Super Heroes and God's "Dream Team"

8-27-17

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thanks to the VBS theme this year… I’d like to inform all of you that I’ve decided to change my official title here at Family of God. From how on I would like to be known as Pastor Lydia of Awesome, or just Pastor Awesome for short. What are my superpowers? I can baptize faster than a rushing river! I can lift high the cross! And I can leap tall Bibles with a single bound! And now, I am just waiting around for Hollywood to discover me and make the next big blockbuster movie out of my adventures assisting the good people of Bucks County.

Every good superhero has a good origin story, too. Some of my fellow superheroes and heroines were born with their special powers. Others got them in all kinds of strange ways – they were bitten by radioactive bugs, exposed to mysterious cosmic space rays, or injected with strength serum. Still others came to be super heroes by using their brilliant use of technology and gadgets.

What’s MY “origin story”? When I was a baby, I had my forehead splashed with water three times, sealed with the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever. I grew up in a group of other baptized super hero people, being nurtured and encouraged in my faith by my family and other caring adults in our community.

Me – and YOU - we are part of a very special league of super heroes. Many of us have different origin stories. Some of us might have begun our super hero journey in another tradition, or no tradition at all. Some were baptized later in life, as teens or adults. Others in this league wandered away the community of super heroes for a while, but eventually found our way back.

Those of us gathered in this building today, and are gathered to worship in communities around the world…. baptized part of this community of faith and named as God’s children forever and ever, we, who have been saved from sin and death by the mercies of almighty God…. We are part of the League of the Living Lord.
Also in this League of the Living Lord are all kinds of characters with interesting backgrounds and unique super powers. There is Abraham and Sarah, who became the father and mother of God’s people, both by blood and by their faithful examples.  The prophets of old, like the likes of Isaiah and Jeremiah, were given wisdom and prophesy to speak truth to power in the face of injustice. Mary refused to give into fear and took a bold risk when she accepted her calling to give birth to and raise Jesus.

Besides our Bible heroes and heroines, Martin Luther turned the Christian world upside down with his stubborn belief in a merciful and loving God… and his ability to write his books, including a translation of the Bible in his language, with incredible speed. Martin Luther King Jr., named after him, preached his dream of a world where both black and white could be free of racism and segregation. Mother Theresa cared for the most forgotten and unwanted people in the slums of Calcutta. All these people are card-carrying members of the League of the Living God.

Today we heard about Peter, disciple of Jesus, bold talker and water walker. When Peter reveals Jesus’ super hero name of Son of the Living God, Jesus in turn gives HIM the Superhero name of Petros… but not a super impressive one, it seems. Petros means small rock or little pebble... Today Peter becomes “Pebble Man.”

While Pebble Man SEEMS like a weak superhero name… but Peter is a chip of the old bedrock that the Church has been built on – the rock being Jesus, the cornerstone of our faith.

Peter…Abraham, Sara, Mary Martin Luther, Mother Teresa…. this is quite an intimidating list of faithful people in our Super Hero League. These people have indeed left us some mighty big shoes to fill. But, like all heroes, our faith heroes have mighty flaws to go with their mighty powers. Abraham and Sarah tried their own “creative” ways to fulfill God’s promises. Most of the prophets were pretty reluctant to take the job as God’s Super hero. Martin Luther was stubborn to a fault, and Mother Theresa struggled with spiritual dry spells. And even among Jesus’ own disciples there are deniers and deserters and betrayers. So, I guess, we are in some pretty good company. 

Which is a pretty good thing for us, because we are all too often distracted from our super hero duties. Like Jesus and the disciples in the town of Caesarea Philippi, filled with stone statues of every kind of god and goddess… we are daily surrounded by statues, real and imagined, that entice our attention and devotion.  Status, success, stuff, salaries, stocks, sports, schedules – these are the dead stones that hold sway over US.

We don’t wake up every morning and say to ourselves, “You know what? Today, I’m going to be too busy to be kind to a stranger. Today I’m going to benefit from racist institutions and laws. Today I’m going to make decisions that will hurt our planet.” Unfortunately… it just happens. The Reverend Doctor James Forbes, a Baptist minister who spoke at our Rostered Leaders Gathering recently in Atlanta, said we don’t have to decide to participate daily in the injustices of the world… it happens because of sin and the broken state of the world. That is why transformation is needed, to be living sacrifices.

