A God Thing

Grace Epsicopal Church, Monroe, La.

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to Eric Law, an Episcopal priest and author of several books, including “Holy Currencies: 6 Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries.” A few years ago, Fr. Law was the keynote speaker and workshop leader for the triennial assembly of the Association for Episcopal Deacons, which I attended.

To kick off his workshop, Law had the assembled deacons—as I recall, approximately a hundred of us—play a silly little game that ended up making a big point. We were handed bookmarks printed with the Holy Currencies logo. 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.. is the winner. 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.

There was a moment in Eric Law’s silly little game when I was flooded with two thoughts: 1) The enormity of what Jesus asks of us, namely that we be ready to give it all away—to sell all we have and give to the poor; 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. 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 fish such that 5 loaves 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 God 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, or the refugee crisis? For that matter, why must children on the south side of Monroe play in dirty, trash-littered streets among burned out and boarded up houses?

The answer is pretty clear: Our God chooses to work through humans—US—in all of our misbegotten glory. We are beautifully and wondrously made…, and yet fearful. We see scarcity instead of God's abundance. We are insecure; we worry. And, yes, sometimes we are judgmental, afraid of helping the "wrong person," someone we deem unworthy of our help.

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?

We could use our prayers to direct God to where a miracle is needed, then wait for God to fix whatever needs fixing: the violent Middle East, the children collecting on our southern border fleeing violence and starvation in their own countries, the  gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. economy, sick people who have neither money nor medical insurance.

But that's not how God works. 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 health care or relative freedom from violence, the problem is not shortage, it’s maldistribution: some have and protect, others don’t and suffer.

Here’s a story that was told to me by a woman who volunteers at the Shepherd’s Center, a joint outreach ministry of the churches in St. Joseph, La. The Shepherd’s Center is a store that offers used clothing, household goods and so forth at very low prices—nickels, quarters, dollars—to the many residents of St. Joseph who live in poverty.

One evening two volunteers had just closed shop after a long day, but just as they were about to slip out the back door and home to their families, they heard a knock on the front door. One of the volunteers said to the other, “You go on. I’ll go tell them we’re closed for the day and to come back tomorrow.”

The other volunteer said, “Oh, no, you go ahead. I’ll go find out what they want.” So she did, and at the front door she found a woman standing there wearing the most tattered, broken down, worn out shoes she had ever seen.

The woman explained that she had no other shoes; this was her only footwear and they were so worn she could barely keep them on her feet. Could the Shepherd Center help her?

The volunteer said, “I’m sure we have something here that will fit you,” and the search commenced. Some time later, the volunteer had gone through all of the shoes on display in the store, and then had gone back to the staging area and was in the process of going through boxes of donated stuff that had not yet been unpacked… but had come up empty-handed.

By this time the woman who needed shoes was apologizing and saying, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be okay.” But the volunteer looked around and spied one more box in the corner that had not yet been searched. “Hold on,” she said. “Let me check that one.”

She grabbed the box and dumped its contents onto the floor, and lo and behold, out tumbled a brand new pair of sneakers. And they fit!

In telling me this story, the volunteer concluded, “It was a God thing.” And I agree. It was a God thing.

But I don’t believe for one moment that "the God thing" in this instance was God creating sneaker molecules out of nothing and hiding them inside that box of stuff for the volunteer to find. What God did is transform the heart of a woman, such that when she was confronted with another human being in need, she saw Jesus. And Jesus needed shoes. 

And so she set aside her own tiredness, family time and convenience, and persisted.

She did not need to know if the other woman was deserving or not, had no money 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. 

 In the name of God, father, son and holy spirit, AMEN.

-->