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• Ordinary Miracles , John 6:1-21  (see below)
  by Rev. Karen A. Goltz      
   

• Communion By The Sea, John 6:1-21 ff, by Dr. David  Rogne    
   

• The Boy Who Gave His Lunch to Jesus, John 6:1-21, by Rev.  Ruth Martin-Maude  
     

• Rooted in the Soil of Love Ephesians 3:14-21, by Rev. Frank Schaefer

•  Deep Wounds in the Family, 2 Samuel 11:1-15, 12:1-9, by Rev. Thomas Hall
   

• Loving Jesus for what we can get, John 6:1-21, Dou Ting Didymus
   

• Fed by Christ, John 6:1-21, by Philip Van Dam

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Ordinary Miracles
based on John 6:1-21
by Rev. Karen A. Goltz

“The Old Ragged Shirt”

Once there was an old ragged shirt

Who always had his feelings hurt.

He lived in a closet with the other clothes

But he wasn’t worn as much as those.

You see, our little shirt had grown too small,

Or the person who owned it had grown too tall.

He seemed no longer to be of use

Except to hang on his hanger, sad and loose.

The other shirts bragged and said,

“We keep our person warm from fingers to head.”

The pants were proud that they were a covering,

And told the little shirt he was useless; that he could do nothing.

The little shirt fought back at first,

So full of anger he wanted to burst.

“I’m not useless,” he said, his voice starting to rise

But the others laughed so hard they had tears in their eyes.

Our poor little shirt so wanted to serve,

But as the others kept laughing he lost his nerve.

And he said to himself, “They must be right,

I can’t cover or bring warmth, so why should I fight?”

And he stayed on his hanger so sad and alone,

But what was in store for him he couldn’t have known.

One day he was taken and put in a box

With old skirts and handkerchiefs and even some socks.

He stayed there a while scared and confused

Wondering if he would be thrown out or – maybe – reused?

Then someone took him out and cut him in strips

And sewed him to other clothes along his sides and his tips.

And as he looked around he was able to see

He was bigger than ever, and he realized, “There’s more than just me!”

His days as a shirt were over and through,

No longer old and ragged, he was beautiful and new!

Joined together with others something great had been built—

He was now part of a gigantic warm quilt!

He was sent to a place that helps people in need—

People without homes and have children to feed.

He was given to a family who’d lost everything they had—

All that was left were the kids, Mom, and Dad.

With the help of kind strangers they made a new start

With their new quilt which was truly a gift from the heart.

You see, our poor little shirt, which in its original form

Was no good for a covering or for keeping someone warm

Was now part of something of great width and great height

That keeps a whole family warm and covered each night.

-Karen Goltz

 

            Have you ever felt like that ragged old shirt?  You want to help out, but you feel trapped by circumstance, by your geography or your resources.  “I know there’s injustice in the Middle East,” you might say.  “But I’m in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  What can I do from here?”  Or maybe it’s something like, “I know there are a lot of people in need, homeless or hungry, but there are so many of them, I can’t possibly feed them all!  And right now I can barely take care of myself.  How much good can my little contribution really do?”  So we pull back within ourselves, we tell ourselves that the problems in the Middle East are too far away for us to do anything, and don’t really affect us here anyway.  We tell ourselves that the people in need are just lazy, looking for free handouts and taking advantage of the system, and it’s best not to encourage that sort of behavior, all the while hoping that we ourselves won’t have to use those services.  We work hard and take hold of our Bibles and proudly quote, “God helps those who help themselves,” not realizing that it was actually Ben Franklin who said that, and it’s not a passage from scripture.

            It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, because there is so much need in the world, including our own.  People all over the world, in the United States and elsewhere, are hungry, homeless, suffering injustice.  There are so many who are sick, lonely, or in need of guidance.  There are so many organizations like Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Social Services, Prison Ministries, Habitat for Humanity, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, just to name a very small few, that need our help.  There are so many ministries to support, so many needs to fulfill, that we can’t possibly address them all.

