More Than We Thought

Text: Ephesians 3:14-21, John 6:1-21

Robert Pirsig in his classic book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance coins the term “gumption trap.” This is where you find yourself when you have seemingly exhausted all the ways to accomplish what you wanted to, and none have worked. You try the same thing over and over. Your thoughts are in a cul-de-sac. Your imagination is dead and but your frustration is lively. You have run out of gumption. He speaks about this when describing how to replace the bearings in his motorcycle engine. But the same thing applies to global problems, like economies in trouble, populations paralyzed by fear, widespread hunger and wealth inequity; local problems like companies (or churches) on the decline; personal problems relationships on the skids. Hard problems.

It applies to feeding a huge crowd of people when there is nowhere near enough food.

The feeding miracle that we heard about in the Gospel reading today is as much as miracle of imagination as it is a magical multiplication of fish and bread. The amazing part is as much the resolve of Jesus and the willingness of his disciples to join in as it is the resulting feast and the leftovers. This story is the only miracle that appears in all four Gospels. In none of the stories does the crowd see this as proof of the divinity of Jesus. In fact, only in John does the crowd react at all. For the disciples, Jesus has done something amazing and unexpected, but the eaters, it seems, are not impressed one way or the other. They started out hungry, and they ended up satisfied. Which seems to be the point. As often with Jesus, when there is suffering, Jesus is moved to relieve it. Even when to do so seems impossible.

The apostle Paul (or more likely someone writing under his name) addresses the church in Ephesus, which Paul founded. In the almost exact middle of the letter, he prays the prayer we heard today. These verses are a hinge in the letter. On one side, the beginning of the letter, it talks about who the Ephesians—and all followers of Jesus, us—who they are. And on the other side, the end of the letter, it talks about—in light of who the followers are—about what they should do. It is a hinge between being and doing, between character and ethics.

Paul prays, as it says redundantly in the original, that we may be filled with fullness and powered by power. The two ideas are related. It is Christ in us that lets us do the things that we must do. It is Christ dwelling in our hearts that enables us to do more than we would have otherwise imagined.

This is not about sentiment. Paul is not praying that we be filled with warm fuzzies about Jesus. The heart of which he speaks was not considered to be the seat of emotion, as it is now, but the center of thought, of rational thinking. Paul wants Jesus to be in the middle of our thinking machines, that we might think like Jesus.

This is the who-we-are part. As followers of Christ, as the Ephesians claimed to be, Jesus is fundamental to us. The one in which we are rooted and grounded. The roots from which we get our spiritual nourishment and the ground—meaning base, not dirt—on which we stand, which gives us our support, from which we push off.

Christ abides in us, as John would put it. As a result, we are capable of being moved as Jesus was moved, be fearless as Jesus was fearless, help those who suffer as Jesus helped. The result of Christ in us is that we have the power to do this. May you be strengthened in your inner being through the Spirit, Paul writes. This is the what-we-must-do part. Or maybe as Lutheran we want to say this is the what-we-can-do part. Our ethics, our response to the needs of others, emerges from this strength of Christ in us, and Christ’s voice.

In fact, it works backwards, too. Without Christ in us—when we stop thinking like Jesus—we easily fall into a gumption trap. Things seem too hard, too long, too far away. But through the power at work within us—within us—Paul says, God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine.

But here’s the rub. This power is not a spell or potion or shield. The power is to think like Jesus. And what we know of the way that Jesus thinks is that he cares a lot about caring for others, about healing them, and about teaching them ways in which they can be free from fear and other obsessions.

It is amazing what Jesus does. Not so much that he fed 5000 people—though that is pretty amazing—but that all those people would find in Jesus so much hope and peace, and the conviction that he could nourish their being, that they would follow him around the countryside and up into the mountains even at the risk of going hungry. And not so much that Jesus would walk on water—though, again, pretty amazing—but that his disciples would go with him and trust him in the face of obvious danger.

The disciples gradually learn to think like Jesus, and the crowds want to. Jesus offers abundant life, a way of living that brings to us and to the world more than we can fathom.