From Dr. Forbes, we heard that leading up to the 1992 Olympics, the United States would always get soundly defeated in basketball… until the 1992 “Dream Team” was assembled. Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and more led the way to Olympic gold, winning games by 44 points or more.

Then Dr. Forbes wondered, if WE at the Rostered Leaders Gathering, had be brought together as “God’s Dream Team” for this time and this place.

Rev. Dr. James Forbes

And I wonder too, though OUR team may be small, if God has not been gathering together a dream team, right here in Buckingham.

But first, before we can become this dream team, we must be transformed. And then Dr. Forbes showed us how we do it. This 82-year-old man laid down flat on his back, like a person laid out in their final rest. We were all stunned, and you could hear a pin drop. He informed us that we need to die to ourselves. Not a graveyard death, he said, but a living sacrifice. That way, we can present our wholes selves to God. That way, we will be ready to be on God’s Dream Team. That way, we will be ready to do our part in the League of the Living Lord.

Our God is a rock that is alive, dynamic, and on the move. Those other things that claim they have power over us? They are lifeless, powerless, and have been overcome by the mighty and loving arms of God.

Dr. Forbes told those of us gathering in Atlanta with white skin, that if there is any advantage to be gained by the color of our skin, to use it to restore community with all people, and to use our privilege to fight the white supremacist movement.  He reminded us that in order to become part of God’s Dream Team, we are to undergo a radical reconstruction of to the infrastructure of our being. And it is certainly not very comfortable to be reconstructed. But it is necessary for being a baptized superhero for God.  

 In our baptisms, we have died to our old selves, and we rise up as new sons and daughters in God’s chosen family, God’s Dream team. And so, as God’s superheroes, we are sent into the world as a chip off the old boulder…to, as the affirmation of baptism (or confirmation) liturgy goes, “… to follow the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” To which, we as a church respond, “I do and I will, and I ask God to help me.”

We as members of the League of the Living God have been given this mission: to not be conformed by the powers in this world that defy God, but instead to be transformed into living sacrifices of God’s justice and deliverance for the sake of the whole world.

What’s the Church’s superpower? Resurrection. The broken being made whole. Hate turning into love. Light shining through the darkness. Death transformed to new life.  Jesus transforming the cross as an instrument of death into a symbol of hope and new life, the symbol that all of us baptized superheroes carry on our foreheads. Invisible, like a secret superhero identity, but still always present.

Only our secret superhero identities are supposed to be public. To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God… in a way that others can see.

And others WILL see… and some may not like it, not one bit. But we let our light shine. We are transformed and we witness the transformation of others. We are part of the Dream Team, with son of the living God at our side. Amen.

(The last picture is one of the white supremacist who was targeting St. John Lutheran Church in Ambler, PA - about 30 minutes from FOG - for having a sign outside their church that said "fight white supremacy." This person then shared one of their member's profile pictures and called him names, and posted pictures of knives on his FB profile. On Sunday morning no violence happened, and the church was overflowing with people and support from the surrounding community.)

Nevertheless, Justice Persists

Sermon 8-20-17

Grace and peace to you from God our father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Every year, my parent’s get a calendar from the local farm co-op as both a Christmas and Thank You gift for being loyal members. As you can see, it’s filled with all kinds of farm pictures you might expect… tractors, farm animals, and amber waves of grain. Last winter, they received this calendar, and as one of my brother flipped through it, something about the August picture nagged at him. It seemed familiar, except not. Time after time, he, my mom, and my dad would gaze at the picture and wonder why it stuck out to them… until it hit them. It was a picture from OUR FARM. Not from the front or even from the side. It was a picture taken… from the back. Everything was there… the silos, the barn, the cows, the tractors…. The different angle just made it harder to see.

As F. F. Bruce wrote his book Hard Sayings of Jesus –– “His yoke is easy and his burden is light, but his sayings are often hard.” And the ones we heard from Jesus today are certainly no exception.

So much ink has been spilled over the centuries to explain, soften, or justify what Jesus does here, and I don’t think any of them are completely satisfying. Figuring out this text turns out to be rather elusive, like the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price. Perhaps what we need to look for is more like a crumb, or rather, a trail of crumbs.

For this Canaanite woman, the hope of just a crumb was enough for her. It was all she felt that she deserved. She was, after all, an outsider in nearly every possible way.

