“Hungry People, Frightened Disciples” based on 2 Kings 4:42-44 and…

July 29, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I have a tendency to get caught up in miracles stories and miss their points. Were there really 5000 people there? Does that include or exclude women and children? Did this happen in the country, in a city, or in the Transjordan (as various gospels purport)? Are we to understand this as the loaves and fishes literally being expansive? Are we to assume that one person’s generosity enabled others to share as well? Or, is this really another way of explaining communion, and we are to attend to the ways that small piece of the bread of life can feed our souls?

(I think for John, this is the communion story. He doesn’t have communion on Jesus’ last night because he has footwashing. And the verbs fit. John has Jesus take the bread, give thanks, distribute them … and also the fish, which seems a solid variation on the cup.)

My questions are ones I’m interested in, BUT they’re distractions. However, as much as I want to make sense of the story by assessing the veracity of the details, the Bible doesn’t work that way! The Bible simply isn’t obsessed with factuality the way that moderns are. The Bible thinks that it is OK have 4 or 5 totally different versions of the same stories (like this one), and doesn’t mind the differences between them. That would seem to indicate that the details aren’t the point!! The Bible speaks in METAPHOR, because it speaks of things that are bigger than facts.

That being said, I think one of the easiest ways to figure out what metaphors and truths the Bible is trying to get to is to pay attention to the ways that stories are adapted as they are retold. One of the most common ways that the Gospels make sense of Jesus is by using references to Hebrew Bible leaders. For instance, the Gospel of Matthew spends a lot of energy constructing Jesus as the “new Moses” including having him come back in to the Promised Land from Egypt. Matthew and Luke each find a way to speak of Jesus as the “new David” by making sure to place his birth in Bethlehem. All of the Gospels also compare Jesus to the greatest prophets of the Hebrew Tradition, Elijah and Elisha, and this story is one of those examples.

Elijah came first. His story of miraculous feeding found in 1 Kings 17:8-16. That story tells of the prophet, who was on the run, being instructed to go to a poor widow’s house so that the widow would feed him. He was hungry and in need of food because of a drought, a drought that he had predicted would come, a drought that the Bible presents as an expression of God’s displeasure at royal behavior. Elijah wasn’t the only one who was hungry because of the drought. The widow he was sent to was also a mother, and she had only a small bit of meal and a tiny bit of oil left to her name. When the prophet asked for some bread, she responded, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” (NRSV, v. 12) The prophet asked for some of the tiny bit she had left, and she gave it to him. Somehow, the widow, her child, and the prophet had enough to eat for many days, and survived.

The Bible is affirming in this story that God is with Elijah. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be quite useful and abundant when given to God.

When Elijah died, his mentee Elisha was given his mantle and sent to continue his work as a prophet. At that point, the Bible spends some time showing that the miracles God worked for Elijah, God also worked for Elisha, proving that the mantle had been passed metaphorically and not just physically. A mantle is a long, sleeveless cloak. In this case it represented the power of the prophet to function as God’s witness in the world.

So, in our Hebrew Bible reading today, Elisha is able to provide food for hungry people when there clearly isn’t enough. It is a very different story, yet the miraculous part where too little food is somehow still enough, is still there. This one starts with a man bringing his tithe to the prophet. The Torah has very specific instructions about how to live well in community, and one piece of that is that the first fruits of a harvest be given away. Sometimes they’re given to the priests so that the priests who are landless in service to God have food. Sometimes they’re blessed to be used for a feast or festival where all the members of the community get to eat together. That method also ensures that those who are food insecure have access to food.

Probably most people were not bringing their first fruits to to Elisha, because his role was as a prophet and not as a priest. But this man sees holiness in Elisha, and brings his offering out of faithfulness to God, to Elisha to be used. Now, Elisha has surrounded himself with a large number of followers. That was very different from how his mentor Elijah worked. Mentor Elijah was a loner, who on good days allowed mentee Elisha to follow him. Elisha was better at working in community. However, both were really unpopular with the leadership of the day, and had trouble accessing sufficient resources on their own, without Divine help.

