Proper 12 - Year B: July 29, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br.  John Forbis, OHC 

Proper 12 - Sunday, July 29, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. John Forbis, OHC 

Now I may be a little slow on the uptake, which I often am, but I just realized something about Jesus:  he likes to have fun with his disciples.  He really enjoys yanking their chain.  As the huge crowd approaches them in this morning’s story, I can imagine how daunting that must have felt to the disciples, let alone Jesus himself.  Yet, Jesus turns to Philip and puts him on the spot, “Where are we to buy bread for these people?”  He asks this as if there is an easily accessible source like Hannaford’s on top of this mountain in the middle of nowhere.  The Gospel claims that Jesus said it to “test” Philip.  But I wonder if he also didn’t ask this question with a slight smirk on his face. 

Philip is the naysayer.  Nope, can’t be done.  It’s pretty clear-cut to him.  Remember, he is the one who later practically demands to see “The Father” after all.

Then, we have Andrew who offers a glimmer of hope with at least one meager offering from a boy, but then he gets quickly discouraged and gives up easily.  We have something here.  But no, it’s not enough.

Now I could provide a cliché here and say, “The story of my life”, but I won’t.  But this certainly is a kind of parable for me and perhaps for you as well.  I am both disciples. 

I do categorically see things as black and white, either/or and make global statements and decisions based on impossibilities.  The problem with this is that I decide what’s possible and what’s not, leaving me flummoxed by objectivity and leaving no room for miracles.

At other times, I can realize that I’ve got something to contribute to make possibilities happen, but then I make an almost knee-jerk decision that it’s not enough and deny potential and again miracles.

These are default positions for me.  They seem to be default positions for our society as a whole.  So this is not just the story of my life.  It can be the story of all our lives both individually to varying degrees and as a community together. 

However, if there are three things I should have learned after being in South Africa for (how long?) 18 years, it is that

1. There are times when I do have nothing to offer.  I have no experience, skill or even opportunity to face a huge crowd of need and hunger coming my way.  I can also feel so depleted that there’s nothing left.
2. At other times, I have something to offer the world, and yes, it is not enough.  Yet, it’s all I got.
3. I can offer what I can when I can, and I’d be surprised about the impact this can have and maybe catch a glimpse of a miracle.

Why haven’t I learned this, yet?  Because Jesus is the piece I often omit from my story and perhaps sometimes even from your story as well.  I apologize for that.  In this omission, we are left with only two results:  the possibilities and imagination are closed off to us, and we are off the hook.  We don’t have to make any effort to try and feed the physically, emotionally and spiritually hungry.  It just can’t be done or we have something we could give them, but it’s not enough.

Only, Philip and Andrew, the naysayer and the not-enough-sayer, have forgotten who they are with.  The joke’s on them.  The joke’s on all of us.  Oh, how we miss the one Tree of Life for the forest.  Have I been all this time with Jesus and still don’t know who he is?

Only, Christ is in our presence, and he makes all things possible.  Paul hopes in his letter to the Ephesians that we will “have the power to comprehend … the breadth and length, and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with the fullness of God.”  He also makes the bold claim that Jesus’ power is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” within us.  So yes, possibilities abound and no, we are not off the hook. 

Father Huntington writes in his rule in Chapter 27, “Of the Vow of Poverty”, “We are to remind ourselves that whenever we admit the thought, ‘How much could we do if only we had the material means,’ we are probably hindering God from accomplishing through us those very ends which we desire for his glory, and that if he were to give us the means while we are in that unfaithfulness to holy poverty, we should find them a cause of weakness, paralyzing our work for him.” 

If I say either I got nothing or not enough, such statements of scarcity render not just me but God weak and paralyzed within me.  And yet, Christ amuses himself by showing Philip, Andrew and us, what is unimaginable anyway.  He accomplishes beyond what we can ask. 

Last week we prayed almost every day a collect that dug deeper within me with each repetition.  It got to a point where I was mouthing the words along with Roy and with some of my brothers.  We prayed, “Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give those things which for our unworthiness we dare not and for our blindness, we cannot ask.” 

This week’s Gospel passage responds well to this petition.  Jesus takes all we’ve got, even our nothingness, and creates an abundance.  And he makes it easy for us in the process.  All he expects from us is to prepare the people to receive a meal.  He expects us to invite them to come and rest a while just as he and his disciples rested up on that mountain, just before this event. 

Once everyone is fed and satisfied, then scraps must be collected and saved.  We are not to waste anything. Waste is just another symbol and symptom of how distorted and limited our visions are.  Quite frankly, we can’t afford to have our sight to remain sullied, just as we can’t afford to be unscrupulous about possibility and abundance. 

Elisha in 2 Kings demands more.  The man who brings a food offering to the prophet is told to feed the people. And upon the man’s protest, Elisha repeats his command to “give it to the people and let them eat.”  To prove to the man that his food offering is “worthy” and enough, all Elisha has to utter is “Thus, says the Lord …” 

The Lord is ominously here with us.  Christ haunts us as he did the disciples amidst the darkness, a rough sea and a strong wind.  Jesus terrifies them walking on the sea toward the boat, only to say a kind of “boo” when he arrives. Jesus is having more fun with his disciples again.

Now we’ve reached the punchline of the joke as the disciples suddenly reach land.  It’s not me.  It’s not you nor anyone else.  “Thus says the Lord, “It’s I, do not be afraid.” 

Now, these might be pretty cruel pranks, but how else is Christ going to reach us beyond our egos other than to annihilate the barrier between our ignorance and blindness and “the breadth and length, and height and depth” of “Christ’s love”.  It’s hardly understandable.  What Christ can accomplish within us and through us is unimaginable.  Yet this all-encompassing God will show us just what is possible and what’s impossible!  And that determination is his.  

If ever we are in any doubt about this, all we have to do is to look ahead to the second half of our service this morning.  Now I will be up there helping to prepare a meal, and I may make mistakes when I’m doing it.  I often do.  I either got nothing or not enough.  All of you will come to receive Communion and you will bring your emptiness or inadequacies as I will have offering you wine, probably trembling while doing it.  But Christ haunts us up there.  He is present with us and through us and he will insist that what we have to offer is sufficient because he makes it so.  But … “Just give it to the people and let them eat!”  For thus says the Lord, We “shall eat and have some left”.  And Christ may even say to us in a whisper, Boo!  Amen.