SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS
IN THE CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE TUESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT
8 MARCH 2005
As Moni McIntyre pointed out three weeks ago, each year our Lenten series takes as its theme a verse from Psalm 51, a penitential psalm, perhaps even the quintessential penitential psalm, the one that sets the tone for Lent during the Ash Wednesday liturgy. But even in the midst of penitence and breast-beating, we come across in that psalm the words of this year's theme: "Make me hear of joy and gladness." Joy and gladness? What's that doing in Lent? We want to hold off on our joy, thank you very much, until Easter. We don't want to be glad. Sadness suits us just fine, for now. And besides, now that we're halfway through Lent, we have just about perfected the art of groveling. Secretly, down under, we like the words of that Lenten hymn from the 1940 Hymnal: "Weary of earth and laden with my sin, I look to heaven and long to enter in." But the Psalmist, in his wisdom, knows how unhealthy groveling can become. He knows that we can feel so miserable about ourselves that we can allow ourselves to believe that even God cannot reach us, which, when all is said and done, is as much a manifestation of the sin of pride as boasting. He reminds us that the purpose of all this brutal self-examination and self-denial is that we may be so purified that we may reach out to touch and be touched by God. We come to this conclusion if we read the end of verse 9: "Make me hear of joy and gladness, that the body you have broken may rejoice."
Rejoice. This past Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, is called "Rejoice" or "Laetare" Sunday, because Holy Mother Church, taking a cue from the Psalmist, decided that a little lightening up of the Lenten discipline might not be a bad idea. The strict Lenten fast was relaxed, and the faithful could even eat little "simmel cakes," made out of flour and other ingredients which were verboten in Lent. Lent IV is also Refreshment Sunday, taking its name from the Gospel of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, which, owing to our practice of borrowing from last year's readings, is our Gospel for tonight.
This is a rich story, a field day for the preacher. It has
been subjected to numerous interpretations, like most stories
in the Bible. But let us say at the outset what it is not. There
is a common, but erroneous explanation, being bandied about today
in some circles, concerning the miracle of the multiplication
of the loaves and fishes described in tonight's Gospel. This "explanation"
is being pawned off as the new and updated theology. Here is how
the contorted explanation goes: The people are hungry, and Jesus
makes it known that the people should share with each other. A
generous little boy comes forward and offers to Jesus the only
food he has. This act of kindness on the part of the boy, the
explanation goes, causes everyone in the crowd to pull out the
food that they were hiding in their cloaks, and share it with
each other. You see, the real miracle, they say, is that
people shared.
Such an "explanation" has been put forward by people
who style themselves "eco-theologians." It is put forward
because some people just have difficulty in accepting miracles,
or even in recognizing the power of God. They still think they
are in control. To such ersatz theologians, if every Biblical
story cannot be explained, or explained away, in human terms,
it is somehow deficient. The irony is that if this Gospel is
about anything at all, it is about the difference between the
way we think, and the way God thinks. We are finite, God is infinite.
Our thought processes are defined by the worlds in which we live,
complete with our prejudices, our biases, our politics, and especially
for us Episcopalians, our impeccable taste. God, on the other
hand, thinks outside the box, and brings about results that we
could not bring about on our own.
But if we are obstinate, hard-hearted and self-centered, we are in good company. The disciples are our heroes. It is the disciples, of course, that obtuse, backward lot, who consistently don't get it. When faced with the problem of feeding the multitudes, they assess their supplies, look at the size of the crowd, and complain, "What are these among so many?" Jesus, however, sees potential in a little boy's lunch. He takes action. He makes the people sit down. He figures out that nothing would be accomplished with thousands of people milling about aimlessly. Then he prays over that lunch box, and voila! The people are fed.
But wait, there's more! As wonderful as that all is, I have
always been struck by the verse in the Gospel which states, "When
they had eaten their fill, He told his disciples, 'Gather up the
fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.'" There
was really no need to do this, was there? Everyone had, we are
told "eaten their fill." Why bother to gather a few
crumbs after so many had been fed? The miracle had taken place.
Listen to how the English mystic Evelyn Underhill explains it.
She writes:
When all were fed, when the job was done, they gathered up twelve
baskets full; one basket for each Apostle. As you know,
the word translated basket is the little satchel in which the
traveling Jew carried enough food for one day's journey, not more.
No waste, but no stinginess. God does not starve His staff;
He always leaves them, if they follow His plan for them and give
without reserve to His children, with enough food in hand for
the day. Give without reserve, and you will gather up enough to
fill your own lunch basket.