This woman was descended from these indigenous people, isolated to the backwater of her own country. She was the “wrong” race to be asking for Jesus help. She was likely a single mother in the wrong century, and her only child was the wrong gender, and if that wasn’t enough, her daughter was suffering from a very wrong-sounding illness. Even this woman’s whole approach to getting Jesus’ attention seems all wrong. Nevertheless, she persisted.

In fact, this woman could not have been more right about Jesus.  She called him Lord and Son of David while the religious leaders of Jesus’ own people despised and rejected him. She knelt before him and engaged in spirited dialogue with him, while his own disciples seemed almost totally in the dark. She knew what she needed from Jesus, and was not afraid to do whatever she needed to get it, for the sake of her daughter. Even when facing a tired, frustrated, and over-booked savior. Nevertheless, she persisted.

This woman knew what it was like to barely scrape by on crumbs. She was used to having men ignore her, dismiss her, and shoo her away. But not this time. She was going to be heard by Jesus, no matter what it took. She was going to lay hold of the grace that Jesus has to offer, even if the people of her time thought she was no better than a dog. Nevertheless, she persisted.

One poem by Jan Richardson begins by imagining the woman saying these words to Jesus: “Don’t tell me no. I have seen you feed the thousands, seen miracles spill from your hands like water, like wine, seen you with… crowds pressed around you and not one soul turned away. Don’t start with me...”

She knew that in the end, he would not and could not go against his nature. She knew he would do the right thing – that he would “throw her a bone,” so to speak. And she was right. She called Jesus out, and Jesus listened to her, and I think that’s why he called her faith great.

I wonder if Jesus remembered her as he blessed the bread and broke it, and watched the crumbs from the broken pieces fall onto the table and roll to the floor. I wonder if he thought about her great faith, as he was breaking bread with people who would later betray, deny, and abandon him in the coming hours.

And apparently, even Jesus needed to take his own advice sometimes, to stop and listen to someone else preach to him. Even Jesus needed to be reminded to see people from a different perspective. This woman reminded Jesus of a different angle in God’s story – that even though God had chosen the Jewish people, that all throughout history God has never ignored the needs of the “stranger,” the foreigner, the immigrant among them. Stubborn women throughout the Old Testament have faithfully and persistently gained God’s ear, and wrestled a blessing in their own right. The stories from the margins, from the edges, from underneath are just as important as the stories of God’s chosen people.

While it is true that all lives matter to God, some lives are treated as mattering less than others. That is while throughout the Bible God has stood with and continues to stand with the oppressed and the downtrodden. While we say with our actions that certain lives don’t matter, Gods insists that they do. To God, oppressed lives matter. Canaanite lives matter. Jewish lives matter. And in our own time, LGBTQIA lives matter. Trans lives matter.  Women’s lives matter. Differently abled lives matter. Chronically ill lives matter. Latino, Middle Easter, and Black lives matter.

I have the privileges of looking back into my family history. I have the privilege to know that my ancestors voluntarily left their homes in Bavaria and Saxony to immigrate to the United States, to settle on this farm that my family has owned for five generations – featured on the cover of the Co-op 2017 calendar. My past can be celebrated. I can go to German Festivals and eat German food and wear German things. 

Imagine that you come from a people who could never know their own history. This group of people had ancestors that were kidnapped from their homes, hauled on a filthy ship for months at sea, only to be sold into slavery once they got to the United States. It is nearly impossible to tell from which country in Africa their ancestors came from – Senegal, Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon? There is no way to know. But their past, it matters to God. Their present matters to God, and their future matters to God too. Just as much as all of ours lives matter to God.

The Canaanite woman knew that, while her voice and her experience did not matter to the people around her, they mattered to God, and she refused to leave Jesus alone until he listened to her.  

The Canaanite woman would not wait patiently for salvation to be granted to her “in due time.” She instead persists in laying hold of what she knows to be true:

That there is enough Jesus to go around. There is enough room in the Kingdom of God for us to make room for the experiences of our neighbors, no matter how different their experiences may be. Their experiences matter. And when we have heard the stories of our neighbors and hear they have experienced injustice, we must do as Jesus has done – we act. We heal the injury where we can. We cast out the demon that have harmed others where we encounter them – the demons of hate and fear.

First, we listen. Then, we speak. The time is now. No more waiting. No more ignoring the truth or shooing it away.  Justice will not wait until it’s “more convenient.” Truth will not be unseen.

