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There once was a pastor named Harry who began every
day with prayers. One day, Harry felt a very specific call from God—go
out and buy 12 barbequed chickens. So that’s exactly what he did—he went
to the colonel and bought a dozen barbequed chickens. But he didn’t know
what to do with them, so he prayed to God to show him people in need. He
sensed God leading him to five homes in different parts of town. One
home was that of a single mother trying to feed her kids. Another was an
elderly lady, just out of the hospital and too weak to cook for her
husband.
In each case, Harry brought food to those in great
need. God used Harry and his dozen chickens to bless five families all
across town. Does that story sound a little hokey to you? Do you believe
that God works this way? Wouldn’t you like to believe that God works
that way? The plain fact is that God still works exactly the same way
today that he did in feeding the 5,000.
God sees the needs of the world, all the pain and
poverty, and still says, “Don’t send them away. You give them something
to eat.” The question for us is, “What are you doing with your
chickens?”
One of the remarkable things about funerals, at least
in this part of the country, is how they bring out the best in people,
by which I mean people respond to the pain of death with offerings of
food—casseroles, pies, cakes, meat loaf, everything in abundance.
Instinctively we know that there is something very healing about the
shared gift of food. I’ve seen this happen a number of times in this
church and elsewhere, but I’m not sure that folks around here are aware
that this is a very western Pennsylvania thing to do. A friend of mine
from New Jersey now living in Derry was shocked and overwhelmed by the
banquet that appeared on her doorstep upon the death of her
father-in-law.
This response to pain and suffering, this ritual
where we see someone mourning and answer with gifts of food, is also a
very Christ-like thing to do.
It’s also close to my own heart and my understanding
of why we suffer in this world. We suffer and our neighbors suffer so
that we each have the opportunity to respond to that need, each to help
the other, uplift the other, bind up the wounds of the other like the
Good Samaritan did.
I called this sermon “Gone Fishing” because that’s
what Christ is doing in this lesson. First, he fished for disciples, and
here, he’s fishing to bring out their best instincts. He tells them, if
someone has a need—you respond, you meet the need.
In our Gospel story, Jesus has just learned of the
death of his cousin John the Baptist, and he goes away by himself to
grieve.
But soon it was time to resume his ministry. He found
a huge crowd of people on shore, and he had compassion on them. He
started to cure the sick, but he liked to heal people one by one, laying
hands on them, and as you can imagine, that took quite a long time. By
evening, everybody was tired and hungry, including the disciples, who
were working crowd control. They urged Jesus to send the crowd away to
get something to eat. More likely they themselves wanted to be able to
eat.
But Jesus said, “No, your work is just getting
started. You give them something to eat.” They couldn’t be more stunned
if Jesus had said “Give them all a bag of gold.” Their response? “We’re
got nothing. What are they supposed to eat, sand?” Isn’t that how we
have reacted sometimes to human need? I know I have. “Lord, we’ve got
nothing to give, nothing valuable to offer. Leave me alone.”
Nevertheless, this story brings out some vitally important principles
about the way Jesus fishes in us today, trying to make us understand
that miracles can happen if we want them to.
The first principle is that miracles happen when
Jesus has compassion for the world. It’s important to give that word
compassion full weight here. It’s a powerful word. We’re not talking a
response like “Gee I’m sorry you stubbed your toe” or even “I’m so sorry
that you broke up with your boyfriend.” The word compassion breaks down
as “with pain.”
Jesus felt the pain of the crowd that day; can any of
you doubt that he looks out at the broken and bleeding world we inhabit
in the year 2005 and not believe that he still feels our pain, that he
still wants to do something to ease our suffering? He wants to be right
here, laying on hands and curing sickness. But he can’t lay physical
hands on us, so he fishes for people who are willing to stand in for
him.
In the musical “Les Miserables” the central figure,
Jean Valjean, is one of the most Christ-like humans ever to take the
stage.
