“Food For Faith”

Whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, we live in a culture where celebrity is...well…just about everything. Nearly every move any celebrity makes, we will all hear about it in some way or another: TV, newspaper, Face book, text message, Twitter, e-mail, or website. Obviously, there was none of this stuff in Jesus’ day. And yet, Jesus was sought after. In this part of the Gospel of John, Jesus and the disciples are heading up to a hilltop for a rest. Maybe even longer…maybe a vacation of sorts on the hillside by the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd follows Jesus, because they’d heard about the miracles he had worked – word of mouth was a powerful medium in those days. John says the Passover festival celebration was near, suggesting a communal gathering. The crowds press closer to Jesus. We translate these images to our day: Michael Jackson, Tom Brady or President Obama, virtually anywhere. The people, we the people, we need to be close to the stars….we wanna rub elbows with them…but why??? To be sure of what? What is it we need to claim, what is it we want from our star sightings? The people of Jesus’ time were no different. Can you imagine if Jesus was covered by today’s media? He’d be covered endlessly, quoted, misquoted, and photographed, but it wouldn’t tell the whole story.  We need to know more about Jesus than just His celebrity. We need to know about His compassion, His generosity and above all, His Divinity.  So the question is….who is this Jesus?

On its face, today’s’ gospel lesson is a story about how Jesus feeds 5,000 people. This is the compassionate Jesus who tends to our needs. Jesus feeds us, literally. But the story behind the story is how He is about filling more than our stomachs with bread. He is about filling our spirit with faith and trust in God. We are offered Food for Faith for the long haul, for our life’s journey, not just for the party of the moment. Caught up in this moment of celebrity, the crowd calls for Jesus to be their king. As theologian William Willimon says, it seems like the story goes: Jesus gives, we receive, we worship him. But who is this man Jesus?

Let’s go back to the Hebrew Bible lesson from 2 Kings 4 that Gabrielle read so well.  (Thank you, Gabrielle) A man was bringing the “first fruits” to a man of God, a prophet named Elisha. Elisha’s servant has the same doubts as the disciple Philip in today’s gospel lesson:  “there’s not enough to go around,” he says. Elisha repeats, “Let them eat for they will have some left.” This is not just a history lesson, but the creation of a connection from Elisha to Jesus and even to the present day.  Theologian Kristine Saldine says that this scripture is about “God’s abundance in a time of scarcity, and miracles of life in the midst of death.” Brothers and sisters, Jesus is not clever, He is not a magician:  He is God.

So John takes us deeper into the mystery of Jesus by detailing another miracle. The compassionate, generous Jesus evades the king-making crowd as the disciples row some three miles out to sea. The waters become rough, the sky is dark, the disciples are terrified. From nowhere, they see Jesus walking toward them on the water. “They are terrified,” but why? Why are they afraid of Jesus? Willimon says the question moves at this point from “Jesus, what can you DO FOR us” to….. “Jesus what do you DO TO us.”

The gospel of John is about the power of knowing Jesus as the Incarnation of God our Creator. Sometimes this kind of power is terrifying.  Today’s scripture is not so much about the math of feeding so many people with so little food. It’s about the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, living among us. It is the power of knowing that Jesus cannot be co-opted or objectified by our culture that claims the right to all information about everyone.  If knowledge is power, then the knowledge of Jesus is relational and grounded In the Christian tradition.  Parker Palmer says, “truth is not about a concept that works, but an Incarnation that lives.”  In our culture today, and even then in the time of Jesus, Jesus’ sincerity embarrasses the sophisticated. It did then, and it still does today.  Jesus is not a brand to be managed; Jesus doesn’t try to imitate anyone but God, our Creator. Our world can try to isolate Jesus or pooh-pooh his unrealistic ideas. But John’s gospel is trying to move the followers of Jesus past their local cultural limitations. As we say in the United Church of Christ…God is still speaking to us, if only we’ll listen.  Christ is alive in us through the Holy Spirit. Food is important, food is necessary, but trust and hope is the sustaining food for our faith.  It’s quite literally bread for life.

Betsy and I have a friend and personal hero named Rye Barcott. Rye went to the University of North Carolina, where he earned an ROTC scholarship. At graduation, Rye was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer and ended up in Iraq. He had his Harvard Business School admission interview via satellite phone from Fallujah. Rye just graduated from a challenging joint degree program, earning an MBA from HBS and a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government. Impressive credentials aside, he is a grounded, faithful young man who believes in compassion and generosity. Rye’s father will tell you he’s just an average guy. 

