Exodus 16:2-15 and John 6:24-35
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| Giovanni Lanfranco, Miracle of the Bread and Fish 1620-1623 (PD) |
There was a reporter who went on vacation out west.
While on vacation he heard of an old Lakota Chief who was famous for his old age and for never forgetting anything.
While on vacation he heard of an old Lakota Chief who was famous for his old age and for never forgetting anything.
The reporter thought it would make a great story, so he stopped in to check it out for himself.
The reporter knocked on the chief’s door and when the chief answered the reporter said “How” raising his right hand in respect.
The chief motioned for the reporter to come inside after the reporter explained he was interested in writing a story on the old chief.
The reporter pulled out his notepad and pencil and asked the chief; “So, since you have such a good memory, can you tell me what you had for breakfast on August 5th 1979?”
The chief simply replied “eggs” and stared at the reporter, who seemed unimpressed with the answer, since anyone could have answered the same way.
The reporter left, but ten years later, while again traveling he remembered the visit and was curious if the old chief was still alive.
He went to the chief’s door and was delighted when he answered shortly after ringing the bell.
The reporter raised his hand in respect, looked the chief in the eye with a smile, and said “How!”
The chief stared at him unimpressed and replied “over easy”
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| Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash |
There is something memorable about a good meal.
There’s a number of meals that seem to have made lasting impressions in my life.
A special meal I shared with my father and his best friend, my Uncle Tim, while I was in college, discussing my vocational calling.
A special Burger King value meal I shared with my mother, when she picked me up from Camp Lejeune to come home for Christmas my first year in the Marine Corps.
A special meal I shared with my wife, when we first started dating.
Another special meal I shared with her parents, when I asked if I could marry their daughter.
A special meal that Pastor Stephen treated me to, when the call committee and I began to talk about serving at St Michael.
And special McDonald’s meals I shared with my children, in my first year at St Michael to celebrate each of their birthdays.
The thing that seems to make the biggest impression in all these meals was not the food that was served, it was the company that was shared around that bread that was broken.
They were all special moments that were shared, with special people, at special times.
I don’t recall each course that was shared at each of those meals, but I can certainly recall the meals themselves.
Sometimes those meals have been so special and nostalgic that I’ve tried to relive them,
Like when I asked my wife to marry me, we returned to that same restaurant a year later.
Although I ordered the same thing, from the same place, the prime rib just didn’t taste quite as perfect a year later,
Or maybe it is just in how I remembered it.
Perhaps that moment was just so perfect at that time, that I should have savored it for what it was.
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| James Tissot, The Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes 1886-1894 (PD) |
Today’s Gospel is a continuation from last weeks story.
It is the aftermath of the feeding of the five thousand.
When a few holdouts decide to come back for more.
Searching high and low for Jesus.
At least it SEEMS they are searching for Jesus,
But Jesus once again proves to be a strait shooter,
He knows what they are seeking, and it ain’t him.
They are seeking round two of an all you can eat carbohydrate buffet.
They want more, more of what they had, more of the same, more of what they believe that they need.
The story isn’t all that different from our first lesson.
Another story of people seeking what they think they need.
A story in which they will eventually horde so much of God’s gift that it will spoil and it will rot,
for no other reason than they were too selfish to consider the difference between need and want.
But people don’t change that much.
Generations removed from this story, the crowd that is speaking with Jesus invokes the story of Moses and the manna, proving that they still don’t understand.
Proving to us all, that sometimes even when we think we understand, we fail to follow through with what the lesson teaches us.
Miracles serve a distinct purpose in scripture.
Miracles are intended to prove a particular truth about God.
In both the feeding of the 5000 and in the story of the manna in the wilderness,
We are called to hear the truth that all good things come from God,
In God’s due season and in God’s due time,
NOT IN OURS.
It also calls us to recognize the most important truth of all.
GOOD THINGS COME FROM GOD!
For the Hebrew pilgrims that have been liberated from the Pharaoh’s shackles of slavery,
It proves that not only will God provide, but God was in fact the provider of those fleshpots and breads that filled their bellies while in Egypt, NOT THE PHARAOH!
