Thursday, August 9, 2012

Sermon July 29, 2012
2 Samuel 11:1-15
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21
“God Is with Us”
Psalm 14 begins “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’” And while many of us wouldn't say, “There is no God”—at least out loud—most, if not all, of us have acted this way a few times in our lives. We've acted like we have all the answers and understood all the questions without doubt or any acknowledgment that life is full of mystery and wonder. We pretend that we don't have unsolvable problems—unsolvable without the presence, assistance and gifts that God provides through divine intervention. And that God hasn't helped us and been present to us through the wondrous presence of friends, family, strangers and human society and culture including church.

Fools do say in their hearts that there is no God and God knows we've all been fools a few times—and some of us more than others. One of the tenets of a twelve-step program like Alcoholics Anonymous is acknowledgment of a higher power. In other words, the alcoholic or other addict has to be able to say, “There is something out there somewhere that is more powerful than I am.” An addict has to recognize the previous foolishness of “There is no God,” and trade it for the relative wisdom that something somewhere is more powerful than his or her addiction, than he or she has been in dealing with that addiction. That's the base line for growth in wisdom—a recognition of powerlessness against problems that are more powerful than each one of us is alone.

The psalm goes on to say that God looks down to see if any have wisdom and sees that the people who do evil take bread from others and don't ask God for help. Then it states that,
There they shall be in great terror,
   for God is with the company of the righteous.
You would confound the plans of the poor,
   but the Lord is their refuge.1

There is something about the people who are willing to acknowledge their powerlessness without God that makes it possible for God's power to be present in their lives. And there is something about people who recognize God's presence in their lives through direct action and through the support of family and friends and other institutions in human society that makes it possible for them to help others. When we know we didn't do it alone, when we know that God has brought us thus far—we can know that we play a part in bringing others along, too. God blesses us through others so that others can be blessed through us.

There is the miracle that happens through the generous sharing of the blessings of creation and the miracle that occurs by such mysterious means that we can do nothing but stand in awe at the power of God in our lives. God is with us either way—the questions, will we recognize God? And how do we recognize God?

In the context of John's gospel, the point is that God is with and within Jesus and John is out to show us the answers to those questions. John wants to show us how not to be fools. So he shows us how God is with and within Jesus by what Jesus does, especially in a story like the one we heard today.

So, we learn who Jesus is by what he does (isn't that true of everyone – don't actions speak even louder than words?), but John's powerful discourses by Jesus are not free-floating. The words Jesus said (the discourses) connect to these stories about what Jesus did (his signs, or amazing works of wonder). And so we have the disciples, down-to-earth (even up on a mountain) and overwhelmed by the crowd, computing the cost of feeding so many people. "Impossible!" they say, but we know that all things are possible with God, of course, especially, with Jesus, "who redefines what is possible".2 So this story is just as much, if not more, about the power of God in Jesus as it is about Jesus' compassion for the hungry crowd. God's power, after all, is "far more than all we can ask or imagine," as we read in Ephesians 3:20b.3

This story is about what can be accomplished with the help of God—God with Jesus Christ, God with the farmer who grew the barley, God with the fisherman who caught the fish, God with the basket-maker who wove the baskets, God with the boy who generously offered his lunch with compassion and kindness and God with the disciples who were lost in pragmatism and logic.

In each of the persons and situations that this story draws from and touches, God's power and action could be evaluated and acknowledged—God's wonders were performed. In each person from the individuals of the crowd to Jesus, Messiah and Son of God, the signs of God can be found. Where do we recognize ourselves individually and as a community of followers of Jesus in this passage?

As a community made up of followers of Jesus, we find ourselves acting in many ways and in a variety of situations—we seek sustenance as a community, at least spiritual sustenance because we do come together in worship to pray and to share corporately in song and other forms of praising God. We seek nourishment, too, as we look for faithful community or fellowship when we eat, play and work together rather than always alone. We also seek to be fed because we know in some way that we are not complete without the God who made us and sustains us: we are sometimes sadder than we want to be, lonelier than we seem to be or needy in some way that is hard to describe.

Together we seek nourishment because we have a vision of who we could be and who we have been. We want to grow in faith and we want to grow into the church we could be with God's help. We have a vision of where God may be calling us together, which will take more than we seem to have today—but not more than God can provide. We could stay like the disciples were in today's story and just wonder how or we can stick with Jesus and see the miracle happen. We will see the great and fantastic place where God is leading us here in this community—if we stay faithful to the road where Jesus has walked.

And even though we are among the ones in this story who are seeking sustenance—among the ones who are hungry for something—we also experience abundance when we realize how much we have in the context of this global community we live in. When God is with us, we see how much we have to give, how much we have to share with others. We have relative material abundance and we have the knowledge of lifetimes lived in faith. We have valuable experience we can share as long as we can share it without the cynicism that is also pretty abundant in this world. Cynicism says, “Six months wages won't buy enough bread!” Wisdom says we have something, so lets bless the bread and fish and start passing them out anyway.

God is with us this day and God is with us always. We can sometimes recognize the power of God without quite understanding it. When Jesus fed the crowd, for instance, in their shortsightedness they wanted to throw away the imperial power of Rome and replace it with a crown for Jesus, they wanted to shorten the story to their scope of understanding, but Jesus knew there was more.

God is with us this day and God is with us always. The disciples were starting to realize the power that was in Jesus—and yet he still surprised and terrified them when he walked on the water. God's power in Jesus is revealed more and more clearly as we read this gospel and as we experience what God can do through him in our lives as individuals and as church.

Let us be wise and not be fools—let us trust that there is a God as we do the work of Christ together. Let us be generous with our love and with our lives as we seek to thrive and grow in this place and time. Let us admit that we can't do this thing called church or this thing called life without the power of God within us. Let us know that God is with us, not advocating all of our choices, behaviors and actions, but calling us to faithfully work together as Christ's body accomplishing “ more than all we can ask or imagine.”

To the glory of God. Amen.


1Psalm 14:5-6
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