Proper12B9Pentecost, Sullivan Park
Care Center, July 26, 2015 by Annette Fricke
A woman by
the name of Sara Miles is attached to these sentences, “There’s always someone
inappropriate at Jesus’ table. Sometimes
it’s you and me.” Although these two
sentences have an illusion to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and most
certainly to the person named Judas whose reputation as a follower of Jesus was
certainly suspect at the very least, we should also consider that any meeting
of a group of believers in Jesus or even non-believers has this same
dynamic. Observe if you will, any table
with or without food of a meeting, even if gathering to play bingo will
occasionally reveal some, who to some of the rest of us appears to be a bit off
color in their language or suspect in their actions. We all have our virtues as well as our vices.
But what if what we see as those virtuous actions performed by us as gifts of
God. That way, the focus is off us and
more correctly onto that which God has given to us. It begs the question, doesn’t
it as to how we measure our lives? Most
of us look at accomplishments and achievements.
Our lives are full of them from the very beginnings of childhood. The baby books record our first words, our
first steps, our first time at feeding ourselves and tying our shoes. About a
month or so ago, there was a special on all the high achievers of the local
high school seniors. If you followed the
questioning of the interviewer and each student’s responses, your conclusion
would also be that we are rewarded in life for our accomplishments and our achievements. But hold on: the interviewer has one more
question, “How many of you have had a job?” Out of a group of around twenty
people, only two raised their hands. My
co-worker, who probably has more in common with me that she would care to
admit, really disliked the whole story about the success of the elite
intellectuals. She saw through the whole
thing stating that the only reason, or at least the main reason that these
students were such high achievers academically is because their parents had the
money and resources to make it happen. She
is truly jealous of what she sees as someone who has it better in life and she
is stuck with a short stick. Sure, you can look at other things, like the
interviewer as well as the response of these young, and claim that the parents
did not influence their motivation. In
my experience of interviews, I know that this is not true and any interviewer
can make what they want by the questions and body language they present. Few,
with the opportunity for an interview will argue with the interviewer. But the
bottom line is, our education system, as well as different work settings,
throughout life is based on competition and performance. You and I resonate with that premise, if not
by our actions, certainly by the results we see. Your performance in your job
determines your pay raises. This is true
even if you work for and by yourself as your own boss. Many of us have lived
under the principle that if you work hard, you will go far in life. Yet, “life
lived under the performance principle makes us slaves to insecurity and
anxiety, constantly comparing ourselves to others, struggling to reach a level
of achievement which always eludes us.
Life seen as “gift,” as grace, can set us free. Once you know you are loved
unconditionally by God, there is such freedom (-Br. Geoffrey Tristram).”
One of the
thoughts someone is bound to think as a result of this story of the feeding of
the 5,000 is a parent loudly proclaiming, “That’s my boy! Isn’t he smart? I taught him that. That’s my boy.” My boy is the one who had the loaves and fish
and he shared them with everyone! Isn’t
that great? Yet the protectiveness of
parenting is always an element. The
rationale is that the parents know best and try to instill those values in
their children. But, eventually, the
children will find out that there are other ideas in the world. The truth be told, we constantly live in the
midst of cultural values and what the voice of Christianity tells us. And then we are confronted with a number of
interpretations of various passages in the Bible, hoping to glean from them
some semblance, some shred of meaning for our existence. We are children of God as taught from the
very beginning of creation and yet we continue to struggle with just what that
means to our daily lives. I know
residents where I work who are clearly jealous of a certain bingo player who
wins more often than they do. He seems
to know which bingo cards to pick and has more success. But isn’t that descriptive of life in
general? Given the same conditions, some
succeed where others are mediocre or actually fail. We look for and seek justice to be done, but
still the results are uneven. We want to
think that hard work will get us to our goals, but even that premise does not
seem to pan out. Maybe we can just look
at the bingo winner’s methods and we can figure it out; maybe not. You might say that bingo is just a game to
trivialize the situation, but you’re still upset that he manages to win and you
don’t. But even winning has its
shallowness. What do we really need in
our lives, what really puts us right with God?
Oftentimes,
our eyes are open so much to what goes on around us that we fail to see God’s
hand in any of it. We attribute everything
to our or someone else’s effort even though we sense there are other factors
involved. We know that this doesn’t work
and yet we sometimes act that it does.
For those of you who have ever struggled with occupations and providing
for a family, you know that feeling of fear and insecurity. You know that despite the best efforts, you
are never quite secure. You see the
tornadoes, fires, and earthquakes and realize that even what seems most secure
around us can disappear so quickly. No
matter how many times we may try to tell ourselves that our lives are secure,
we take back that lie every time we are hit with the realization that we do not
have security. Our lives are truly
dependant on God. God is our source as
well as our sustenance. It is God who
brings us what we need from heaven. God
is the one who is able to calm our anxieties and fears in a way that simply
clinging to the false securities of this world cannot.
The reason
that Jesus was so popular is because people attributed to him what they were
unable to do themselves. Jesus walked with
them in their lives as one of them. He appeared
as an ordinary human being with a vision for a new world. He had many followers because this is one who
put them at ease, who calmed their fears and anxieties about life. He brought healing in the face of sickness
and death. He brought hope in the midst
of despair. Jesus had, above all a
compassion that surpassed anyone they had ever known throughout the course of
their lives. And yet, there is evidence
in this gospel text that Jesus was not who the people thought he should
be. They wanted him to be their
king. Yet God, in wisdom knew that was a
temporary fix as well. God surpasses the
temporary, the fleeting by continuing to give us what we need and satisfies our
deepest desires.
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