The Miracle

9 Pentecost, Christ Church, St. Joseph

In our Old Testament lesson two weeks ago, a passage a few chapters earlier in 2^nd Samuel, we were painted this delightful picture of King David leaping and dancing before the Lord.

 

The occasion was moving the Ark of the Covenant—the centerpiece of Hebrew worship of the One God—from the house of the Levite Abinidab, where King Saul had parked it to collect dust 20 years earlier.

 

Having replaced Saul as King, David gathers together the people of Israel and transports the Ark back to Jerusalem—with a celebration in the fine tradition of the New Orleans Second Line: shouting, dancing, tambourines, sounding trumpets, clashing cymbals.. and more! 

 

New Orleans Second Line, photo by Charles Lovell.

Of course, I’m historically putting the cart before the horse. It would be more accurate and appropriate to say that the New Orleans Second Line is in the fine tradition of King David’s procession returning the Glory of God to its home in Jerusalem!

 

Either way, my point is that David was not merely moving a piece of furniture. He was making a statement about what kind of king he would be. In contrast to his predecessor, he was saying, the One God and the worship of the One God will be at the center of my kingship.

 

Well, yes, David was, by and large, a righteous king. But we also know, as told in today’s passage just a few chapters later in 2^nd Samuel, that David was capable of great treachery. That David fell to temptation, then compounded his sin with an evil cover-up.

 

Oh, what humans will do to try to save face! And the more powerful the human, the more likely their face-saving cover-ups will lead to the death and destruction of innocent lives. We see evidence of that in our national and international politics all the time.

 

So as a model for kingship, David is definitely a mixed bag. Jesus is a different story altogether.

 

Here in the middle of our Gospel lesson, John states, When 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.

 

I don’t think we need rocket science to figure out that it is earthly kingship—precisely the kind of kingship that contributed to David’s fall from grace—that Jesus is rejecting and fleeing from.

 

Certainly John does a good job of portraying Jesus as a leader, and a strong one at that. One who knows what he is going to do but nevertheless gives his disciples an opportunity to suggest a solution to the problem at hand.

 

Here I think it important to note that John tells this story of the feeding of the 5,000 a bit differently from the other Gospels. For example, Matthew 14:15 & 16 says:

 

As evening approached, the disciples came to [Jesus] and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

 

Luke and Mark are virtually identical to Matthew: The disciples—not Jesus—initiate the discussion. They want to send the crowd away. Jesus says no, you feed them.

 

But in John’s account, Jesus initiates the discussion, and he does it even though he knows already what he is going to do, and he does it as a test of them. It’s almost as if he’s saying, ‘Okay, guys, have you figured out yet what kind of king I am?’

 

Of course they haven’t, and so he shows them, again. And I’ll come back to that part of the story in a moment, but first an aside: I point out that John’s account of this miracle is different from the accounts of Matthew, Mark & Luke, NOT to start an argument about which account is “the right one.” I do not think those arguments are necessary, nor do they lead us to a deeper understanding of the Bible. I think they are distractions from what we can learn from the Bible.

 

Rather, I ask, “What can we learn from each telling of the story? What can we learn from THIS telling of the story, that we don’t learn from those other tellings?”

 

John’s Gospel presents Jesus as a strong, fearless leader, a man in charge, a shepherd leading with a firm but tender hand, a man in charge of his own destiny as well. In John, Jesus’ life is not taken from him; he gives it freely.

 

So.., back to the feeding of the 5,000. The disciples, who have themselves just returned from their first mission trip with stories of miraculous healings and exorcisms, still do not yet fully understand what kind of king Jesus is.

 

So Jesus shows them: I’m the kind of king who feeds people, physically and spiritually. Moreover, you are what you eat. The physical food you eat today satisfies your belly for a few hours. The spiritual food I offer transforms lives.

 

Just what, do you suppose, was the miracle that took place on that hill near the Sea of Galilee some 2,000 years ago? I’m sure God can create out of nothing at any time. I’m sure God can cause molecules of bread and fish to magically multiply.. at any time.

 

But that kind of miracle would be almost unremarkable. After separating light from dark and sea from dry land, after hanging the sun, moon and stars in the heavens, I’m guessing God could multiply bread and fish without breaking a sweat.

