Another sermon.

[I've been getting quite a lot of preaching practice this year, preaching once a month since November. Here's the latest.]

TRINITY EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AMERICA
Sermon: Pentecost 11A - Matthew 14.13-21


I think today is the coolest Sunday yet this month – a little cloud cover brings us to the cooler 80s. It’s been a hot, humid July, and all this hot month, in our Bible lessons Jesus has taken us to the farmlands of God. No, we haven’t actually been turning fields or tending crops – at least most of us haven’t been. But each Sunday, Jesus has called us to walk with him in these corn-rows of grace called pews, and in that field of fellowship called the Undercroft. Working quietly, he has told the secrets of tending the fruit of God’s love. We heard just how foolishly we have to sow the seed – ready to “waste” 75% of it in the rocky soil, the shallow soil, and the weedy soil. The next week, Farmer Jesus surprised us by letting those weeds stay, because in our haste to rip up what we think are weeds, we just might lose the precious crops as well. Finally, last week, we heard stories of Jesus’ fellow farmers in the fields of faith: stories of Wangari Maathai, bringing life to women and the environment by planting just one tree at a time; stories of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, who fought for the civil rights of real-life farm-workers; stories of Molly, Daisy, and Gracie, who clung against the fence of injustice and crossed the desert of slavery, to find their way home in the plains of freedom.

All throughout these sweltering weeks, Jesus has tried to teach us how to be good sowers of God’s Holy Word, how to fertilize with courage and imagination so that we can harvest overflowing baskets of the fruits of justice and freedom and peace for all people and all the earth.

But today, after weeks of labor in the fields, Jesus takes a break. Today, just like God rested on the seventh day after six days in the hard work of Creation, Jesus rests. And today, after weeks of teaching us through stories and parables, Jesus works a miracle instead. Today, in that miracle, Jesus shows us the point of all our sowing and tending and harvesting. Jesus shows us why we have to learn God’s farming secrets.

Jesus looks out, our Gospel lesson says, on this vast, hungry crowd that has followed him – hungry for healing, hungry for grace. And he has compassion on them, and he heals them. They are healed, and they are whole, but they are still hungry. You see, Jesus cares about more than just our spiritual and emotional needs – Jesus sees us in our very physical, concrete, bodily needs as well.
“You give them something to eat,” Jesus tells the disciples, “Feed them” – just like Jesus will make Peter promise to “feed my lambs” in John’s Gospel But the disciples hesitate, calculating that there is not enough to go around: five loaves plus two fish do not equal more than 10,000 hungry bellies.

The disciples think like we all do, looking realistically at scarce resources at hand, and trying to stretch them as far as we can. Here at Trinity, we’re not a rich church or a huge church. We don’t have hundreds of people here on Sundays, and few of our members make anything close to a hundred thousand dollars a year. That’s because we are a community of people from all economic backgrounds and income and poverty levels. You see, though we are small, our growth strategy is to make this house open for all people, especially those who have been marginalized by our broader society.

Nevertheless, the steeple needs to be stabilized, and the organ’s undergoing major repair, and the roof is still waiting for one, and the walls need to be repainted, and the bathrooms need to be renovated, and our entrance needs to be remodeled and made wheelchair-accessible, and … the list can seem endless. Next month our Finance Committee will determine where we need to go to keep our congregation’s economic recovery going, and you can be sure that we have to keep working together, spending wisely what we must, and saving well whatever we can.

Five loaves, two fish, one shaky steeple, and no shortcut to meeting all the needs of a hungry world. I think we can understand exactly what the disciples were feeling when Jesus says, innocently and almost naïevly, “You go and feed them.”
But far from innocent or naïve, Jesus is passionately serious, for he is ready to work one of the greatest miracles of his life. Sure, walking on water and raising Lazarus from the dead and healing the centurion’s daughter are enough to wow us even now: but those miracles all benefitted a small group of individuals, while this feeding meets the needs of thousands of people. And in this miracle, sisters and brothers, we see both the ultimate secret of God’s farming, and why we should labor at our farming at all.