Elisha uses the gift from the man’s first fruits to feed those who surrounded him in HIS community. It shouldn’t have been enough to feed the people, and yet it was more than enough. The Bible is indicating that God is with Elisha. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be useful and abundant when given to God.

God was with Elijah, God was with Elisha, and God was with Jesus. This story, this miraculous feeding a large crowd that sounds a lot like Elisha feeding, is the ONLY miracle found in all 4 Gospels. Clearly the early Christian community thought this story was central to understanding Jesus.

In the second story, Elisha’s servant names that what was given to Elisha wasn’t enough to feed the large crowd. In John, the disciples who are expected to understand what God and Jesus are up to, articulate similar concerns. The crowd is BIG, and they’re all hungry, and they don’t have the resources to feed them.

But one person, in this case one small boy, offers his meager resources. 5 barley loaves and 2 dried fish, the traveling food of the poor in that day, were likely all he had with them. He offered them to God and to God’s holy one, a lot like the man who had offered his first fruits to God’s prophet Elisha. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough.

But the Bible is indicating that God is with Jesus. It is also telling us that what seems like a small and insufficient gift can be quite useful and abundant when given to God.

There is another unique detail in John. The story opens telling us that Jesus “went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee which is also called the Sea of Tiberias.” (NRSV, v. 1). It isn’t called that. The Sea of Galilee just isn’t called the Sea of Tiberias. BUT, it is super meaningful to mention it that way. In 20 CE, the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, created a new capital for himself in Galilee, on the Sea of Galilee, and named it for the Roman Empiror Tiberius. The goals seemed to be twofold: one to flatter the Roman Emperor Tiberius directly; another to commercialize the fishing on the sea, then building up the economy, and proving his powers as an good leader. Both of the goals were really aimed at trying to get access to lead more of the Roman Empire, as his father had.

Tiberias was a noticeably Roman city, one that offended the Jews as it was built on burial grounds, and represented the ways that the Empire sought to exploit the people for economic gain. To call the Sea of Galilee the Sea of Tiberias is to remind those experiencing the story of the social and political location of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, his miracle itself undermined the empire because it fed the hungry masses whose hunger the empire sought to exploit. The Sea of Galilee had been the primary food source for the people, but had become a source of income for the Empire, at the expense of the people’s primary food source.

On the shores of the Sea, Jesus fed the hungry and hurting people, both with food and with hope.

The initiating act of the miracle was the child who offered his meager bread and two small dried fish.

Those three characters shared what they had, despite it not being enough: that child, that man bringing his first fruits to a politically unpopular prophet, and that widow who shared her last meal. None of them did anything all that unusual. People share sometimes. People offer tithes. Desperate people make do and share what isn’t even enough for them over and over and over again. Many people have told me stories of their own parents limiting their food intake so they could eat enough as children. This happens.

But the Bible says that even little gifts can create significant good. That narrative is feeling really big right now, because the problems of the world feel really big right now, they feel like a hungry and frightened mass of 5000 people looking expectantly for food! Sometimes, for me, what I have to offer feels really small sometimes – a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, a voice to raise in prayer, a presence in the midst of the struggle that stays calm and peaceful. They’re SMALL when the problems are BIG. But the Bible says that God can do a LOT with what we give to God, even when it appears that what we have to offer is a lot less than what is needed to solve the problem.

God isn’t asking us to give out of resources we lack! God asks for what we can give, no matter how small, and then God works with it.

In the midst of the really hard times of life, the things that pick us up aren’t usually big miracles. They’re still the small stuff! They’re the little indications that someone cares and we aren’t alone in the struggle. I encourage you to think about the hard times in your life and what picked you up. Was it big things? Or was it things so small that the person who offered it might not even remember?

The small stuff matters. A little tiny loaf of bread. A regular tithe offering. The simple supper of a poor child. Each became a means of grace in the world. God can work with what we have to give.

