July 31, 2005 - 11th Sunday After Pentecost - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Isaiah 55: 1-5
PSALM: 145: 15-22
SECOND READING: Romans 9:1-5
GOSPEL: Matthew 14: 13-21

Think of the refrain of that hymn - Oh Lord, have mercy on me. It's interesting the way we think about that. I don't know about you, but, for me to say, "Lord, have mercy on me", means, "Cut me some slack. Don't be quite as hard on me as maybe I deserve, or maybe I have learned growing up that I deserved".

But the Gospel today gives us a very different interpretation. "Oh Lord, have mercy on me", and then Jesus throws an absolute feast for everybody and all who are in need. That is quite different than just cutting me some slack, or just making the punishment not quite as severe as it might be. It's a very different attitude toward mercy than we are trained to believe.

This particular story shows up six times in the Gospels. Every one of the four Gospels has at least one rendition of this story. So, next to the Beatitudes, I believe this particular passage is the one that gets read on Sunday mornings more than any other, perhaps, and preached on quite a bit. Father Barry was here this morning at the 8:00 service, and he said the first sermon he preached here at St. Paul's was on this passage.

I want to give you a little background on this passage before I make some points about it. First of all, there are two feasts in the 14th Chapter of Matthew. There are two feasts in the 14th Chapter of Matthew. The first feast is thrown by Herod. Herod, the king, has invited, I assume, the important and the notable, and, in order to fulfill his social obligations to his guests, he has found it necessary to kill John the Baptist, and cut off his head, and have it presented to the feast on a platter. As a result, Jesus is going off by Himself to a deserted place, because He hears the news about John's death, and John is who? His cousin. John is His cousin. John is the one who began the ministry that Jesus is continuing, and, as you can imagine, Jesus wants to have some time to process this. But, even if Jesus is going off on His own to pray, to reflect, or whatever He is actually doing, the people are still in need; and, even though they see His boat taking off, they follow Him, hoping that, wherever He lands, they will be there at the right time, and Jesus will continue the kind of healing ministry that He has begun all throughout Galilee and in various parts of Palestine. The people who have waited for Jesus are in need, and Jesus, despite all that is going on in His life, personally, as the boat pulls up to shore, He sees them. And it says what? He had compassion on them, and He began to heal their sick. And it looks like He spends the whole day doing it, so that, as we get close to the evening, the disciples are nervous.

Now, I wish I could say that the disciples were just being polite, but I'm sure they were trying to figure out how to get off the hook. They are saying, "Jesus! You have to knock off, so we can send them away, so they can get something to eat!". Where are 5,000 people, plus women and children, going to find some place to eat on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and Palestine? To my knowledge, there are not any Home Town Buffet places around that are set up for bus-loads of people to come in, and, even if there were, it would be pretty tough to deal with.

So, Jesus gives them perhaps the most difficult task that he has given them in the Gospels, "You feed them. You give them something to eat". And, right there, we begin to see two different world views.

The first world view is one that actually pops up with Herod at the beginning of Chapter 14 of Matthew's Gospel, where the idea is - and this is typical; it is the view we see, for the most part, in governments and around the world - where there is an idea that there is only so much to go around. So, my life is about finding out how to get my share, and, once I have found my share, then I have to do what? I have to protect it, so that nobody else steals my share. Right? Think back to the beginning of 2001, A Space Odyssey, and the apes protecting their share. Herod had that mentality, and, initially, the disciples had that mentality. The disciples' mentality says, "Well, we've only got five loaves and two fish. What is that among so many?"

But Jesus has a different understanding of the world. Jesus has a different understanding of what God's Grace is all about. Jesus has a different understanding about how we interact with one another. Jesus knows He is the Son of the God who created all that is. Jesus knows that His Father has enough, literally, for everyone, and, in fact, we learn more about it in this Gospel.

Jesus says, "Bring it to me", and Jesus goes through an action or a set of actions that should be familiar to every one of us here. Jesus takes the bread and the fish that they offer to Him. He lifts it up; and He blesses it and gives thanks to God for it; He breaks it, and He gives it to His disciples, who then go out and give it to the rest. Now think about this. Have you ever put yourself in the mind of one of the 5,000 sitting out there? They're pretty much clueless during this. They aren't aware. There is no microphone. You know, it is kind of like sometimes here at the Church, maybe you have been out in the congregation when I have left my microphone on in the Sacristy, and you hear us wrestling about, "Well, you know, I don't know if I'm going to be able . . . . ." No; there is no microphone. The people sitting out there just know that they have been told to sit down and that something is coming. The disciples have done their little scarcity bit with Jesus more or less privately, and Jesus, very publicly, has taken what they offered, has lifted it up to God and given thanks to God, and He has begun breaking it up; and, piece by piece, He is giving it out to the disciples, who are passing it on. And what do we know about the rest of this story? That, at the end of the day, everybody is fed, and, at the end of the day, there are 12 baskets left over.

