St. Alban's & St. Thomas' Episcopal Churches, Monroe
Last spring I attended the triennial assembly of the Association for Episcopal Deacons. Our keynote speaker and workshop leader was Eric Law, an Episcopal priest and author of several book, including “Holy Currencies: 6 Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries.”
Law has gone from writing books to founding a center for congregational development and stewardship called the Kaleidoscope Institute. Our Bishop has just decided that some of Law’s work needs to be in the curriculum of our Diocesan school of ministry for lay people. So, the St. Thomas’ chapter of the Daughters of the King is a step ahead of everyone else on that because they studied this book together last spring!
To kick off his workshop at the deacon’s conference last year, Law had the assembled deacons—as I recall, around a hundred of us—play a silly little game that ended up making a big point. With the help of the organizers of the conference, a bunch of these bookmarks were handed out. Some people got none, some got 2 or 3 and a few got 5 or 6.
Then, Law said, this game has just two rules. 1) If someone gives you a bookmark, you must take it, and 2) the person who ends up with none.. wins. When I give the signal, Law said, you will have 10 minutes to give away all of your bookmarks.
Well, I don’t remember if anyone won that game. And I don’t remember how many bookmarks I ended up with, but I’m pretty sure it was more than I started with. I got down to zero a couple times, but no sooner had I done so than someone would come along and thrust a bunch into my hand.
Now, you might be thinking, “Well, duh! The rules of the game were set up to make sure that happens!” And, indeed, they were. The value of the game was not that it was a “fair” or “objective” test of anything. The value of the game.. was in what it revealed about how humans think!
The first few minutes of the game, I was being totally rational and measured. My plan was to give one bookmark to each of however many people I needed to, to get rid of them all. That way I could spread my generosity over the maximum number of people. And if anyone gave me a bookmark—“a” bookmark; I was assuming everyone else would be as rational as I—I would find one more person to give it to.
And isn’t that how we do our charity?
But Jesus said, “Get rid of it all. Give it all away. Sell all you have and give it to the poor.”
There was a moment in Eric Law’s silly little game when I was flooded with two things: 1) The enormity of what Jesus asks of us: give it all away; and 2) the powerful human tendency to gather, to collect, to keep, to secure our future, indeed, to hoard.
Today’s Gospel lesson is about exactly that. It is my favorite miracle in the Bible, and not just because I love to eat.
Perhaps today’s miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 is the greatest miracle Jesus performs! Greater than bringing dead things to life because that happens all the time. That’s a pattern of the universe. We see it happen before our eyes every spring.
I imagine many people think the feeding of the 5,000 is about Jesus multiplying molecules of bread and wine such that 5 loves and 2 fishes magically turned into hundreds of loaves and fishes. That’s what I was raised to think it was about.
But..
how’s that even a miracle? That wouldn’t be a miracle. That would be God
showing off! Surely the creator of the universe can multiply molecules of bread
and fish without breaking a sweat!
It is certainly an appealing idea. God has superhero powers; God made the rules of the universe, therefore can break them any time God wants to!
The problem with that, of course, is we’re left to struggle with the question: Since God can do that without breaking a sweat, why doesn’t God do it more often?
Why do people go hungry in a world of plenty? If God is good and loves us all, why doesn’t God fix the Middle East? Why must children in Gaza die horrific deaths? Why must children on the southside of Monroe play in dirty, trash-littered streets among burned out and boarded up houses?
Why do the children of St. Joseph, Louisiana, come to Vacation Bible School so hungry that they must be fed before they can concentrate on the lesson?
The answer is pretty clear: Our God is not a show-off God. Our God chooses to work through humans—US—in all of our misbegotten glory. We are beautifully and wondrously made…, and yet stiff-necked, insecure, self-centered.
You see, I think the real appeal of the notion of God as multiplier of molecules of bread and fish is that it leaves humans completely off the hook. Oh, that we had a show-off God! Would that not make life a whole lot easier for us!
I mean, we could sit around and wait for God to fix it, whatever “it” is: the violent Middle East, the children collecting on our southern border fleeing violence and starvation in their own countries, the escalating gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. economy.
And if God doesn’t choose to fix whatever it is that needs fixing, well then, it must not be meant to be. Too bad for those dying in Gaza. Too bad for the poor. Too bad for those kids… and I really do looooove them, but… I’m a mere human. All I can do is pray for God to work a miracle.
But our God is not a show-off god. It IS up to us. And the problem almost never is an absolute shortage of molecules of anything. The problem is maldistribution. Whether we’re talking food or cash or relative freedom from violence, the problem is not shortage, it’s maldistribution: some have and keep, others don’t and suffer.