So, let us go from this place, offer what we have, and watch to see how God multiplies our gifts into signs of hope and grace. God is able, and so are we. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“The Value of Mountaintops” based on Exodus 34:29-34 and Luke…

February 8, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

The story of the Transfiguration, as the Gospel lesson is called, comes up every year the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. Conveniently, it is found in each of the synoptic Gospels, so there is a different version for every year. Basically, I’m saying that this is the 10^th year in a row that I’ve preached on this story, and I’m sort of amazed that there are new things to notice in it.

The first thing came from this line, “Just as [Moses and Elijah] were leaving Jesus, Peter said to Jesus “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said.” It is easy to assume that this is just another story of Peter being an idiot, because if you pay attention to the Gospels that’s a major theme. I’ve suggested that in the past, and talked about how human it is to want to hold on to a moment and memorialize it in physical space. I’ve talked about Peter talking because he is anxious, and not even listening to himself, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Another possibility occurred to me this week. I thought to ask, “where is the mountaintop” and while the particular mountain isn’t definitive, the answer is that it is somewhere in Galilee. That answer is enough. One of the major theological splits between the Southern Kingdom (Judah) and the Northern Kingdom (Israel) was over the correct place to worship YHWH. The Temple was in the South, and the Southerners claimed that the Temple had special significance as a worship center. They dismissed the Northerners as “just worshiping in high places” as if that was heathen.

In fact, the Northerners often DID worship in high places. They built altars and worship spaces on mountaintops and (you’d hope) had pretty great worship experiences there. There really is something profound about being on a mountaintop and the closeness to God experienced there. Perhaps it is the view. Perhaps it is the starkness. Perhaps it is the journey required to get there. Perhaps it is the wind, and the clouds, and the experience of exposure. Perhaps it is the oxygen deprivation. (Really, the mountains in Israel are like the medium sized Catskill mountains. It wasn’t oxygen deprivation.) In any case, the people in the North had been settling up worship sites on mountains for many centuries, while the people in the South had decried it as heresy.

Galilee (in the North), in the time of Jesus, was resettled by Judeans (Southern) who were reclaiming it as a Jewish space. It may be that Peter’s seemingly simple/idiotic ramblings reflected a pretty serious cultural clash in the region they were in. The Gospel of John presents Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman by the well and claiming that God can be worshiped ANYWHERE. The Synoptics don’t have that story. The Gospel of John was written well after the fall of the Temple, while the Synoptic were written in the more immediate aftermath of the fall. I think Peter MAY have been expressing a natural human tendency to want to build a space to give thanks to God on that mountaintop. And I think it may have been heard as heresy!! In fact, I think the story may truncate there because the early Jesus followers weren’t quite sure what do to with the heresy.

Of course, the Northerners weren’t the only ones to have mountaintop experiences. The Hebrew Bible reading tells of Moses coming back down off the mountain where he’d been “conversing with God” and he was so strongly transformed by it that he had a freaky glow to him. There IS something about mountaintops. Sometimes the people who go up them come back quite a bit different.

The second thing that emerged from the gospel reading today came from a colleague in my lectionary group who said, “Hey, isn’t the voice of God literally in the feminine?” I had no idea, but I looked it up and it is! “Voice of God” in Hebrew is bat(h) kol which is literally “daughter of a voice.” Apparently, no matter how wonderful Morgan Freedman is at “playing God,” his voice is all wrong! I’ve been at so many plays and skits and movies where God’s voice has been presumed to be a bass, and yet the words “voice of God” connotes the feminine.

It was at that point that I realized that even in the lesson Gospel I’d always heard the voice of God as male. How is it different if it really is just “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!“ without assuming that me saying it is a little bit wrong? Similarly, how different is it to consider that Moses might have been up the mountain for 40 days hearing a feminine voice telling him all sorts of wisdom and giving guidance?

Now, of course, I’m NOT suggesting that God has a gender, and I’m NOT suggesting that God really speaks like a human and therefore I’m certainly NOT suggesting that God speaks like a girl or woman. I am suggesting that projecting a masculine tone onto God’s voice is inaccurate to Hebrew, and that should keep us all on our toes.