Jean has received God’s grace from an old priest who
saved him from returning to prison. Jean originally went to prison for
stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. Upon his parole, he broke
into the priest’s rectory and stole the silver dining plates. He is
arrested and brought back to the priest, who tells the police, “No, the
plates were a gift. And you forgot to take the gold candlesticks, too.”
That moment turned Jean’s life around. He wants to share that grace with
everyone he encounters. That includes a young woman named Fantine, who
has lost her job and turns to prostitution to feed herself and her
daughter Cosette.
One night Fantine is beaten and abused by a handful
of men, but Jean rescues her, takes her to a safe place and cares for
her.
But Fantine demands to know why Jean is being so
kind. She thinks he’s after what the other men were after.
When it dawns on her that there are no strings
attached to his kindness, she protests, “You don’t understand. I’m a
prostitute. Cossette has no father.”
And Jean replies, “She has the Lord. He is her
father, and you are his creation. In his eyes you have never been
anything but an innocent and beautiful woman.” If you don’t understand
these words, you don’t understand the Gospel. There is hope for the
sinner, not because the sinner has the power to change, but because of
the compassion of God. Miracles begin with the compassion of God.
And the second principle is that the compassion of
God is not a matter of convenience. I know that just about everybody in
the room right now is above average for displaying compassion in their
nature. There are no nasty people here.
But how many of us have ever turned away from the
chance to help another because it just wasn’t convenient at the time?
How many of us have ever come down with “compassion
fatigue,” where we just weren’t open to anyone’s problems at the moment?
How many of have ever had to do compassion triage? That’s when you get
several appeals for help in the mail at the same time, and you have to
pick one to help and throw the rest away?
Even the best mother in the world sometimes feels
hounded and closed in by her own children, and she just wants to get
away for awhile.
I’ve always been very bad in large crowds; can’t
stand them. I rarely go to sporting events anymore, because of having to
fight the crowds. Maybe that’s why I’m a Pirates fan. No crowds.
But what if every single face in that mob on the
shore of the lake that day wanted something from me, like they all
wanted something from Jesus? What if they all wanted a piece of me? I
would get out of there as fast as I possibly could, stopping to help no
one.
But it’s exactly in that kind of setting that we see
the real compassion of Christ. He doesn’t push us away and tell us to
leave him alone for a time. He doesn’t hide from us so that we can’t
find him. He doesn’t close his ears to our cries.
It is right in the thick of things that we find God
displaying compassion to the needy. And it is right in the thick of
life, when everything seems to be caving in on you, that God hears our
cries. His compassion knows no limits.
And yet we have so much trouble seeing this. We have
so much trouble seeing that our fate, our lives, are in the hands of a
loving and all-powerful God whose nature is to meet our needs before we
even know we have them.
A man and his dog were walking on the beach when they
encountered another man strolling by. The owner of the dog was so proud
of a new trick the pooch had learned, so he said to the visitor, “watch
this,” and heaved a piece of driftwood into the ocean. The dog sprang
up, walked out on top of the water, grabbed the stick and came back. But
the second man said nothing.
Twice more the dog’s owner threw the driftwood into
the waves, and twice more the dog nimbly walked out on top of the water
and retrieved it. Finally the owner could stand it no more. “Didn’t you
see anything unusual here?” he demanded. “Yeah,” the second man said.
“Your dog can’t swim.” The disciples had witnessed a full day of
miracles, but they had missed the obvious. If Jesus could heal bodies,
he certainly could nourish them, too. The disciples had missed that.
They were too focused on the overwhelming need and their own weariness.
That leads right into the third principle. Miracles
don’t happen until someone gives God something to work with. The feeding
of the 5,000 didn’t get started until someone—in John’s gospel it’s a
little boy—comes forward with five loaves and two fishes. But whenever
someone does provide the raw ingredients, that’s when God starts to use
that effort, however feeble, to do good in the world.
