Full Transcript of Justin Crisp's Homily:
“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.” In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When I was growing up here in Seymour, the story of Jesus feeding the five-thousand was one of those storybook, shock-and-awe scenarios that confirmed Jesus' divinity and miracle-making power. He would receive the bread and fish from the little boy—important to the story because even I could be this little boy— lift his hands to the sky, say a few magic words, and then hand out the food to everyone. In my mind, this seemed to happen instantly too, because it would have taken far too much time for all five thousand people to go through a cafeteria line, like I had to at Seymour Primary just down the road from here. And at the end of my dream, the camera would zoom out and pan across the countryside, as a few of the more slow eaters among us finished munching and the rest of the people began to gather up the remains in big baskets, which were all filled to the point of overflowing.
How beautiful is that? Jesus took a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and BAM! Abundance. We could use a little abundance today, couldn't we? We are a paralyzed people, understandably overwhelmed by the weight of terrifyingly complex economic problems, trapped in complicated webs of social and cultural despair, oppressive systems that have polluted our minds and hearts by telling us that some people matter more than others, some people are worth more than others, some people deserve more than others.
I don't know about you, but I have often find myself closed in by the immensity of the problems we have made for ourselves, and frustrated by the sheer incompetence of our political and intellectual discourse. I have been shocked by the level of despair I have witnessed as a chaplain at the University of Tennessee Medical Center this summer, the despair born of being confronted with a diagnosis with a cure for which you know you cannot pay, the pain of hearing of a spouse's death over the phone because you simply don't have the resources to get to the hospital to be with her; as if being chronically ill isn't enough, you have to deal with the burden of knowing that the daughter who is holding vigil by your side has counted out pennies in order to get something for her headache from the gift shop.
We could use a little bit of that abundance now, Lord. I know some people who need those loaves and fishes. I know I cannot simply lift my hands to the sky and watch as bread magically multiplies, or falls to the ground like manna from heaven— but if there never seems to be enough for everyone, I must ask why.
I have fallen in love with our reading from 2 Kings, this story of Elisha feeding the prophetic community assembled around him, which St. John's re-telling of Jesus' feeding miracle seems to mimic. There's something important foregrounded for us by this passage from the Hebrew Bible, something to which we should pay attention. Think about the contrast between the characters of this story: you've got the servant of the man who has provided food for the group, for one, and he's positively incredulous at Elisha's suggestion that twenty loaves and some grain could satiate a hundred hungry stomachs.
No way! He cries. This is impossible. You're so impractical, Elisha. It'll never work. Elisha, however, simply recognizes the gifts his community has been given and calls for their just distribution: "Give it to the people and let them eat." And in accordance with God's faithfulness and Elisha's prophetic wisdom, there is more than enough.
Here we've got personifications of two logics, two ways of seeing the world: a logic of scarcity and a logic of abundance.
We see abundance in Elisha's retort to "Give it to the people! Let them eat," in his thanksgiving for God's providence and trust in God's faithfulness, and in his dogged determination to ensure the hungry among him are fed.
But a logic of scarcity is being exemplified by the servant: this is never going to work, there isn't enough to go around, so I've got to protect my treasure to ensure that, at the most, me and my closest loved ones are safe.
Sounds just like our culture to me. Sounds like the paralysis, fear, and resignation that characterizes this, our stately culture of death which sparkles.
The servant is not wholly to blame for this, nor am I suggesting that a wholesale condemnation of our culture is the answer. Fear does terrible things to human beings. And we've been told this is all the best we can do. It's about fixing it, patching it up, bailing it out.
This is exactly the issue, because the difference between Elisha and the servant, what keeps us from living out a logic of abundance, is a failure of imagination.
Growing up, I loved watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood on our local PBS station—my mother can tell you, it was a daily routine for us. And one of things I appreciate most about how Fred Rogers taught me, through his television show, to think and to play was his focus on "make-believe," on imagination. Recently, PBS did a mock-up re-mix of some Mr. Rogers' songs which, interestingly enough, went viral on YouTube, which I think says something about that for which our culture is hungry. The chorus of the remix goes something like this:
Did you ever grow anything in the garden of your mind?
You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind.
It’s good to be curious about many things.
You can think about many things and make-believe
And they’ll grow.
Growing things in the gardens of our minds is something intrinsic to the Christian life, something integral to our theological and spiritual tradition.
I love this closing doxology from our reading from Ephesians:
"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine."
More than we can ask or imagine.
So much for, "That's not realistic. That's never going to happen. This is the best we've got." We have a God who is at work in us—a God who is giving us the good of God's own life through gifts of supernatural grace, raising us beyond our natural capacities, out of our conditions of scarcity, and empowering us to participate in the movement of Christ through history. We have a God who does extraordinary things with ordinary stuff: twenty loaves and some grain, five barley loaves and two fish, and in the bread and the wine of the eschatological feast we are about to celebrate together.
See, something interesting is happening in St. John's re-telling of Jesus' miracle—verse 11 includes what might seem at first glance to be a throw-away clause. It reads, "Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them..."
When he had given thanks. Whatever happens hinges on this. On giving thanks. In the Greek, this a form of the verb eucharisteó—from which we get a term with which we Episcopalians are intimately familiar: the Eucharist. If you break down "Eucharist" etymologically, you see that "Eu" means good and "charis" means grace—so, in a sense, eucharisteó is an offering of praise and thanksgiving that God's grace works well. In the words of our prayer book, "It is [indeed] right to give God thanks and praise." The Great Thanksgiving that follows is form of anamnesis, or a sacred remembering or recollection of God's goodness and faithfulness to us from the beginnings of creation, and culminates in our remembrance of the Words of Institution, another time when Jesus took bread and gave it to friends. In remembering this, we re-member Christ's body, and by consuming these holy gifts, we are consumed by them
we become, as we pray after Communion, "living members of the Body of Christ." In this meal, there is always enough for everyone.
Our world needs our imaginations, needs for us to grow good and faithful and true and beautiful ideas in the gardens of our minds, needs us to embody a logic of abundance which is never satisfied by with "that's just the best we can do" until everyone is fed.
Our world, our nation, our region, our town— Seymour needs your voices and your bodies, So the next time someone tells you your idea, your vision, your dream, for a more just and beautiful world is just not realistic, I want you to remember that you are the Body of the Messiah in this world, that in the words of St. Augustine, what you receive at this table, is the mystery that means you, so be a member of the Body of Christ, and make your Amen true. Let us make the Eucharist our imagination.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Thank you for such an inspiring Homily, Justin. If you would be interested in attending a class Justin will be teaching consider attending "Jesus and Paul on Poverty and Economics:"
This class will be taught by Justin Crisp, in partnership with Dr. Diana Swancutt, Visiting Scholar at Boston University. The course is sure to ignite stimulating dialogue on moral life as it pertains to economic justice and the reality of poverty in our city, nation, and world in light of the Christian tradition—and the witness of Jesus and St. Paul in particular.
At Tyson House Episcopal-Lutheran Campus Ministry on UT's Campus,
**Thursday, August 2 and 9 from 6:00-7:30 PM and
**Saturday, August 4 and 11 from 9:00 AM-12:00 Noon