God names us, Paul writes. Who we are—our character and characteristics—comes from God. God calls us. I cannot imagine that we will be able as Jesus did to walk on water or feed 5,000 people from a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread. Such things are unlikely to fix what ails the world anyway. But we are able—with the voice of Christ within us—to not be trapped into inaction out of despair. To feed the hungry that we can, to comfort those that we can who are frightened. Strengthened in our inner being, to respond to God’s call and to be as partners in the work of God’s kingdom.

To Lead is to Have Compassion

Text: Psalm 23
Other texts: 2 Sam 7:1-14a, Mark 6:30-34

There is a kind of restlessness in king David that makes him want to put God in a little house.

God objects. In all the years I’ve known you, God says to king David—and known the leaders who have come before you—have I ever asked you to build me a house? I have not lived in a house since the olden times in Egypt (and before that).

But David is uneasy, even when God reminds David of their mutual history. When David was a young boy in the fields, God chose him. God made him a great king over Israel. God vanquished Israel’s enemies by David’s hand, and created a place for Israel to be safe and to prosper. Yet David’s story has been one also of wandering, danger, and exile. God is with him now, but perhaps David is not sure whether God has always been so, and more to the point, whether God will always be. It may be that David is being generous to God in offering God a permanent temple. Or it may be that David just wants God securely and permanently nearby.

We share with David a legacy of Adam. Anxious restlessness and a sense of being beleaguered and urgent striving. We are creatures after the fall, knowing in the center of our beings that we are made for the better and wondering where sometimes—or often—where God is. We are missing something: peace of mind and peace among people, contentment, an ability to love without misgiving, knowing we are cared for and cared about.

Jesus looks at the crowds that increasingly surround him. Crowds of people, you get the impression from Mark’s reading, who are harassing him. He and his disciples need rest and food and some quiet time. But Jesus cannot turn away. The people come for healing, of course, and to see miracles. But it is not their illnesses that move Jesus in this passage. He has compassion on them, Mark says, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

It is this that draws the crowds to Jesus. It is more than healing, though I’m sure that was important. But healers then were a dime a dozen. It is the restlessness of David in them that responds to Jesus. The people see in Jesus someone whom they can trust to guide them as sheep trust their shepherd.

The twenty-third psalm is a treatise on our deepest needs and desires. It promises food for our bodies, and a break from our weariness. It promises water for our thirst, and peace in our busy-ness. It promises restoration of our souls and psyches.

Though it seems to celebrate God’s abundance, it more exactly celebrates God’s sufficiency. It promises not that all our hungers will be satisfied, but that we would be free from hunger. I shall not want, it says. The verb has no object. It does not say “I shall not want this or that.” It says, as it does here around the altar: I shall not lack. It says that wanting will no longer be a cause for worry. In that way, this is a psalm of grace. The promise frees us.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. The two phrases are joined without a conjunction because they each mean the same thing. Trust in the shepherd, and lacking nothing, describe one another. The sheep who trusts the shepherd does not worry. The sheep who does not worry can only so when trusting the shepherd. The guidance of the shepherd along the right paths is what makes the shepherd the good shepherd, the one to be trusted. It is the guidance we long for in our restlessness; the rest—the abundant life—follows.

The psalm is not a utopian vision. Grief and shadows of death are and will remain a part of our lives. The psalm does not promise to take us away from all that. It cannot, in this world. But it can weaken their power. I fear no evil, a word whose meaning here is more secular than cosmic. It is the evil and sorrow and suffering of the day to day whose presence remains but whose strength is obliterated.

It is God’s presence that makes this work. You are with me, the psalm says. These words are in the exact center of the psalm. With them the song changes from a description of the shepherd (he makes me, he leads me, he guides me) to an address to God (you set the table, you anoint, your goodness). It goes from a statement about God to one to God. From knowing about God to knowing God. From talking about a shepherd to having one.