Rye’s mother is an anthropologist who encouraged him to learn about the world by living in it in a way and place that he might never consider. That’s how he ended up in Kibera, Kenya, renting a room in one of the worst slums on the planet, with 500,000 people living on a plot of land the size of New York’s Central Park.  He and a local guy he got to know decided to start a soccer program in Kibera supported by funds Rye is constantly working to raise. The kids get uniforms to play, but they only get to play if they work with Rye to clean up the slums first.  Today, Carolina for Kibera is a growing nonprofit with a local staff and lots of financial backers in the US.  Unlike the disciples, Rye didn’t doubt he could make a difference. He knew he didn’t have to have all the money and the answers BEFORE he began. He trusted, he believed.  He acted on faith.

While on a summer trip to Kibera while still at the University of North Carolina, Rye met a woman named Tabitha one day in the heart of the slum. She told him she was going to start a health clinic for young girls, and she needed some cash to set up a vegetable-selling cart to raise the money for the clinic. Rye admits he was doubtful. But Tabitha looked him square in the eye and asked for the equivalent of 20 dollars to by the first round of vegetables. Reluctantly, Rye gave her the 20 dollars. He said good bye to her and to his money, pretty sure he’d never see her again.

The next summer Rye returned to Kibera, One day, Tabitha came running down the street yelling for him. “Follow me,” she said, as they wove their way through the depth of the slums. “Cover your eyes,” she ordered Rye as they turned the corner. As he pulled his hands from his eyes, right in front of him was the “Rye Medical Clinic.” It existed solely because Tabitha was able to feed people with vegetables to earn the money that would eventually feed their faith in themselves to be healthy. Unlike the disciples, Rye and Tabitha didn’t stop to ask, “how will we ever feed them all?” They started with $20 worth of vegetables.  And now, like in our scripture, the baskets full of leftovers are feeding an entire community.   Tabitha recently died too young, but her legacy and the clinic lives on.

So even if we start small, we tend to get what we need.  Knowing Jesus is the power by which we are fed. At the end of our human capacity to know lies the very heart of the Incarnation of God in Jesus. Being fed in faith is a way for the multitudes to be nourished. From that point forward, whatever we face is not so daunting. It isn’t just the miracle of the loaves and fishes…it’s the power of God in Jesus that feeds us. It isn’t just the miracle of walking on a stormy lake…it’s the power of God through Jesus Christ that helps us to the shore in the storms we endure.

When we offer the prayers of the people in worship, and in our own personal prayers, we place our needs before God and ask for help in different ways and forms. Often, we feel we don’t have enough of what we really need to be healed, to be whole, or to be holy. We worry that whatever we have to give as one person or as one church is not enough. Yet this text tells us plain and clear that “not enough” is not the final answer. In fact, when placed in the hands of Jesus, the Living God, the Son of God, our human weakness is the very means by which we are fed through faith.

In 1976, Millard and Linda Fuller had the preposterous idea that they could build decent and affordable housing for the working poor all over the world. With only a few backers, a few tools, and precious little carpentry skill, it would have been easy for them to say, “What can we possibly accomplish in the face of such an enormous housing problem?” But it was the undeniable passion for justice and a belief in the nourishing power of Jesus Christ that pushed them and finally thousands of other Habitat volunteers forward. God’s power multiplies when we pray for preposterous things to happen in the name of Jesus. If you want to get in on this kind of power, check the sign-up sheet in the lobby for our next Habitat work day on the Apostles’ Build at

Our friend Lo Smith, in speaking about the robbery here two weeks ago said something like, “Isn’t it interesting that the treasures we had locked up were stolen from us, and none of the other things were taken.” Good point.  If we lock up or hoard or over-think our resources, we can still lose them. But if we start with a loaf of bread and a fish, give it away, and then wait to see what happens, we have everything to gain. What we lost in the robbery is a drop in the bucket compared to what we can accomplish in our stewardship drive this fall. In the hands of Jesus, a little can become a lot, the few can become many, and the weak can become strong.

Jesus’ actions cut short the quest for glory and signal the power of God’s unknowable power through Jesus. Jesus is not simply a concept providing a comforting nightlight for humanity. Jesus is the Incarnation, the floodlight, the shining sun of God’s love and compassion. John says in chapter 20, verse 31.,“These things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His name.” What Jesus does in these passages, on the hill and in the sea, is totally unexpected, and it changes the lives of those around Him forever. Not one of the disciples expected Jesus to actually produce enough food to feed the crowd OR to come walking up on the water alongside their boat. But the Jesus we know often does the unexpected by showing up with us and for us in unexpected places and ways. When we least expect a miracle we may experience the loving touch of Jesus to help us through the storm. When we are starving for the bread of life, the simple act of communion with Jesus is sustaining.  In Jesus, we have more than enough food for faith.

AMEN

Prayer:

Holy and gracious God, you continually bless us with your presence. Help us to be awake to your Living Word among us always. Help us to continually renew our faith in you, our calling to serve your people, and to look for you and see you when we least expect. In the name of Jesus Christ, our living Spirit, we pray. AMEN