Right now, though, we may only be able to see a glimpse of the vision of peace and justice that God has for the world. Right now, we only get a crumb, just a taste, really, of the final victory feast over sin, death, and the evil in this world. Right now, we are only getting sips of the freedom Jesus has in mind for all of his people.

But the crumbs and the tastes are enough – because we know there is plenty more where that came from. We know what Jesus can do with a little bit of bread and some persistent faith.

On his deathbed, Martin Luther said – We are all beggars. Much later, Sri Lanka pastor D. T. Niles continued his thought by saying - "We are beggars telling other beggars where to find bread." There is more than a crumb for all. There is enough. Amen.  

Rosa Parks was my kids sermon

Standing against the Storms of Hate

8-13-17

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

St. Paul Lutheran Church in Beachville NJ – which is about 45 minutes from where I used to live - has a beautiful sanctuary that is shaped like an upside-down boat. Actually, there are a lot of churches around the country that have sanctuaries that look like upside-down boats, inspired by ships such as the ones my ancestors took to reach America as immigrants from central and Northern Europe. Take a moment and look up… doesn’t our sanctuary remind you of being underneath an upturned boat?

Three years ago at St. Paul in Beachville, I was hanging out with sixty Lutheran youth from the Nebraska Synod who were in NJ on a mission trip. They drove two straight days cross-country – one way - through East Coast traffic to spend 3 days in New Jersey - to literally flood the Jersey shore with their time and presence. They arrived to help with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, still very much present even two years had passed. They their days spent clearing logs at a Lutheran Camp in North Jersey, and canvassing entire neighborhoods to find out their needs, all in the in the hot July sun.

These young people got out of their comfortable little Nebraska boats about as far as humanly possible. Jesus said, “Come,” and they responded. In fact, their pastors who I met that week I ran into again this past week at the clergy event in Georgia.

Now, it’s been almost five years since Hurricane Sandy. But I don’t think I need to tell you that there are people who are suffering still, in different ways. Five years out, it just might be harder to see. It’s easy to spot a collapsed house. But it is harder to recover an interrupted life.

There are plenty of other storms that have hit all of us in the meantime. These storms might not show any external damage. But we can feel the devastation all the same. These storms damage the heart: The hurricane-force winds of shame and hopelessness that knock you down, all the while shouting in your ears – you are not enough.

Wouldn’t it great if our little community here in this little boat would be a haven from all the terribly frightening storms raging in the world, and raging in our own hearts? Wouldn’t it be great if there was “Check your Storms at the Door” or a “No Storms Allowed” sign somewhere out in the parking lot?

While this place IS a safe space for us to gather, the storms are still very present here with us, even on this warm summer morning. Being Jesus’s own disciples, and following orders from Jesus’ own lips did not stop the storm for Peter and the rest of the disciples as they battled their own storm that day.

But the mighty winds and waves DID not and COULD not prevent Jesus from coming to their aid. Our storms CANNOT and WILL NOT prevent Jesus from coming to us, or from getting into our boat with us.

Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton preached on the last day of our time together of the ELCA Rostered Leaders Gathering in Atlanta. Pastors and Deacons from all over the country from all different kinds of contexts gathered for connection and renewal. Bishop Eaton reminded us that human beings are not meant to walk on water. That part was completely Peter’s idea, she said. Just like when we try to take some things into our own hands that should stay in God’s. 

Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton

But when it turned out to be too much for Peter, Jesus has Peter’s back. Jesus doesn’t say he had little faith because Peter fails at something that he shouldn’t actually be able to do in the first place. Jesus is reminding Peter of something that he forgot, something that we all forget – Jesus says instead, “I’ve got you.”

And then, Jesus climbed INTO the boat. And Jesus climbs into the boats we find ourselves in too. He climbs into our tiny boats WITH us, through all the storms, and it is only then that the storms cease.

Rachel Held Evans, a Christian writer and speaker who also spoke last week at the Rostered Leaders Gathering, reminded us that God has already given us everything we need – word, sacraments, the Holy Spirit, and each other. And we have a God who walks through storms. We have a God who jumps into boats with us. We have a God who jumps OUT OF TOMBS… because "our God knows the way out of the grave." (Rachel Held Evans)

Our upturned boat sanctuary here can remind us that we are all in this boat together. But also, it is not up to us to keep this boat from sinking in the storms we find ourselves in. It is NOT up to us to work up the courage to jump out and chase after the next thing that might save us from feeling like we’re sinking.