How did Jesus take five loaves and two fish and make them fill thousands of bellies? By somehow magically multiplying the food? No! The miracle, you see, is not that Jesus made something out of nothing – it is that Jesus saw and believed that there was something where the disciples were certain there was nothing. Jesus looked out at the crowds, and he realized that some among them had some food with them, while others did not. Jesus looked out, and saw that some had many resources, and others had few, and until they could all share in all the resources, they would all go hungry. So Jesus shows the crowd what must be done – all must share what they have with everyone else, and everyone must take nothing more and get nothing less than her and his fair share.

The miracle isn’t that Jesus magically multiplied the loaves and fishes, but that Jesus divided seemingly scarce resources for the benefit of all the people, and demanded – demands – that we do the same. This miracle happens again and again whenever we all take whatever little we have, and offer it to God first, so that we and others and everyone can a fair share of the common wealth, no more and no less.
And now it’s clear what this has to do with the holy farming we’ve been learning all these weeks. Jesus’ miracle was in helping the people share with everyone else the gifts they already had among themselves. But Jesus had to have something to start the sharing with. Five loaves and two fish are not much, but they were enough to begin the cycle of giving and taking, passing and receiving no more and no less than one’s fair share in the common wealth. Jesus had to have something to start the sharing with, and so do we – and that’s why we farm. Week after week, season after season, we sow God’s Holy Word in these corn-rows called pews and in that field called the Undercroft, so that we can have something to start our nation’s sharing.
God’s Holy Word – which is sometimes called Justice, sometimes called Freedom, sometimes called Equality, and always called Welcome: we plant this Word, and we tend it in our church and in our neighborhood and in our relationships and in our voting-booths so that with the harvest we will have enough to start the sharing, and call on others to join us. And we care for this farmhouse of God called Trinity on 100th Street, we fix it up and raise money for its second hundred years, so that there’s a place to pick up more of the harvest of justice when we’re running low. With this harvest, week after week, season after season, we will feed the world, yes; but more importantly, with this harvest we will start the cycle of sharing the world’s common wealth over and over and over again.

And sisters and brothers, you and I know how desperately hungry our world is for the harvest and for the sharing. For six months, UN officials have been warning the world that Western Africa has a pending food crisis, after the double-whammy of record drought and locust invasion. In Mali and Niger, the countries hardest hit, over 4 million people are starving or going to starve, many of them children under 5 years old. The cost for immediate food aid is $16 million – barely pocket change compared to the $25 billion proclaimed by our President and his colleagues in the world’s eight leading economies. But somehow, those presidents and prime ministers – together with all the Hollywood celebrities and musicians in Live Aid – haven’t yet been able to find even 5 of the necessary $16 million. And perhaps the most sobering reality-check is that $16 million is 1% of the amount NASA has spent just to prove that they still don’t know how fix foam tiles on the space shuttle!

It takes neither a rock star nor a rocket scientist to know that you can’t feed bracelets, concert tickets, and space shuttle fuel to starving babies, in Africa or anywhere. No, sisters and brothers, those starving babies and all the babies after them will only be fed by the harvest of God’s justice transforming our unjust world and its unequally distributed wealth. The harvest of God’s justice, for which we labor in these sweltering corn-row pews and our farm-field Undercroft, week after week, season after season, to feed all who hunger for freedom and thirst for equality.

For five weeks, we have been learning God’s farming secrets, learning how to cultivate this harvest of God’s justice. And the greatest secret of all is this: when we look like Jesus did, and see something where others though there was nothing, miracles will happen. When we see all that we collectively have to share with each other, and when we actually begin the cycle of sharing, miracles will happen. Our gracious God has given us the gift of this farmhouse and the fields of a hungry world and all the knowledge we need to be good farmers. Let us go and raise up the harvest of God’s justice. Let us go and let the sharing of the common wealth begin.