Here's a little story that helps make the point. A member of Christ Church in St. Joseph, La., started a Shepherd Center in that little town to make available good used items to poor folks for a minimal price. One day, two volunteers had locked the door for the day and were about to leave when comes a knock on the door.
"I'll go tell her (the woman at the door) we're closed for the day," said one volunteer to the other.
"Oh, no, you go on home," said the other volunteer, "I'll see what she needs."
So one volunteer left and the other went to the door. The woman needed shoes. She had lost everything, she said, and most of all she needed shoes to replace the tattered flip-flops on her feet.
"Come in," said the volunteer, "I'm sure we've got something your size here somewhere."
And so the hunt began. They searched through the shoes on display. Nothing. They searched through shoes ready to go on display. Nothing. They go through piles of unsorted stuff. Nothing.
By now the woman is apologizing and telling the volunteer to go on home and not worry about it. But the volunteer persists. Finally, she spies a box of items in the corner that has not yet been opened. She picks it up, turns it upside down and out falls a pair of brand new sneakers in the woman's size.
I don’t believe for one moment that God created sneaker molecules out of nothing and hid them inside that box of stuff for the woman to find. What God did is transform the heart of the woman, such that when she was confronted with another human being in need, she saw Jesus. And Jesus needed shoes.
It is certainly an appealing idea. God has superhero powers; God made the rules of the universe, therefore can break them any time God wants to!
The problem with that, of course, is we’re left to struggle with the question: Since God can do that without breaking a sweat, why doesn’t God do it more often?
Why do people go hungry in a world of plenty? If God is good and loves us all, why doesn’t God fix the Middle East? Why must children in Gaza die horrific deaths? Why must children on the southside of Monroe play in dirty, trash-littered streets among burned out and boarded up houses?
Why do the children of St. Joseph, Louisiana, come to Vacation Bible School so hungry that they must be fed before they can concentrate on the lesson?
The answer is pretty clear: Our God is not a show-off God. Our God chooses to work through humans—US—in all of our misbegotten glory. We are beautifully and wondrously made…, and yet stiff-necked, insecure, self-centered.
You see, I think the real appeal of the notion of God as multiplier of molecules of bread and fish is that it leaves humans completely off the hook. Oh, that we had a show-off God! Would that not make life a whole lot easier for us!
I mean, we could sit around and wait for God to fix it, whatever “it” is: the violent Middle East, the children collecting on our southern border fleeing violence and starvation in their own countries, the escalating gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. economy.
And if God doesn’t choose to fix whatever it is that needs fixing, well then, it must not be meant to be. Too bad for those dying in Gaza. Too bad for the poor. Too bad for those kids… and I really do looooove them, but… I’m a mere human. All I can do is pray for God to work a miracle.
But our God is not a show-off god. It IS up to us. And the problem almost never is an absolute shortage of molecules of anything. The problem is maldistribution. Whether we’re talking food or cash or relative freedom from violence, the problem is not shortage, it’s maldistribution: some have and keep, others don’t and suffer.
Here's a little story that helps make the point. A member of Christ Church in St. Joseph, La., started a Shepherd Center in that little town to make available good used items to poor folks for a minimal price. One day, two volunteers had locked the door for the day and were about to leave when comes a knock on the door.
"I'll go tell her (the woman at the door) we're closed for the day," said one volunteer to the other.
"Oh, no, you go on home," said the other volunteer, "I'll see what she needs."
So one volunteer left and the other went to the door. The woman needed shoes. She had lost everything, she said, and most of all she needed shoes to replace the tattered flip-flops on her feet.
"Come in," said the volunteer, "I'm sure we've got something your size here somewhere."
And so the hunt began. They searched through the shoes on display. Nothing. They searched through shoes ready to go on display. Nothing. They go through piles of unsorted stuff. Nothing.
By now the woman is apologizing and telling the volunteer to go on home and not worry about it. But the volunteer persists. Finally, she spies a box of items in the corner that has not yet been opened. She picks it up, turns it upside down and out falls a pair of brand new sneakers in the woman's size.
I don’t believe for one moment that God created sneaker molecules out of nothing and hid them inside that box of stuff for the woman to find. What God did is transform the heart of the woman, such that when she was confronted with another human being in need, she saw Jesus. And Jesus needed shoes.
She
did not need to know if the woman was deserving or not, had lost her stuff
through bad decision-making or not, was in need because she was lazy… or not.
She saw Jesus, and Jesus needed shoes.
Brothers and sisters, the world does not need more molecules of anything. The world needs human hearts that have fallen into the hands of God and been transformed. That’s the miracle looking for a place to happen… Every. Single. Time. AMEN
Brothers and sisters, the world does not need more molecules of anything. The world needs human hearts that have fallen into the hands of God and been transformed. That’s the miracle looking for a place to happen… Every. Single. Time. AMEN
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