The Miracle of Abundance

A sermon preached on July 31, 2005 at Faith Episcopal Church.

The little village had suffered greatly as the war raged on. Many young men had died and there was little food. It was all they could do to survive on the little that was left. So when the weary soldier appeared in the square, shades were drawn and shutters closed. He stood there feeling their presence behind the barriers and he understood. He began gathering up sticks and soon had a small fire started. Then he took a battered pot from his pack, and went to the well to fill it with water. After he put the pot on the fire he looked around and chose a medium sized stone and added it to the pot. Then he sat down to watched the fire.

Not long after, a man came out of his shop and walked over to the men. “What are you doing here?” he asked. The soldier said, “I’ve been walking for long time and this looked like a good place to stop and make some soup.” The man’s eyes darted to the pot which was beginning to simmer. “What kind of soup are you making?” “Oh, just a simple thing my mother taught me, stone soup.” “Stone soup! Who ever heard of such a thing.!” “My mother really had a way with these kinds of things, it’s really good; it just takes a while.” Then he added, I remember sometimes she liked to add potatoes – said it gave a better texture.” He sniffed and said “it always smelled so good.” The man from the village stared at him and realized that he could almost smell that soup. He ran back to his store and came out with a handful of small hard little potatoes. “He said, why don’t you try these.” Then he sat down.

Soon a woman came by and after looking suspiciously at the two men, went and peered into the pot. “What this?” she demanded. Her neighbor said, “Stone soup with potatoes – it’s be ready soon.” She looked at the pot again and said, “It will be bland, you need some onions.” And then she disappeared. When she returned, she wasn’t alone. Her neighbor was with her. She pulled out a sad looking onion from her pocket and a small knife. She dropped the pieces of the onion in the water and motioned to her friend who produced three carrots which she broke and added to the pot. They joined the group sitting around the fire. Soon, others ventured out from behind their shutters and the soup blossomed with garlic and herbs, peas, turnips and even a small piece of dried meat. The last little treasure was salt. Little bits of food that had been hidden and hoarded bubbled together making a savory satisfying meal that the town shared with the soldier. Someone was heard to comment, “Best darn stone soup I ever had!”

It’s easy to see how this story fits with the gospel story of the feeding of the multitude. It wasn’t merely 5000 since it slips in “along with women and children.” Jesus saw to that even those that don’t count are counted and fed. As tempting as the stone soup process is to explain the miracle, I’m leery of it because it offers up an explanation of how it might have happened. Once we begin to picture people drawing little crusts of bread and other bits of food out of their pockets the story loses its power. While there is always a good message in people sharing what they have with those who have less, that’s not really the God messge here.

One reason we don’t hear the message is that we read the story without hearing the story that precedes it. It is the story of a banquet – actually it’s Herod’s birthday party at which his step-daughter Solome danced her famous dance. She was so enchanting that Herod offered her anything she wanted. As any smart young woman would, she went and asked her mother “What should I ask him to give me?” Herod’s wife had an ax to grind with the recently arrested John the Baptist. John had blown the whistle on the adulterous and therefore illegal nature of her marriage to Herod. This was her opportunity to silence him. So as is often to case with whistle blowers, John’s head ended up on a platter, literally. It was displayed to the guests at Herod’s birthday party. It also says that Herod hadn’t wanted to kill John because he knew that he was popular figure, a prophet, but he didn’t want to offend his guests by not honoring his promise to Solome!

Matthew’s gospel takes directly from that story to our open air banquet of bread and fish with this segue “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. He is grieving and probably angry, more determined than ever to teach his understanding of the Kingdom of God.

One point made here which we miss is that in the original Greek, Jesus has the crowd recline (not sit down), which is the traditional Roman banquet posture – you can only do that if you are being served. Here were the ordinary people who struggled to have enough to eat, who were the slaves and servants, the ones unseen by the powerful being treated like the guests at Herod’s birthday party. At this banquet, instead of the fruits of oppression and violence, they were given miraculous divine plenty.

