Monday, July 26, 2021

There Is Enough

 John 6:1-15

July 25, 2021

 

Feeding the Multitude With Loaves and Fishes
Eric Feather
5000 people is a lot of people.

It’s a crowd. A big crowd.

Actually, the biggest city in the area at the time

might have been around 7,000 people.

So if this hillside picnic were a city,

it would have been the second largest in the area.

That’s a pretty big event.

 

Now, I think that promoters, and event coordinators,

and disciples then and now can agree on one thing:

you don’t try to feed a crowd of 5000,

at least not all at once, not without selling tickets ahead of time,

or charging up front, or sponsorship, or a big group of volunteers

and definitely not without some advanced planning.

 

So when Jesus asks the disciples where they’re

going to get food for all these people,

Phillip has a perfectly reasonable response.

He says “we don’t’ have enough.”

We don’t have it, we don’t have access to it,

we don’t know where to get it, we don’t know who would

give us enough— to feed all these people.

There is not enough.

It’s a reasonable response.

Phillip has the voice of reason here.

 

And sometimes, occasionally its true.

But we’ve heard it and said it so much

that we start to believe it, that that voice of reason

starts to seep into everything that we do and say,

it starts to be our mantra, our organizing thought,

the way we operate throughout our lives.

There is not enough.

  

There is not enough. The story that gets told by

corporations, politicians, commercials, TV shows,

news shows, school districts, city councils:

There is just not enough for everyone.

Not enough food, money, land, jobs, time, doctors, medicine,

electricity, heat, water,

and whatever else can be counted and held back.

We hear it so much, it’s repeated and insinuated,

and drilled into us from the moment we’re born.

So much so, that the fear is always in us

and it drives us and directs our actions.

There is not enough.

 

There’s enough for billionaires to go up into

space for ten minutes. But still there’s not enough

 

Remember the great toilet paper panic of 2020?

There was not enough. Really there was enough.

But because everyone thought there was not enough

There was not enough.

 

People who calculate these things

say that there is enough food produced in this world,

so that every person in it could eat 3000 calories every day.

But still, around 815 million people go to bed hungry.

We’re fortunate that there is not a production problem,

But there is a distribution problem. And at the root of it, is this fear:

There is not enough.

 

This is part of many people’s issue with immigrants,

with people of color, with those who are poor.

If those other people get, there won’t be enough for me.

There is not enough.

 

We’ve got to hold it back, hoard it, keep it safe

so that the right people get it and are in charge of it.

because there is not enough.

We live by the principle of scarcity.

And at its root, this principle of scarcity is a lack of trust in God.

The principle of scarcity tells us that we’re on our own.

We only have what we can get for ourselves.

We only get whatever we scrap and fight and work for.

Only what we “deserve”. What we have we’ve earned.

It says there are no gifts to be given because God doesn’t give gifts.

There is not enough and there will never be enough.

 

The story of scarcity we’re telling today

is the same story that the disciples told.

There is not enough to feed those 5000 people, Jesus.

Send them away.

 

But in the middle of that story of scarcity being told o

on that hillside in front of that crowd,

One boy came up and said, “I have enough!”

Even though all he had was five loaves and two fish.

Even though it was probably all the groceries he had for his family.

And even though Andrew only saw the scarcity and said,

“What’s so little food when you’re talking about so many people?”

It was still enough.

 

And Jesus took what the boy had to share

he blessed it, he broke it and gave it away.

With complete trust in what he and God were going to do.

 

Now here is where the mystery happens.

Without a food committee, without making

an announcement of a pot luck, without tickets,

without any planning whatsoever,

there was enough – for everyone in that crowd.

 Now the story is not clear on how it happened.

Some people read this and see that Jesus made more bread

and more fish right there.

Enough for all to eat and more, ex nihilo, out of nothing.

Some believe that Jesus and God

produced food where there was none

and the people had more than enough to eat.

Now that is a miracle of God no doubt.

 

But some people look at this and see something else.

They see that Jesus brought the Spirit of God to rest

on a community of 5000 people

and they were inspired by that boy, and they were inspired by Jesus

to trust God and share all that they had.

 

A normal crowd of people who traveled with their own provisions,

taking whatever they had just bought at the market,

whatever they were taking along with them for their journey,

whatever they were going to eat themselves

whatever they had there to sell to this big crowd,

and they were inspired by Jesus, and the Spirit,

and that young boy’s generosity.

And they didn’t keep it for themselves.