The crowd of people in Mark long to be with Jesus because they are deprived somehow of the promise of the psalm. They have no shepherd. Jesus sees this. And because of this, Jesus has compassion on them. This is the other reason they are drawn in such great numbers to Jesus. They see he can be their shepherd. And they see he has compassion for them. This is not some mystical sensitivity; people are not easily fooled about others’ compassion for them. They know when it is bogus, an empty show.

Compassion means to suffer with, or to feel with. Like empathy. But more than that, because it is not something that can be done at a distance. It is not the same as pity. It is not intellectual or sentimental. The word that Mark uses means gut-wrenching. To be compassionate for someone means to hurt inside in body and soul. Jesus is compassionate because, just as God is in the psalm, Jesus is with the people. Compassion is like solidarity. One cannot be compassionate from a distance any more than one can be a shepherd from a distance.

Compassion is the heart of Mark’s Gospel and the heart of Jesus’ life. It is the “for us” that we say when we talk about the crucifixion plus the “with us” that we say when we talk about Emmanuel, the incarnation. It is a synonym and an implementation of the unconditional love that Jesus talks about. It is the center of the teachings of Jesus, the one whom we follow.

We seem to have lost our shepherd’s guidance. We seem to have been roped into becoming parties to an unfortunate agreement that the good life can come about through the means of violence and greed. That these evil forces can invisibly and magically yield good fruit, and if they have not yet, then they someday will. Compassion is an afterthought, a nice possible side-effect. But these are forces that, unlike compassion, operate most effectively at a distance. When near, they turn our stomach. We cannot easily endure in our bodies or our ethics the close-up suffering of others.

Our restlessness in the world can lead us to acquiesce to this deal. But it does not have to. We are made for better.

When we are baptized, as Miles just was, and when later we become part of a community of people who confess to following Jesus, we say we are born to a new life. One consequence of that life is that we become sheep of a sort, no longer deprived of the promise of the psalm. And as much as we are able, entrusting our fortunes to God, the Lord, our shepherd.

Going without Honor

Text: Mark 6:1-13
Other texts: Ezekiel 2:1-5

We are advised to set clear, measurable, and attainable goals. How else, we are asked, are we going to know whether we have accomplished what we set out to do? How do you know whether you have arrived if you do not know your destination? How can you plot the best path to get there? It is important to be effective and efficient, essential elements of productivity. If we set good goals, we say, we can mark and judge our actions, know when to cut our losses if necessary, quit while ahead, or optimize assets. This is good process for getting some kinds of things done.

But sometimes the goal is not the point. Sometimes the destination is not known to us. Sometimes we are called not to accomplish something but to be some way, or to be some place where we are needed for reasons mysterious to us and sometimes, but not always, eventually revealed to us.

Jesus returns to his hometown after assembling his team. He has been wildly successful. He has healed people, and cast out demons. Crowds have pressed around him, seeking his power. He has brought to life a child thought to be dead.

The people in his old neighborhood are astounded, Mark says. But not in a good way. Astounded as in “I don’t believe it!” They cannot believe that someone as ordinary and as without prospects as Jesus was could have done what he has. This is the Jesus the carpenter they know, one of Mary’s boys. They judge Jesus, taking offense our Bible says, but it really says they are scandalized.

Jesus seems puzzled, amazed by their disbelief, Mark says. But Jesus is not angry at the people. He is not judging them. Nor is he making excuses about his inability to do any deed of power (or just a few deeds, it turns out). He has not been thwarted in some project. His job is not to make people admire or trust him. Some people will, and some people will not.

Like a prophet, Jesus speaks for God. Whether people hear him is another thing altogether. He is not responsible for the hearing, just the speaking.

Jesus is not, as someone called him, a big ball of divine power walking around able to accomplish whatever he wants. In the Gospel of Mark, more so than in the other Gospels, Jesus is revealed over time, and there is a sense of Jesus gradually coming into his own. Jesus develops. We teach that Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine. As the lives of humans unfold, so does the ministry of Jesus.

