Month: July 2024

July 28, 2024 First Congregational Church in Auburn, MA UCC

John 6:1-14 — After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. ² A large crowd kept following him because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. ³ Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴ Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. ⁵ When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” ⁶ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. ⁷ Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” ⁸ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ⁹ “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” ¹⁰ Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place, so they sat down, about five thousand in all. ¹¹ Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. ¹² When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” ¹³ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. ¹⁴ When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” 

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I want to set the scene in your minds – so imagine yourself watching from the door of one of our church school classrooms… watching the teacher tell the story of Noah and the Ark to a group of ten year olds, there for Vacation Bible School.  It’s a mixed group of kids who’ve always attended and some from the neighborhood, who’ve maybe never been inside a church before.

As the teacher tells the story, describes the animals two by two, talks about how Noah was told in a dream to build the ark – all that story we’ve known forever – look over there at that boy with the green t-shirt.  Check out the look on his face – a mixture of utter disbelief and disgust.  There can be no doubt – that boy thinks he’s being sold a bill of goods.  There’s no such thing as that ark.  There were no animals, two by two.  And nobody ever heard God’s voice in a dream.  

If you came back the next day, you might notice that boy is gone.  He’s turned his back on church because that story made no sense to him.  In fact, the story we thought would strengthen faith actually drove him away.

I was the one watching the boy as I assisted in the VBS classroom that year in my home church.  And, yes, he never came back.  

We tried to tell him a story about how miraculous God is; instead he heard a story about how unbelievable God is.

Now, what I’m thinking about today is whether or not we’ve completely missed the boat on what makes  those stories miracles… about what makes them miraculous…   Today’s reading is one of those miracles, but you know there are others…. children healed, Lazarus brought back to life, Jonah and the whale…. and I want us to think about whether by focusing on arks, and bread, and medical healing, we’ve missed what’s really amazing.

And I wonder if we haven’t totally missed the point of the stories because we keep insisting that it’s the ark, or the fantastic amount of bread, or the healing that is the point of the story.  You see, I don’t think it’s the ark or the bread or the act of healing that’s the miracle; I think it’s always and every time the relationships folks have with God or Jesus that is the key to the miracle.  

If we listen to the story of the feeding of the 5000 and marvel at how Jesus managed to come up with bread and cheese and fish for all, then what we’re thinking is that miracles are about someone coming in and saving us at the last minute.  It means we think that miracles are passive events. Maybe we pray, but after that, it’s all up to Jesus to do something for us

Do you remember the story about the man at the pool of Bethzatha?  (or Bethsaida, or Bethesda… the way the Hebrew letters got transliterated into Greek and then English is irrelevant… they’re all the same place.)  So, there’s this pool in Jerusalem, and the story is that if you dip yourself in the water when it is turbulent, there’s a chance that you’ll be cured of whatever ails you.  But you’ve got to be first.  

Jesus is talking to a guy who’s been pool-side for thirty-eight years, never making it into the pool…. thirty-eight years.  Jesus listens, and then he says to the guy, “Do you want to be healed?”  After 38 years, it’s a reasonable question…he’s spent decades laying by the side of the pool, never in the water.

So, what’s more miraculous – that Jesus heals the man?  Or that Jesus frees him from the captivity of being poolside?  Is this another anti-scientific story about healing?  Or is it a story about the way following Jesus can change everything?

It’s way too easy to picture miracles as always being about the manipulation of physical realities, or special treatment for God’s chosen people… I’ve actually seen people suggesting that in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump the other week, it was God’s guiding hand that kept Trump from being seriously injured, and that is a miracle.  So, why didn’t God save Corey Comperatore?  He was just attending the rally.  I don’t know how that feels to Comperatore’s family, but I do know that it’s insulting to God to suggest that God has love and compassion for one person and not for all people, that God would protect one person but allow another, an innocent person, totally not involved, to be killed.  That’s not a miracle, that’s just sloppy thinking.

So, what’s the powerful word of hope to come to us from today’s miracle story?  Why stop with the idea that it’s only about the miraculous production of food?  As I read and re-read it, it seems to me that it’s not about sudden interventions, or the sorts of things that need a protector to show up.  It is, instead, about the way that listening to Jesus, about the way that following Jesus’ path, feeds us with the strength for each day.  Jesus feeds us, gives us to the strength we need for each day.  That’s the miracle here.

The even bigger miracle is that this isn’t something that only happened to long-gone disciples on a hill in Palestine.  It’s not something that happened back then and never again.  It happens to us, every day.  All we have to do is reach out to Jesus to know and experience the miracle of strength in our lives.  All we have to do is reach out for a guiding word to help us live lives of worth and value.  And that’s the miracle for us today.  The miraculous changing of our lives from nothing to something, that no matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey we are loved by God, accepted by God, and commissioned to be God’s loving disciples right here in Auburn.  That’s a miracle to hold on to.

