What we need is here

John 6 – Bread of Life week one  

There's a joke you've probably heard about giving at church. The pastor looks out at the congregation and says there's good news and there's bad news... First, the good news. We have more than enough income to fund all the mission that God wants us to do... Now, the bad news. As of right now, that money is in your pockets.

It's a joke that's a little outdated and a little judgey. Many of us don't have cash in our pockets, if we even have pockets... And the joke assumes that all of us are holding back our gifts from God rather than sharing them... That's the bad news. But, the truth of the joke is that it's hard to trust God enough to put our whole lives, including our money, into God's hands... (Even though deeply we know that God, the provider, is always generous to us) and so maybe it should be easier to trust. Easier to give generously... We wish it was easier.

Maybe it helps to know that way of God, the practices that Jesus Christ invites us into have always been challenging.  Way back in Elijah's time, even the prophet Elijah didn't believe that God could feed 100 people with 20 barley loaves. We can sort of imagine that... After all, we practice communion. We can imagine everyone getting a pretty good chunk of bread with 20 loaves to share. But then, it gets more extreme—Jesus asks the disciples to feed a crowd of thousands. And this story is repeated over and over again, it’s told at least six times in four gospels... so clearly, it's a teaching that's very, very hard for people then and people now to grasp.... We expect scarcity and God brings more than enough.

How? Well, in this particular version of the story, the disciples ask who has some food to share, and in a beautiful act of trust, a little child brings forward five loaves and two fish. Jesus prays over this gift, they begin to share it... And by some miracle there is not only enough for thousands, there is extra. The extra is twelve baskets... And I'm sure it's not a coincidence that it's twelve, always symbolizing wholeness and completeness throughout the biblical story.

Now, some of us want to make this miracle understandable. We’re scientists. We’re managers. We want to know the details… how would God pull that one off? We want to make it understandable. We’re feminists! Of course, the women would have had food along. There were no restaurants along the road in those days, so as they traveled, even if the men thought they had nothing, the women would have picnics packed (of course)... But whether this all happened by miraculous multiplying or the miracle of people actually trusting that they could share what they had in order that all could have enough... And then abundantly more... Any way we hear this story, it's a story that clearly, we need over and over again... Because just after the feasting, life's storms come, and we are still just as afraid that Jesus might not be with us, that there's not enough resources to go around. Jesus is still trying to reach our fearful hearts—even today—with the news that with God, all we need is right here.

Wendell Berry wrote a beautiful poem about fall and harvest and wild geese flying overhead and it ends with these words:

… what we need

is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.[1]

You may have heard (but it's okay if this is the first you've heard because we’ve only just begun communicating) that this fall we're entering a Capital Campaign. Together in this 150th Anniversary year, we're going to raise a significant amount of money and make commitments to fund the mission that we trust God is calling us to do. We're going to make feeding hungry people a reality in this place, building on a whole history of feeding hungry people, body and spirit. The way that a Capital Campaign works is that we give according to our ability, and that God challenges us to give a gift of real trust... Because then our gift not only benefits the mission that we do together as church, it benefits us. Like that little child who brought forward the bread made by his mother and the fish caught by his father, the initial gifts inspire all of us not to give small but to give as a practice of trust. Not to give grudgingly but with a spirit of joy because as God makes it possible, we can be the builders of kitchens and food ministries that will serve generations to come.
In the gospel of John, the disciples move right from this amazing, abundant feast into stormy seas. Just as quickly, they move from faith to fear... And understandably so...

