don't eat alone

I know I haven’t been here in a while. I’ll explain that another time. For now, I am preaching today at United Churches in Durham, Connecticut and I thought I might as well post my sermon since I have it written as a way to be back in touch. The passage is John 6:1-14: John’s version of Jesus feeding the multitude.

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One of the maxims in life that I think holds true is that our answers are often only as good as our questions. The best example I can give you comes from the old Pink Panther movie where Inspector Clousseau is checking into a hotel and sees a small dog sitting next to the desk.

“Does your dog bite?” he asks.
“No,” says the clerk. So, Clousseau reaches down to pet the dog who growls and bites him.
“I thought you said your dog did not bite,” Clousseau exclaims.
The clerk drolly replies, “It’s not my dog.”

Our answers are only as good as our questions.

Our story from John’s gospel swings on two pretty good questions.

In John’s version of what we have come to call the Feeding of the Five Thousand, an astoundingly large mass of folks has followed Jesus, hoping to hear him speak and see him heal people. They had not gathered for some planned event. As best we can tell, as we fill in the blanks with our sacred imagination, they had not come expecting to be fed. They wanted to hear Jesus. But as he looked out on the crowd it sparked a question that he aimed at Phillip.

“Where can we buy some bread for these people to eat?”

Another minister I know made an interesting observation that has stuck with me. She pointed out that Jesus was rarely the host when it came to hospitality. He hosted the meal on the night before his death and he cooked breakfast for Peter and the others the morning after his Resurrection. Other than that, his idea of hospitality was to go to others, to let them welcome him into their world. It is a powerful observation about how real inclusion involves figuring out how to meet the other person on their terms, not ours. And, after reading this story again this week, I think she missed one of the meals that Jesus hosted: the one right here. He wasn’t cooking, but the whole scene unfolds because Jesus asks where they can buy bread to feed everyone. The crowd had followed him quite a distance, but they had no expectation of being fed. They weren’t calling out for food. They wanted to hear him speak. They had heard about the healing he had done of both body and spirit. But Jesus knew a hungry crowd when he saw one, and so he asked Philip a question.

“Where can we buy some bread for these people to eat?”

John is quick to point out, as he retells the story decades later, that Jesus “knew what he was going to do” but asked to see how Phillip would respond. We have been conditioned to think that means that Jesus already knew he was going to do a miracle, which is one way to understand it, but what if Jesus’ question was more about trying to get them beyond the logistics of crowd control; what he was going to do next was teach them more about who he was.

Phillip answered quite concretely, “We don’t have enough money to give everyone a cracker, much less a meal.” He had no imagination beyond the futility of how much it would cost.

Even though Jesus was talking the Phillip, the conversation was in earshot of the other disciples. Andrew, who it seems had paid more attention to who was in the crowd, mentioned that he had seen a small boy with a lunch of five barley loaves and two fish, but then he added, “But what good is that for so many people?”

Our answers are only as good as our questions. Andrew asked a good question, though he had no idea what was coming next.

His question gave Jesus an opportunity to move beyond Phillip’s declaration of scarcity. What good is a little boy’s lunch in the middle of a hungry crowd? Jesus’ answer, by his actions, was that it was enough. Jesus knew they didn’t have money to buy bread for everyone, but the little boy who was willing to share what he had opened the door for a miracle.

The whole thing swung on the kid. John doesn’t describe the interaction with the boy, or tell us if he was with his family, or even how he and Andrew came to know each other. We can assume that Andrew didn’t just take the kid’s lunch like a playground bully. The boy must have offered it. He was willing to believe his little lunch could feed more than just himself.

Jesus took the lunch and blessed it, handed it to the disciples who began to distribute it, and everyone ate, and they ended up with leftovers, all because of the faith of a little child who trusted that there would be enough.

As one who used to work as a chef, I have to smile at how John makes the meal sound so easily done: they took the little lunch, passed it out to more than five thousand people, and everyone was happy. I worked for years as a professional chef and one of my jobs was running a wedding hall that held three hundred people. It took an incredible amount of planning and coordination to get dinner on the table. I don’t even know how to begin to think about over five thousand.