This feeding story is more about God’s intention to bless than it is about how it happened. God’s infinite generosity is something we can count on. This generosity creates a dynamic of abundance that is open to all. God’s abundant intent is ours to accept and allow to flow in our lives or we can thwart it.

We can thwart God’s abundance of blessing by living lives cut off from others, lives devoid of mystery, lives motivated by fear and anger and illusion of scarcity. When people’s chance to receive God’s blessing is denied you end up with something like Herod’s birthday party that makes your skin crawl.

But when the flow of blessing is unimpeded miracles happen. Jesus, as occupied by grief as he was, became the source of blessing to the crowds. He gave them health, compassion, presence. He loved them and then he fed them. He was saying – take that, Herods of the world, this is the real banquet because here God is the host.

Back to stone soup, a story that teaches us how to approximate the miraculous feeding. That story turns the feeding of the 5000 all around. It’s as if Jesus came into town and allowed his hunger to teach the community how to be like him. He taught them and he teaches us that we can be instruments of abundant blessing to each other and those who cross our paths. We look at the world and we know that there are lots of people in need of a banquet. They need something to prime the pump of abundance so that they can turn around and be a blessing to someone else.

God has a ready supply of this kind of miracle just waiting for us to get out from behind our shutters and meet over a good steaming hot bowl of stone soup.

The Mighty Mustard Seed

Preached at Faith Episcopal Church on July 24, 2005

A story of early California, when it was only a wilderness, with a great many trees, beautiful plains, all kinds of wild animals and birds; many many Indians, and no white men at all.

Father Junipero Serra had come from Spain to Mexico to spread the gospel, and hearing about this beautiful, vast country to the north, decided to explore it. With a few faithful followers and Indian guides, he traveled north through the land that is now California. As he traveled he scattered mustard seeds brought from Spain to his left and to his right,

The following year, as they returned south they followed ‘a ribbon of gold’ and following that path again Father Serra went on to establish his ‘Rosary of Missions’ from San Diego to Sonoma.

As a new Californian, I really love this story – especially when the wild mustard blooms turn the hillsides and valleys that beautiful golden yellow. Just as in our gospel story today, those plants become huge, towering over Max and me as we walk to the beach. Orange County life is far removed from Jesus’ day and his favorite metaphors so it’s good for us to live in the midst of one of them – to see it spring up around us.

I had fun this week pursuing mustard seeds. A Google search will turn up all sorts of things. – the legend of Fr. Serra scattering the seeds, a site to buy those little mustard seed pendants, a number of ministry organizations from Canada to Jamaica that work to make a difference in the lives of people who struggle. There’s the Mustard Seed Foundation that makes grants all over the world – many of them are exactly what the name might imply – seed money for small revolving loan funds and start up businesses. Some of the seed money grants for women really excite me. I once took an anthropology course on Women in Developing Countries. When women are lifted out of poverty they change their communities. The seeds sprout and spread because the first thing they do with it is improve the diet and health of their families. The next thing they do is to improve their communities with things like opening schools. The Mustard Seed Foundation was a good discovery.

The next thing that Google turned up for me was the health benefits of mustard seeds. The mustard plant is related to broccoli and cabbage and we all know how important it is to eat those vegetables. There are over forty different varieties. Enzymes in mustard seeds have been shown to inhibit growth of existing cancer cells and to discourage the formation of new ones. Go mustard seeds! And it doesn’t end there. It appears that mustard seeds are an excellent source of selenium of magnesium which help reduce the severity of asthma and some symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. Magnesium is a help in lowering blood pressure, help with bad sleep patterns, reduces the frequency of migraines and even prevent heart attacks linked to diabetic heart disease. We will be serving mustard at the coffee hour!

The French eat of a lot of mustard, after all, Dijon is a city in France! I grew up eating American mustard so I was not prepared for the real deal. I innocently bought a very generic store brand mustard. I was using it in a sauce for some chicken. Let me tell, that mustard was out to get me – even the tiniest little bit left me feeling as if my sinuses had been scoured with bleach! It was shocking –that mustard should be listed as a controlled substance! Maybe mustard isn’t just that friendly little seed. It’s strong stuff and needs to be respected.

