The Narrow Gate

Welcome to the continuation of my blog, post-seminary. Ministry and evangelism have brought me back home to Chattanooga. I welcome your company on my journey.

The original blog, Down In Mississippi, shared stories from 2008 and 2009 of the hope and determination of people in the face of disaster wrought by the hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, of work done primarily by volunteers from churches across America and with financial support of many aid agencies and private donations and the Church. My Mississippi posts really ended with the post of August 16, 2009. Much work, especially for the neediest, remained undone after the denominational church pulled out. Such is the nature of institutions. The world still needs your hands for a hand up. I commend to you my seven stories, Down in Mississippi I -VII, at the bottom of this page and the blog posts. They describe an experience of grace.



Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Day 601 - Where Do You Draw The Line

A sermon given at Mowbray Presbyterian Church,  Mowbray, TN on August 3, 2014

Epistle Lesson: Ephesians 4:1-6


It is a positive reflection on Christian Education that most of us learned the miracle story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 (Loaves and Fishes) early in life and it sticks with us. On the other hand it has become such a common scripture that we tend to overlook the truly significant part of the message this miraculous feast reveals.
One of the reasons is often we do not read much of the surrounding scripture to get the full picture of God’s relationship to humanity. In reality, we need to read the whole bible to understand that relationship, but we often take shortcuts.
One short cut is to use a single verse to make a point. This is often called “using a ‘proof’ text” because the person using the quote is usually trying to prove some particular interpretation, usually to the disadvantage of someone else. It seldom works.
Since it is not really practical to search the whole Bible every time we run into a question of meaning, we try to understand a problematic passage by reading enough of the surrounding text to understand its context. I recommend this strategy if you are having trouble understanding a passage:  Go backwards and forward a few verses, or pages if necessary, to see where the whole text is leading us relative to the verses in question.
The main message in the miracle of feeding the 5,000 really isn’t about Jesus performing miracles.  The story of the feast reveals the very high standard of discipleship and compassion for the human condition Jesus expects from his disciples - and from us – since we all are called to a common, unified task to spread the word about God’s redeeming grace. Paul emphasized repeatedly that task demands intense unity among believers. We are required to do the hard work to find compassionate forbearance and charity towards everyone who thirsts for God’s grace, not just towards our fellow believers. Christians are called to be Christ’s presence in the world. We honor this duty when we put aside personal opinion and emotion that causes us to nurture anger or indifference towards those who thirst for Christ’s love but do it a little differently.
How do I get that message from this miracle of feeding the 5,000?
I expand the surrounding text. For example, if you look for all the miracles common to all four Gospels, you would find only the feeding of the 5,000. important.
If we acknowledge that the Holy Spirit inspires and helps us interpret Scripture, we cannot avoid the fact this feast very powerfully touches the very core of what it means to say, “I am a Christian.” What exactly is it to be a Christian?
Look at what Jesus and the disciples were doing before the great meal. Matthew and Mark’s account are very similar; however, Mark accounts for the nature and urgency of the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. Mark’s whole Gospel leaves with us the message that the ministry of Jesus and disciples was hard, demanding and urgent work. There was much to do and too little time to do it; therefore, Jesus always acted in a way to magnify his action. So let’s see how the magnification builds to the climax of the story.
The first three Gospels tell us two very important events preceded the feeding of the 5,000. First, Jesus sent the disciples on a “trial run” called “the mission of the twelve” (see also, Mark, Luke) to test their abilities. He sent them into the countryside with nothing but the clothes on their back and their sandals. They were to speak to everyone but preach only to those who were receptive and welcomed them in their homes. They were not to argue but leave alone the ones who refused to listen or offer hospitality.
By the time the disciples return from the mission they were exhausted but had to begin again dealing with the crowds around Jesus. It is a very hard job to be a disciple. Recall Jesus preached to the poor, the hungry, the outcasts, the imprisoned, sinners of Roman and Hebrew societies. Jesus expects these disciples to master compassionate response to everyone, including the hostile and the outcasts in order to find and minister to those who thirsted for healing grace. And, while being welcomed into someone’s home when you are carrying no food is a blessing, being welcomed into the home of someone who may be almost as destitute as you may give small benefit to a hungry stomach.
This mission is significant itself. Luke suggests Jesus knows he has taught the disciples all his knowledge and this mission is the last on the journey to Jerusalem and the cross. And, both Mark and Luke tell us after this great feast Jesus told the disciples about his impending death. Perhaps this feast done by the man Jesus who must grieve over his impending death yet be overjoyed by his disciple’s success presages the Lord’s Supper?
The other important preceding event was the execution of John the Baptist by order of Herod. Mark and Matthew tell us on their return to Jesus the disciples bring this news to Jesus.
Luke says John is the cousin of Jesus, probably a childhood friend or as I would suggest, bosom buddies. John the Baptist also heralds Jesus’ divinity in the first three Gospels. The Gospel of John says the Baptizer proclaims that Jesus will take away the sins of the world as a sacrificial lamb, that is, Jesus will be a sacrifice. The death of cousin John surely weighed heavy on the heart of Jesus both as the loss of a great relative and as a reminder of his journey towards his crucifixion.
But there is more in this story. Not only does Jesus see his disciples exhausted from their work, he is in the same situation. He is known throughout the countryside. Every where he goes is beset by the poor, sick, downtrodden looking for grace, the curious and those looking to trap him.  Have you ever been panhandled? Imagine that everywhere you go, every destitute person recognizes you and runs up pleading, “Please help me!” and your compassion forces you to help them. It will wear you out.