You and I may operate from a mentality of scarcity. Some of us may have grown up starting in the Depression, or have had parents who did, or grandparents who taught us lessons about making sure that you always have enough, always putting something aside, and, frankly, we tend to be scandalized by the outrageousness of God. God doesn't put extra aside to make sure for a rainy day. God encounters people in need, people who are hungry, people who need compassion, and God pours it out on them. Jesus offers them not just five loaves and two fish, but everything they need to be filled and satisfied.

Now, that is an understanding of mercy that is one that each of us needs to take to heart, and each of us needs to figure out ways to start operating in our lives based on God's understanding of mercy, which is an abundant blessing from God's plenty, and not based on our understanding of mercy, which means a slight mitigation of bad consequences that we justly deserve. O.K.?

Now, I want to take this in a different direction now. I want to talk about how we make that abundance available to the rest of the world. Have any of you ever heard of something called the Millennium Development Goals? If you have heard of the Millennium Development Goals, raise your hands. There are at least four members of the Peace and Justice Committee here, and they have all raised their hands! The Millennium Development Goals came out of folks trying to figure out how to get a handle on the radical division between the have's and have-not's in the world. My goal here is not to get preachy. My goal here is not to make you feel bad or guilty about anything, but I want to lay out these Millennium Development Goals.

These are goals that we, as Christians, might embrace in order to make the mercy and the generosity and the abundance of God real for people to whom it is not now real.

First goal - Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty.
Second - Achieve universal primary education.
Third - Promote gender equality and empower women.
Fourth - Reduce child mortality.
Fifth - (this will be important to several of you out here today) Improve Maternal Health.
Sixth - Combat HIV, AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
Seventh - Ensure environmental sustainability.
Eighth - Develop a global partnership for development.

These Millennium goals are goals that, by the year 2015, if they were implemented, could make a significant difference in that gulf between have's and have-not's in our world. Obviously, there is an incredibly significant political dimension to this, but I am not interested in that today. I am interested in the spiritual dimension of it - how we, as Christians, engage that, and how, in my opinion, we, as Christians, cannot avoid participating in that. There is a tool that has been proposed to help fund this. If every government, if every Church, if every individual set aside 7/10 of 1% of their income for helping to reach these Millennium Development Goals, we could accomplish this by 2015. That is 7/10 of 1% - that is the challenge, financially, for us.

I want to give you an idea of some of the ways that might be used. Do you remember when the tsunami hit in December, when we talked about giving through Episcopal Relief and Development? This congregation contributed $8,000, at that time, through Episcopal Relief and Development. Episcopal Relief and Development received millions of dollars, and, in fact, with all the groups together, they received more money than they could spend on just buying rice to take to people who were in need. Here is one thing that Episcopal Relief and Development did. The fishing industries of whole nations were destroyed, so, rather than get a boat-load of fish and take it over to feed them, Episcopal Relief and Development is working with local partners in order to build a factory or a plant that will make fishing boats, so that the people there can actually create and sell the fishing boats that they need for their own industry. Then, in 20 years or so, when they have fulfilled that need, maybe they will convert it to making pleasure craft or tour boats or something else, but they will be developing sustainable industry that will help the folks there move beyond being the beneficiaries of our charitable gifts. It is about partnership for development. That is one idea.

Here is the significance to me. As I mentioned before, Jesus did something with his disciples that should be familiar to all of us. Jesus took the bread that they offered; He blessed it; He broke it; He gave it out to them; and they gave it to all the other people sitting around. Does that sound familiar to anybody here? What? The Eucharist - Communion. We do it week by week, and it is not only something that we do in order to do what Jesus asked us to do until He comes again - "Do this in remembrance of me" - but it also provides a template for our responding to the needs of the world. Rather than sitting back and saying, "Oh, well, you know we only have this; we only have that", we learn from Jesus; we take what we have; we offer it up and give thanks to the God who created the world and in whose Kingdom there is an abundance of everything and for everyone; we offer it up to God; and then we begin to break it, divide it, organize it, and share it. We begin sending it out to those who are in need. Sometimes, it might be bread; sometimes, it might be expertise; sometimes, it might be political support. Whatever it is that we have, we take it; we bless it before God; we break it; and we share it. That is how we will get there. This is not anything new-fangled. This is something that Jesus taught us in the Gospel. If you are confronted with 5,000 people who need to eat, follow His example. When you are confronted with a world that is divided between rich and poor, follow His example. It is a commitment to partnership and to being united with those who have less than us, and caring for them, and in concrete, spiritual, and practical ways, making a difference.

So, I would invite all of you to take this to heart. As we receive the Holy Communion today, I hope each one of us will listen in a new way to what God might be saying to us about how to take, bless, break, and share what we have with the rest of the world.

AMEN