 

I’m guessing a greater miracle happened on that day so long ago. I’m guessing Jesus blessed the bread and fish.. and through his compassion and his act of love and thanksgiving and praise, God became known to the gathered throng in that breaking of the bread.

 

“You are what you eat.” Our Bishop loves to say that. When he offers consecrated bread and wine in the feast of Holy Eucharist, he says, “Become what you receive.” The physical food you eat today satisfies your belly for a few hours. The spiritual food offered in the breaking of bread transform lives.

 

Photo by World Food Programme

 

Because when God becomes known to humankind, our hearts are opened and miracles happen, miracles of giving and sharing even when we ourselves are in hard times, of welcoming strangers, of caring for the least among us. So much so that we have more blessing left over than what we started with.

 

You’ve heard it many times: “I went to the homeless shelter or the food bank or the mission field to give/help/do something for people who are less fortunate than me,” people say, “and I got more out of it than I gave.”

 

When God is revealed to us, when we recognize the Divine within and among us, when we see ourselves and our neighbors—all of them—as God’s beloved, human hearts are transformed.

 

Meister Eckhart, a German theologian and Franciscan monk of the 14^th Century, said it this way (from Edge of the Enclosure, 7/30/11):

 

For not only bread
but all things necessary
for sustenance in this life
  are given on loan to us
    with others
    and because of others
    and for others
    to others through us.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Blessedness

 Pentecost 7, St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

Blessed be…God .., who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing, Paul writes to the Ephesians. And then he goes on to detail those blessings:

·      Adoption as God’s children through Jesus Christ our brother

·      Redemption and forgiveness of sins

·      And in the fullness of time, to be gathered up in him…

 

The riches of grace, indeed, lavished upon us by the God who IS Love, first, last and always.

 

To me, the most striking thing about today’s lessons is the stark contrast in emotions I experience in reading them. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is all joy and gratitude. It’s all reassurance of God’s love for humankind. It inspires confidence. It brings peace and trust that all will be well.

 

Not so much the other two. I will return to Paul’s description of blessedness, but first we need to look at these other two stories to see what is there for us.

 

In 2nd Samuel, we have King David leaping and dancing with abandon before the Lord, and all the people celebrating with him with music and dancing. This is, in fact, a delightful picture!

 

They are transporting the Ark of the Covenant from the home of the Levite Abinadab, where it had been deposited by King Saul after the defeat of the Philistines. It had sat there for 20 years, sort of out of sight and out of mind.

 

Now that he is king, David is not merely moving the Ark, but making a statement about who he is and how he will lead. He is saying, I want the Glory of the Lord near me in Jerusalem. With the Ark in a special tent put up for that purpose, he is declaring his intention that worshiping God would be at the center of his leadership—not just for him, but for the people as well.

 

 

 But here in the midst of this joyous image of dancing and leaping with joy before the Lord comes a statement.. shocking in its harshness. It’s like taking a bight into a beautiful apple and finding a worm—worse, a half a worm—and we are brought up short. David’s wife Michal is watching from a window and, we are told, she despised him in her heart.

 

What in the world could it be about the scene before her that causes such a hateful reaction? We do know earlier in the story of Michal and David, as told in several passages of Hebrew Scripture, that she loved him very much.

 

The writer of 2^nd Samuel does not explain her change of heart, so we are left to wonder. Was she perhaps jealous of David’s relationship with God? Perhaps fearful that her husband’s first and highest loyalty was to God, making her second in his affections at best? Or was she disdainful of his “let it all hang out” abandon, finding it unbecoming to his station in life to leap and dance for joy before God and the people?

 

I am ruefully reminded that I, myself, have been known to kind of look down my nose at people whose manner of worship includes everything from waving hands in the air to speaking in tongues to, indeed, dancing up and down the aisles of churches. Give me stately ritual over spiritual drama on Sunday, pleeeeeze!

 

Pick your answer or come up with another, but recognize that Michal is offered to us here as a mirror. Paul draws for us a picture of blessedness. God’s desire is to gather in—not just us but all things in heaven and on earth. It’s a picture of heaven on earth.

 

But our feet are so often stuck in the muck of earthly things. Our jealousies and our fears, our disdain for those who do not live up to our standards of worship, lifestyle, morality—whatever. Those very human responses get in the way of our inherited blessedness. Instead of joining the dance, we stand back in fear, in anger, or passing judgement.