Jesus’ audience was fisherman and farmers. They knew all about mustard. They knew that it was a dangerous weed that was highly competitive with wheat. Left unchecked, a few mustard plants will reduce the wheat yield by 35%. It is a plant of amazing fecundity. Each mustard plant is capable of producing 1.5 million seeds. When the seeds mature, the whole plant breaks off at ground level and it turns into a tumbleweed, scattering seeds for miles. A mustard plant was not a happy image for a Galilean farm community. It was an invasive weed that drew birds that ate the carefully sown good seed. And Jesus said that’s what the kingdom of Heaven is like.

Renown Jesus scholar Dominic Crossan puts it this way. “The point is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, or even higher, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses – if you could control it.” (The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediteranean Jewish Peasant.)

When the Gospel’s were written, the young faith was already beginning to spread like mustard. The prolific plant is a good metaphor for the power of Christian proselytizing – the sharing of the good news. The tumbleweed message of Jesus spread throughout the middle east, europe, and eventually the world. Christianity was really the first evangelistic religion. Prior to Christianity, people didn’t really think of religion as something that might be chosen, you simply were whatever faith your community espoused. Jesus brought choice into the faith equation. Some Jews chose to follow the new sect, some pagans chose to become followers of the Way. There were plenty of documented examples of families being split. Then there were the Reformation stories of communities and nations split over choices within Christianity. Trying to control the weed, once it gets going is nearly impossible.

Then you add a new proselytizing religion into the mix, a new sort of mustard and things get really out of control. Islam and Christianity both claim to be the only way, to know the only truth, the control the only gate to heaven. It’s a good time to remember that there’s not just one kind of mustard – and that God loves wondrous variety.

I don’t believe that Jesus ever intended his followers to become warlike in his name, or to persecute people who believed differently. I think he intended people to know the love of God that resides in each and everyone of us. Jesus said, know that it’s there, have faith in its power, even if it is tiny. When it sprouts, it can bring a kind of healing and peace unlike any you have ever known. It’s like joy bubbling up inside of you. Outrageous love for everyone, even the most unlikely. It shows in your face, in your walk, in your laughter, in your compassion. It is contagious and others will be drawn to it. They will want to know what makes you so contented; they will want what you have.

So close your eyes, and picture a point of light, as tiny a mustard seed. It is somewhere between your diaphram and your heart. Can you see it? Take a deep breath and watch and feel it begin to sprout. It sends little shoots in all directions, lighting up your being from within. Feel it filling your center down to your feet and up to your head. Then feel it escaping the boundaries of your flesh and radiating out into the world. That is love and once it gets started it will take over and fill empty places, crowd out hatred and judgment and it will leave no room for fear. Let this weed of love grow in you and beyond you. Be the kingdom of heaven.

Come and be fed

Preached at Faith Episcopal on July 10, 2005.

Bombs in London, car accidents, all manner of tragedy and sadness. We’ve just had a week that reminds us how easily our fears are fed. God bless the Brits for climbing out of smoke filled tube stations and being so British – stiff upper lip and a refusal to be afraid.

Then we have Isaiah issuing this extravagant invitation. Come and be filled with that which truly feeds you. Drink deeply of the waters that truly quench your thirst. In the midst of a frightening morning Londoners reaffirmed who they are – their insistence on being true to themselves was their nourishment. Courage satisfied them and they spent no money or labor on fear.

I’ve been fed a lot this week. Melanie’s leaving has been the occasion of many lovely invitations – all of which offered abundant food. It was a wonderfully satisfying week –experiencing such mutual affection – yours for Melanie and hers for you. We ate in restaurants, in your homes and all the food was good but it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d been served bread and water – what fed and satisfied us was the love and friendship shared in those moments. Thank you all.

