The Renovating Reverend

With so much going on, I haven’t had time to write, so I thought I’d dig into my sermon file. This is an edited version of sermon notes I used when invited to speak at a Unity church, some years ago. The scripture reading was the 8th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, verses 1 through 8.

Good morning. I am a minister-at-large with Universal Ministries, which is an international, interfaith ministry. Most recently, my own ministry has focused on marrying couples all around the state, so this morning it feels as though somebody is missing up here — as though two somebodies are missing! Even so, I’m very glad to have the opportunity to speak to you this morning.

I did not grow up in a Universal Ministries church or in the Unity movement. I was actually dedicated in a Conservative Baptist church. There are some very good things that took away from my experience as a Baptist. One was the teaching that everyone has at least one good sermon in them. Even at an early age I knew this must be true because my grandmother had already demonstrated she had several. And she wasn’t afraid to repeat them. Another important thing I learned from the experience was the doctrine that everything in scripture must be read and interpreted in light of what Jesus said and did. Jesus was the focus and the key to everything in life. And Jesus stayed with me as I grew up, even through a time when I wondered if he was the Lamb of God, a gutsy guy who’d followed his convictions to the bitter end, or a fictional character who never really lived at all. Somehow, nothing has ever managed to get in the way of my appreciation for, my connection with, Jesus. So it’s little wonder that when I was invited to speak in church that I would speak about a moment in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and that I would bring my Jesus action figure with me! I’ll put him on the lectern, here. He is my hero.

Today’s reading about the feeding of the multitude was from the Gospel of Mark, but this miracle appears in all four Gospels, and it is the only miracle that does appear in all four, so there must be something special about it. I have certainly liked the story since childhood, when the Sunday school teacher moved around small figures of Jesus, loaves, fish, and baskets on a felt story board.

The traditional exposition of this story is that it demonstrates Jesus’ divine power and teaches us that we can trust God to supply for all our needs. When I was a kid, however, that just didn’t seem to cover the whole story. And, as an adult, I still thought there must be more to it, something deeper than the conventional reading and speculation about the meaning of the numbers of loaves, fish, and people. It would be many years before someone would help me see beyond convention and symbolic numbers to more of what this miracle might be saying to us.

It happened on one of those Sundays when I went to church despite not really wanting to go. In the mega-church that I attended, it was very easy to quietly slip into a row far from the pulpit, sit down, and daydream about all of the other places I could be on a beautiful southern California day. And so, despite the incredible church building, massive choir, and one of the grandest pipe organs in the country, my attention drifted until the guest speaker was introduced. He captured my attention quickly.
The guest speaker was a slender, slightly stooped, gray-haired man who wore a simple white cassock. He had an incredibly intense expression and an urgent way of speaking. Many famous people had spoken at this church, but this man’s name was not familiar to me. His name was Henri Nouwen. Nouwen, who passed away in 1996, was a Roman Catholic priest and a well respected author. He is, perhaps, best known for his book “The Wounded Healer.” What he said that morning would propel me into spiritual seeking and growth. His topic, as you might guess, was the miracle in today’s reading. I remember that he had four main points. He said that the food in the story had been:

Taken
Blessed
Broken
Given

For him, the food represented the life of Jesus. Jesus was just like the food. He was taken (or, rather, chosen), blessed by God, broken through death, and given (via resurrection) as a gift of redemption, a gift of healing to all, a gift that is more than enough to satisfy all. Nouwen further explained that we, too, are just like the food. We are chosen of God, we are blessed with God’s love and grace, we are broken as we travel through life, and, like Jesus, we can be healers. The key to all of this, for Nouwen, was at the end of the story; the food multiplied when it was blessed. He explained that the story is inviting us to “put the brokenness under the blessing,” and to see what abundance and healing follows.

Because I had come from a very conservative expression of Christianity, was feeling terribly broken, and had just begun to hope that I might experience healing, Nouwen’s words blew me away. It was amazing to hear that, not just in spite of my brokenness, but because of it, I could experience healing and also help others experience healing. I just needed to consciously and prayerfully put my brokenness under the blessing of God’s love and grace. Many years later, it still strikes me as an amazing, powerful message.

Using Nouwen’s talking points, I’d like to share how I’ve come to understand the story.

Taken (Chosen)
Jesus took the bread…

•It’s interesting that no one questioned the food’s quality. The bread may have been very hard and crusty. The fish—whether dried, smoked, or fresh—may have been out in the heat of the day for hours. Since Palestine is roughly on the same latitude as southern Arizona, you can imagine what that fish might have been like by mid-day! But in the story, the bread and fish were OK.

•Likewise, no one questioned the background of the person who provided the food. John’s gospel tells us it was a boy. No one grilled this individual about family history, socio-economic status, any past mistakes, religious affiliation, or anything else. Jesus had simply asked the disciples, “What do you have?” What was there was good, and it was good enough.

•The food was not just acceptable, but valuable. It was exactly what was needed at that time and place, late in the afternoon, a good distance away from any town or city.

•If we are like the food, all of this is a reminder to me that God accepts us just as we are, and that, wherever we are in life, we are right where we need to be at this moment.