 

They brought it out of their tunics and pockets

and baskets and shopping bags and let it all go.

They shared it with the people

around them who had brought nothing to eat.

And there was more than enough for everyone.

 

And this, I think, is an incredible miracle.

In our world where the principle is scarcity.

 
 

Whichever way you see it,

Jesus’ miracles are never just miracles.

They always show us something about God.

And with that picnic meal miracle,

Jesus showed that the world is filled with God’s blessings.

We can trust in God’s abundance.

Even when all your senses tell you there isn’t enough.
Even when the voice of reason tells us otherwise.

There is enough.

 

The way that Jesus came into everyone’s life on

that hillside is the same way Jesus comes into ours.

Whenever we feel nervous, or we’re not sure we’ll make it.

Whenever we worry about the future,

Whenever all we see ahead is disaster,

whenever we’re stingy and selfish and not willing to share,

Jesus tells us, “there is enough.”

 

With that meal on that hillside,

and this meal that we eat every week,

Jesus is slowly reordering the world’s reality.

Not just in our stomachs, and in our churches either.

Jesus is reordering the economy, the government,

the world, and our hearts.

There is enough: enough food, enough money,

enough space, enough time, enough attention, enough love.

 

Jesus shows us and this crowd the real story about

God’s grace, God’s gifts, God’s love for everyone.

Jesus shows us and feeds us the real story

about God’s abundance.

 

What Jesus is saying is that when people

come together in faith in the presence of God,

When people trust in God’s abundance,

there is nothing that can’t happen.

There is enough.

 

Splanchnizomai

 Mark 6:30-34; 53-56

July 18, 2021

 

The disciples are back from their travels

and their excited to tell Jesus what they’ve been up to.

 

Jesus and the disciples are getting big.

The word is spreading and people are coming out

from far and wide to see him.

He’s being mobbed like a TV star in Hollywood.

 

So Jesus suggests that they all go

and get away from the crowds

and go to a deserted place

and get some well deserved rest.

But again they’re recognized and there’s a crowd around them.

 

It says that Jesus looked at that crowd

and he had compassion for the crowd

Because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

 

Now, I think I probably have an idealized view

of what the people who followed Jesus around were

like, I think a  lot of us do.

I think paintings and movies have portrayed

these people as disheveled, forlorn, sad yes,

but generally patient, good natured, and thankful.

A basically unified crowd, all ripe for discipleship.

But Jesus saw them as “sheep without a shepherd.”

 

As I’ve said, you have to read up on sheep when you’re a pastor.

And without a shepherd, sheep get lost very easily,

they’re frightened and they run from one thing to the next.

They are not calm and level headed and placid.

They don’t know where to go, they’re libel to run off a cliff.

They don’t know where their next meal is coming from

Sheep without a shepherd can be very anxious and lost.

They get cranky and they run around, and they do a lot of bleating.

The sheep farming site I looked at today said

“Another thing worth noting is that sheep get spooked easily.

They are afraid, even of the smallest things you can think of.
But this doesn’t mean you should mess around with them!
They can be dangerous if provoked.”

 

So “sheep without a shepherd” is not a great complement.

It doesn’t describe a disheveled but good hearted group.

The reality is that crowd of people Jesus encountered

was most likely cranky, short tempered, impolite, and rude

and maybe even a little dangerous when provoked.

 

Situations change over the centuries.

But people have not changed.

people are still the same today.

 

People are not normally sweet and humble  

when they are anxious and lost.

When they don’t have stability and don’t know where their

next meal is coming from.

When they don’t feel grounded and secure.

When they’re threatened constantly.

Oftentimes people in that situation are desperate.

Sheep without a shepherd often make bad choices

and when they’re anxious and lost too long

they make very bad choices .

 

We’ve probably seen people like this.

Maybe we’ve known them, maybe we’ve been them at one time or another. 

Shepherdless sheep people end up on the streets or in prison or worse.


Now our upwardly mobile society

tells us that we should look on people like this with contempt.

Some would even say to shame them or harass

them would be the best course of action,

that that would somehow shake them up

and change the course of their behavior.

Definitely, if they mess up bad, just put them in jail

and forget about them.

 

These people should just pick themselves up by their

bootstraps (whatever those are) and fix their own lot in life.

At the very least, we should not be coddling or fraternizing

with these people. Because they could get the wrong impression.

and we could get dragged into their shepherdless sheep ways.

Those shepherdless sheep should be avoided.

