9^th Sunday of Pentecost - August 2, 2009

Kingswood UMC - Buffalo Grove IL

Text: Mark 6:30-44

The story today is not a parable, or a story that Jesus tells to teach about God. It is a miracle story, something Jesus does that reveals who God is. It is not Jesus telling a story, it is Jesus as the story. You’ll remember that he’s been teaching and healing in the towns and villages of Galilee, and crowds have been clamoring after him, gathering in large numbers to hear him. They are eager to hear his words, to take in as much of what he says and who he is that they can. Many come who need healing .. or they come bringing those who do. So Jesus has designated some of his disciples to be apostles, those sent out to share in the work of teaching and healing. Our story begins as they return to report on what has been happening in their work ...

So much for a quiet day in a deserted place. The crowds found them ... and instead of a lonely place, it became a place crowded with people who were hungry to hear Jesus and to know his power to change their lives. So what is this about?

It seems to me that there are two ways to think about this. One is to focus on the crowds ... what were they hungry for? What was it that they needed that brought them out to hear Jesus? The second way is to focus on Jesus ... who was he? What did he have that drew the crowds to him? OR we might ask it this way ... What are you hungry for? What is it that brings you here to hear about Jesus week after week? And who is he ... who is Jesus? That is the key question of the whole first half of Mark ... and it remains our question, too. Who is Jesus for this day, for this time and place, for you, for us?

Let’s start with the what are you hungry for question. You’ve heard it asked ... or maybe asked it ... any number of times. It gets to the end of the day ... and there is no plan for dinner ... and somebody asks, "what are you hungry for?" as you decide which way to turn pulling out onto the highway. You do a body scan .. and decide pizza or Chinese or a salad bar or tacos or burgers or breakfast is what you are craving. Your companion may have a taste for something else, so you think

of a place where you can get both. What a luxury it is to have so many choices!!!

At this level it is a question that most of the world can’t even imagine.

But let’s think of this as a metaphor for other kinds of hungers. If we imagine the crowd that Jesus encountered at that deserted place we get some other clues. If we are like them ... Jesus described them as sheep without a shepherd ... we need to think about sheep for a minute. Generally, sheep aren’t too smart. They wander off into thickets and get caught in the brambles; they are vulnerable to predators; and they tend to over-graze unless prodded to move along. So in several ways, sheep without a shepherd are at risk ... and they may be hungry for protection from predators, for assurance that they’ll be freed from the places they get caught; and for encouragement and guidance toward new and greener pastures. Maybe these are things for which you are also hungry. There seem to be plenty of "predators" out there .... at least the fear of them is rampant ... and we invest huge amounts of our treasure protecting our selves. And we all have found ourselves "caught" in the thicket or brambles of a relationship or work or financial dilemma. We need reassurance that we’ll be freed and helped when we get caught. In addition, everyone of us can get stuck in a rut ... grazing the old routines until there is no nourishment left in what was once a green and fresh field. We need encouragement ... to be given courage ... and guidance in how to move on.

But there is another thing about this crowd that may help us name our own hungers. They come for healing ... for themselves or those for whom they care. They are wounded and want to be made whole ... so much so that they follow Jesus to out-of-the-way deserted places, and into a crowd, without any thought for taking along provisions ... hoping, longing that they will be healed. So intent are they at finding someone else to heal them, that they forget to take care of themselves by taking along some food for the day. They find themselves empty as the hour grows late. It isn’t that they need a fancy meal ... just daily bread would suffice.

I’m wondering if we aren’t a lot like that. We want the healer to heal us ... whether it is a doctor, or a counselor, or a preacher, or a new president ... and we forget to do the basic things that we know will strengthen us along the way. We place our hope in the expert, and then don’t take their advise. At least that is my story. I go to the chiropractor and podiatrist fairly regularly to deal with a sprain in my ankle that happened several years ago but still gets irritated and, now, aggravates my aging knees. They patiently talk to me, offer me treatments, and send me home with exercises ... which I routinely forget after the second or third day. Or maybe you go to a counselor, or consultant, to get help with a relationship or job situation. Just taking that action seems to help ... but you forget what they suggest, and soon are back in the old patterns.