This episode with his hometown neighbors is a lesson to his disciples, whom Jesus immediately sends out in mission. He warns them, through this example, and then through words, that some will welcome them and some will not. It’s fine. Minister to those who receive you, Jesus tells them. Do not worry about those who do not. Your job is to be the person who offers healing and transformation.

In the past few weeks two young pastors have been called to build, more or less from scratch, two new churches in this area. One (who is actually a pastor in training) is Tiffany Chaney , who is working in Dorchester at the site of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. Her fledgling congregation is called The Intersection, a name that fits the geography of the site and also fits the intent of its mission. The intersection, as she says, of faith and life.

The other pastor is Ryan Lun, who was just ordained last month and is working with Good Shepherd Lutheran church in North Quincy. His congregation-to-be is called Good Neighbor Church, which fits his mission of serving the growing population of Chinese neighbors in Quincy.

Both of these pastors seem to me to be people of great courage. They have been sent out (two by two as it happens) called to act without the benefit of the kind of goals that we are taught to admire. They have a thankless job. I do not mean that people will not thank them or that they themselves are not grateful for these calls. But their job is to do stuff that may or may not lead to some outcome that they may or may not have imagined. They are being called as prophets are called, sent as disciples are sent. Not knowing the destination.

Prophecy is the intersection of life and faith, of humanity and the spirit. It is embodied in humans like Ezekiel. O mortal, the voice says to Ezekiel, meaning “son of Adam,” a phrase which appears over and over in this book. A son of Adam into whom a spirit has entered.

Prophets have no goals, or rather their goals are not theirs and not known. Prophets carry the divine word even though they themselves are merely human. Prophets are called not to enact or implement the future, but to state clearly the present, to envision what could come from what is now, and to speak for God.

Stand up! God tells Ezekiel. You shall speak for me It is not a sought-after job. Prophets are rarely called to successful ministry. They always work in rocky soil. The people of Israel were, our Bible says, impudent and stubborn. It says more exactly that they had hard faces and hard hearts. They are rebels who have rebelled against me, says God. God is not angry with them, any more than Jesus is angry at his neighbors. The Israelites are rebels now. God has told Ezekiel that it will be tough going. God sends Ezekiel anyway. What happens next is not the responsibility of Ezekiel.

We are called—pastor-to-be Tiffany and Pastor Ryan and you and me—we who follow Jesus are called to speak. To speak clearly and courageously as Jesus has taught us, about forgiveness and justice and overriding compassion.

We are sent as disciples to reveal God through our actions, conforming our lives to our faith. We do not have to measure our accomplishments. We do not have to find or follow the best path. This is not a time to judge whether what we are doing is effective or efficient. It is a time to stand up when called, to go out when sent.

Binding and Loosing

Text: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Once upon a time there was a governor of Massachusetts who was enjoying a photo op at the Ashmont MBTA station. I’m not sure what the occasion was. Perhaps the opening of the renovated T station there.

There were two notable things about this event. The first was that the governor had no idea where he was. He did not know where Ashmont was (which is in Dorchester) because he had never been in that part of town before. And the second thing was that he had no idea how much it cost to ride the T.

The reason the governor did not know these things is that the governor had many other places he no doubt preferred and many fancier ways to get there. He did not have to go to Dorchester. None of his friends lived in Dorchester. People from Dorchester who wanted to talk to the governor had to go to the State House, where the powers that be worked. And the governor didn’t have to ride the T. In fact, that particular governor had never ridden the T, even before he was governor. There was a gap—and I do not mean in miles—between the governor who visited Ashmont on a photo op and the people who used Ashmont T to get around the city in which they lived.

The governor enjoyed being at the top of a kind of pyramid of privilege. At the top, the governor in his limousine. Then people who had cars, then people who rode the train, then the bus, then people who could not afford even the bus and had to walk, if they could. The pyramid corresponded, very imperfectly, with a parallel wealth pyramid. Imperfectly because many people preferred the T or walked out of convenience or pleasure. Nonetheless, the governor of the Commonwealth was ignorant about the lives of most of the people for whom he was making decisions.