When any of the gospel writers often talk about “the crowd,” they do so as though it was some kind of cohesive unit, but let’s think about that for a minute. Over five thousand people had gathered on the hillside to listen to Jesus. As one who has a hearing disability, one of the first things I question is how the folks in the back even heard what he said without any amplification. If you think about when you have been in a large crowd, you know it does not move as a unit. Things start in one place and ripple out, like the wave in a packed stadium. When Jesus said, “Make the people sit down,” I picture the ones in front responding to the disciples’ request and the instructions rippling back until everyone was seated. If the disciples were the only ones serving the meal, it would have taken hours to distribute the food; the passage actually says that Jesus was the one who fed everybody and the disciples just collected the leftovers—which makes me think, perhaps, a big part of the miracle was in the way “the crowd” began to see one another as people: they had to share and cooperate so everyone could eat.

Remember Jesus’ question: Where can we buy bread for these people to eat?

Remember also that John said Jesus knew what he was going to do when he asked the question. Maybe so. Jesus knew he was going to feed everyone with what he had, and when Andrew pointed out the little boy with the loaves and fish, Jesus had all he needed: one person—one child–who was willing to share what they had.

Let me give you a personal example of why that matters.

I am going to have to have knee replacement surgery in the fall. I had my right knee done a little over two years ago; this is the second step on my way to becoming the Bionic Man. This week, I had conversations with two different people that centered around my surgery. Both were sympathetic. Both offered to help, but in different ways. One said, “After your surgery, if you need me to go to the grocery store or to pick food up for you somewhere, I would be happy to do it.” The other said, “Let me know how I can help.”

Both meant well, but it was the first one who made the difference for me because they were specific. They had taken time to think about me, about my surgery, about what they could offer and then they said, “Here’s what I have.” They knew I am the cook at home. They knew I am the one who does the shopping. They offered specifically to do what I will not be able to do, without making me come up with what I needed from them.

Trying to think of how we can save the world is a lot like Philip asking how they could afford to feed the crowd: it’s overwhelming and incapacitating. We can’t meet the needs of the world. But if we think about how we can share what we have with specific people, if we tune our hearts to see the needs in front of our faces, then we can make a difference in their lives and ours. We can all be fed, both literally and figuratively, because we have enough. We just have to be willing to share with one another. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

This post started because a friend posted a video with a song title I recognized, but it wasn’t the song I knew. It did however send me back to a song embedded deep in the soundtrack of my life that I needed to hear today on behalf of friends who are hurting deeply–and also for myself. Most of the songs tonight fall in that category. As we move into the heaviest days of Holy Week I offer these songs of lament and loss. You may have heard them if you’ve been around me much. Then again, a good song is worth listening to over and over.

The video for “Don’t Give Up” is as compelling as the song itself because Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush are in a constant embrace through the whole song.

in this proud land we grew up strong
we were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

no fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I’ve changed my face, I’ve changed my name
nut no-one wants you when you lose

don’t give up ’cause you have friends
don’t give up you’re not beaten yet
don’t give up I know you can make it good

I can remember the first time I heard Tracy Chapman. The song was “Fast Car.” I still love that record. The last track on her second album is the one I keep coming back to: “All That You Have is Your Soul.”

here I am, I’m waiting for a better day
a second chance, a little luck to come my way
a hope to dream, a hope that I can sleep again
and wake in the world with a clear conscience and clean hands
‘cause all that you have is your soul

so don’t be tempted by the shiny apple
don’t you eat of a bitter fruit
hunger only for a taste of justice
hunger only for a world of truth
‘cause all that you have is your soul

oh my mama told me
‘cause she say she learned the hard way
she say she wanna spare the children
she say don’t give or sell your soul away
‘cause all that you have is your soul