There have been many feeding stories that have come across my desk and computer screen in the last week. They all tell the same story in different ways… It seems that in Everett, Washington there was another bride who decided to call off her wedding 12 days before the event. Instead of creating a media circus by running away she and her parents held the reception anyway and invited the residents of the Interfaith Family Shelter which is across the street from the church where the wedding was to be held. Fifty of the family’s friends joined an equal number of shelter residents. There was delicious food and a DJ cranking out good danceable music. The extra food fed people for three more days. The manager of the shelter remarked how wonderful it was for people to have an evening free from worry. This is a story straight out of the gospels.

Another story about feeding came from an experimental program in Kenya – looking at the kind of help from developed world do African nations really need. The village of Sauri was selected because it is a typical remote African community. Almost two thirds of the villagers live on less than $.55 a day; a third of the adults were HIV positive and malaria was rife. The nearest hospital served 100,000 people and had no doctor. The traditional subsistence farming had left the soft red soil worn out and depleted of nutrients. Enter Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Their Millenium Development Goals plan to reduce world poverty by half by 2015. The first step was to infuse the soil with fertilizer that had always been unaffordable for the farmers of Sauri. Seed for hybrid corn that produces double ears was provided, the community water supply was repaired and a clinic was built. They also provided mosquito netting to cut down on the malaria. None of this took huge amounts of money – it is estimated that it costs $110 per person. People with AIDS are being given anti-retroviral drugs. The villagers have bought a truck to take their surplus produce to the nearest town. The Kenyan government has upheld their part of the project by getting electricity to the school and clinic. The villagers each now contribute about $10 in labor or goods. They have made benches for the school. The farmers will pay for their fertilizer and seeds by giving a tenth of the crop to the school for lunches.

This kind of project is neighbor love that truly feeds. It is one response to hunger in the world and can be embraced with courage and conviction. We will never be truly fed or satisfied by selfish acquisition. All that we can accumulate will be as dust in our mouths unless it is shared. You will be fed by the knowledge of God, by God’s knowledge of you. You will be fed by the love of God, that love which you receive and which you give. You will be fed endlessly.

I leave you with a story…

The students of a great Zen master asked him to describe Heaven and Hell. He told them – in Hell there are banquet tables covered with every sort of good food, delicacies from many kitchens all offering up tantalizing aromas, all beautiful to please the eye as well as the palate. But the people seated at the tables are starving and shout angrily at one another, for you see, they all wear golden sleeves and they cannot bend their arms to feed themselves. They sit in the presence of such abundance and cannot enjoy it. After a pause, the great master said Heaven is not that different – great tables overflowing with every kind of delicious food, prepared to delight the senses. The people seated at the tables also cannot bend their arms but the sounds of laughter and joy ring from the banquet hall because at the Heavenly banquet the people feed one another.

Keeping It Simple

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on July 3, 2005.

I used to celebrate the Eucharist in Rite One, with the old Elizabethan language, every week – it was the preferred form used at the 9:00 Sunday service at the Cathedral. While there is always comfort in familiarity, I don’t really miss it, except for two things; first, the regular recitation of the Summary of the Law. “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. One these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” I miss that in our contemporary setting. The other thing I miss are the sentences that go between the absolution of sins and the Peace. I miss saying “Hear the Word of God to all who truly turn to him. Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.” Those two reminders, the summary and the invitation, are there to ground us in what is important – they keep it simple.

As this is Melanie’s last Sunday here – I’ve been unable to avoid thinking all things Melanie. When I met with Bp. Bruno just a year ago about coming to this diocese, I never dreamed that I would be showered with so many blessings. To be made the vicar here – after meeting him only once, was amazing enough. But to end up living ten miles from my daughter was some of Spirit’s more creative work. Last September Melanie moved in with me and we have had a delightful time as mother/daughter roommates and friends. Fortunately, our gospel today gives me good cover to preach about her.

Jesus says today that “these things” have been hidden from the wise and revealed to infants or “little ones.” What are these things? The answer to that question is the answer to the question, “what was important that Jesus wanted people to know?”

