Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles—A Sermon on Sharing our Bread

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Filling in for Pastor Dan these few Sundays has been an interesting experience—for all of us, probably! It is sort of odd to come in and out of this place, not being here every Sunday but being here several Sundays, sometimes two in a row. I imagine you all may feel like it has been sort of odd, having Pastor Dave much of the time, and me sometimes, and sometimes both of us together, and then the occasional guest preacher or presider, and your lay preachers being featured, as well! This has been an eventful summer.

When I prepare to be with you on a Sunday morning, it can sort of feel like I’m coming into something in the middle. Luckily for us, there’s the continuity of the lectionary, keeping us in a somewhat orderly fashion. But I wonder sometimes if I’m going to say something that completely contradicts what last week’s preacher said!

Sure, we’re all looking at the same Bible, but we sure aren’t looking at it through the same lenses. That has hopefully been the greatest blessing of your summer—hearing the Word from so many different mouths. I imagine, though, that you’re looking forward to having Dan back, so you can feel a little less whiplash from week to week.

Similarly, we enter this week’s gospel text somewhere in the middle. The first sentence refers to something we haven’t heard: “Now when Jesus heard this…” it begins. Heard what? Sometimes, the previous passage is last week’s text, and so we can take a minute to recall that and catch up.

But this is not one of those times.

Last week, the gospel was a series of sayings from Jesus about what the kingdom of heaven is like. A mustard seed, and treasure, and a pearl, and a net. The thing that Jesus heard, though, is none of those things. There’s another half chapter between there and here, and it’s nothing to skip over—it’s the death of John the Baptist.

Upon hearing that his friend and co-conspirator had been heinously executed, Jesus “withdrew...to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns” (Matthew 14:13). The death of John the Baptist rattles the community that followed him, and the community that followed Jesus. People gathered together, hoping to hear a word from Jesus about what had happened, and what was going to happen next. Jesus spent a very short time alone, coming ashore once he saw the crowd of people begin to gather.

Verse 14 is so lovely–”he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them, and cured their sick.” He is grieving the death of John the Baptist, wondering what this will mean for the movement, but at the sight of the people he has come to love, he remembers what his work is all about. He has compassion for them and he heals them. He sees that they are grieving, but on top of all of the suffering they had been doing before.

They are still poor, they are still oppressed, they are still tired, they are still hungry, they are still sick, they are still afraid. They still need to be cared for by Jesus.

The disciples realize how late it’s gotten, and tell Jesus it’s time to go, time to let everyone head back to their villages for dinner. They may have come out to see Jesus without packing anything to eat, since it was fairly sudden. It’s been a full day for everyone. Rather than send everyone away, Jesus suggests that the food the disciples have on hand—five loaves of bread and two fish—will suffice. [I wonder sometimes if the disciples ever got used to Jesus suggesting unlikely things, or if they always stammered, “wait, what?”]

Jesus blessed the bread and fish and began to share. The story ends, “and all ate and were filled.” This is one of the stories that has been told about Jesus often throughout the centuries, to explain the power he possessed and the amazement that followed him around.

It’s traditionally interpreted that Jesus multiplied the five loaves and two fish into enough food for thousands of people—not unlike the time he turned the water into wine, or calmed a storm and walked on water, or raised Lazarus from the dead, all of which sounds impossible.

You may be a miracle skeptic. You may look at stories like this and scratch your head. You are not alone. In fact, there is a great lineage of skeptics and wonderers in the family of God, which is part of the reason we need prophets.

The prophet Isaiah this week calls out to people who believe that to hunger or thirst is their only choice, and the prospect of being fed is far from likely. “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1). Could it be so? Could there be such richness? Food for those who have no money? Wine? And milk? Nothing less for the people of God. In just those few short sentences, “Isaiah anticipates their objections and skepticism by explaining that God’s mercy is beyond human comprehension.”[1]

Speaking of “beyond human comprehension,” we're back at those five loaves and two fish and thousands of people. This story from Matthew’s gospel does not say, “and then Jesus turned five loaves into thousands of loaves and two fish into thousands of fish, so there was enough for everyone to eat.” But that’s what we have said this story says. What the story says is that Jesus and the disciples shared of what they had, and that all ate and were filled.

I wonder, though, if Jesus and the disciples were not the only ones who shared what they had. I wonder if the folks who trekked out from their homes to this seashore thought they might be there a while, and perhaps a few loaves and a fish or two might not be a bad idea.

It is possible that, at first, they were reluctant to share with one another—sound like anybody you know? Some of those who brought food may have been worried that others had not, and so their food might be taken from them by force. Some who hardly had food for their families might have been embarrassed by their meager morsels, and not wanted to be seen having so little. Some may have been waiting until they got away from the crowds, so they would not have to share with anyone who hungered.

