Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (11B), July 22, 2018

O God of compassion, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

If you were in any other church service where the Revised Common Lectionary is used for the appointed Bible readings today, you would have heard a short Gospel lesson about Jesus’ lovely invitation to his disciples to have a little R&R in a deserted place, and the compassion that Jesus had on the crowds that messed up their retreat plans. Then, skipping almost twenty verses, you would have heard that people from all over brought friends and family who were sick to Jesus, hoping to have them touch even the fringe of his cloak because all who came in contact with it were healed. Usually when verses are skipped like that, I mention something about them in my sermon, but this week I really wanted you to hear the whole story for yourselves because the skipped verses are about Jesus’ disciples. When those verses get taken out, the story becomes solely about the power and popularity of Jesus. Of course that matters, but Mark’s Gospel is not so much about how magical Jesus was. What matters much more is that Jesus’ followers fully engage, fully participate in the Rule of Love, which is another name for the Reign of God. [1]

Over and over, Jesus gives his disciples, the learners and leaders, authority to teach and heal, to proclaim good news to all who are oppressed and marginalized. “You go do it,” he says. Their success has been great enough that, as we heard last week, even Herod noticed. When the disciples returned from their adventures, both excited and exhausted, they unexpectedly encountered a huge crowd of hungry people who are described as like sheep without a shepherd, in other words, lost. The disciples’ response suggests to me that they were feeling depleted, under-resourced, overwhelmed, and well, crabby. And Jesus gives them more authority. “You give them something to eat,” he says. You can do it. He blesses the five loaves and two fish and gives them to the disciples. I want you to notice that miraculous multiplication happens in the disciples’ hands, not Jesus’ hands.

On the boat ride back, terrified by the storm, utterly astounded at the calm they experienced when Jesus finally got in the boat with them, Mark says that they were confused because their hearts were hardened – calloused actually, stubborn, unwilling or unable to be open, flexible, and vulnerable. Doesn’t this sound like what can happen to Jesus followers? Doesn’t this sound like the Church? No wonder the verses get omitted from our Sunday readings. Who wants our callouses pointed out?

Just thirty-two short verses later in the Gospel of Mark, there’s a second feeding of the multitudes story. Once again, the incredulous disciples ask how they are going to feed so many people in the desert. This time Jesus blessed seven loaves and a few small fish, and gave them to the disciples to distribute. After 4000 were fed, they had seven baskets of broken pieces left over. When the crowd had dispersed and they were back on their boat headed for Magdala, they realized that they had forgotten to bring any bread for themselves and only had one loaf. Doh. Listen to what Jesus said to them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collected?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” And that question is left hanging there as the scene changes, but it’s clear in the Gospel of Mark that the answer is still no. And that’s basically our answer too, as far as I can tell. We still do not understand much of the time.

We still don’t understand about compassion — one of the major themes of the stories of the Exodus, when the people understood that the Holy One had compassion for those in distress, enslaved and oppressed. Compassion, feeling with, feeling great affection and suffering with, is a fundamental attribute of God and a fundamental value of Jewish tradition. And in the Gospels, every time the word for compassion is used, a basic human need is present and plain. Compassion, I would argue, is at the heart of the Gospel message too. When we respond to need with compassion, when our needs are responded to with compassion, everyone will have enough, no matter how insufficient, insignificant or inadequate what we have to share seems to be. The Good News is that we are here today, engaging our memory and our imagination and our practice. The Good News, (which is what Gospel means) calls us not to keep apart from the suffering of the world, but to take our part, stretching beyond the perceived limitations of our resources to reveal the love of God.

In a few minutes we are going to have a formal “welcome to the Church” ceremony for baby William. William is not going to remember it. He will have to rely on others as he grows up to tell him, and more importantly, to show him, what it means to be a part of the Church, a follower of Jesus. What messages will William hear and what will he experience in the behavior of Jesus-followers as he grows up? Here’s what I’m hoping for. I’m hoping that anyone who does not know the love of God, the compassion of God, will come to know the love and compassion of God because of William and the rest of us. I’m hoping that we will all continue to grow as people who relate to each other with respect, with dignity and justice. I’m hoping that William will learn that, as misguided, confused, and calloused as the Church can be, sometimes the community of Jesus-followers with all our differences and disagreements is still the best at feeding hungry people, healing hurting people, liberating imprisoned people, loving the hard-to-love people, and proclaiming that those who are hungry and hurting and trapped and hard to love are made in God’s image too.

I’m hoping that William will learn what Jesus taught, that none of us can do it alone. I want William to know that we need community to feed us when we are hungry, to carry us when we are hurting, to heal us when we are suffering, to free us when we are trapped, and to love us when we are hard to love. We need community because it works as a pumice stone to smooth our rough edges, our callouses. We need community so that we have strength in numbers – support and solidarity – to work for peace with justice. We need companions to encourage us when we are afraid and to spell us when we need rest. We need opportunities to receive all of the God’s gifts and we need opportunities to give them too, in order to live into the fullness of life that is God’s desire for us. I want William to know that the basis for community is not agreement, but showing up. As Bishop Desmond Tutu says, the glue that holds the Anglican Communion together is that we meet.  Now as glue, this might sound pretty thin, but what if someone says, “I won’t meet.” “I don’t feel like showing up.” That is serious beyond words in the damage that it does to the community.

So I want William to know that we will need him to show up – to be in community with us – and I want us to show up for him as he grows into his life in Christ. I am grateful for every single person who has shown up today. Some of you are here specifically because of William – that is really wonderful. Some of you had no idea who William is or that he was going to be baptized today – you showed up for other reasons. Turns out that is really wonderful too! It’s a little bit sad to have a formal “welcome to the community” ceremony when the wider community doesn’t show up. One of the things about showing up is that you often don’t know before hand, and sometimes you don’t even know afterwards, for whom it makes a difference, how much it matters – but I can guarantee you that it matters a great deal.

I want William to know that he’s had an Episcopal initiation into Christianity and that we’re practicing. Practicing Episcopalians, practicing Christians. We don’t have it down yet, but we keep working on it together. That’s why we answer the baptismal covenant questions with an acknowledgement that we need God’s help. I want William to know that God will help. I want William to know that whether or not he ever believes in God, the Gospel promise is that God believes in him. The Gospel promise is that God believes in William and his mothers, Janice and Mary, and God believes in each one of the rest of us. That’s what Jesus showed us with his life and his love – and that’s what Jesus was hoping we would show one another.

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