I think Miss Underhill is trying to tell us that this story reminds us that we are not independent and self-sufficient as we may think, but rather we are created to be interdependent on God and one another and that we are to share what we have so that there is enough for everyone. Maybe if we recognize our need of others we are more likely to accept our responsibility for the needs of others. God entrusts the miraculous food to his disciples, the ones who, their shortcomings notwithstanding, would be the first leaders of the church. Now we who think sacramentally will see this gift of Jesus as the eucharist. But that is a narrow view. It is in a real sense, the viaticum, and by that I don't mean the Body and Blood of Christ given to the faithful on the point of death, but in a real sense, food for the journey of our faith. The Word of God, handed down from one generation to another, interpreted in light of those other two legs of the stool, tradition and reason --- as well as the sacraments that nourish our souls. We can even say that the fragments gathered up on that Galilean hillside are the Church itself, "that wonderful and sacred mystery" made up of "all sorts and conditions of men" and women, from every race and clan, people from every corner of the globe who call Jesus Lord. This is the gift, the ultimate gift, given to church leaders, those "stewards" of the sacred mysteries.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, it would appear that more and more we are seeing evidence of a squandering of this sacred gift. More and more, church leaders, lay and ordained, seem content with leaving fragments behind. Some fragments, it would seem, are just not worth gathering up. They, because of their race, gender, sexual orientation or theology, are purposely left behind, and deemed to be of little significance, fragments that the church can allegedly do without. Worse, if we may belabor the metaphor, there have been attempts to remove those fragments which had been seemingly secure in the disciples' baskets and to scatter them underfoot. All too close to home, we have seen attempts to scatter such fragments through an application --- dubious at best and fraudulent at worst --- of the church's canons. Recently, at a global level, there has been an attempt to remove from the Anglican basket certain fragments whose theology is found objectionable to certain other fragments. Miss Underhill tells us that Jesus commanded the fragments to be gathered up, and that he gave each disciple enough to nourish those to whom he would minister. But what seems to be happening today is that the basket-holders are tenaciously guarding, even hoarding the church's treasure, as if it were theirs, and not God's. This is especially unfortunate in a communion which for so long has prided itself on having so broad a tent that there was ample room for various fragments to co-exist under its protection.
And, indeed, that mutual respect and forbearance which has been a hallmark of Anglicanism seems to be crumbling before our eyes. It is a sad day, indeed, when the Primates must resort to evensong, because some of them refuse to receive communion with those with whom they disagree, on the assumption that they would taint the sacrament. Allow me a digression. When I was in seminary, the bishop of Long Island summoned all of his seminarians to an all-day retreat in his private chapel. Enthroned in the chancel, he would preach, ex cathedra, on the topic "du jour." The topic one year was the heresies of the early church. One of my classmates complained: "Bishop," he said, "this is the nineteen-sixties. Why must we learn about all those heresies of the second and third centuries?" "Because, sir," responded the bishop, "those heresies are alive and well in the church today." One of those heresies was Donatism, which maintained that the efficacy of the sacraments was adversely affected by the moral impurity of the celebrant. (The case in question involved a bishop of Carthage who had handed over the sacred scrolls to the Emperor's henchmen during the Diocletian persecution.) A council of the church declared, in the doctrine of ex opera operato, that the moral or behavioral shortcomings of the celebrant had no effect on the sacraments ---- thanks be to God! I mention this because it would seem that the primates have taken the heresy of Donatism a step further; they are not saying that they won't receive communion at the hands, say, of Bishop Griswold, but that they won't receive communion in a room at which he is present! All we can say in response to this is to invoke
the words of Mr. Stone's great hymn: "The cry goes up, 'How long?'"
My friends, there has never been a time in the life of the church when we need to heed more the words of the Psalmist: "Make me hear of joy and gladness," because the broken body is more than our individual collections of skin, bones and sinews, but the Body of Christ itself, which finds it all too difficult to rejoice as it suffers from "schisms rent asunder and heresies distressed."
One thing is certain. The Jesus who preached in his first sermon at Nazareth that he was coming to bind up the broken-hearted, to restore sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are captive; the Jesus who consistently reached out to the least, the lost, and the last ----Zaccheus, and Bartimeus and the paralytic at Bethsaida's pool; the Jesus who said that if you have done anything amiss to the least of his brethren, you have done it unto him; the Jesus who shows no partiality among persons ---- this is the same Jesus who bids us to declare no one off limits, this is the Jesus who commands us to gather up all the fragments, that nothing may be lost.
Let us pray:
Watch o'er thy Church, O Lord, in mercy, save it from evil,
guard it still,
Perfect it in thy love, unite it, cleansed and conformed unto
thy will.
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides, was in this broken
bread made one,
So from all lands the Church be gathered, into thy Kingdom
by thy Son.
(Hymn 302, The Hymnal 1982)