 

But Jesus, it said, looked at these people and he had compassion.

Compassion. We know what that means. The definition is:

“Sympathetic pity and concern

for the sufferings or misfortunes of others”

It means to hurt for someone else’s pain.

 

But the word that is used here is translated

as compassion because that’s the closest in English,

but the word in Greek is much more descriptive.

The word is splanch-ni-zo-mai

It’s  kind of a euphemism  more than just a word

it actually means bowels.

There are other words in Greek to convey compassion

that don’t have quite this meaning.

But what Jesus felt was this kind of compassion.

Bowel compassion. Deep low in the stomach.

You know that feeling.

A combination of sadness, pain, and deep love.

 

 

When do you remember ever feeling that,

deep in your bowels?

I feel it at funerals of people who have had sudden

and unexpected deaths of a loved one.

I feel it every time there’s one of those mass shootings,

Or when there’s a natural disaster and people’s whole

world gets destroyed and torn apart.

 

Deep pain for the suffering of another,

deep emotions for another person

and a desire to change the situation.

 

Jesus felt compassion for them. Deep bowel pain.

Because they were like sheep without  a shepherd.

And, it says, “he began to teach them many things.”

Meaning he spoke with them, he spent time with them,

valuable time.

 

No doubt they weren’t all saints.

No doubt they weren’t all kind or gentle.

No doubt some of them were dangerous when provoked.

But he still spent his time with them.

 

Now they didn’t have to do anything to win Jesus attention.

It doesn’t say they showed promise, they didn’t pick themselves

up by their bootstraps, they weren’t showing initiative.

They didn’t have to do anything good to win Jesus attention.

All they did was be anxious, directionless people.

Lost sheep.

 

That tells us a lot about Jesus and about God.

 


 

I have a few friends and acquaintances

that have serious doubts about God.

They look at the church’s behavior or

the behavior of Christians and they assume that God is the same.

They see the most prominent Christians in the world

judging, shaming , harassing or ignoring others.

Especially the outcast in our society.

And they think that is a reflection of God.

 

But Jesus is the way we know God.

And Jesus looks at the worst of this world

and doesn’t react with judgment, shame, contempt

an eye roll, or by turning away.

Jesus reacts with splach-ni-zo-mai.

Bowels. Deep pain and sympathy.

 

I believe that God looks at the horrors of this world,

the violence, the lost people, the addiction, the apathy,

the racism, the animosity, the endless ways we hurt each other,

and ignore each other,

and think we’re so much better than each other.

God looks at the shootings –  and even the shooters

who cause so much pain – and God experiences

a deep bowel pain for these symptoms of a lost humanity.

 

Even when we have contempt and hatred,

God has compassion.

Even when we roll our eyes,

God opens his arms.

Even when we have no more compassion to give,

God has more.


We have all been lost sheep.

Humanity loses its way on a daily basis.

We follow fame and politics

 and power and money with religious zeal.

We are prone to callousness, despair and cynicism,

We have all made some bad choices.

We have all made deals with the devil and

traded in good things for bad.

We forget where our shepherd is

and who our shepherd is.

 

But when we get lost,

we just need to remember that

Jesus is our shepherd.

 

And it is Christ’s splach-ni-zo-mai,

Christ’s compassion, his love,

mercy and forgiveness that will

heal us, guide us, and bring us home.

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

The Gruesome Feast

 Mark 6:14-29

July 11, 2021

 

Today, our story is about a feast, a meal,

a banquet, a little dinner party for some friends.

 

It’s Herod’s party.

Herod is the Jewish king of the area

The Jewish King of the area that Jesus lives in.

He’s thrown a party in honor of himself for his birthday.

It is an exclusive party with an exclusive guest list.

For the courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee.

I’m sure they had the best food and wine.

The best décor, the best of everything.

 

Surely, John the Baptist was not invited to the party.

But John was very much involved.

 

Herodious who is King Herod’s current wife, is angry with John.

 

Herod had married Herodious.

Herodious was Herods’ brother’s wife,

which wasn’t too odd in itself

except that Philip, Herod’s brother, Herodious’ husband,

was still alive. And so was Herod’s wife.

Even back then, this was not normal.

 

Most people were probably pretty upset with

this arrangement and how the king had left his wife

and taken up with his brothers wife,

but still no one said anything about it.

 

Most people didn’t say things like this to Herod.

Herod was a king, a leader of the region.

And Herod had a habit of killing people for less.

