You Gotta Give ‘Em Hope, pt. 2
June 13, 2010
Mark 6:30-44
Last weekend at the June meeting of National Capital Presbytery, Frances Taylor Gench, who teaches at Union Seminary in Richmond, took us through a reading of this well known story from Mark’s gospel. She credited the Quaker educator Parker Palmer with the insights she shared, and I’m crediting both of them for any insight that might shine through this morning as we reconsider this Eucharistic tale.
It was a graceful coincidence that Frances chose this text, as I was pondering the feeding stories and “table texts” of the gospels as one frame for our consideration of hope, and, in particular, for thinking about our hopes for the church.
If I had to say in one sentence what I hope for the church, broadly speaking, it would be this: I hope the church can be faithful to its sacraments. By faithful, I mean, in particular, that the church be ethically responsible to our sacraments.
The core of the sacramental theology is the same as the core of this story from Mark: there is enough to go around. There is enough water in the font to baptize all who want to be baptized. There is enough bread at the table to feed all who come. There is enough in the cup to send no one away thirsty. There is enough. Plain and simple: there is enough.
I hope that the church will come to recognize this simple truth and live fully into it.
Consider the story from Mark. This passage opens with the phrase, “the apostles.” It’s the only time Mark uses this title for Jesus’ disciples, which is noteworthy because just prior to this story in Mark they have been sent out to spread the good news and the narrative is interrupted by the account of the death of John the Baptist. Their situation is getting serious, and, as the story suggests, they are growing weary of the stress.
I was feeling their pain in the midst of Pride Week – a lot of us have been busy sharing the good news, and in some places that can still be a dangerous activity. I was privileged last week to be part of a small audience listening in on a conversation between Bishop Gene Robinson and Ugandan Bishop Christopher Senyonjo. Bishop Chris, as he is known, began speaking out on behalf of GLBT citizens of Uganda about ten years ago. He has lost his job and his pension and been forced to relocate his family repeatedly in response to death threats – all for spreading the good news that God so loves the world, the we belong to God, that all of us are created equal in God’s image and in God’s eyes, that God’s love and grace know no limits. There is more than enough of them to go around.
Grace always disturbs the status quo, because the status quo is always premised on an economy of scarcity. If God’s love is limited, then I’d better get mine. If God’s love is limited, some people can’t have it.
But that is not the economy of the kingdom of God. It is not the economy of the gospels, and the feeding stories underscore this with striking, imaginative clarity.
So the apostles, the disciples, the bishops are moving from town to town seemingly on the run for their lives perhaps from dangerous mobs or unruly crowds. But Jesus sees the crowds and he is deeply moved by their plight. The Greek word – SPLAGCHNIZESTHAI – translated as compassion comes connotes gut-wrenching, we might say his heart was broken for them. They are caught up in scarcity – in the desert the text tells us – without someone to show them the abundance that surrounds them. They need most of all a teacher.
But the hour was getting late.
Doesn’t it feel that way sometimes? The hour is getting late. We are running out of time. We will never get through the to-do list – the thank you card, the call to a colleague, the kid’s school play, not to mention the chores – and get on to the really important stuff. So we better get those bothersome people out of the way.
That’s what the disciples want to do. Send them away to find something to eat. Send them out on their own to compete as individuals in the marketplace.
But Jesus will have none of this. “You give them something to eat,” he insists. “You give them something to eat.”
Huh? Say what, now? You want us to give them something? You might not have noticed, but we’re tired and hungry, too. We may not even have enough to feed ourselves. We do not have the money in this congregation to have that kind of ministry. We are just a small church.
But Jesus will have none of it. “You give them something to eat.” In other words, stop waiting around for a miracle … and participate in the one that is happening all around you.
It’s almost as if he says, “here, let me show you how this works. See what resources you already have. Hm, five loaves of bread and a couple of fish. That should do it. Now watch.”
First, organize the people into small groups – into communities where real communion is possible. Put them together in a space where relationships can grow. Put them down on the green grass – the green grass, in the middle of the desert. See? Get it? Green grass? In the desert? Work with me.
And then, foreshadowing the practice of eucharist – a word that means simply “give thanks” – practicing gratitude, then, Jesus gives thanks to God for the gift of bread. He takes, blesses and breaks the bread and sets it before his disciples.
