“Grace, Glory, and Foolishness”
John 6:1-21
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
7/27/14
If it’s just me, I’m not sure that I feed them. What about you?
Yeah, there’s a mess of them. And sure, they’re hungry. But after mingling with them even for a short
time, we see that most of them are nothing but groupies and thrill seekers. And they’ve been tagging along for weeks
now. But we understand that, too. I mean Jesus really is an attention magnet,
isn’t he? Unlike most of the other prophets,
miracle workers, and snake charmers drifting through the area, Jesus doesn’t
seem to be grasping for celebrity. He’s
just as edgy and daring as the best of them, but he really seems to care. He cares about, speaks to, touches the
forgotten, the disabled, the women, the Gentiles, and anyone else whom the
religious wheelers and dealers tell us to ignore.
Still, most of this crowd is mindless sheep waiting on the
next feed. So, if it’s just me, I
probably don’t feed them. I keep score
too closely. Not Jesus, though. His heart is high as the mountain, deep as
the sea, so much more welcoming and gracious than mine. All that matters to him is that people he
loves are hungry.
When worldly glory – being right, popular, and powerful –
become our greatest ambitions, Jesus reminds us that true glory is found in the
back of the crowd, in the humbling company of grace.
Taking stock of the situation, Jesus turns to Philip and
says, “It’s supper time. How are we
going to feed all these folks?”
Now, Philip and the rest have just been watching Jesus do
things that defy simple explanation. But
when he asks where they can find enough bread for all these folks, Philip seems
to come down with a case of amnesia.
“Well, I don’t know,” he answers. “You’d have to work six months to make enough
money to buy bread for this crowd.”
Jesus shakes his head as if to say, “Is that the best you
can do?”
Deciding to play along, Andrew says with graceless sarcasm,
“Oh look! Here’s a lad who’s got some
food for us. Now, what have you got,
young man? Five loaves of bread and two
fish? That’ll do it! Come on everybody, dig in!”
Not at all amused, Jesus looks at Andrew and says quietly,
“Tell everyone to sit down. Go on. Tell them.”
And the revelation begins.
Glory and grace overflow.
People eat, and a surplus is collected.
But all the people see is another act of nature-bending power. With their minds numbed by the bliss of
momentary fullness, the people begin to murmur among themselves, “This guy is
good! He’s real good! A guy like this
ought to be king!”
And so it begins.
The idea trickles innocently off of one person’s tongue, but it quickly
gathers speed, energy, and danger. Like
an avalanche, it sweeps through the crowd.
“Yeah! Yeah, let’s make Jesus our
king!”
All of a sudden the people forget what has happened. Instead of responding with gratitude to the
satisfaction of their hunger, the people become ravenous for more. The crowd has taken this incredible gift of
grace and twisted it to make Jesus fit into human categories of power and
authority. All it takes to be king, you
see, is to garner enough votes or to create enough fear. Always afraid of Caesars and Herods, the
people mistake the miracle of enough for the promise of excess. They overlook the presence of the gracious
response of God and choose to see the arrival of a king who can lead them to
victory over political enemies.
Jesus is no politician, though. Realizing what the crowds are plotting, he
pulls away. In another act of subversive
grace, he refuses to allow anyone, crowd or disciple, to imagine him as a king
like Caesar, or Herod, or even David.
Jesus desires to lead people of faith, people who can accept the uncertainties
of a spiritual life without depending on the crutches of signs and wonders, of
proofs and absolutes that make discipleship a safe option in a dangerous world.
While in Mebane, NC, I served on the board of Allied
Churches of Alamance County, whose purpose is to feed, shelter, educate and
otherwise help the homeless and working poor of the area. At a board retreat one weekend we found
ourselves in the midst of a discussion about finances, always a source of
anxiety for nonprofits. One board member
observed that we were approaching the problem entirely from a business
standpoint. It appeared that our trust
lay almost exclusively in outward efforts: fundraisers, letters to churches,
grants, and so forth. She wondered out
loud how we might approach that same work as a spiritual mission rather than as
pure business.
As she did, another board member interrupted. “That doesn’t work!” he crowed. “You can’t run an organization that way! I mean sure, we trust God. It’s right there on our money, ‘In God We
Trust.’ But you still have to go out and
get the money. Just to sit back and
trust God. It’s foolishness. It doesn’t work!”
Trusting God doesn’t work.
It’s foolish. That’s what he said.
I think that like Philip, that board member missed the
point. It seems to me that this fellow
might have believed in God, but he
had never learned, and maybe he’d never been taught, that trust is a whole
different net of fish. Mere belief tends
to leave us at a place of personal consent and self-satisfaction. Trust, on the other hand, takes practice and lots
of hard work. Trusting God will work us
to death – from life to death to life anew.
Trusting God is grace, glory, and
foolishness all wrapped up together.
Just like Love. Just like Jesus
himself.
For Jesus, grace and glory always come as a package
deal. When feeding the multitudes, his
grace reveals his glory. Late that same
night, the disciples are huddled together in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Strong winds and high waves rock the little
boat and threaten to capsize it. Jesus
appears, and the grace of his presence reveals his glory as he delivers his
followers from chaos to calm.
The presence of Christ in our midst does not promise the
end of suffering, just the end of lonely and meaningless suffering. Such talk always sounds foolish in a culture that
associates blessing with health, beauty, wealth, popularity, and power.
In the last thirty six hours, this part of Christ’s body
has been immersed in suffering. On
Friday night we held a memorial service for a young man who met with such
despair that he acted to end his own life.
I am grateful that this sanctuary was a place in which his friends and
family could gather to grieve and to begin to heal. Yesterday afternoon we gave thanks for a life
that spanned more than nine decades, yet a life that included the death of a
beloved son in the terrible insanity that is war. In both services there were hearts hungry for
assurance and hope. And going into both
services I prayed that there would be enough for everyone. I could only trust that there would be.
Immediately after Dr. Doane’s service, a number of us went
straight to the Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen where people who were physically
hungry lined up to be fed. There weren’t
five thousand people at Main Street Christian Church last night, but there are
millions upon millions more like them in God’s creation.
When we stop and think about it, it becomes all too easy to
follow Philip’s lead, to throw our hands up and say, “There’s just not enough to
go around, not enough hours in the day, not enough gas in my tank, not enough
gift beneath my tree. I can’t do
it. It doesn’t work.”
It sounds foolish to say in this
world, but yes, there is grace and glory to spare. That’s why Jesus says to us, “Sit down. Get ready to eat. Get ready to share. There is enough. It’s right here. Trust me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment