Sermon preached by Karen M. Meridith

St. James's Episcopal Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Proper 13A: Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

August 3, 2008

Not my words, gracious God, but your Word speaking through me. Amen.

A reading from the Book of Common Prayer, page 855:"The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ...The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love."

For nearly three weeks the bishops of the churches in the Anglican Communion, with a few well-publicized exceptions, have been meeting on the campus of the University of Kent near Canterbury Cathedral in England. For those of you new to the Episcopal Church and for Episcopalians of sound mind who haven't succumbed to the "all Anglican all the time" obsessions of a few of us, this is the Lambeth Conference which gathers every ten years at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. We at St. James's have a direct connection to this gathering not only through our bishops who are attending but also through our own Ian Douglas, a member of the Lambeth Design Team who have created a conference centered in worship, prayer, Bible-study, and the building of relationships between bishops across a spectrum of cultural contexts and theological perspectives.

I confess that I am one of the aforementioned obsessed and have been following the conference closely, probably too closely if the state of my housekeeping and the shocking lack of attention to my studies are any indication. From the beginning I realized that I couldn't feed my obsession simply through news reports for a couple of very good reasons: first, the bishops have met in closed sessions, and, second, conflict sells papers. The pressure to publish a "hot" story has colored much of what I've seen in the English and American media; the desire to see the conference blow up in some spectacular way has been almost palpable. It's really too bad because there seems to be so much that is good that could be reported. Fortunately, there have been an amazing number of bishops blogging their reflections each day on the internet, most positive, a few negative, all refreshingly honest about their own sometimes roller-coaster feelings about living in community with so many other bishops from so many different countries. As one wrote very early in the conference, "A characteristic which appears to be common to all bishops is that they have opinions. So, if you take 650 bishops and bring them to a campus in Kent, you have 650 opinions about most matters you discuss."

I confess further that I have read a lot of blog entries over these three weeks, often so descriptive I wished I could be there too, occasionally so disgruntled I wanted to say, "Oh, bishop, get over yourself." If the Anglican Communion manages to soldier on (and I sincerely hope it does), it will be because these bishops from all over the globe have worked hard to shift their focus from what divides us to what holds us together. And what is it that holds us together? My impression is that on the whole they were especially positive on two themes: shared worship and shared mission.

The conference itself began, after a 3-day retreat, with a spectacular eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral: 700 Anglican bishops and ecumenical guests in procession, an English choir singing in Latin to Congolese music, a Melanesian Gospel procession, a Sinhalese invocation of the Holy Trinity. (You get the idea-sort of an upscale version of Sunday at St. James's!) One bishop called it Anglican worship at its finest, but it was only the beginning. Over and over bishops blogged about how much they appreciated having each day of the conference grounded in worship-starting at 6:30 am with morning prayer followed by the Holy Eucharist at 7:15, then noonday prayers, evening prayer, and compline, each led each day by different provinces in the communion. A bishop wrote, "We say the Lord's Prayer each day in the ‘pentecostal tongues' of our own languages, and it is beautiful...there is a distinctive ‘Shape of the Liturgy' for Anglicans which is recognizable and comfortable even when ‘incarnated' in various cultures and languages."

The Lambeth Conference also began with attention to mission, naming as its five marks: proclaim the Good News; teach, baptize and nurture new believers; respond to human need by loving service; seek to transform unjust structures of society; and strive to safeguard the integrity of creation. A bishop noted a significant tie between worship and mission: "It was the turn of the Church of North India to lead the Conference Eucharist this morning. ...Having presided at the breaking of the bread with us they have gone on, like an extended Ministry of the Word, to break open their stories and their lives through the rest of the day." Another blogged: "Each day we are called on...to gather at the table to share bread and wine, to pray for the hungers of the church and world that all might be fed. If the church keeps its focus there, then the Communion can indeed offer much to a world that needs the witness of unconditional love seen in our story of death and resurrection."

Taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled...

Today's Gospel reading relates an obviously pivotal story for the early church. How do we know this? Because the feeding of five thousand men (the only ones who were counted, of course, as Matthew notes) is included in every one of the four Gospel accounts. Now, if you know your Bible you'll know how very unusual that is. Many of the Gospel stories we're familiar with occur in only one or two, some in three, of the Gospel accounts. John's Gospel, for instance, is written from a completely different perspective from those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke so it is rare indeed for a specific story to occur in all four, even rarer when so many of the details agree. 

Yet even when the stories agree in many details, there are significant differences in others, such as where and at what point in Jesus' ministry the action occurs, even in what exactly Jesus says. In fact some of us hearing the Gospel read this morning might well have thought, "Hold on. Where's the little boy? Wasn't there a boy who offered to share his dinner of five loaves and two fishes?" Well yes, there is a boy who gives his loaves and fishes to feed the five thousand-but only in John's telling of the tale.

When we remember these stories that show up more than once we sometimes combine the details from the different versions as though they are all one story (think of how we merge the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, ending up with wise men and shepherds in the same Christmas pageant), but the Gospel writers did not give us a single homogenous narrative. Just why we have four often very different Gospel accounts in the same canon is a lecture for another day.  Likewise, we don't have time this morning to look closely at all the differences and similarities here, but I encourage you to read and compare today's narrative from Matthew with that in Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-13 for yourself (being mindful that we read the Bible in translation, of course).