It is as if the disciples, the people of the way, the first instance of the church, are set before the people as an example. See, we had this bread and these fish, and if we share it among ourselves there is enough.
Perhaps the groups of 50 and 100 will begin to look among themselves to see what gifts they bring to the table. Jesus clearly believes in the gifts of his followers, after all, he told them to see what they had after he told them to feed the people. He knew they had gifts even if they didn’t, even while they’re still panicking at the prospect of 5,000 hungry people with no 7-11 in sight.
He trusted abundance, not only among his own community but in the milling crowds as well. He also understood that in crowds there is scarcity, but in community abundance. Create community and you will create abundance.
But, if we act as if scarcity is real then we create real scarcity. We could look at the global economy and at the role that our consumer society plays in it, and we should do that regularly. But this morning, instead, just look at the church itself.
We act, for example, as if God doles out gifts for ministry like Scrooge giving coals to Bob Cratchet. Thus we build fences around ordination and imagine that some are unfit, as if God could not work through any one of us. Remember the disciples in this story: even they – as bumbling as Mark depicts them – even they came up with the resources to feed 5,000. Yet we act as if energy, imagination and love are gifts that only heterosexuals can have for ministry.
But that is not true. This is true: in baptism you are claimed as God’s own for the sake of the world – for ministry.
We proclaim in baptism that we belong to God in life and in death, be then we act as if our only sources of security come from the national security apparatus and we bless the nation’s wars or, what is even worse, we sit idly by, quiescent and impotent as if God’s love has no real power to change the course of history.
But that is not true. This is true: the steadfast love of God endures forever, and the powers and principalities can never separate us from that love. That truth is the foundation of nonviolence, and we are called to show it to the world.
We proclaim at table that this is a foretaste of the kingdom of God, that beloved community of nonviolence to which all are invited, but then we build fences around the table as if there were high walls and a moat around the kingdom, and only those who say the right phrases in the right ways to the right people or priests merit God’s love and welcome.
But that is not true. It is not true.
This is true: God loves you just the way you are. There is a place for you at the table of our Lord.
My hope for the church is this: that we might be a community that penetrates the illusion of scarcity to inhabit the reality of abundance. The ability to do so is the measure of our lives, and in such lives lies the hope of the world.
“And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered 5,000.”
Amen.
Mark 6:30-44
Last weekend at the June meeting of National Capital Presbytery, Frances Taylor Gench, who teaches at Union Seminary in Richmond, took us through a reading of this well known story from Mark’s gospel. She credited the Quaker educator Parker Palmer with the insights she shared, and I’m crediting both of them for any insight that might shine through this morning as we reconsider this Eucharistic tale.
It was a graceful coincidence that Frances chose this text, as I was pondering the feeding stories and “table texts” of the gospels as one frame for our consideration of hope, and, in particular, for thinking about our hopes for the church.
If I had to say in one sentence what I hope for the church, broadly speaking, it would be this: I hope the church can be faithful to its sacraments. By faithful, I mean, in particular, that the church be ethically responsible to our sacraments.
The core of the sacramental theology is the same as the core of this story from Mark: there is enough to go around. There is enough water in the font to baptize all who want to be baptized. There is enough bread at the table to feed all who come. There is enough in the cup to send no one away thirsty. There is enough. Plain and simple: there is enough.
I hope that the church will come to recognize this simple truth and live fully into it.
Consider the story from Mark. This passage opens with the phrase, “the apostles.” It’s the only time Mark uses this title for Jesus’ disciples, which is noteworthy because just prior to this story in Mark they have been sent out to spread the good news and the narrative is interrupted by the account of the death of John the Baptist. Their situation is getting serious, and, as the story suggests, they are growing weary of the stress.
I was feeling their pain in the midst of Pride Week – a lot of us have been busy sharing the good news, and in some places that can still be a dangerous activity. I was privileged last week to be part of a small audience listening in on a conversation between Bishop Gene Robinson and Ugandan Bishop Christopher Senyonjo. Bishop Chris, as he is known, began speaking out on behalf of GLBT citizens of Uganda about ten years ago. He has lost his job and his pension and been forced to relocate his family repeatedly in response to death threats – all for spreading the good news that God so loves the world, the we belong to God, that all of us are created equal in God’s image and in God’s eyes, that God’s love and grace know no limits. There is more than enough of them to go around.