On the one hand, we have this amazing celebration, vision and challenge ahead of us, and maybe we can glimpse how God could accomplish it through us... And then we move right into storms. Look at our church finances! Our hoped for income is at 80 percent... How could we possibly gather enough when we seem to have so little? Our economy and political systems are broken, we're worried about the midterm elections and who will be our next governor, and if we have the capacity to make the changes for good in our public life that seem so necessary. And as one recent retiree told me, we are told all the time, particularly in regards to our financial life, that we have to look after ourselves, that has to be our first priority.
Add to all this bad news that people are leaving... Next week is Vicar Bethany's last Sunday, and we are going to miss her. We’ve loved her energy, her hopeful good news, her hard work and presence among us... we’ll miss her and as we think of each one who is leaving because their work here is done or because for a season they’ll be sharing their gifts somewhere else, we wonder… how will there be enough, how will we do all this without them? 

That’s when we’re reminded by Jesus… who invites us to feed the multitudes, who walks over stormy seas to calm us, that what we have is enough because it is never all there is… “what we need is here, if we can learn to trust and draw on the abundance within us and between us.”[2]

It doesn’t mean we over-promise or never say no. Sometimes we’re invited to hold a boundary, to say no order to be able to say yes... we practice that, too. But if we need a push into trust in God, this is the day…        What we need is here.

We see it modeled as Ken gives quarters to children and they (almost always) bring those quarters joyfully up to the jar to share them. What a tangible practice and example of giving what we’ve been given.

Maybe you’ve experienced it in a pay-it-forward coffee line… where—surprise!—you go to pay and someone has already paid for you… wow! Thank you!

We imagine living it out as we plan for a 150^th Anniversary Capitol Campaign to fund our kitchen renewal, and prepare for a pay-as-you-can food ministry… where we will all contribute from what we have been given so that together God’s mission can be accomplished here.

What we need is here…

This morning, in a few minutes, as you receive the bread of communion in your hands, I invite you to look at it before you eat it… what we need is here. It’s our mantra for today, for this week, for this season of taking the risk to trust in Christ’s faithfulness to us in the feast and in the storm, and to know that with Christ, there is and will be more than enough.

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[1] Excerpt of poem by Wendell Berry, shared in an article by Parker J. Palmer, On Being, March 23, 2016. https://onbeing.org/blog/what-we-need-is-here/ Accessed 07/28/2018

[2] Parker J. Palmer, “What We Need is Here,” On Being, March 23, 2016. https://onbeing.org/blog/what-we-need-is-here/ Accessed 07/28/2018

Wilderness Sunday: Visions from the Wilderness

Romans 8 & Mark 1:12-13

It’s been hot. When it’s hot here in Minnesota, I think of moose. I’ve heard that moose don’t like the heat and keep having to move farther north all the time to escape our ever-changing climate. I imagine moose trudging through the morning mists through the bogs of the Boundary Waters to our north, moving deeper into ever-shrinking habitats. I imagine them groaning…

Then, I think of far-away Syria, beautiful land of hills and vineyards, grassy hills and olive groves. I think about how people I visited pointed over to a large reservoir, dammed in their lifetime, and told us the story of their childhood village buried in a watery grave at the bottom. And now, twenty years later, it’s not only that village and all its creatures that are gone… now towns and cities, grassy knolls and whole populations of birds cry out with inhabitants after many years of terrible suffering all over that small country. I remember reading a grandmother’s account that there are no children left in Syria anymore—because you can’t remain a child when your land is constantly under siege. Will war and destruction never end?

I think about the rainy day when a small circle of us were part of the Sacred Sites tour as part of the Healing Minnesota Storytelling project with Jim Bear Jacobs and Dakota elder, Bob. …We gazed for a long time at the fertile ground, wet and thick with life, where the Dakota women came for generations to give birth because their very first people were born there. This was their Genesis place. Also, we listened as we learned about bulldozers digging up the bones of ancestors without respect, without honor… as recently as 2009. Will the most longtime-people-of-this-land’s voices ever be heard? Will repentance ever come?

And then there’s Facebook—for those who don’t use it, this social media gathering can be a place for powerful good, beauty, encouragement, prayer (like any human gathering space, right?)… but also, maybe unlike some of our gathering spaces, it’s a place to hear and learn about other people’s wilderness moments because sometimes in people’s alone times in the social media cloud, they share with more vulnerability…

A friend of mine wrote this week, with periods after every word:

I. Will. Not. Succumb. To. Despair.

Others commented… I’m feeling like that, too. I’m glad I’m not alone. Here’s something I’m reading every day that’s helping me.

