Journey's Weekly Homilies
Seventeenth Sunday, Year B
July 27, 2003
Homily by Sam
II Kings 4:22-24
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:1-15
I am highly disturbed by today's readings. For me they
represent a kind of seismic shift in priorities. They
challenge my sense of loyalty and community and what it means to
be a follower of Jesus in this country.
I begin with a phrase from Martin Luther. He said God is
that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in
time of need. The letter to the Ephesians today declares
that all people regardless of nation, culture, gender, or class
may look to the same God for refuge in our time of need and for
guidance in what is good.
That is a startling insight for the apostle Paul who inspired this
open letter to all the Churches in the region. He had been
raised in a world that was sharply divided between Jew and
Gentile, male and female, free and slave. It was thought
that salvation encompassed only Jews and even among them women
were of a lower class.
Traveling and preaching among the Gentile believers of Greece and
Asia Minor convinced Paul of something that would change his life
and the life of every believer after him. He realized that
God is much bigger than any nation or race. He began to
comprehend how God's blessing extended to all people without
distinction according to class, race, and gender.
In our own time this means that our loyalties must become
international and ecumenical. In the words of the American
revolutionary, Thomas Paine, we are citizens of the world and our
religion is to do good.
This comes to me as a revelation much as it did to the apostle
Paul. I grew up thinking of myself as an American and a
Christian. I did not reflect on how small these identities
are and how the separated the world into those like me and those
not like me.
Today my work with refugees, my cross-cultural friendships, my
involvement in activism for peace and justice, and my reading of
scripture calls me to broader loyalties. I now think of myself
as an American only to the extent that it helps me to be a better
world citizen and a Christian only tot he extent that this religion
inspires and supports me to do good in that world. As I read
today's Gospel I conclude that as followers of Jesus we are a kind
of prophetic movement and our loyalty is to God before nation.
Today we hear an amazing story about loyalty, a story which is
repeated in all four Gospels. Outside of the passion
narrative I can think of only two stories that are repeated in all
four Gospels. The feeding of the 5000 is one of those
stories.
The core elements of this story, repeated in each Gospel are:
The disciples are called out of their normal existence to a
separate place.
Crowds of poor people follow.
The leaders complain about the lack of food.
Food miraculously appears.
The food is blessed and distributed.
The people eat and are filled.
The leftovers, which exceed the original amount, are gathered.
The Gospel of John adds that this is a Passover meal further
emphasizing the
exodus theme.
At the center of this meal is bread. Bread was a staple in
the diet of Mediterranean peasants. It constituted half of
their daily calories. The rest of their sustenance came
mostly from wine and oil.
Fruit and fish were rare commodities. But bread was so
common that the word bread is often used for food of any kind.
Bread was equivalent to life itself.
The bread which peasants ate was barley, an inferior grain that
produced a dense black loaf. It was unappetizing and
difficult to digest but it was all they had. More wholesome
grains were reserved for the rich.
The production of bread was a major household activity. It
would take three hours to sift the grain, mix, knead, and form
bread to bake the next morning. The work had to be done at
night when the temperature was cool and the air moist.
People on the move could not engage in the production of their
daily bread. They had to take what they could carry from
what they had already baked. Once their supplies were
consumed or spoiled they would have to beg. If you followed
Jesus you were cutting yourself off from your food supply, staking
your life on this man.
Yet our story today is about more than food. It is also
about empire. In the Old Testament there were two schools of
thought about empire. Kings could be good, some people
thought, if they followed the law of God and brought bread and
justice to all people.
Another group of people were more cynical. They said that
kings were inevitably corrupt and self-serving. When the
people first asked for a king their leader Samuel warned them
against it. He said, "A king will draft your sons as
soldiers and employ your daughters as entertainment in his courts.
He will tax you to starvation while he and his friends get rich.
And in the end you will be his slaves.'
Most of the prophets agreed with Samuel. They persistently
pointed out how the ruler of the day subverted God's laws of
justice and oppressed the weak,
returning them to the life of servitude in Egypt.
John the Baptist was an anti-kingship type of guy. He
preached against the king of the day, Herod. According to
the ancient historian Josephus Herod decided to kill John because
he led poor people into the wilderness and preached to them.
And today Jesus leads the poor people into the wilderness.
The feeding in the wilderness follows the story of John in each of
the four Gospels. This suggests that Jesus has taken up the
mantle of the fallen prophet. He and his followers have
publicly forsaken their allegiance to the king and the empire,
pledging their loyalty to God alone by embarking on a second
exodus where God will feed them abundantly. In the end the
people acclaim Jesus as a prophet.
This message must not be lost on us today. For we too live
in an empire. As we speak our country deploys commando units
in over sixty countries throughout the world. Our military
has engaged in over ninety missions in the last ten years under
both Republican and Democratic presidents. Our children must
register to fight in these armies and our taxes support the
efforts. This empire is built in our name and sustained in
our interests.
But as followers of Jesus we have a different loyalty.
Martin Luther King once said, "The Church is not the servant
of the State. The Church is not the leader of the State.
The Church is the CONSCIENCE of the State." As I
reflect on this responsibility of conscience I come to the
following conclusions.
As followers of Jesus we insist that the life and well-being of
every person on this planet is as sacred as our own.
We hold our own leaders accountable for their injustice at home
and abroad.
We oppose wars that are fought in our name and for our benefit.
We pray and work for the peaceful resolution of disputes and an
end to the mechanisms of war.
We insist on a harvest of justice for those who toil anonymously
at low wages to produce our food and clothing and clean our
offices.
This week our President has bragged to the whole world and
displayed the gory corpses of our enemies. It amazes me that
he calls himself a 'Born Again
Christian'. He does not know what it means to be born again,
but you do.
We who share in the bread from heaven believe that the ways of God
feed us deeply and sustain our faith. That includes the
command 'Thou shalt not kill'. Justice and nonviolence are
the bread of life. They are more basic to us than patriotism
or self-interest.
When we follow Jesus we enter a different kind of kingdom. We eat
of the bread of justice, not the bread of suffering and
exploitation. When we do this people around us will question
our patriotism and our faith in the American way of life.
And our answer might be, "Through faith we have become
citizens of the world and our religion is to only do good."
Today as every Sunday we gather at table in memory of the Passover
and the flight from Egypt with Pharaoh's armies chasing after.
We gather to recall the bread in the wilderness and the movement
that Jesus inspired.
'This bread that we bread, is it not our life spread before us?
This cup that we share, is it not our past and tomorrow?'