You know what else looks like a boat, besides our sanctuary here? Our upturned hands, open and ready to receive Christ’s body. Week after week, month after month, year after year, through all the different kind of storms that life throws at us – Jesus still comes to us. Whether we are ready to jump out of the boat or clutching the railings for dear life, Jesus comes to us. In the breaking of the bread and the sharing of wine, Jesus comes to us. When we come to the table, with hands open, God gives us everything that we will ever need to face whatever storm comes our way.

Jesus gives us what we need for the storms that rage within us. And Jesus also gives us what we need to stand firm against the storms that are raging all around us too. Storms that come with fearing and hating those we don’t think belong in our boat – people who are different from us. People who are of a different religion, a different race, speak a different language, are of a different sexual orientation, or of a different gender or gender expression. We don’t see that we have all been created by God, beautiful in diversity, but equally loved. We don’t see that we are all in the same boat together, one body of Christ, members of one big family of God. We don’t see that our words - and our silences - do damage to other members of the body of Christ.

That storm seems so powerful, so overwhelming, and we seem to be so small and powerless to stand up against it, much less do anything to change it. Why rock the boat for a storm that we personally, a congregation in Pennsylvania from a mostly white denomination, might not even feel the effects of? Why stick our necks out about something that is happening in Charlottesville, Virginia? Or Charleston, North Carolina? Or Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, or Little Rock, Arkansas?

There is a storm that happened yesterday that will leave it’s mark just as clearly on this country as any hurricane. White supremacists and members of the KKK descended on Charlottesville, Virginia from all over the country on Saturday, and clergy from across the region and beyond gathered in protest. The night before, at St. Paul Memorial Church just outside of the University of Virginia campus, a torch-bearing mob surrounded the church during the evening church service as clergy and other people inside prayed for strength to stand for God’s light and justice and truth, to fight against some people’s opinions that other people are not enough.

The disciples were terrified of the storm, and Peter was terrified of sinking into the turbulent waters, Elijah in our first reading was terrified that God had abandoned him, and we also may be terrified of what will come next on the news, and what can we possibly do about it.

Timely words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s are written inside of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Georgia, where he was pastor for a time. The words are from Dr. King’s biography. He writes: “..It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth. And Lo, I will be with you, even to the end of the world.”  Tragically, these words could have been written yesterday.

Some storms must be faced again and again, it seems. But as God’s people, we have been called to never tire for standing for what is right, even in the face of such voracious storms. Now, even in this place, Jesus says to us, his beloved church - “I’ve got you. I’m not going to let you fall. Now stand, Family of God. Stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness. Stand up for truth. For I will be with you. Always.”

As the man for whom Martin Luther King Jr. is named after spoke nearly 500 hundred years ago – “here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”

Well, Family of God… God will… and God DOES. Amen.

A tale of Two Celebrations

8-6-17

Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, amen.

Wedding season is in full swing, and after the wedding service comes… the reception! With dancing… food…friends and family… and best of all, cake! But with weddings also come comparisons. I’ve attended two weddings already this summer, and they could not have been more different. The service for one couple was relaxed and full of laughter and joy. The other felt much longer than it actually was because the sanctuary did not have air conditioning! I know I shouldn’t complain, since I was not the one wearing a floor-length formal gown! One wedding took a while to serve dinner, but we didn’t mind so much while we were listening to the dynamic live band. The other served us our food impressively fast, and it was delicious, but after dinner in the extended time between dinner and dancing, the party fell flat for a while.

No matter how perfect the wedding seems to be, how smoothly everything seems to go, or how well-behaved the family is, something unexpected and memorable usually happens. I have a lot of cousins, so I’ve been to a lot of weddings over the years. At one outdoor service, the bride’s cathedral length train blew straight up in the breeze and almost clobbered the pastor. At another, the unity candle refused to light. At yet another, they ran out of cake. 

But some things about weddings are always the same. Two people get married. And friends and family come celebrate, and there is almost always food – and plenty of it. Have you ever gone to a wedding and left hungry?

There are no weddings in today’s readings. But there are two different gatherings with food and surprises. The first party happened just before the reading we heard day. We begin by hearing of Jesus’ reaction to the beheading of John the Baptist, his cousin and the prophet who prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry. John had run into some trouble in speaking out against King Herod, who ruled the region. Now, this is NOT the King Herod that threatened to kill young Jesus earlier in Matthew, but THIS Herod was ALSO bad news. Herod is not the kind of guy you go around criticizing, and that is exactly what landed John the Baptist in prison.