Grace always disturbs the status quo, because the status quo is always premised on an economy of scarcity. If God’s love is limited, then I’d better get mine. If God’s love is limited, some people can’t have it.
But that is not the economy of the kingdom of God. It is not the economy of the gospels, and the feeding stories underscore this with striking, imaginative clarity.
So the apostles, the disciples, the bishops are moving from town to town seemingly on the run for their lives perhaps from dangerous mobs or unruly crowds. But Jesus sees the crowds and he is deeply moved by their plight. The Greek word – SPLAGCHNIZESTHAI – translated as compassion comes connotes gut-wrenching, we might say his heart was broken for them. They are caught up in scarcity – in the desert the text tells us – without someone to show them the abundance that surrounds them. They need most of all a teacher.
But the hour was getting late.
Doesn’t it feel that way sometimes? The hour is getting late. We are running out of time. We will never get through the to-do list – the thank you card, the call to a colleague, the kid’s school play, not to mention the chores – and get on to the really important stuff. So we better get those bothersome people out of the way.
That’s what the disciples want to do. Send them away to find something to eat. Send them out on their own to compete as individuals in the marketplace.
But Jesus will have none of this. “You give them something to eat,” he insists. “You give them something to eat.”
Huh? Say what, now? You want us to give them something? You might not have noticed, but we’re tired and hungry, too. We may not even have enough to feed ourselves. We do not have the money in this congregation to have that kind of ministry. We are just a small church.
But Jesus will have none of it. “You give them something to eat.” In other words, stop waiting around for a miracle … and participate in the one that is happening all around you.
It’s almost as if he says, “here, let me show you how this works. See what resources you already have. Hm, five loaves of bread and a couple of fish. That should do it. Now watch.”
First, organize the people into small groups – into communities where real communion is possible. Put them together in a space where relationships can grow. Put them down on the green grass – the green grass, in the middle of the desert. See? Get it? Green grass? In the desert? Work with me.
And then, foreshadowing the practice of eucharist – a word that means simply “give thanks” – practicing gratitude, then, Jesus gives thanks to God for the gift of bread. He takes, blesses and breaks the bread and sets it before his disciples.
It is as if the disciples, the people of the way, the first instance of the church, are set before the people as an example. See, we had this bread and these fish, and if we share it among ourselves there is enough.
Perhaps the groups of 50 and 100 will begin to look among themselves to see what gifts they bring to the table. Jesus clearly believes in the gifts of his followers, after all, he told them to see what they had after he told them to feed the people. He knew they had gifts even if they didn’t, even while they’re still panicking at the prospect of 5,000 hungry people with no 7-11 in sight.
He trusted abundance, not only among his own community but in the milling crowds as well. He also understood that in crowds there is scarcity, but in community abundance. Create community and you will create abundance.
But, if we act as if scarcity is real then we create real scarcity. We could look at the global economy and at the role that our consumer society plays in it, and we should do that regularly. But this morning, instead, just look at the church itself.
We act, for example, as if God doles out gifts for ministry like Scrooge giving coals to Bob Cratchet. Thus we build fences around ordination and imagine that some are unfit, as if God could not work through any one of us. Remember the disciples in this story: even they – as bumbling as Mark depicts them – even they came up with the resources to feed 5,000. Yet we act as if energy, imagination and love are gifts that only heterosexuals can have for ministry.
But that is not true. This is true: in baptism you are claimed as God’s own for the sake of the world – for ministry.
We proclaim in baptism that we belong to God in life and in death, be then we act as if our only sources of security come from the national security apparatus and we bless the nation’s wars or, what is even worse, we sit idly by, quiescent and impotent as if God’s love has no real power to change the course of history.
But that is not true. This is true: the steadfast love of God endures forever, and the powers and principalities can never separate us from that love. That truth is the foundation of nonviolence, and we are called to show it to the world.
We proclaim at table that this is a foretaste of the kingdom of God, that beloved community of nonviolence to which all are invited, but then we build fences around the table as if there were high walls and a moat around the kingdom, and only those who say the right phrases in the right ways to the right people or priests merit God’s love and welcome.
But that is not true. It is not true.
This is true: God loves you just the way you are. There is a place for you at the table of our Lord.
My hope for the church is this: that we might be a community that penetrates the illusion of scarcity to inhabit the reality of abundance. The ability to do so is the measure of our lives, and in such lives lies the hope of the world.
“And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered 5,000.”
Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
9:45 AM
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