That there are inequalities of wealth and privilege is nothing new. In the time in which Paul wrote his letters to the church in Corinth, the wealth pyramid was shaped less like a pyramid and more like a thumbtack with the dangerous end up. At the flat bottom was almost everyone. Most people by far had next to nothing. This is where Jesus lived, poorer even than a subsistence farmer, for he had no land, and he lived as a craftsperson, by his own hand. At the pointy top were the very few who had wealth and power.

Paul writes in today’s passage to the Corinthians encouraging them to support financially the emerging organization in Jerusalem of the followers of Jesus, who had sent out an appeal for help. This is not the first time Paul has had to remind the Corinthians to think of people who are less well off than they are. Reading between the lines, we can see that though they have eagerly given lip service to helping Jerusalem, they have not followed through. “now finish doing it,” he writes, “so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means.”

This is for sure a request for money. But for Paul money is a specific case of a general principle. He is writing about grace—a word that means gift, and thanks, and generosity—about God’s grace given to us, and about our grace in turn given to others. The word is mentioned five times in the first few verses of the chapter we just heard. Paul is writing about not only the necessity of generosity and but even more, about its power.

As always, Paul is concerned less about (or not at all) about the moral goodness of individuals and more about how their actions strengthen or weaken the unity of the community of the followers of Jesus, the body of Christ. Paul argues with intensity, but not because he likes the people in Jerusalem (in fact, he does not like them very much), but because they are part of that body. The actions of the church at Corinth threaten the whole community because the Corinthians have abundance while Jerusalem has little. There is a gap between part of the community—Corinth—and another part—Jerusalem.

“It is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need,” Paul writes. This should not strike us as weird. Paul could be writing about traditional American values. Generosity, interdependence, and neighborliness. This is not about liking someone or supporting their beliefs or admiring what they do. Calvin, Luther’s contemporary, summarized this passage: “no one starves, no one hordes one’s abundance at another’s expense.” Would you let a neighbor starve while you have a surplus?

For the sake of all, there needs to be a fair balance, as Paul says, between the wealthy and the needy. The word is sometimes translated “equality,” but that is not quite right. He is not trying to shuffle the pyramid here (impoverishing the Corinthians to enrich the Jerusalemites), but to help the Corinthians see things differently. The gift from Corinth will be measured against the need of the church in Jerusalem to determine whether it is sufficient for Jerusalem. But the gift will be measured against the abundance of the church in Corinth to determine whether it is gracious for the Corinthians and generous.

The Corinthians are blessed with many gifts. Yet all such gifts have the power to fragment communities or to bind them together. If we take any of God’s gifts as a way to differentiate some people from others, or to protect some against others, then the whole of us fragments and suffers. But if we see God’s gifts as grace which we might share, then we are tied together into one body. Who shall the Corinthians be, Paul asks them. Who shall we be?

In the verses just preceding these, Paul describes the Macedonians, who have already sent much to Jerusalem, even though they, the Macedonians, are dirt poor. Some think he does this to embarrass the wealthy Corinthian church. But Paul is not commanding them, he says. What makes the Macedonians special is that they were begging Paul to let them participate in the grace and the fellowship of helping the people of Jerusalem. “Begging us earnestly,” Paul says, “for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints.” They see this helping as the gift it is.

They realize that we are called to be generous not because we should, though it is true we should. And not because we are grateful for God’s gifts, though we are. But we are called to be generous because God is generous. God was generous in Jesus, Paul reminds us. We are made in the image of God. It is in that image that we itch to be generous. It is a gracious gift to humans that we are allowed to be generous to others.

Paul is a missionary. His job is to create and nourish and tend communities of people. His call to the Corinthians to help the saints of Jerusalem is urgent. Not because of the need of Jerusalem. But because of the need of the Corinthians to be generous, rather than privileged. And the need of the broken world to be stitched together by generosity. And the prospect that if we do not eagerly enact our longing to share God’s grace, our spirits will starve.