 

But John the Baptist said something about it.

and he had mentioned it publicly

that Herod and Herodious’s marriage was a sham.

That  Herod, the king who was supposed to be leading

The Beheading of John the Baptist
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

the Jewish people, didn’t even follow Jewish laws himself.

 

So Herod has John thrown in prison,

but he doesn’t want to kill John.

Herod was fascinated with John the Baptist.

He likes to listen to him,

it says Herod is even afraid of him.

 

But back to the exclusive dinner party.

The birthday bash for Herod.

The entertainment was a dance
by Herodious’s daughter, Salome.

A little aside, everyone tries to make this a seductive dance

by a young woman. But it doesn’t say anything like that,

it just says she danced and everyone liked it.

No need for it to be seductive, that’s irrelevant to the story

maybe she was clogging or tap dancing.

Whatever, she did a good job.

 

The important part is that Herod wants to show off

to his guests how generous and wealthy he was.

He swore to the girl that he would give her

anything that she asked for – half his kingdom even.

Right in front of all these important people.

 

I’m sure he thought that maybe she would ask for a pony,

a new dress, a chariot, a better room, a cell phone.

But the girl knows an opportunity when she sees it,

and she consults with her mother Herodious

who’s been steaming about John the Baptist.

 

And Herodious tells the girl


to ask for the head of John the Baptist.

Having it on a platter was the extra flare of the girl

I guess she figured she had to carry it on something.

 

Now Herod is stuck.

Stuck in that awful place that so many politicians are.

Between doing what he wants to do, what he should do,

what he knows is right, and doing what the

rich and powerful around him expect him to do.

What he promised them he would do.


So forced by his oath, his honor, his fears, his pride,

and his need to be respected by his high powered guests,

Herod has John the Baptist beheaded.

And, just as the girl asks, at the banquet,

he gives her his head a serving platter.

The terrible left overs of a terrible and gruesome meal.

 

In this chapter of Mark, Mark 6, there are two feasts.

There is this feast. The feast of the empire.

The feast that is a feast of wealth and power.

The feast that’s governed by greed and gluttony.

The one that’s governed by oaths and deals with the devil.

It’s a feast that’s exclusive.  Where just a few eat too much

and most everyone else gets nothing or worse.

 

This is the feast of politics, and commercialism, even of religion

This is the feast of the market place.

We’re used to this feast. It doesn’t faze us.

 
 

And, if you stay until the very end, you see that this

is a gruesome feast.

This is a feast that inevitably ends in violence and death.

A feast that ends with the truth being slayed and killed

and served up on a platter for someone’s spite and enjoyment.

It’s a feast where our children are sucked in as pawns.

This feast is a feast that ends with death.

 

We know this feast.

We live in this feast every day.
Whether we’re the attendants or the victims,

or for most of us, somewhere in between.

It’s the world we live in. It’s the empire all around us.

This is a familiar feast.


But in Mark 6, there is another feast.

It’s a feast that we’ll be focusing on for the next 6 weeks in worship.

In this feast, Jesus is the host.

Unlike Herod’s party, there is not an exclusive guest list,

everyone is invited to come.

 

Although the disciples try to convince

Jesus that there is not enough,

and there is only enough for a chosen few, Jesus won’t hear it.

Jesus knows that there is enough for everyone to get fed.

So everyone is invited to eat and enjoy.

 

Jesus feeds five thousand people

And at the end of the meal, everyone is satisfied.

And there are twelve baskets of food left over.

 

And just like at Herod’s meal, the host makes a statement

But instead of an oath – a promise of half the kingdom to one –

What is given is a promise of the whole kingdom to all the people.

This is a feast that ends with life.

 

Two visions of meals.

The meal of Herod’s kingdom –

and of our kingdom.

And the meal of Jesus kingdom.

 

Both are presented to us by Mark.

Both are offered to us, with no obligations.

The question that Mark asks us is,

Which table do we want to eat at?

 

For Lutherans, we don’t believe that we make the decision

over whether or not to have faith.

God’s grace is ours no matter what.

But we do believe that we have a choice

what to do with that grace.

And we make that choice

of which table we’re eating at every day.

 

We make that choice in how we treat others,

how we work, how we spend our free time,

how we raise our children, how we talk to other people,

how we vote, how we treat the poor and less fortunate

how we treat the rich and powerful.

And how we as a church represent God to the world.

 

Every day, every minute, these

two feasts are spread out in front of us.

 

Which one do we want to invite people to?

At which table do we want to eat?