have God figured out, you don’t even have to talk about God using the same words other people do.  You just have to know that you didn’t create yourself.  God did.  And that same God who made you will always be there, whether you realize it or not. 

8.  Doubts are the heart of faith.   Faith is not certainty.  Faith is not trusting that when you’re in a sinking boat, God’s going to scoop you out of that ocean, fast.  Faith is crying out to whoever might be out there for help.  Faith is most found when we feel most lost.  When we doubt God for allowing some things to happen.  When we see suffering and suffer ourselves.  When we don’t know where to turn.  Don’t be afraid to question God.  Don’t be afraid to question the church.  Don’t be afraid to question yourself.  Doubts are the heart of faith.

7.  Eat chocolate as much as possible.  Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for it.  Guilt is a really bad way to live your life. 

6.  You’re going to hurt someone.  Sometimes you’ll do it on purpose.  Often, you won’t even realize you’ve done it until they get all weird and distant.  But you will hurt someone.  And when you do, it doesn’t matter whether you thought you were right to do so, or whether they hurt you first.  You say you’re sorry, every single time.  Whether you even mean it or not.  Those two words are magic – they can make you into who you want to be.

5.  Someone’s going to hurt you.  They probably won’t do it on purpose, either.  They may not say they’re sorry.  But you have to let go of that hurt the best way you can.  Talk to someone about it.  Pray about it.  Draw or dance or scream until you feel better.  Just don’t hold onto it.  Someone wise (maybe Buddha?) once said, “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”  Don’t do that.

4.  Hang out with animals as much as you can.  They are pure souls, not caught up in worrying about the color of someone’s fur or how fancy their leash is.  They just love and trust implicitly.  They’ll teach you how to do that.

3.  Find (or make) community.  You can’t live this life without your people. Find them. Practice forgiveness and kindness with them.  And when someone seems a bit lost, be wide open to welcoming them.  We all need people.  I hope church can be that for you, but if it isn’t, find some community.  You'll need it to survive.

2.  Sit under a tree, as often as possible.  The screen of your phone or tablet or laptop is fun and shiny and numbs you from whatever you’re worried about.  But, y’all, that stuff is addictive.  Be careful you don’t let it keep you from really living.  Get outside and touch something real, like a tree.  Something that grows and changes and lives.  It will help you do the same.

1.  You are loved more fully and completely than you will ever realize.  You’ll spend so much time and energy and mistakes trying to convince people to love you.  You’ll buy things, and study things, and worship things to try to get love.  But you don’t need to, because that's not really love.   God loves you exactly as you are.  Always has.  Always will.  You can’t buy or earn it. It’s called grace.  And it’s yours.  But not just yours – it’s everyone’s.  So we have to try to love others as fully and completely as we can.  It’s not easy.  But easy is boring.  Y’all are loved.  If you forget the other 9, never forget that.


May we have faith in Jesus.  But may we also have faith in children like he did.  Look how many were fed because he took that little boy’s offering seriously.  Look how much was leftover.  He didn’t just say, “let the little children come to me.”  He meant it.  So should we.


Thanks be to the God who created us with delight, to the Spirit who gives us the courage to dream and to the Son who works wonders with the gifts of children.  Amen.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

The Things We Take With Us


July 5, 2015
Mark 6:1-13
1Jesus left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. 4Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." 5And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6And he was amazed at their unbelief.

Then he went about among the villages teaching. 7He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.8He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." 12So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.


Sermon: “The Things We Take with Us”

I’d like to start this morning’s sermon with a little test. (Don’t worry, it’s simple.)  Basically, I want to find out if any of you are as nerdy as I am.

Raise your hand if you have ever watched Doctor Who?

If you raised your hand, congratulations, you are a nerd like me.  If you didn’t raise your hand, let me assure you, you will become much more nerdy by the end of this sermon!

I love the British show Doctor Who.  It is about a time traveler, inexplicably named “The Doctor,” who constantly saves the world from aliens.  (Nerdy, much?) He himself is an alien too, the last of his kind, the time lords.  He has a time machine (naturally), and travels throughout space and time with a human companion.  He’s quite fond of the earth, and feels compelled to constantly protect it.

That job, as you might expect, makes him lot of enemies.  But he has one enemy greater than all the rest: the daleks.  The daleks are a little ridiculous.  They sort of look like an angry R2D2, or an oversized cheese grater with a plunger attached.  But they’re supposed to be terrifying.  They are the Doctor’s greatest threat because the daleks believe themselves to be the only pure race.  They want to kill every other form of life.  They don’t use the word kill, though.  They use the word “exterminate.”  (It’s not a stretch to recognize the historical themes present in Doctor Who.)  Exterminate.  It’s the harshest word in the Doctor’s world.