When John Mellencamp came out with Scarecrow it changed the way people thought about him. He was no longer Johnny Cougar. We can all sing “Pink Houses,” but one of the songs in the middle of the record is my favorite: “Between a Laugh and a Tear.”

when paradise is no longer fit for you to live in
and your adolescent dreams are gone
through the days you feel a little used up
and you don’t know where your energy’s gone wrong

it’s just your soul feelin’ a little downhearted
sometimes life is too ridiculous to live
you count your friends all on one finger
I know it sounds crazy just the way that we live

between a laugh and a tear
smile in the mirror as you walk by
between a laugh and a tear
and that’s as good as it can get for us
and there ain’t no reason to stop tryin’

When Jonatha Brooke wrote “Ten Cent Wings” that’s what chicken wings went for at Happy Hour, and where she got the inspiration for an amazing song.

I will love across the borders, I will wait until it’s dark
I will fly and you’ll be with me, my wings, your heart
then our memory may fail us, and our language will go too
but the shooting stars will catch our celestial view

ten cent wings, I’ll take two
pin them to my sweater and I’ll sail above the blue
ten cent wings, tried and true
orbiting like satellites I’ll sail away with you

Emmylou Harris is probably best known for “Boulder to Birmingham,” when it comes to grief songs, but “Bang the Drum Slowly” is the song she wrote after her father died. Her lament fits the losses we live with in these days.

I meant to ask you how when everything seemed lost
and your fate was in a game of dice they tossed
there was still that line that you would never cross
at any cost

I meant to ask you how you lived what you believed
with nothing but your heart up your sleeve
and if you ever really were deceived
by the likes of me

bang the drum slowly play the pipe lowly
to dust be returning from dust we begin
bang the drum slowly I’ll speak of things holy
above and below me world without end

Patty Griffin’s record American Kid is the album she wrote after her father died, which happened around the same time my dad died. “Wild Old Dog” is one of the most visceral metaphors of what it feels like to find God in grief, or, perhaps, to understand how deeply God feels our grief. During Holy Week, I hear it as a crucifixion song.

God is a wild old dog
someone left out on the highway
I seen him running by me
he don’t belong to no one now

it’s lonely on the highway
sometimes a heart can turn to dust
get whittled down to nothing
broken down and crushed
in with the bones of
wild old dogs
wild, old dogs

I bought Bookends when I was I school and the song “Old Friends” has haunted me ever since. I think I am finally starting to understand it.

old friends, old friends
sat on their park bench like bookends
a newspaper blown through the grass
falls on the round toes
of the high shoes of the old friends

old friends, winter companions, the old men
lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset
the sounds of the city sifting through trees
settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

can you imagine us years from today
sharing a park bench quietly?
how terribly strange to be seventy

old friends, memory brushes the same years
silently sharing the same fears

On the record, it was paired with “Bookends,” as it is in the video I found.

time it was, and what a time it was,
it was a time of innocence,
a time of confidences
long ago, it must be,
I have a photograph
preserve your memories;
they’re all that’s left you

One of the perennial favorites on my soundtrack is Pierce Pettis. I am going to let him close us out tonight, not with a song of resolution as much as a call to tenacity–to keeping on. This is “Hold on to That Heart.”

Molly works on the children’s ward
the ones that aren’t gonna make it
she holds those little hands
and says a prayer sometimes
she just can’t take it

I lay me down to sleep
pray my soul to keep
if I die before I wake
slouching at the bar
she says some people are hard
they look at me like I’m crazy

I say hold on to that heart
hold on to the love you know
hold on to that heart
Molly don’t let go

he picks up the telephone
she says how you doing
he says I’m alright
no that’s wrong
but I’m getting through it

said I used to have a wife
used to have a life
it wasn’t that long ago
she says you’re going through hell
I have been the myself
but you can be strong I know

she says hold on to that heart
hold on to the love you know
hold on to that heart
boy don’t let go

whatever is honest
whatever is true
whatever is loving and lives in you
Think on these things
and hold on . . .

Don’t give up. Hold on. I will, too.

Peace,
Milton