Christianity is not for the Lone Rangers among us.
It’s a partnership between God and people, working together. Miracles
begin with the compassion of God, but they are fueled by the materials
we bring to the table.
Many people have trouble believing that this miracle
took place, that Jesus actually multiplied those five loaves and two
fishes into enough food to feed the Russian Army. But whether you’re
willing to take the miracle at face value or not, the central point
remains the same: this story is a parable about our poverty and Christ’s
abundance. Any way you slice it, the people could not have been fed
except by the grace of Jesus Christ. And that’s why the story of the
five loaves and two fishes, except for the Resurrection itself, is the
only miracle repeated in each of the four gospels.
What is important to understand in this story is that
Jesus worked a miracle, but not without the active participation of the
disciples who thought no miracle was possible. God certainly could have
made food rain from the sky, the way he fed the nation of Israel with
manna in the desert.
Jesus could have waved his hands and said the magic
words, “Colonel Sanders,” and each family in the crowd could have had
their own barbequed chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy on the side.
But that’s just not his style. His words remain, “You give them
something to eat.”
Maybe the real miracle is that God can get through
this hard shell some of us have and get us to respond to the needs
around us.
What little thing can you provide, what ingredients
for God’s miracle? A word of hope? A helping hand? A barbequed chicken?
Though it may seem useless to you against the vast needs of the world,
offer it anyway. Whatever the deed, God will bless it and spread it. You
and I are meant to plant a handful of grass seed under God’s great sky,
to touch a little filament of wire to the electric power of God.
Finally, the last principle is this one—we give our
best, and let God do the rest. That is the secret of joy-filled living.
No doubt some of you are saying that this all sounds
good, but still, I don’t have much to give. The pennies that I can
provide don’t add up to much against the vast sea of need.
If that’s what you’re thinking, let me tell you what
pennies can add up to. A lady named Edna Tomevi collects pennies at her
church—literally, one penny at a time. Edna learned that it takes 85,000
pennies to make a mile, so in 1997 she challenged her church to
contribute their pennies to the Society of St. Andrew’s gleaning
project, which donates food raised in orchards and gardens to food
pantries to feed the hungry.
Every Sunday during the morning worship, Edna
announces to the church how many pennies were turned in that week. She
counts the pennies, she wraps them and the pennies are cashed in and
sent to the society to pay for the costs of shipping the food where it’s
needed. So far Edna has raised over $2,600 in pennies. She’s now working
on her fourth mile of pennies, and by the way, she is 88 years old.
She said she hopes to keep raising money one penny at
a time indefinitely. Nothing dramatic. Just an 88 year old lady who
wants to provide God with the raw materials to make a miracle.
Edna could sit in front of the TV all day. She could
sit around and dither about how good things were in the old days. Or she
can wrap pennies now. She is bringing joy to her own life, and to
others.
This year at our Vacation Bible School we challenged
the kids to bring in donations to drill wells in Bangladesh, so that
people could have fresh water to drink. They brought in enough money to
drill 10 wells for people still suffering from the effects of last
December’s tsunami. Last year we raised money for Heifer International
at Bible School and we raised enough to buy chickens and goats and I
think even a pig if my memory is correct. The point is that people said
we don’t have enough children to even have a Bible school, but between
us and the Tyrone Church we pooled our resources, brought our raw
materials to the table and God multiplied our efforts to make a miracle.
So what’s Jesus fishing for in your life? Where are
you taking your chickens? God has great compassion for the needs of
humanity. But he works in partnership with people—people who care about
others and want to see miracles happen in this insane world. At the end
of Les Miserables, Jean Valjean lies dying, with Cossette, the daughter
he rescued along with her mother, by his side.
He sings his last will and testament to her, with the
words, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”
When people participate in God’s work in the world,
when they love one another, that’s when they see the face of God in all
their neighbors, and the secret of a joy-filled life. Where are you
taking your chickens today?
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