I hope that the show of generosity from the disciples—just five loaves of bread and two fish—inspired the crowds to open their hearts and their picnic baskets.

This pattern of inspiring community and communion is a hallmark of the ministry of Jesus. Responding in kind is a hallmark of the Christian life. In communities across the centuries, Christians have been gathering together in the face of fear and scarcity to proclaim hope and abundance. “Early Christians frequently took their meager resources, brought them together, and did miraculous things with them….this story challenges the church not to be overwhelmed by fear, but to trust in the power of God to provide.” [2] We can trust God to provide by miraculously multiplying loaves and fishes into more loaves and fishes—and our understanding of just how that multiplication happens can vary.

We are not sitting on a hillside with Jesus, sharing a meal with thousands of strangers. But as the church in the 21st century, we still have the opportunity to come together in the face of fear and scarcity to proclaim hope and abundance.

As Americans in a globalized world, we can see that there are places where God’s children are hungry, and places where God’s children are fed; we can see that there are places where God’s children are enslaved, and places where God’s children are free; we can see that there are places where God’s children are uneducated or undereducated, and places where God’s children are educated or overeducated; we can see that there are places where God’s children are oppressed, and places where God’s children are the oppressor.

As we walk the aisles of our overflowing grocery stores, and revel in the beautiful abundance of the Davis Farmers’ Market, we know that there are people here in our own community and across the world who are going without even the most basic nutrition. We know that it does not have to be this way.

An Argentinian theologian named J. Severino Croatto wrote about this week’s portion of Isaiah, and how it speaks to the economically devastated people in his society. “The only positive way out of our dilemma is creativity and solidarity,” he says. [3]

There is a way for the whole world to be fed. There is a way for all of us to have what we need—and even what we want—without our siblings in Christ going without. I am not about to solve world hunger from the pulpit this morning, dear friends. But I am going to remind you that this story about Jesus feeding thousands of people is only a story if we leave it here in this pulpit, here in this room, there in that book. The miracle of the Christian community is that creativity and solidarity, facing problems small and large with solutions small and large.

This morning, you who are hungry will have the opportunity to come to the table and be fed, bread and wine without price. We will sing together, in just a minute, about this table, and how we are all invited to “taste and see that God is good.” So, come. Eat and be filled. Leave this place full of gratitude, hope, and abundance. Open your heart and your picnic basket—there is bread to share. Amen.

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[1] Nyasha Junior, “Third Sunday in Lent” in Preaching God’s Transformative Justice, 140.

[2] Michael Joseph Brown, “Matthew” in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, 105.

[3] J. Severino Croatto, “Isaiah 40-55” in Global Bible Commentary, 195.

Living On a Prayer—A Sermon Wholly Void of Bon Jovi, Though

You may be wondering what you're doing here on a Sunday; don't I preach on Wednesdays? Surprise! I preached this sermon this morning to the good people of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, usually the home of my seminary classmate The Rev. Jeremy Serrano. 

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I bring you greetings from the Belfry, your Lutheran-Episcopal Campus Ministry to UC Davis and LEVN, the Lutheran-Episcopal Volunteer Network, part of Episcopal Service Corps. I spend my days, and many of my weeknights, with a handful of young folks who are living in Davis temporarily.

Some of them are UC Davis undergraduate students, here for a few jam-packed years studying and socializing, looking for a place to step out of the fray for a moment and meet people who “get” them.

Some of them are UC Davis graduate students, continuing their academic journeys in more specific ways, looking for a place that’s decidedly not buzzing with the near-death experience of cutthroat exams.

And some of them have graduated from colleges around the country, and are living in half of our little yellow duplex for 11 months, serving in local non-profit organizations and attempting to create intentional community together.

Sure, we’re the place you can definitely find a Lutheran pastor and an Episcopal priest, but we’re a place that invites more questions than it provides answers.

As a young adult myself—yep, I also fall into the under-30 demographic of the folks involved in our ministry—I feel right at home in this place of transitions and learning experiences and questions. We gather each week for worship and for dinner—nothing says “young adults” quite like free food—and we stay connected in the in-between via Facebook and emails and iMessage emoji. It is my duty and my joy to be among this particular genre of the communion of saints.

Since we gather on weeknights instead of on Sunday mornings, my colleagues know that I am a pretty safe bet for a Sunday morning supply gig. Pastor Jeremy and I were at PLTS at the same time, and so at a recent First Call Theological Education gathering in Arizona, he invited me to be here this morning. I always jump at the chance! It is such a delight to get out into the synod on Sundays like this one, to commune with the good people of congregations like yours. 