There’s a very similar harsh word in our gospel reading this morning.  Ektinaxate.  It’s the Greek word meaning, “shake off.”  When Jesus sends out his disciples two by two, he tells them to travel light.  No extra tunic, no food, no money, no bag.  Just a good walking stick.  They’re told to go to a place and, if they are not welcomed there, to “shake the dust off their feet as a testimony against them,” and move on.  Ektinaxate.  It sounds a bit harsh, but if we’re honest with ourselves, it also sounds really appealing.

You see, we all have a bit of that dalek inclination in us.  We call that sin.  We all have a tendency towards seeing others as a threat; a desire to keep to our own, however we define that through politics, theology, economic status or race.  And so, ektinaxate, shaking the dust off our feet when we are afraid of being threatened, is attractive. 

We’ve all done it: decided someone wasn’t worth our effort anymore.  In college, there was one person I treated this way.  We were in the same dance class.  She would always come and tower over me, saying really patronizing things about my size.  I decided that I Did Not Like Her.  I decided that everyone is entitled to write someone off.  I shook the dust off my feet. 

And then, one day, the Christian organization I was a part of was welcoming new members, and assigning them to Bible study groups.  I led one of those groups.  As one name was called, I thought it sounded familiar.  And then, standing before me was that same person, the one I had decided to write off.  She gave me a big hug and said she was so glad to be a part of my group.  She ended up being a great friend, and I learned all of the deep insecurities that led to her being so hurtful to me.  I had decided to shake her off.  God had other plans. 

We can’t just read this text in Mark as Jesus’ permission to write people out of our lives, to exterminate our sense of guilt, and move on. 

Because when we read this text that way, we’re taking things with us Jesus never told us to bring.  Remember Jesus told his disciples to travel light, taking only sandals, the clothes on their back, and a staff.  He didn’t tell them to take superiority.  He didn’t tell them to take the need to be right.  He didn’t tell them to take the need to prove themselves, or to save themselves from hurt. 

Mostly, he told them to take the gospel.  And a large part of the gospel is that, in Jesus Christ, God came and moved into the neighborhood, to be one of us. 

Hospitality is central to the gospel.  Those disciples were sent to go to strangers, and seek hospitality. They were called to reject self-sufficiency and create community wherever they went, modeling for those they met the kind of incarnational community God brings.

Sometimes, Jesus told them, the disciples wouldn’t be treated well.  Sometimes, people would slam the door in their face.  When that happened, they were to then shake the dust off their feet.  Ektinaxate. 

It’s been helpfully pointed out that hospitality in Jesus’ time would always begin with washing the feet of guests when they came in your home, an act that showed they were now under your care.  The disciples were told to shake the dust off their sandals because there was dust to shake off!  Their feet had not been washed.  They had not been welcomed.  The presence of the dust itself showed the lack of hospitality.  It was time to move on.

Sometimes, in life, it is time to ektinaxate, shake the dust off our feet, and move on.  But we should be careful about our motives.  Do we shake the dust off because, along with the gospel, we have also brought the need to argue, or prove our rightness, or show our spiritual superiority?  Do we shake the dust off because we’d like to avoid confrontation and the difficult conversations reconciliation – the very heart of the gospel -- demands of us?

We need to be careful that we do not become too dalek, too obsessed with our own rightness, that our first impulse is ektinaxate, shaking off all that seems threatening or different. 

If we truly proclaim the gospel with our lives, going together, taking little with us, relying heavily on the guidance of God’s spirit and the hospitality of strangers, there will be very few occasions in which we need to shake the dust off our feet.  And even then, as we admit that we can do no more, we still pray that God would work in ways we cannot.  We see in Mark that, even when he was rejected in his hometown, Jesus still healed a few people and did what he could there before moving on.

Who have you decided you’d like to “shake off?”  Does God agree with you? 

And perhaps just as importantly, have we shown the hospitality of the gospel to those who come to our door seeking refuge?  Or have we left dust on their feet, too busy tending to our own needs and desires and arguments?  Have they shaken us off as a result?

Shaking the dust off is easy.  We do it all the time, without even realizing it.  Staying, and creating community, being reconciled, bringing the kingdom of God on earth, is much harder.  It requires relying on others.  It requires vulnerability.  And we fear that most of all.

One of the Doctor’s companions, Clara, speaks to him when he’s afraid as a little boy (time travel, remember), scared of monsters under the bed.  She says, Fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly…fear can make you kind. It doesn't matter if there’s nothing under the bed or in the dark, so long as you know it's ok to be afraid of it. So, listen. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this. You're always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like…a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that's ok. Because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home.”

You can bet Jesus’ disciples were terrified of being sent into the world with nothing but the gospel and a walking stick.  But that fear didn’t stop them from discovering home among strangers.  It didn’t stop them from telling the story that brought all of us here today.  And even when they had to shake the dust off their feet every now and then, they found the courage to keep going, sharing the gospel of hospitality wherever they went: that God made a home among us in Jesus Christ, and still does. 


Wherever strangers become family, wherever wanderers’ feet are washed clean with love, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in a roof over someone’s head and food for their journey, Jesus is making a home among us, once more.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.