Sermons

“The Blessings of the Breadth of Faith”

John 6:1-21; Ephesians 3:14-21 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – July 29, 2018

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might open our hearts and our minds to the breadth and length and height and depth of your love and let go of all our fears. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

One of the ways I had been preparing myself for Junior Camp over the past few weeks was by telling myself that the 30 campers we would have this year couldn’t possibly be as loud as the 60 campers I helped with two years ago. And really, I think that was true. But as it turns out, it only takes a couple of 4^th graders screaming to affect the ears. There are a lot of things at camp that trigger the screaming: spiders, ants, water balloons, lizards, tarantulas, your friends. Some of those screams are happy screams, but those are just as ear-splitting as the scared screams, so that doesn’t really help. What was amazing about those kids was that many of them faced their fears head-on. They were afraid of heights but they did tree-climbing anyway. They were afraid of the dark, but they made it back to the cabin from vespers with very little light, often without screaming at all.

I bring this up because I think there is a sub-text in both our scripture lessons today about fear. 4^th and 5^th graders live with their fears closer to the surface than most adults. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have them too. And a lot of them are hinted at in our readings today. The crowd was following Jesus because he was healing sick people. Sickness is one of our greatest fears. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to live without the benefits of modern medicine. Our fears of sickness are both about suffering and about death. Even though we’re much less likely to die these days from a wide variety of illnesses and injuries, often our treatments themselves are excruciating. The other fear that comes with this is the caregiver’s fear, the feeling of being helpless to stop our loved one’s suffering. No wonder a crowd was following Jesus, having seen and heard that he was healing the sick.

But crowds create their own problems. All those people gathered in one place, and then Jesus asked Philip to figure out lunch. Philip responded by putting words to another one of our deepest fears: scarcity. “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” We don’t have enough. We can’t get enough. We will run out. This is one that gnaws at us, isn’t it? It keeps us up at night and hovers in the background, even in moments when we do actually have plenty.

There are other fears that keep us up at night, some of which are way less likely to have anything to do with reality. The next section of our story raises one. Anyone here afraid of ship wreck? There are a lot of dramatic ways to be in danger, most of which will never happen to most of us. But that doesn’t keep us from spending time worrying about them. What’s interesting about the story though, is that while it mentions the danger, the storm itself is not the main source of fear. The way John tells the story the disciples aren’t terrified until they see Jesus walking toward them on the water. He doesn’t say if they scream as well as 4^th grade girls, but I can imagine they might have. There’s danger, but there’s also the unknown, and that is often way more frightening. When something disrupts the way we understand the world, it makes us worry there’s nothing we can depend on.

Finally, there is a fear that is just barely hinted at in the passage we read from Ephesians. It comes up at church camp; it comes up at church. It comes up at work and in politics and community engagement and school. Paul makes reference to God, and perhaps off-handedly notes that it is God “from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.” This assertion is a direct challenge to our tendency to divide ourselves into tribes and develop false narratives about how those “other people” who are different from us are something to be afraid of. Often, our reaction to people being different than we are – doing things differently, looking at the world differently – is to assume their existence implies we are wrong. So we respond by judging them as wrong, and often, as a threat.

These two passages have given us an extensive list of fears: sickness and death, scarcity, danger, the unknown, and difference. I’m sure we could come up with more fears if we tried. Anything you’d like to add to the list, things these stories didn’t touch on? Now that we’ve rounded up the bad news, let’s turn to the good news. Because these passages don’t just remind us of our fears; they also tell us about God’s response to our fears. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that he was praying they could comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, so let’s look at that. Though we live in a seemingly three-dimensional world, Paul introduces four ways of measuring. I think he does this to remind us that our earthly existence can’t fully contain God. He wants us to try to understand, but he knows we will never have the full picture.

It seems to me, however, that there are enough hints here to move us beyond our fears. What is Jesus’ response to sickness? Healing. Jesus took the faith of those who came to him in need and transformed it into healing power, bringing an end to suffering. What is Jesus’ response to our determinations of scarcity? Abundance. Philip was sure they couldn’t possibly feed that crowd. But Andrew went ahead and mentioned that there was this one boy with five barley loaves and two fish. Was he trying to back up Philip’s assertion that there wasn’t nearly enough? Or did he have an inkling that Jesus could make just a tiny portion into a gracious plenty? Everyone got as much as they wanted, and then they gathered the leftovers into twelve baskets. Our illusions of scarcity are dissolved in the face of God’s abundant love.

What happens with the danger of the storm and the terrifying mystery of Jesus water? This one is remarkably simple. The disciples are terrified, and Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” And then they discover God has brought them through the danger and they’ve reached their destination. We are reminded we don’t need to be able to explain everything and we don’t need to fear that which we can’t explain. “It is I,” says Jesus; “don’t be afraid.” What would life be like if, instead of assuming things we don’t understand are threats, we expected them to be manifestations of Jesus somehow? What if we could remember that God will carry us through danger?

Finally, Paul’s point, in his blessing of the Ephesians, is that God is so much bigger than we can possibly imagine. God’s love stretches farther than we see, even with our mind’s eye. God’s abundant mercy is for all peoples, us certainly but not just us. “Every family in heaven and on earth.” When Christ is dwelling in our hearts, we become more firmly rooted and grounded in that love, and these fears – of sickness and suffering, scarcity and danger, and everything we don’t understand – dissipate. When we are “filled with all the fullness of God” there isn’t any room left for fear.

So how do we get filled up with the fullness of God? Are there any hints in our stories today? I suppose there are thousands of ways, but there are a few specific things suggested in these passages. Paul would start with prayer. He’s praying this fullness of faith will come to pass for the Ephesians. We can pray that for ourselves and for one another. We can pray for people we’ll never meet whose lives are vastly different than our own. We can focus our prayer lives on recalling the full breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love. One of the things we lifted up all week at Junior Camp was encouragement. Those kids were able to face their fears because others were praying actively by telling them they could do the hard thing and congratulating them on every attempt, successful or otherwise. When we feel like we’re about to scream, we can take a deep breath instead and remember that Christ dwells within us. This kind of prayer is transformational.

There is another hint in the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus can make miracles out of practically nothing. So if we’re willing to offer up our “practically nothing” God can work with that. So often, our response to scarcity is to grasp more tightly to the little we have. But the gospel invites us into a different way of living. Instead of holding onto what we have, we’re invited to share it, to let it become part of God’s abundance. And when we do, we suddenly discover there is more than we ever thought possible. This is what it means to live in the abundance of God.

Finally, if we’re looking to be filled with the fullness of God’s love, and we’re not quite up to praying, and we’re definitely not ready to give up the little we have, there’s always screaming. If we’re really too scared to do anything else, we can cry out to the Lord from the depth of our fear, and God will respond from the depth of God’s love. “It is I; do not be afraid.” God’s ears are far more tolerant than mine. However it is that we call upon Christ, abundant love will be showered down upon us. Alleluia and Amen.