In campus and other young adult ministries, we are keenly aware of the wider network of congregations and ministries that we serve alongside, because our community members came to us fairly recently from somewhere else, and we do our best to successfully launch them to what’s coming next. We are so grateful for the home parishes of our students and LEVN volunteers—places like this—who raised them in the faith and sent them off to college and beyond. We know that you send them off in the hope that they will grow in faith and in love and in service to God and to one another.

As you have sent and continue to send your young-adult family members and members of your parish off to college or their next great adventure, we know that you are praying for them and wishing them well. We know that you have entrusted them to us, and with God’s help, we care for them and guide them through their time with us. Keep them coming, and we’ll keep them going.

In this season of Easter, all of us have been reading through the Acts of the Apostles, encountering the stories of Jesus’ friends who continued the work after his death, resurrection, and ascension. It’s our same cast of characters from the gospels, those pesky disciples with their impertinent questions and constant bickering and general misunderstanding of the whole point.

In this week’s story, they have come together one final time with the risen Christ, and—for old times’ sake—still aren’t totally sure what’s happening. “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” they ask. Their risen Lord replies, as usual, as I imagine it, with a sigh: “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”

But! “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:6-8). In other words, “no, but that doesn’t mean never, so continue what we’ve started.”

A weird part about the season of Easter is that we are sort of in a paradox of Jesus being risen and not-yet-risen, depending on which reading we’re talking about. In this reading from Acts, Jesus has already been killed, then raised, and now is ascending to heaven. But in our Gospel text for this morning, he is awaiting arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. In both scenes, he is with his friends, talking to them and to God about what has happened and what is going to happen.

We could go back and forth for a while, probably, about whether or not the apostles are adequately prepared to do what God needs them to do. We could go back and forth for an even longer while, probably, about whether or not we feel adequately prepared for what God needs us to do. Jesus sits in the garden and prays for his friends, and we follow in all of their footsteps. It is comforting to me and perhaps comforting to you to know that on his last night of life, Jesus prayed for us. And, certainly, the risen Christ remembers us, as well.

In this Gospel According to John, Jesus prays, “Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf” (John 17:7-9).

Jesus is praying on behalf of his friends and on all people whom God has given to him, all those whom God has created to be God’s people—Jesus’ 12 friends, and the women, and you and me. In his prayer, Jesus asks God to protect us, so that we all may be one, as Christ and the Creator are one. What a lovely sentiment, and a deep challenge. “If the emphasis on unity can be seen in Jesus’ prayer, then we can conclude that he was aware that keeping his beloved united” was not going to be easy. And that, “without cohesion, they would not survive.”  [1]

As Christians in the United States of America in 2017, we are being pulled in many directions by many powers and principalities. We are seeing play out on the local, national, and global stage, just how many choices we have. We are a nation of many. We are a nation of native peoples, and of immigrants, and of the descendants of immigrants, and of the descendants of enslaved people. We are many metaphors of community—a melting pot or a salad bowl or a dazzling bouquet of every kind of flower—none of these is one, stagnant, stationary thing. The unity in Christ that we proclaim does not insist on sameness.

Perhaps this prayer of Jesus gives us an opportunity to consider what that unity means. We know that as the trinity is three and is also one, we, too, are millions and are also one. I hear this prayer as a sincere petition for unity, but not for uniformity. For us to sing not in unison but in harmony. For us to be individuals-in-community. We, the body of Christ, are called to be a living and breathing and dying and rising organism—changing and growing and reforming from age to age.

We are interacting on a routine basis with one another here in this building and church buildings like it; we are engaging with our families, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and acquaintances in the good work of the Gospel and in all manner of things; we are encountering strangers on the road and in the grocery store and at the gas station and in the post office and any number of seemingly mundane scenarios where the truth of our community resides.

As we go about our days, are we living as the witnesses to the resurrection that Jesus has sent us out to be? 

Are we recognizable as the body of Christ?

In order to live deeply into our call as the body of Christ, we need to live out the example set for us by Jesus in this week’s Gospel text. We need to pray. We need to pray, and we need to get serious about it. As disciples in the present, we must “offer prayers on behalf of the universe in which we are privileged to live and our neighbors with whom we share it.” [2]

We know this, in theory. We have prayed several times together already since we arrived this morning, and we’re not done yet! There may be words of prayer we know by heart. There may be prayers we grew up saying, and maybe even still say! There may be times of the day or times of our lives we feel more inclined to pray. There may be whole seasons of our lives during which we cannot even fathom putting anything together that even remotely resembles a prayer. 

Often, when we are struggling, we reach out to friends or family members and ask them to pray for us—before a medical procedure, or when we’re waiting for news (good or bad), or when we’re trying to make a big decision, or when we’re just feeling kind of lost. It feels wonderful to hear you’re being prayed for, doesn’t it? And when someone dear to you is in need of prayer, it feels good to say, “I’m keeping you in my prayers”—whether in person or in a Facebook comment, right?  