 

King Herod and his wife Herodias mirror human treachery and its capacity for destruction even more clearly and starkly. In this scene, we get just a hint of potential blessedness. King Herod is drawn to the message of John the Baptizer. He can’t quite put his finger on why, but he wants to hear what he has to say.

 

He would probably be happy if John were to leave the neighborhood, but he doesn’t want to harm him. Indeed, Herod protects the prophet from his own wife, whom he loves dearly but who is clearly infuriated by John’s truth-telling about their marriage, which is unholy in the eyes of Jewish law.

 

In the end, Herod succumbs to his own lack of courage and character. His wife cynically manipulates him by exploiting her child’s budding sexuality. He yields to his own lasciviousness and swears a foolish oath. Then, having made a sweeping promise, he must save face and not disappoint his blood-thirsty base. Murder is the outcome.

 

 

 The earthly muck of pride, fear, the need to save face, self-righteousness, the pursuit of power and earthly wealth, sucks at our feet constantly. It prevents us from seeing and joyously embracing the blessedness that God desires for us and offers us as our inheritance.

 

Now, I need to say a few more words about the nature of blessedness. It has become commonplace today to attribute everything to being blessed. We get promoted at work, “I’m blessed,” we say. A bigger house? A newer car? Yes, yes, I’m blessed. A great vacation? Our freedom from political oppression? We don’t hesitate to call these things “blessings.”

 

But that’s not what Paul is talking about. The blessedness that comes from God that Paul is describing here is spiritual, not material. I do NOT mean to say that we should not be grateful and thankful for material things, or political things like freedom to worship as we choose. These are good things. We should be grateful for them.

 

But there’s two problems with calling them “blessings.” The first is the unfortunate implication that because we have these material “blessings,” God must therefore bless us more than God blesses those who are poor and those who live under political oppression. Not so. Indeed, the Bible—and the Hebrew Scripture and the Qu’ran, BTW—all tend toward the opposite.

 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” “Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have eternal life.” “Do it to the least of these and you do it to me.” Etc. The passages that convey a bias toward those who have little are many.

 

The second issue with calling material gifts “blessings” is that it tends to obscure some very important and serious realities, a primary one being that earthly economic structures are not designed to produce “blessings.” They are designed to produce economic rewards, and those by no means equally. Some labor is valued much more highly—and profitably—than other labor.

 

Moreover, the labor market does not reflect the values we profess. If it did, teachers might just be paid more than football players, and we all know that isn’t going to happen anytime soon! Of course, as a retired teacher, although I love to complain about football player salaries, I’m also painfully aware that my labor has been valued much more highly than the absolutely essential labor of many others. I think of food workers, retail workers, people who clean homes and businesses, and those who save countless lives by picking up our garbage and carrying it away.

 

My point is, simply, that calling the products of our economic and political structures “blessings” conceals both responsibility and privilege. I have become very, very careful about what I call a “blessing” because I do not want to lose sight of my own responsibility to work for just political and economic systems, or my privilege as one who does way better by existing structures than many, many others.

 

Now, I’m not trying to start an argument about whether the labor market—or any other market, the stock market, the commodity market, etc.—is fair or not. And I’m certainly not trying to say that markets are bad. Markets are good! They promote the circulation of beneficial earthly goods. We just need to make sure we manage them—for they are vehicles of our own creation—so we need to manage them to make sure they produce the outcomes we want.

 

What I AM trying to say is that earthly economic and political structures do not produce “blessings.” Blessings are from God, and as Paul explains and illustrates, God’s blessings are spiritual in nature. Moreover, they are equally offered to all creation: everything in heaven and on earth, as Paul says.

 

 

And if we can find it in our hearts to fully accept and live into God’s gracious blessedness, to set our eyes on spiritual things, to know and live as God’s beloved, as redeemed and forgiven, then we will pass it on. We will overcome and rise above the muck of human pride, greed, idolatry, jealousy, and hate. We will become channels instead for God’s love, forgiveness, mercy and generosity toward all people and all creation. We will see Jesus in every other person and we will work for justice and peace on earth as our baptismal covenant calls us to do.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.