Homily for Sunday, July 29th
Lessons:
Psalm 34
2 Kings 4:42-44
A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first
fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in
his sack. Elisha said, "Give it to the people and let them eat." But
his servant said, "How can I set this before a hundred people?" So he
repeated, "Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the LORD,
`They shall eat and have some left.'" He set it before them, they ate, and
had some left, according to the word of the LORD.
Ephesians 3:14-21
I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in
heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his
glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power
through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as
you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power
to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height
and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you
may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to
accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory
in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
John 6:1-21
Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also
called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw
the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat
down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was
near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to
Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said
this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered
him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get
a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to
him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But
what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit
down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down,
about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given
thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much
as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather
up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered
them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who
had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had
done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into
the world."
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take
him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got
into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and
Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was
blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking
on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to
them, "It is I; do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into
the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were
going.
Collect:
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom
nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Homily:
“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
In this valley, tasting and seeing
that the Lord is good is a long-standing tradition. Today we will honor the many good cooks Graves Mill has
produced by carrying on an old chapel tradition with our 5th Sunday
dinner on the grounds. Breaking bread together, sharing our blessings with one
another, we commemorate Jesus’s feeding of the five thousand.
Seeing that the Lord is good
has also been a blessing of this valley. Since its first settlers arrived in
the 1700s, the breathtaking beauty of Graves Mill has attracted people and made
them want to stay here. For those
early colonizers, many of whom came from the British Isles, this place must
have looked like home. Graves,
Jenkins, Hawkins, Lillard, Estes, McDaniel, Berry—these are just some of the
family names of the folks who found our valley and these blue mountains as
familiar as England, Scotland, or Wales.
In Friday night’s opening ceremony
of the Olympics, the landscape, history, and culture of the British people were
celebrated. Being an English major and an unapologetic Anglophile, I loved the
whole show. The pastoral scenes,
with green pastures, milling sheep, and Glastonbury Tor in the distance
certainly reminded me of Graves Mill. Unlike Britain, where the industrial revolution
overshadowed the rural culture, Graves Mill has remained a farming community. A
hundred years ago, there was a narrow gauge railroad that ran all the way from
Somerset in Orange County right by this chapel and up into the mountains, built
by a lumber company. Imagine how many trees they must have extracted from these
hills to make their investment in a timber train worthwhile. Now, I don’t know if any trace of the railroad
remains. I’ve never come across one. The idyllic rolling pastures have
prevailed.
The setting for today’s famous
gospel story takes place on such a pastoral hillside. Jesus, the good shepherd,
has attracted quite a flock around him, hungry for his words and loath to
leave. He certainly could have
said a prayer of blessing over them, dispersed them, sent them home. But that was not his plan. As in the
story of the prophet Elisha, Jesus wants to demonstrate the gracious generosity
of God to the 5000 people gathered near him. His disciples are in disbelief
when he says he will feed all 5000 of them with five loaves of bread and two
fish. After Jesus tells the people
to sit down, he himself says a prayer over the food and passes among all of
those gathered, giving them bread and fish, enough to satisfy their hunger and
some to spare. As in the Last
Supper, when he breaks bread and shares bread and wine with his disciples,
Jesus shows us how to value the intimacy of dining with others.
Prefiguring the sacrament of
communion, when we break and share the body and blood of Christ, the feeding of
the five thousand represents a fundamental facet of our faith: love. We love one another enough to take care
of each other’s most basic needs. Feeding
hungry people is simply what we are supposed to do.
Surely some of those 5000 believed
magic had been performed on their behalf, and believing that, they wanted to
make Jesus their king. This miracle, however, is not about magic, and it’s
certainly not about the power of kings. A king would deal in gold and silver
and jewels, in all the trappings of majesty, NOT in simple barley loaves and
fish. A magician, like a genie, might grant you three wishes or help you to win
the lottery, but a magician would have no interest in feeding you. Bread is
simply not the stuff of power or magic.
It is the stuff of Jesus and of everyday life.
Both in the way he represents his
own body as bread and in the way he feeds bread to the multitude, Jesus tells
us that he is part of our everyday world. He is with us and within us. It’s not magic…it’s just love. And like
life, love is an everyday miracle that we tend to take for granted.
“Taste and see that the Lord is
good.”
Amen.
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