Has there ever been a time when you’ve said you’d pray for someone and then, well, sort of just...didn’t? Or maybe you were going to, and then before you got a chance, you did the 4000 other things you had on your to-do list and then suddenly the friend told you the results of the thing you were supposed to be praying about—maybe even said, “thanks for your prayers!” and you just sort of...let it go? Let me tell you, we have all been there. And if you haven’t, you can be the first to teach us all how to cement our prayer lives into action.

I am not your regularly-scheduled preacher, and I do not have the capacity to follow up with you next week, or the week after that, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t set you a challenge before I sat back down. Our deep and abiding task is to, like the apostles before us, constantly devote ourselves to prayer.

Consider how you might embody that devotion. Consider how you might take very seriously the prayer requests you receive, and the prayers of intercession we offer later this morning, and the prayer that Jesus taught us that we’ll say—as we have said 1000 times—during the Eucharist.

Pray for one another. Pray for yourself. Pray for your pastor. Pray for the people that you see suffering in your community and around the world. Pray for the people you see experiencing great joys in your community and around the world. Constantly devote yourself to prayer.

Whatever that looks like. Whatever words you say, or don’t say; whatever actions you take or don’t take; whatever movement of your body feels like a prayer to you—or perhaps your body needs to try residing in a prayerful stillness. Laughter can serve as a prayer, and tears can serve as a prayer.

Perhaps, through this constant devotion, we will begin to recognize that our whole lives are prayers. And for that, thanks be to God.

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[1] Samuel Cruz, “Commentary on John 17:1-11” for Working Preacher.

[2] Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Prayers for the Coming Week

The Acts of the Apostles—A Community in Conversation

Dear Reader,

You may have noticed that my sermon posts have been a little inconsistent these past few months, as I've been traveling about doing the parts of my job that take place in communities outside of Davis. This past week was one such week, as I was in Ohio to meet with the board and program directors of Episcopal Service Corps. I looked up the propers for this week so I could begin thinking about my sermon on the plane, and I inadvertently clicked ahead a week. So, the sermon that follows does not match the scripture you (may have) heard on Sunday, but rather the one you (may) hear this coming Sunday. Next week, we are participating in the third annual Davis Interfaith Games, so I won't be preaching—hence, using this text this week rather than tabling it for its proper week. Fortunately for me, grace abounds! Also, this sermon is largely audience participation, and I wouldn't want you to miss out on that. So, when you get there, I'd love it if you would come out of the woodwork and comment, answering questions 1 and 2. Humor me.

xo Case

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In the season of Easter, our lectionary readings hop into the Acts of the Apostles, the first book of the New Testament after the gospels. Scholars say that it's a continuation of the Gospel According to Luke, like by the same author, and so it continues to tell the story of what happened after the first Easter. Jesus is gone, again, and the disciples are out and about, building the beloved community.

For them, that looked like what our first reading suggested: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people” (Acts 2:44-47a).

It's been 2000 years, and our society has evolved over and over and over. Communities may look like this, or they may look like something else.

One of the things that is most important to me about our community here at the Belfry is that everyone gets a say in what our community looks like. When we gather for Spirituality Group or Bible Study, we decide as a group what we’re going to be learning about together. I have some ideas, always, and am here to provide the structure and the expertise. But the groups aren’t here for me, they’re here for y’all.

I did go to seminary and get ordained for a reason, so I’m not completely abdicating my role to y’all. I did, at least, start the sermon from up here. But I’m going to sit down now, and listen to you. I have some questions to ask, but the answers are yours. Surprise! This sermon is “some assembly required.”

1. What is the most life-altering community you’ve ever been a part of? Life-altering in a big way or a small way, and a big group or a small group.
1. What characteristics did you notice, as everyone was sharing, these communities had in common?

2. If you were going to design a community, what would it have? Who would be in it with you? Hypothetical or literal, (ie your best friend, or “people who like xyz”).

3. If you were going to make the Belfry a more ideal community, what would we have? Who would be here with us? What would we do?

Some of us gathered together this afternoon, and will gather on Wednesdays for the remainder of the quarter, to talk about becoming a Reconciling in Christ ministry. This will designate us, primarily, as a place where LGBTQ Christians are invited, and where we’d be willing to call a pastor who identified as a member of the LGBTQ community. On top of that, it will give us an opportunity to look at ourselves as a community and see where we have room to grow.

I am so grateful to be in community with all of you, and to work together and play together toward building the beloved community. The first reading tonight was from The Acts of the Apostles, a book written millennia ago. Our lives, though, are the lives of the apostles, and we have more work to do and more stories to tell—together.