That’s what God is telling us today.  We all have a part in God’s miracles and that part comes as we aim to live out the Gospel call to be people of love, people of mercy, people of generosity.  That we take up this calling, that we live it out, that we persist in it to the end, now that’s the real miracle.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child

The First Congregational Church in Auburn UCC   July 7, 2024

Mark 6:1-6 (The Message)

He left there and returned to his hometown. His disciples came along. On the Sabbath, he gave a lecture in the meeting place. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. “We had no idea he was this good!” they said. “How did he get so wise all of a sudden, get such ability?”

But in the next breath they were cutting him down: “He’s just a carpenter—Mary’s boy. We’ve known him since he was a kid. We know his brothers, James, Justus, Jude, and Simon, and his sisters. Who does he think he is?” They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further.

Jesus told them, “A prophet has little honor in his hometown, among his relatives, on the streets he played in as a child.” Jesus wasn’t able to do much of anything there—he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them, that’s all. He couldn’t get over their stubbornness. He left and made a circuit of the other villages, teaching.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Years ago, I knew a young person who’d won a full ride scholarship to one of those prestigious prep schools – the kind of school which generally costs upwards of $70K a year and points you towards future success.  

We were all excited for her and her family – and, of course, it was a feather in the cap of our school system.  And then she turned the whole thing down, and went instead to our local high school.  It’s a good school, to be sure, but more invested in preparing people to work in the local industry.

I thought for sure she’d decided she didn’t want to leave home and friends.  But one day I found myself at the local version of Starbucks or Dunkin’s and her mom was at the next table, talking to her friends.  That’s how I learned that the girl’s parents had refused her permission to take the scholarship… because they thought, probably rightly, that if she went off to that fancy school, she would change so much she wouldn’t belong at home anymore.

Her mom said she’d do well wherever she went, and they’d had to think about what would be best for her overall.  And, who knows, maybe that was the right decision.

But it reminded me how strong our community expectations are.  It’s the sort of thing we see here in this morning’s readings.  Back home everyone is impressed by Jesus, at least at first, but their expectations – after all he’s just the carpenter’s son – made it impossible for them to really take Jesus seriously.

What we expect people to be puts fences around what we’re able to hear them say.  Those folks in Jesus’ hometown couldn’t hold onto the Good News he preached because all they could really see was a carpenter’s son, and so he couldn’t possibly be saying anything enduringly important.  Now, if he’d been talking about the differences between walnut and chestnut wood…. or now to sharpen tools, they’d have saved his thoughts forever.

But they thought they already knew him, and so they couldn’t really hear him.

That’s one reason why it can be hard to hear the Good News.  But it’s not the only one.  Sometimes we struggle to hear because we fear what that new idea might mean to us.  I’m not just talking about bad news, but any news that might be unwelcome… 

You’ll notice that because the folks back home couldn’t hear what Jesus was saying, Jesus himself had no power there. And he went away.

Joseph Bessler, who teaches theology in Phillips Seminary, puts it this way:  “established habits of mind are powerful in resisting any gospel that would alter the balance of social power”^[1]

Does that make sense to you?  Does it still make sense if I tell you his school is in Oklahoma?  Or do our cultural assumptions say he should be discounted because, well, Oklahoma??

That’s what this is all about.  It’s about helping us become aware of the assumptions that make it hard for us to hear the call of Jesus.  Maybe the assumption that stops you is an accent, maybe a skin color, or an origin.  Maybe, the assumption that makes it hard for you to hear is a sense that if you once listened, really listened, you’d find yourself changing in ways that are scary.  Maybe if you could hear, you’d have to stop hiding behind “we’ve always done it this way”.  I know that’s how it works for me.

Being a Christian isn’t always easy.  Sometimes we’re forced to face things we’d rather ignore, sometimes we have to try new things when we’re really uncomfortable.  And sometimes we have to give up what we adore…. but we’re not left without resources.

First of all, we’re supposed to do this work in community – we are not alone, we are never alone.  And then we have the power and comfort of worship to support and encourage us along the way.  And always, always, we have the bread of heaven to nourish us.  This communion we will share today gives us strength, reminds us that we are part of a centuries-long family of believers who have dedicated themselves to the idea that love changes everything.

So let us eat together and face the idea that the world is changing with courage and determination, that we might follow Jesus all the way.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child

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^[1] Joseph A. Bessler, “Theological Perspective,” in Feasting on the Gospels: Mark, ed. Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, First edition., A Feasting on the Word Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 168.