Blessed
Jesus blessed the bread…

•Instead of saying that Jesus blessed the bread, some translations of the Gospels say that “he took the break and gave thanks.” I have learned that this is because the Hebrew blessing of food has always been a prayer of gratitude to God for God’s greatness and abundant giving. The bread blessing says, “Blessed are you, Lord, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” It is a combination of blessing and thanksgiving.

•If you’ve read a self-help book or worked a recovery program, I’m sure you’ve heard of the importance of the “attitude of gratitude.” This is because a lot of folks have experienced that the attitude of being grateful, even for the most basic things, transforms our lives in powerful ways.

•While we are blessed by God’s love and grace, my experience has been that we fully experience the blessing only when we cultivate gratitude. Love, grace, and gratitude are all so important for us to embrace. Why? Because we are…

Broken

•The Gospels tell us that people flocked to Jesus for healing—-many felt broken.

•James Dillett Freeman, a much admired minister and poet in the Unity movement, was once asked to articulate some of the most important things he had learned in his lifetime. He answered, “I have learned that every person alive has been wounded or is hurting in some way, and needs healing.”

•In practical terms, if we have a cut on our skin, it probably won’t heal well unless, at the very least, we do something to clean it. If we ignore it or don’t know it’s there, the cut is likely to fester. In spiritual terms, we can’t heal until we acknowledge our brokenness, until we know where we are broken. Once we know that, we can put the brokenness under the blessing of God’s love and grace…the blessing of our gratitude to God for what we have and—-if we dare—-for who we are, right now, in this moment. Even if we’re feeling crusty like bread or stinky like fish, God’s love and grace permeate our existence, they are all around us, within us. If, for whatever reason, we can’t manage to be grateful for anything else, we can, perhaps, be grateful for the existence of God’s abundant, all-pervasive love and grace, because, whether or not we feel it at any given moment, we are blessed. And we are…

Given

•My experience has been that when we put our brokenness under God’s blessing and employ the attitude of gratitude (even if we do tentatively, by inches), our lives begin to change. Our outward circumstances may not begin to change, but we begin to change internally. And gratitude seems to inspire a person to generosity. When we more deeply recognize that we have so very much in God’s love, grace, and indwelling presence, the experience of abundance begins to flow into all areas of our lives, and is passed along by us to others, in the smallest of ways, in our daily lives.

•The seemingly humble loaves and fish that are our character, our time, and our talents, multiply under the blessing. The blessing and the gratitude begin to fill our lives to overflowing as we bless others. Just as in the story, there is enough for us, everyone around us, and twelve baskets, besides.

This sounds wonderful. Abundant love and grace can fill our lives and the lives of others. But what about those times in life when we’re not feeling full of love and grace? Those times when we feel as though we intellectually know of their existence and availability, but just don’t get the sense that love is “sticking,” that the kindness and love given to us are just rolling on through or bouncing right off?

This is where the paper cup in my sermon title comes in.

You’ll have to trust me on this…

Paper Cup Meditation

I don’t know what the origin of the paper cup meditation is, but the concept was passed along to me by a social worker. It’s all about visualizing your heart, your whole life, being filled with God’s love.
I invite you to take the next few minutes to let God’s love and grace sink deeply into your life, to give it a chance to fill you up to overflowing, right here and now. You might close your eyes, focus on the dancing flame of a candle, or look at one of the beautiful features of this sanctuary. However you focus your thoughts, know that God’s love is for you, just as you are at this moment. It so completely fills you, so completely indwells you, that you are the love of God.

If you have a tough time envisioning or experiencing this today, just imagine that your heart, your soul, your whole being is a paper cup. There is a constant, gentle flow of God’s love and grace into your being, into your cup. Picture God’s love however you like. You might see it as something airy, or as a soft light, or even as a metallic liquid. See the love begin to fill your cup.
If your cup has a hole in it, or even if it has no bottom, and the love flows right on through, don’t worry. Know that the love and grace are constantly flowing into your cup. Before the foundation of time, God knew us, and knowing all that we are in advance, God extended love and grace to us. God has continued to supply them, and they can never be exhausted. See the constant, limitless love of God begin to fill in the bottom of your cup.

As the bottom of your cup fills in, more and more of God’s love and grace stay with you, and your cup begins to hold more and more. Imagine also all the love of God that has come to you through others, even in the smallest of ways. Every kind smile and thoughtful remark, every good wish and deed is coming home to rest in your cup, along with the constant, direct flow of love from God. All this love keeps filling in the bottom of your cup until the amount of love in the cup rises toward the top. It continues to fill your cup, to rise slowly until it just spills over the edge. Your heart and soul, the very core of your being, are so full of love that love is not only in and around you, but has become an integral part of you.

Bringing this experience and knowledge of God’s love and grace with you, slowly return your attention to the sanctuary, to the present time and place.

God’s love and grace are truly endless, ever flowing into and through our lives. There is so much more than enough. If your experience or certainty of this ever fades, you can always meditate again on the paper cup, filling in and filling up to overflowing, for you are the love of God.

Amen.