I’ve always maintained that motherhood was the best training for ministry. You learn a lot from the wisdom of children. What do children know? They are born knowing the basics, it’s good to be fed, it’s good to have a warm bed, it’s good to be held, it’s good to be loved. Babies’ innate wisdom reflects the blessings that God would give us. . Melanie and Brady approached all of these differently. As a newborn, Melanie would sleep through a meal. Once he was on solid food Brady, just to be contrary, cried between bites, afraid that he’d starve to death before the next spoonful. I couldn’t shovel it in fast enough. They were different but the basic truth was there – the needs of the body are important.

As babies get a little older and begin to understand some level of individuality, what is important to them expands. Familiar faces bring joy, strangers can be scary. During one baptism at the Cathedral, I had successfully received the sleeping infant from her mother – things were going well. Then I poured water on her – she woke up to an unfamiliar face and screamed at the top of her considerable lungs – right into my lapel mic and nearly killed the choir! Little ones engage their curiosity and develop independence through accomplishments beginning with rolling over, sitting up, crawling and eventually walking. These all come with the need to feel safe.

As a sense of self and freedom to explore grew I could see where the kids safety zones were. Melanie explored her limits of safety in creative ways. Shortly after learning to climb I saw her one day standing on the sofa looking out the window. I’m not sure what possessed her to push back on the cushions and sat down with such force that she bounced off the couch and landed on her well padded bottom on the floor. It stunned her a bit and I ran to pick her up and do all necessary motherly consoling. She figured out quickly that she wasn’t hurt and so the first thing she did when I put her down was to climb back on the sofa and try to recreate the stunt. The element of risk was acceptable plus I was there to pick her up.

We had a Mother’s Out program that they would go to so I could have a couple of hours to run errands without car seats and diaperbags. Brady would hit the door of that place and be off and running without looking back. He had a great time but boy did he make me pay when I came to pick them up. He would throw spectacular fits which stunned the people who worked there. They told me – he was fine until you got here. I finally figured out that it was Brady’s way of making sure that he could count on me. If he was a rotten as he could be and I would still take him home he felt confident in my love for him. He was a two year old Prodigal Son unsure of his status and welcome – I had let him go – could he trust me to bring him back home. It was fun time raising that boy.

For children in nominally attentive homes, these are conditions that just are – they are cared for, fed, loved, kept safe. It’s uncomplicated – it doesn’t call for lots of interpretation. It doesn’t need lots of rules. The next chapter in the Gospel Matthew following today’s reading is one of the stories of Jesus conflict with the Pharisees over activities on the Sabbath. He and his disciples are walking through the fields and they are hungry. However, plucking the grain from the stalks is considered work and the Sabbath is for rest. Jesus is making the point that sometimes we make it too complicated. The need for a day off is real – everyone needs a break. But when it becomes so institutionalized that there are rules to follow in your recreation – we’ve made it too complicated. Children know better than that. Some times on my day off I like to bake something – it’s not work - it’s recreation because it refreshes me. One spring break Melanie went to Georgia and built houses with Habitat for Humanity. Was she working? – you bet she was! But was her spirit refreshed, yet it was. She knew how to take her break.

Kids keep it simple. The Norris kids were our neighbors, the oldest, John was Melanie’s age and after him there was a ton of girls, starting with Keeley. One day our neighbor’s dog Bingo was hit by a car and died. Sad moment for all of us. John was particularly undone. I think it was his first experience with death and he cried for days and went on and on about it. Julie did her best to comfort and console him and find answers to the unanswerables. Finally Keeley, who spent most of her short life sucking her thumb had finally had enough. She rolled her eyes at John and loudly popped her thumb out of her mouth and said “Look, Bingo was here, he got killed and now he’s in Heaven.” She gave John a withering “I dare you to say anything else” kind of look and put her thumb back in its normal place. John seemed satisfied. Kids know how to keep it simple.

In simplicity you can see the big picture. Jesus reminds us and invites us to that big picture. He said “Love God, love your neighbor - come to me and we will keep it simple.”