Herod threw a huge party for his birthday, and was so pleased with the dancing of his step-daughter that he swore before all his guests that he would give her whatever she wanted. The girl, prompted by her mother, the current wife of Herod and the target of John’s criticism, told her to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And because he had made his promise so public, Herod HAD to go through with it, or lose face in front of all his guests.  

Of course, when Jesus heard about it, he wanted some time to grieve for his friend. And perhaps to regroup, since surely once John was gone, Jesus would be Herod’s next target. But the crowds would not let Jesus lay low for long. And instead of sending crowds away, Jesus had compassion on them and healed their sick.

As people compare weddings, we also can compare these two feasts. At Herod’s birthday banquet, the guest list was limited to a very exclusive and elite group of powerful people. In this select assembly were the regions’ rich and powerful, and they feasted on the best food and had the best entertainment.

And in the end this party lead only to death – the death of a prophetic voice at the hand of a king who did it to safe face at his own birthday party.

At the surprise feast of Jesus, what some have named “the feeding of the five thousand,” it was not just the rich and powerful who were given food – all the people present were satisfied. The feeling of being full is so common to us, we don’t realize that it was a rare occurrence for the people of Jesus’ time.

These people at Jesus’ party may not have feasted on rich food, but had their fill of a simple meal of bread and fish. There was no music, expect for the grateful cheering and laughter of people made whole, and no dancing - except perhaps by those newly healed.

This is a party that leads to life – it is a feast where compassion is the host, where all are fed and all or healed – men, women, and the children there too. Actually, some estimates say as many as twenty thousand people – or more! - might have been present, since Matthew only decides to mention the number of men.

Jesus has no guest list. He doesn’t ask them for their credentials, call their references, or demand they prove their need. Instead, he heals. He feeds. He has compassion on twenty thousand people. The menu might not be as fancy as Herod’s feast, but with Jesus we know that our host is kind and compassionate, not driven by greed or self-preservation.

At Jesus’ party, there is always enough for everyone. Even when there only seems to be a little bit – just five loaves of bread and two fish – even that little bit is enough for Jesus to work miracles.

The truth is we would never have been invited to Herod’s party. Maybe, if we were lucky, we would have been servants and gotten to eat the leftovers – if there were any. But in reality, we are like the ones in the crowd, desperate to see Jesus, hungry and dusty and in need of healing.

But we can also be the disciples too. We can look around us and wonder how can Jesus care about all THOSE people, too. Send them away, Jesus. Surely you have better things to do with your time. Surely there could never be enough of Jesus for everyone. Better keep some back, just in case.

But, like the woman in Jesus’ parable from last week, the woman takes just a little yeast and mixes it into dough in order to make it rise, Jesus only needs just a little bit in order to do great things. Five loaves of bread and two fish to feed twenty thousand. Just a small seed is needed for faith to grow. Just a few sproutlets of wheat among the weeds. Just twelve blue-collar common men who would later do miracles in Jesus name. Just a small hope tucked away deep in the heart that the sun will rise on a new day. That’s all Jesus needs in order to do amazing things in our lives.

But the story doesn’t stop there. After Jesus takes the bread and the fish, he gave it to his disciples to hand out the life-giving meal, to do his work. We are the ones sent out. It may be God’s work that we do, but it is our hands that make it happen.

Just as Jesus gives life to people in something as simple as a full stomach, we are called to do the same. After all, there are plenty of hungry people in our own time.

But we certainly can’t feed the whole world by ourselves. Let alone twenty thousand people. But Jesus can take something as small as a two-hour time block and turn it into meals for hundreds of hungry people around the world – through us and using organizations like Feed My Starving Children. In fact, this fall we are starting to put together a group from here to go over to Del Val University to take a shift in packing meals for people all over the world. And all it takes is a few hours of our day.

The feast that Jesus provides for us – rather than the feast of the Herods of the world – is about sharing what we have been given by our generous God, no matter how insignificant the offering seems. Jesus shared his life with the likes of us, giving us his life so that we may live too. And then Jesus hands the work over to us, to keep on healing and feeding in his name, until of God’s people are filled and made whole. 

(Here I impromptu shared my children's sermons, for which I brought 12 leftover containers as a visual of how much God's overflowing love is for us.)

And even after all that, there will still be LEFTOVES. Thanks be to God. Amen.