We cry out from the wilderness—untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching—dangerous, breathtaking, sought after, feared… wilderness is not just one thing, it is complex, and we are part of it… whether we’re far out in the wilds or whether we’re in the city, thistles and dandelions growing up from the cracks in the sidewalk.

Today, I’m also thinking about the Christ youth who are gathered with 30,000 others in Houston nearly ready to begin their journey back to us… I’m sure that there have been moments of wilderness in that unfamiliar territory in Texas, hours from our southern border. Moments when in the midst of a crowd, the metaphor of wilderness still fits. They are out of their usual paths, out of their comfort zone, having to be brave in the face of new experiences, having to learn how to trust ourselves and others.

They are hearing stories from others that have been through wilderness—difficult times , facing discrimination, injustice, identity struggles, chronic iillness, disaster, violence, mental illness, addiction and racism… and maybe as those stories are told, it’s touching their own stories, already full of wilderness.

They are also learning that La gracia de Dios lo cambia todo – God’s call, God’s love, God’s grace and God’s hope can change everything in our lives. God reaches out to us in the wilderness, to our places of deepest longing, and God reveals who God is…

In Romans, Paul describes this groaning, these complex wilderness experiences as birth pangs.  In the wilderness, something new is born in us.

This summer at Como, there is a powerful art exhibit by WashedAshore.org: Art to Save the Sea. “The Washed Ashore Traveling Exhibits feature beautifully designed and well-crafted giant sea life sculptures made entirely of marine debris collected from beaches to graphically illustrate the tragedy of plastic pollution in our oceans and waterways and to encourage conservation.”[1] It’s just incredible to look at these giant, beautiful sculptures of sea creatures and seascapes… and then to see the huge amount of plastic strips, beach shoes, bottle caps, netting, plastic toys… and then to consider all the material that these artists have to gather… what seems like infinite debris to work with… as the creation groans and whole species of birds become extinct.

We are all connected, and the wilderness and all the creatures of earth are some of the ways God reveals this to us. Whether wilderness is groaning or sighing, singing out or rustling by… we stand in the wilderness and can see a bigger picture.

Right after Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit drove this Beloved One of God into the wilderness. In Mark, this whole story is just two small sentences and only a few details. Jesus was out there 40 days—a number that might remind us of the 40 years God’s people spent learning how to trust God, sharing manna, receiving water from a rock... a number that might remind us of other ancient prophets… a number that might make us think of contemporary wisdom about learning new practices over a season, over a little more than a month, an amount of time that can make some habit “stick.” What happened in the wilderness? Well, Jesus was tempted by Satan (sometimes called “the adversary”), Jesus was with the wild animals, and angels waited on him.

In Mark, these are not described in deep detail as in other accounts… the details seem more mingled, and doesn’t that seem like real life in the wilderness? It is not just one thing—there are steep challenges, there are new encounters, there are moments of receiving exactly what we need to stay alive.

And from that wilderness time, Jesus’ ministry begins…

We. Will. Not. Succumb. To. Despair.

We hope for what we do not see… a world cool enough for the moose groaning in the wilderness; a world where children can grow up free of war, bombs, and violence of any kind;
a land where all our places of birth and death are honored, where all people have a homeland, where we live in deeply interconnected, loving, vulnerable and brave ways.

And we don’t know how to pray as we ought, but God’s Spirit intercedes for us… reminding us over and over again, that all things work together for good because of the deep love of God. With the whole creation, we groan, suffering with the earth and all its inhabitants… and we are called to be involved in the Spirit’s birthing work, to actively love and offer grace and keep hope in Christ’s life-giving wilderness visions alive.

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[1] washedashore.org