In today's reading Jesus, hearing that Herod has beheaded his cousin John, takes a boat out into the water off a deserted area in order to have some time alone, but when he comes back ashore a great crowd has gathered. Jesus feels compassion for this multitude and sets about healing the sick among them. Matthew says there are five thousand men there, plus women and children. If you factor in those uncounted women and children in even a modest way (one wife, 2.1 children...) this conceivably adds up to more than twenty thousand persons in all, more than the entire population of a typical urban center in Jesus' day so we mustn't let ourselves get too hung up on precise numbers.

The important point is not whether this number is a verifiable fact, but that here in this deserted place we have a city's worth of people without a city to provide for their needs, so the disciples' concern seems pretty reasonable. As long as Jesus keeps healing, as long as he keeps ministering to them, these people will keep hanging around. And then what? It's getting late in the day. While they may be peaceful now, a crowd of hungry people can turn ugly in an instant. But when the disciples ask Jesus to send the crowd away to find their own suppers, Jesus replies, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."

You give them something to eat. This is one detail on which three of the Gospel accounts agree; in fact, they use exactly the same words in the original Greek, and it's emphatic. We don't see this easily in the English translation, but in Greek the subject of the simple command "you give" is made more pointed by the reflexive "yourselves". You yourselves-you disciples-you give them something to eat. Once again, the disciples' response seems pretty reasonable: "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." The underlying question is, how, Jesus, are we to do what you are asking us to do?

And I put it to you, my sisters and brothers at St. James's, my brothers and sisters in Christ called to participate in God's mission to "restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ," is this not our question, too? How are we to minister in this broken world to the uncountable numbers who need so much when we are so few and have such limited resources? Part of the answer lies in what Jesus does next. He gathers the people, blesses and breaks the bread-any of this sound familiar? And he doesn't let those disciples off the hook. They are after all the ones who distribute the food to the crowd. They do give them something to eat. Like them, our ministry must be grounded in and sustained by our presence at God's table, and as the old joke about voting in Chicago says, it should be done early and often.

In my former life as a Christian formation director I used to offer periodically something we called Communion Orientation, initially created at the request of some parents who felt ill equipped to prepare their young children to receive communion. So to put them more at ease we gathered to talk over what it is we're doing as well as how all the parts are important and necessary. The children all had been participating in the worship their whole lives, but the long unfolding of liturgy can be bewildering if you're unaware that it actually has a structure and purpose. I wanted to give them a feel for the "distinctive shape of the liturgy incarnated,' as the Lambeth bishop put it, so I used the image of a special family meal to illustrate.

First, I told them, just as we get our house in order and set a special time, so the processions in and out of the sanctuary signify that we are marking this place and time as holy. Then we get ourselves ready, maybe by dressing up a bit, just as the collect for purity asks God to help us get our hearts ready for worship. Whenever we have the family all in one place we like to share family stories, and likewise the lectionary readings tell us stories of who we are as God's people. The elders of the family always want to share their wisdom and teach us. We express our concern for family members who can't be with us even as we joyfully greet those who are. Now it's time to eat! At the table set with special linens and dishes, God's blessing is asked, some of us take responsibility for serving the food, and absolutely everyone-from babies to grandparents-comes to the table. After we've eaten we clean up and say thanks to the host. We've remembered once again what it means to be a member of this family. We've remembered, too, how much we need each other and how we love and support each other, even when we're not together. Now our nourished bodies are ready for the work we will do in the ordinary days to come, and it's time to go. We say goodbye-let's get together again soon!

This was intended to be a very simplified way of looking at the eucharist for young children so I was pleased to hear the parents say that they too had benefitted. Still I was surprised to find in the next class not only the expected young ones and parents but also some of their older brothers and sisters who had been receiving communion for years. In subsequent classes we started to see adults who didn't even have children at home. Over and over I heard that this simple way of looking at the liturgy was helping them get in touch with the "distinctive shape of the liturgy incarnated" in our parish and how they felt when they participated regularly. One woman told me she finally understood why she felt disconnected on those Sundays when she came in during the Peace after volunteering in the nursery, even though she took communion: she had missed the family stories! 

Verna Dozier used to challenge people by asking, "Do you intend to follow Jesus or are you content to worship him?" It's a trick question. We can't do one without the other. Like the helical structure of our own DNA, the church's strands of worship and mission are tied to and twisted around each other. To separate them is difficult, likely injurious. We follow Jesus faithfully by coming together in the Holy Eucharist, and by coming regularly to the Holy Eucharist we learn to follow Jesus. When Jesus tells the disciples, "You give them something to eat" he also equips them for the task by blessing and breaking bread with them.

Many of our bishops at the Lambeth Conference these past three weeks have come to believe that the way forward for the Anglican Communion lies in more shared worship and mission, with less emphasis on uniformity in theology. One of the blogging bishops wrote of his desire for "worship that sees theology not as a subject among subjects, where once you've ‘gotten it,' as with the Periodic Chart, or  the quadratic equation, you're done... rather something that is full of endless mystery and surprise, where once the grammar of theology is gained, worlds of reflection, meditation, contemplation, relationship and transformation open up." A grammar of theology that shapes the language of transformation-a wonderful image.

William Temple, a past Archbishop of Canterbury, famously noted that the church is the only institution that exists for those who don't belong to it. In Communion Orientation, we decided that a tremendously important moment in the eucharist comes, and can only come, after we've eaten together. It's when the deacon shoos us out of the doors into the wide world where God calls us to live as the Body of Christ now nourished for mission: "Go in Peace to love and serve the world." As the church, our best work in mission to "those who don't belong" (yet?) comes when we've built relationships through regular worship together. That's why we're here. In other words, you give them something to eat. Amen.