It proves to those who came to hear Jesus teach, that not only does God provide the bread to fill them up, rather than Rome or Herod,
But God can produce enough for all, even from an empty cupboard.
Something that no Empire, no Pharaoh, no Nation, and no King can do.
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| Nicolas Poussin, The Jews Gathering the Manna in the Desert 1637-1639 (PD) |
Comic John Pinette once did a bit about the no carb diet.
He said that his doctor recommended it because he was eating way too much pasta and bread.
He claimed that when he discovered low carb pasta and bread he was pretty happy,
Until he tasted it.
He claimed that the low carb bread “looks like bread but it has no other properties of bread”
“It tasted like it still had the rapper on it.”
He said, “I put butter on it, but it wouldn’t go on. Peanut Butter and Jelly would just bead up and fall off”
He said he began to believe they had sprayed it with scotch guard at the factory.
He even tried to toast it but it wouldn’t toast, he said he even took it into his garage and attempted to toast it with a blow torch but it only “absorbed heat like a space shuttle tile”
He finally concluded that if he ate it, it would never break down in his system, and they would dig him up in five thousand years, and conclude that he had been on the Atkins diet.
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| Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash |
Whether it is the disciples or this crowd,
We always have an easy time casting stones at those in scripture who just don’t seem to get it.
The problem is that we too just don’t get it either.
It isn’t because we aren’t faithful, we aren’t good enough, or we aren’t smart enough.
It is just that God is too good to describe, too good to grasp, too good to comprehend, and at times…
God can just be too good to believe.
We, like the crowd seeking -NOT JESUS- but more bread,
have a tendency to seek the god that provides what we want when we want it,
not the God that gives us what we NEED when we NEED it.
So, when we get what we actually want, we hoard it for ourselves until it rots.
God gives what is needed and when there is excess, it is our call to ask just where God wants it to go,
Because THAT place, sisters and brothers, is most often where it is needed.
Now, this could be a great stewardship sermon.
Maybe you need to think about that bread as money, or time, or talents?
Maybe you need to discern what God has called you to in your own life, with your own gifts?
But I want to see if you will consider one last crumb from this Word we have heard today?
I want you to think about what will happen up at this alter in a few moments, and what kind of excess that produces in you?
What will you do with that abounding grace that we will receive in that meal?
How will it change your life when you walk away from that meal?
What will you do with that excess grace and mercy and love?
How will it impact the community around us?
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| Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash |
This is the power of the sacrament in our faith tradition, and it hit me like a brick two weeks ago.
My chaplain, who served with me in Iraq, reached out to me.
We had not seen each other in 13 years.
Many of you have heard the story, but as a Lutheran chaplain, he shared that meal with me at a moment when I knew it would be my last meal.
Obviously it wasn’t, but it changed that day for me, and the months that followed.
As I was driving to meet up with him again for lunch after 13 years, I kept mulling over what he had done and who I was now.
I wasn’t sure what I would say or how I would explain to him how I had come to put on this black shirt and white collar.
I wanted to tell him what his ministry had meant to me at that time and in that place.
Then it dawned on me that I didn’t remember a single word from a single sermon he preached in that place, a single note from a single hymn that we sung together in that place, but what I DO remember the clearest of all were the words; “THIS is the body of Christ, given for YOU”
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Each week, I dig through the languages of these texts and the stories come alive before me.
I try my best to put that to paper but it is impossible,
Because God’s word is like trying to describe the beauty of a landscape to someone who is blind,
or the taste of a delicate and rich dessert to someone who cannot taste,
or the sound of a string quartet to someone who cannot hear.
Sisters and brothers, we are all too deaf, too blind, and our palates are far too dull to know the taste of something so good.
And no matter how hard I try I will never succeed,
Because I too only catch a glimpse, hear one soothing note, and taste only a fragment of how good it is.
And that is why we have both the Word and the meal.
Because that meal is beyond Words,
That meal is the Word and it is made flesh and blood.
Amen.
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| Photo by James Coleman on Unsplash |
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