Today is “Camp Sunday,” specially designed to try to get everyone excited about camp and the great things that happen there. It is more toned down than last year because… well, you can’t go big every year. So really, this means that the songs are camp favorites and I get to talk about camp. It has turned out to be remarkably helpful that it is also transfiguration Sunday, as the mountaintop experience of God thing is basically what I’m talking about.

Now, camp is definitely for kids, but it isn’t JUST for kids. As a church, we put down a deposit for the weekend BEFORE Labor Day at Sky Lake for an All Church Retreat with Sabine O’Hara. That’s an experience designed for all ages. All of the Upper New York Camps are also retreat centers, and that’s a great gift for anyone needing to get away. Yet, they started as camps, and that’s important too. For some of you, this is a subtle invitation to consider volunteer counseling. For some of you, this is a mostly irrelevant set of (hopefully uplifting stories). For some of you, this is the motivation you’ve been needing to talk to a kid in your life about camp. But best of all, for some of you, this is an invitation to get yourself to CAMP.

I’ve been thinking this week about what camp was like for me as a camper. At first, it was scary. Simply being away in an unknown environment was overwhelming. Luckily, the first time I went to camp, my pastor’s wife was my counselor and one of my church friends was my cabin mate. My brother and his best friend from church were also at camp, and that made for an easy transition. After that first year, I didn’t care who was there, because I’d realized that at camp I was welcome and liked for who I was.

That may not sound like much, but it was to me. I was a really socially awkward kid, and I got picked on a lot at school. I hadn’t experienced social success in my life until I went to camp. Being in the naturally supportive environment, with an emphasis on cooperation and fun, I was able to thrive and make real connections. I was included, and a part of the group, friends with my cabin mates and family group. I “fit.”

The experience of being welcome, included, and connected changed the way I saw myself, maybe a bit like Moses looking different to others when he came down the mountain. I began to believe it was possible that I could be likable, and that was amazing!

Of course, the way that it all happens at camp is sort of mysterious. Having done 61 weeks at Sky Lake, I still don’t quite know how it works. The components don’t seem like they should be able to add up to the whole. There are meals, some of them cooked over a campfire. There are songs, some of them about God. There is time to swim and boat, to hike and do crafts. There is Bible Study, and there are games. There is usually a dance and often a talent show. Ice cream is usually made, tie die is created, and personal hygiene is occasionally cared for. There is a lot of silliness: water ballet, mud hikes, wacky outfits, kumbaya marathons, belly flop contests (ow!), exceptionally loud praying, and/or ridiculous songs. There is a lot of sacredness: fog on the water, the call of birds, quiet stillness, deep friendships, cooperation and support, laughter, tears, healing, worship, and nature. And somehow, each and every week ends up being a mountaintop experience.

Sometimes I get curious about it. How does it ALWAYS work? What are the component parts that make it work? Why does it work just as well when it is cold and raining as when it is warm and beautiful or miserably hot? Why is it just as great with all ages and ability levels? Why is it always the same and always different?

Why does Christian camping share God’s love so well?? Why are people able to be so much more authentic and supportive at camp than anywhere else? Why is it OK to be who you are at camp when it isn’t at home? How does it WORK? It is a mystery, but it always works. Not every camper (or counselor) has a good week every week, but every week amazing and beautiful things happen and people leave transformed. Camp isn’t for everyone – or so I hear – but for many people it is the most loving (and fun!) place they’ll ever go.

Ever since I first went to camp I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the world more like camp. Eventually I learned the language for kin-dom of God and realized that it IS the world as camp (yet somehow with less bugs for those who need less bugs to have a good time). Mountaintops are very important – both physically and metaphorically – because they help us gain a vision of what IS and what can be. Sometimes the descent is rough and the transition back into “real life” is challenging, but the lessons learned on a mountain can change a whole life, and sometimes a whole society (Moses) or the whole world (the disciples). May it ever be so. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 7, 2016