The need for daily bread ... daily nourishment of our bodies and souls through food and exercise and spiritual food ... is a hunger we too often ignore. How often do you work through lunch so intent are you on getting the job done? Or forget breakfast because you are focused on some other need that you have ... to please a boss or teacher or friend? How often do you skip a morning walk or stretches, in order to have time to make the Starbucks stop? Or forget to say thank you for the sunrise, or rain, or for your daily bread?

So if the crowd in our story is any indication, I’m guessing that most of our hungers involve a search for one or several of these things.

We search and hunger ....

So the crowds follow Jesus ... and we have also followed him here. Who, exactly, is this man? Who is Jesus for you? How does this itinerant teacher and preacher from another time and place nourish and heal you? It seems to me that in this story there are at least three things that happen that tell us a bit about who Jesus is.

First we see that Jesus is a man with compassion. As the apostles, the ones who have been sent out to extend the work of healing and teaching, as they return in exhaustion from the many encounters they’ve had ... with not leisure even to eat .... Jesus reads between the lines of their reports that they need a break from the work and the crowds. The word compassion is a compound word meaning with passion. And the word passion comes from the Latin root, passio, meaning suffering. So compassion is to suffer with ... to feel deeply with. So Jesus gets it ... gets us ... knows what we are going through, knows our hungers, knows our need for rest, knows us in our most basic dependency and yearnings. He has compassion on apostles who serve in his name ... and on the crowds that gather around because they’ve just heard of him and are curious. He knows us because he’s been there ... tired, hungry, threatened, caught in the brambles of controversy. AND he knows something that we keep having to learn ... that we are not alone.

I visited with the father of one of our members this week who is quite ill. The second time I arrived at his room he was holding a small leather cross that one of his grandchildren had made in Sunday School here several years ago. It was embossed with various symbols and the initials of the grandson. He shared with me and his daughter that he holds it all night because it helps him remember that he is not alone.

Walter Brueggeman writes about the Spirituality of the Psalms (in a book by that name, 2002) and reminds us that the reason the darkness of life and death may be faced and lived into is that even in the darkness, there is One to address...and because of that we find the darkness strangely transformed by the power of God’s relentless solidarity with us. (p. xiii)

So Jesus offers compassion ... or relentless solidarity. Secondly, we see that Jesus has the power of God in him. We can argue until the cows come home about what really happened that day. Was the actual cellular structure of the bread and fish changed so that it literally multiplied in Jesus’ hands? Or was the miracle that when one person shared, and Jesus blessed what was offered, others were inspired to also share what they had, producing a feast instead of the predicted famine? Frankly, I don’t think we need to decide. What is true is that it is a miracle ... a sign of God’s power to feed God’s people. God sent manna into the wilderness when the Israelites were ready to go back to the slave pens of Egypt. Just so, God’s power is available in Jesus to feed and nourish us so that we may live free and aware of God’s power to bless and to heal our hurts and fill our emptiness.

So compassion ... Jesus gets it, gets us ... and using the power of God to heal and feed and bless us are two of the ways we encounter Jesus. But there is one more thing. This isn’t a one way relationship. Yes, we’re dependent, frail, self-centered, wounded and hungry creatures. But God knows we’ve been given resources and gifts for this journey. The other thing about Jesus is that he challenges us to share in the responsibility of caring for ourselves and the hungry crowd all around us. He has called and claimed the disciples, sent them out to share in the work. And then, when they want to send the crowd away to find their own things to eat, Jesus tells the disciples to give them something to eat themselves!!! You give them something to eat, he says. When they resist, dumbfounded by his request, he simply tells them to pay attention to what they do have. When they are able to identify what is already available, Jesus takes it and multiplies it so that all are fed.

One of the biggest problems that I think we face as persons and families and as the church is that we are all too quick to focus on our limits and hesitant to do the work of identifying what we’ve already been given. When we can do that ... and put it in God’s hands ... miracles happen!!! And we and the world are changed.

How many loaves do you have? Go and see!!!

When they had found out what they had, they reported to Jesus: five loaves of bread and two fish.

Jesus ordered them to get all of the people ....