31 July 2011

“We have what we need”
Matthew 14:13-21
OT 18A / Season of Pentecost
31 July 2011


When our Faith Thinking confirmation youth begin their unit on the Creed – how we introduce them to the concept of Creed, is by making the statement that “a creed is a statement of belief, about a person or an organization” and that “many people, many organizations, beyond the church, have creeds” – and then, we look at them.
The Scouts have creeds – both boys and girls. “On my honor …”
Nations have creeds – “I pledge allegiance …”
And so do corporations, clubs, schools … church congregations and larger church organizations like synods. They’re called mission statements.
One of my favorite mission statements is from the SW Minnesota Synod, from where we came before Nativity:

God places us in cities, farms and towns together under one prairie sky. The Risen Christ surprises us with opportunities to plant God's Word in the world. Walking together in confidence, we cultivate life-giving congregations, nurture partner ministries, and cooperate in the life of the ELCA.
By God's grace, together we have what we need.

What makes that creed – that mission statement – so memorable to me … is that, honestly, it doesn’t at all describe the state of reality in many of the cities, farms and towns, and church congregations of SW Minnesota. Far from it … often, it’s a huge contradiction. Driving through Glenwood and Willmar, Marshall and Pipestone can be quite pleasant, but you also notice how the farm economy is suffering … small towns are drying up, people are moving away because there’s no work, and those who remain are often the least confident … elderly with no where else to go, and the young unemployed and underemployed … the poorest of the poor. And life together in that synod – particularly in these past few tumultuous years in our ELCA – has been anything but cooperative and life giving.
And yet, what I love about that mission statement comes in the final sentence … “By God’s grace, we have what we need.” Those words, they are like a flag planted in unclaimed soil … stating a reality which is not yet fully realized … bold, forthright, it says what it means and means what it says … that as people of God, congregations of people of God, a synod of congregations walking together as people of God … there is enough, we have been given, we have been blessed with enough for God’s good and gracious will to be worked out, in and among us, right here, right now.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need. Those words, they are a full-on volley against the life-draining word of scarcity … the greedy, setting neighbor against neighbor word which runs rampant, not just through the SW Minnesota synod, but all through our church and our nation. Because the word on the street is that, most certainly, we don’t have enough and so we have to cut … cut everything from our personal spending to corporate budgets to church ministries. Even the political game in Washington DC going on over the national debt … has everything to do with a mindset of scarcity … prophets of doom and gloom abounding on both sides …there’s simply not enough to go around, and so YOU will have to suffer the consequences (YOU … but not me, of course) … And we all know who the suffering YOU will be … the ones who can least afford to lose.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need. Most thankfully, it’s that word – not the despicable word of scarcity, but that word, that balm of blessed abundance … that word is The Word which comes to us this morning in our Gospel reading.

The miraculous feeding of the crowd by Jesus is the only miracle story which is shared by all four Gospel accounts. That in itself should cause us to pay particular attention … if this was important enough for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to have it in common … so should it be vital to us, as we read and hear the story of Jesus they share with us.
The rampant abundance in the story should also grab us. All there had enough to eat … no, more so … they were all filled … and there were twelve baskets full of the leftovers. So much from so little points to the lavish abundance of God, in caring for his people … in caring for us.
But the main point we should come away from this text with this morning … this morning, deep in this season of scarcity … is that by God’s grace, together we have what we need.
Enough for Jesus. Enough for ourselves. Enough for others. Enough to share.
The disciples, for their part, are wallowing in scarcity. “Send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
But Jesus knows better. “they need not go away; you give them something to eat.
Jesus sees what the disciples, what all those who live in the season of scarcity, there’s not enough to go around … we’ll never be able to do this … he sees what they, we do not … that we have enough.
Jesus knows the disciples have always had enough to meet the demands of their days and their nights. He knows because he’s the source and ground of all they have ever had … have now … and will continue to have.
And so his word to them …. “YOU give them something to eat” … this is not a crazy-speaking word, not a word putting forth an impossible demand … no, it’s merely a statement of fact, coming from the One who knows them all so well.
The disciples still don’t get it.
In their scarcity mode, all they can do is count what they don’t have.
“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”
“Bring them to me.”
And, amazingly, there is enough.
But should we say “amazingly?” I wonder.
Because if we’ve been following Jesus’ story along … we should have come to expect, to know, this ending, even before it came to pass. By God’s grace, together we have what we need isn’t just a mission statement word from the SW Minnesota Synod of our ELCA … no, it is the theme word of all Scripture … of every Word that the Church has been given about Jesus …
… it is the Word behind the Word of Holy Baptism … that through this little water and short Word, here is another forgiven, freed, redeemed from evil and death child of God.
… it is the Word behind the Word of Confession and Forgiveness … child of God, even though you fail to live as I call you, yet I, your creator and redeemer, yet even I who make and call you holy, I forgive you this day, again and again.
… and it is most certainly the Word behind the Word of Holy Communion … this meal, this sign of God’s goodness and love past, present and future … this bread and wine sign of Jesus With and For Us … this preview of what life together in God’s reign of perfect community, perfect justice for the poor and oppressed, hungry and downtrodden, perfect peace for all … this preview of all that is to come in Christ, where all are the same before God and with God and in God forever.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
This is Jesus’ word for us, people of Nativity, this morning.
By God’s grace, we’ve always had what we needed. In 1969, when this congregation formed, we had what we needed. In the mid 1970s, building a new building here, we had what we needed. In the 1980s, through numerical success and leadership failures, we had what we needed. In the 1990s and into the early 2000s – even as the congregation physically suffered and declined – we had what we needed. Through the season of rebuilding, physically, spiritually, numerically – we’ve had what we needed.
And today, that word is just as true for us here … by God’s grace, together we have what we need.
True enough, Jesus has come to us over the years, and even today, he comes to us, asking us to do what may well appear to be a difficult, impossible task … feed these people … feed those people … feed them on the food of the Word and the physical food for bodily nourishment … a word which speaks to us of Christ’s call and expectation of growth for us … spiritual, physical, economic. It is a tough word in tough times, especially now, when the byword, the watchword, for all of our life, is scarcity, there’s not enough, cut, cap, delete, end.
And yet, Jesus does not call forth from us any more than he has given to us, to spend, to use, to feed the people. When we say “we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish,” Jesus provides abundance, from the God-given abundance we’ve always had with, in, among us.
By God’s grace, together we have what we need.
Into a world stuck in scarcity, shredded by the cutback knife … we who follow Jesus are called to move, and proclaim a different Word … into a government, a society, at times even a church mired in the word of death … we are called to joyfully proclaim this Word of life, life as God wills it for us, life as Jesus provides it for us, life as it will be for us.
Oh yes … hear it loud and clear, you prophets of doom, you voices of gloom and despair among us … the only deficit which is to come upon us is a deficit of death … as our future together is bright, and clear, and abundant. God’s abundance … enough for each one of us … enough for us to share … not just in a future to come … but now … now … NOW!!!
Amen.