Mark says (6:31) Jesus and the disciples are so busy with these crowds that “many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat.”  In all this exhaustion from the mission of the twelve and grief over the death of John, they worked with the crowds so intensely that they could not even stop to eat themselves.
So an exhausted Jesus stands here by the sea listening to his exhausted disciples tell him of all the good and bad news with a crowd calling for him in the background. Who would not be so struck with grief with this news that they would welcome a chance to just sit down and rest,…or cry with a very heavy heart?
And so, here on the shore of the Sea of Galilee among this turmoil, Jesus finally says what you and I are already thinking, “Lets get in a boat and sail away from here to a quiet, abandoned place on the other shore and a little rest.”
What happens? The crowd sees them embark and everyone sets off on foot along the shoreline following Jesus and the disciples to the place they disembark.
When Jesus gets out of the boat he looks out at the crowd already present there. We all know it is shorter to follow a diameter than the circumference of a circle, so this crowd must have raced around the shoreline with urgency.
Now we reach the climax of the story. Jesus looks out over this crowd of miserable humanity, sick, crippled, possessed by demons, schemers, the whole slice of human misery, and what does he feel? Matthew says he had great compassion for them. Mark is even more pointed (6:34), “He had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.”
“This exhausted, grief-stricken Jesus “had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd and he began to teach them many things.”
We miss the power of this story in English. This one little word translated “had compassion,” is the entire key to the story. It really means “gut wrenching compassion,” but today we might say heart rending compassion.
The Gospel writers, or perhaps more accurately, the Holy Spirit that inspired these writing, carefully reserved the use of this word to describe the divine compassion of God represented in Jesus. It is used only to describe the reaction of Jesus to crowds of sin-sick sinners seeking healing.
Only two instances in the entire four Gospels use this deep compassion for one human towards another, both are parables of Jesus. One is the Good Samaritan on his way back from Jerusalem who saw a man robbed and left for dead beside the road and had compassion for him. The other is the father of the prodigal son who espied his son on the road coming home a broken man and the father felt this heart rending compassion towards him. If you have a child you can imagine the joy and at the same time painful compassion over a son who suffered so due to his own pride but remained tied by love to his parent. Jesus tells us it is impossible to have too much compassion towards another human whether he is your son or a stranger in a ditch, perhaps lying in wait to rob you.
The two parables reveal a compelling expectation of us to have the compassion that Jesus had at the feast. The message in this story is not the miracle. The message is the feast of compassion is open to everyone who seeks grace.
When the disciples say evasively, “there are so many people and nothing to eat, let us send them away to get something to eat in spite of the fact they are in the desert(!), what did Jesus tell the disciples? “You give them something to eat,” (How tired and hungry you are is not the point is left unstated but implied.)
You want us to give something to eat to the robber who probably wants to rob us, to the fellow with leprosy who is ritually unclean, to the morally degenerate that we loathe, even to the Pharisees who seek to trap and kill you?  Jesus didn’t put any qualifiers on it, he just said, “Feed my sheep.”
I can’t speak for you. But my take on this is that following Jesus is not living on easy street. You need heart rending compassion that nurtures forbearance, patience and even charity towards those seeking grace whom you dislike or disagree with over matters of religious interpretation. That is a tall order under which we all chafe.
In my last sermon I talked about how the bad things of this world happen to good people. Today at this feast at a shared table, Jesus has turned the world upside down. Jesus tells us what good people do for someone in desperate straights. Jesus demands unqualified compassion towards those seeking Grace even when our inner feelings want us to do otherwise.
There is a high cost to discipleship. Paul captures the idea, “I know the right thing, but I persist painfully in doing the wrong thing.” Doing the right thing is a painful struggle.
Understandably, you might say, Well Pastor Henry, it is a nice theoretical concept, but we are humans like Paul, we can’t help it.
I could remind you that also we have to heed Paul’s reminder to his congregations about unity but I won’t for a minute. Paul said some of us are smart, some skilled, some rich, some well situated, some struggle but bring a great talent to the church, some struggle with a sin finding it hard if not impossible to change but they give of themselves to the congregation as much as they can. We are all struggling sinners but we are all called as parts of the body of Christ, each bringing that special gift God calls us to bring. Paul said unity of the congregation is the most valuable and divine thing we can possess to keep those parts working right. Unity is sharing the compassion of Jesus with those whom we may differ but share the same grace. Paul said you only become a sanctified person by working at it every day, like a distance runner in training.
This feast of Jesus tells us we cannot feed this flock of unruly sinners without a shepherd who seek grace unless we have patience with them, unless we find heart felt divine compassion to see everyone as a child of God not a minion of Satan; unless we are ready for the hard work when we see some child of God in need, and unless we don’t wait or pray for Jesus to do something, but rather do as Jesus says, “You feed them.” We should all strive constantly to attain the heart full of compassion because we do not hold it securely. In that heart there is only room for love, patience and charity towards the sheep without a shepherd.
I said earlier “I could remind you about unity of purpose,” but perhaps I don’t need to. By happenstance I bumped into somebody who knows your congregation and they said, “Those folks at Mowbray Presbyterian Church are really nice people and take good care of each other.”
Keep on training for the long distance run to glory, and feed his sheep.

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