A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie
2 Chronicles 36:14-23
Psalm 122
Ephesians 2:4-10
John 6:4-15
Sometimes I wish God would show us miracles like this : feeding five-thousand people out of some kid's lunch box. Stuff like that just doesn't seem to happen much any more.
Though I do remember one kid with a lunch box that saved the day. After paddling six or seven miles into the wilderness, we hit the rapids where a sharp rock rips a hole in one of the canoes. And then I discover that the pack with the repair materials was left in the car. We bring all the boats ashore, and while the scouts dry out and unpack lunch, the leaders rummage through our packs looking for something to plug up the hole. Nothing. So much for that neat motto: "Be prepared." Just as we are considering foraging for natural' options for repairs, Becky opens her mess kit and finds the making of a miracle. Not loaves and fishes, but duct tape. "When the going gets tough, the tough get duct tape." It did seem like a miracle.
Maybe there are more miracles happening than we think. Perhaps we need to look again.
I have several anniversaries happening this weekend: the fifth anniversary of my ordination was yesterday on April Fools' Day, the fiftieth anniversary of my birth is today on April 2, and, by the liturgical calendar, today, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, is the ninth anniversary of our marriage.
I spent quite a while reflecting on these anniversaries, looking through old photo albums, and I realized there'd been a lot of things happen that I never would have believed possible. They seem like miracles to me. Big things and tiny ones, like
Somehow we're given what we need right when we need it, often in unexpected ways. That happens in our churches, too. The theology that supports total ministry claims that the Spirit has given the church everything we need to do the work we are called to do. We look first at what we believe God is calling us to do our mission. Then we consider what work needs to be done to accomplish that. And finally we consider which of us are called to do that work. If after prayerful discernment, we find some gaps in our team places where it seems there is no one to do what needs to be done we might find a miracle in an unexpected place . . . or it might be a sign that we need to do more discernment about our mission: that perhaps our understanding of our mission has been mistaken or that God is calling us in a new and different direction.
Sometimes, in our churches and in our personal lives, we might be like the unfaithful priests and people in today's first reading. They were not doing what God hoped they would do. And to say that things didn't go well for them is an understatement. Yet even then, after a sabbath time, a time of waiting, something of a miracle occurred God stirred up the spirit of a foreigner, King Cyrus, who made God's people free to go home and rebuild the temple.
It's another odd kind of team work. Looks like we're in this together even those, like King Cyrus, who might seem to be working against us, might be part of God's chosen team. Miracles seldom happen to people in isolation. Miracles, it seems, are community events.
Jesus didn't feed the 5000 out of thin air, though I suppose he could have; he took what little they had: a child's five barley loaves and two fish. God could just have made the Hebrew people go home and build a new temple; or at least he might have raised up a Hebrew leader; instead he stirs up a foreign king. God uses the seemingly unimportant offerings and abilities of apparently unqualified people. God takes those ordinary things and works miracles.
At the same time, the Bible is quick to remind us that even when our actions or offerings produce miracles, we should not boast. "This is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." It is God's gift we call the gift "grace" -- that saves us.
Even the work that we are able to do is God's gift to us. "We are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works." We were made to work miracles for each other. So if you happen to have a couple of fish or a roll of duct tape or a skill to share, let's use it and see what kind of miracle God will make next.