            When Jesus saw the large crowd, he asked Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”  I imagine that question must have panicked Philip.  Five thousand people.  Show of hands: who among you is willing and able to provide a satisfying meal to five thousand people?  I had trouble finding a caterer I could afford for my wedding, and I only had seventy people to feed!  It seems impossible, as it did to Philip.  One of the other disciples, Andrew, at least looked to see what they did have to work with.  He found a boy who had five loaves of bread and two fish.  And that little bit of food seemed so insignificant compared to the size of the crowd that it didn’t seem worth handing out at all.  But Jesus insisted that they did anyway.  And when everyone had eaten enough to be satisfied, the disciples gathered up twelve baskets of leftover bread.  Twelve baskets of leftovers!  That’s more bread than they’d had to start out with!

            The feeding of the five thousand is generally accepted as a miracle.  How else could five thousand people eat and be satisfied, and have more leftovers than they’d had food to begin with?  An alternate theory I’ve heard, proposed by some skeptics, is that some of the people in the crowd had brought some food of their own, and when they saw Jesus’ generosity, they were inspired to do the same.  If even one fifth of the people there had brought their own loaf of bread, that’s a thousand loaves, more than enough to feed five thousand people.  So, according to this alternate theory, this wasn’t a miracle at all, but rather the biblical proof-text for potluck suppers.

            I’m not sure if I buy that theory, but to me, it’s not worth wasting much time worrying about.  Sure, it seems to take the magic and the romance out of the story, but does that make it any less mysterious?  Any less miraculous?

            It seems like maybe it would be less miraculous if Jesus were just presiding over a potluck supper.  That’s so ordinary.  How could something so ordinary be a miracle?  Well, I want to know who came up with the idea that something ordinary can’t also be miraculous.

            I married into a large family, and my fifteen month old son is the sixth grandchild on that side.  My niece Abby, number seven, was born a few months ago.  The child I’m carrying now will be number eight.  Birth is so ordinary.  It happens thousands of times each and every day.  But as ordinary an occurrence as it is, is there anything more miraculous than a new life coming into the world?

            When these children are baptized, ordinary water is joined with the Holy Spirit, liberating them from sin and death by joining them to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through the ordinary waters of baptism, they are reborn children of God and become initiated into the Church, which is the body of Christ.  God has chosen water, so ordinary to our lives, to be a sign of the kingdom and of cleansing and rebirth.  Yet what occurs through the ordinary waters of baptism is nothing short of a miracle.

            When we celebrate Holy Communion, ordinary bread and ordinary wine are joined with the Word of God, and become for us the true body and blood of Christ, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sin.  Through these ordinary elements, we can experience the real presence of Christ in our lives.  That is definitely miraculous.

            And then there’s the greatest miracle of all, the miracle that is stated so succinctly in John 3:16, the miracle that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  Think about that, especially those of you who are parents.  There may be some things you love enough that you’d be willing to die for.  How many things do you love enough that you’d give your children to die for them?  Your only child?  What is there that you love that much?

            God loves the world that much.  Not just parts of the world, not just certain groups within the world, not even just the people who love God back or who at least acknowledge God’s existence.  God so loved the world, the whole world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.

            Compared to a love like that, I feel like any act of love I try to do is so little and insignificant.  How can I compare to a love like that?  I’m not God and I can’t save the world.  If that’s the goal, then I may as well just be an old ragged shirt hanging in the back of a closet somewhere.

            But the good news, the miracle of God’s breaking into our ordinary lives by the ordinary act of being born a human male, doesn’t stop there.  God knows of our weaknesses and our limitations, God works through them, and God frees us from them.  Of course I can’t save the world.  Through all of my best sermons, newsletter articles, conversations, and actions, I don’t have any hope of ever saving even one person.  None of us can.  We can’t even save ourselves!  That’s God’s job.  We’re not the saviors; we’re the saved.  Each and every one of us, because God so loved the world that he gave his Son to die for us, is equal before God.  But even though we’re equal, it doesn’t mean we’re all just the same.

            God has blessed each of us with dignity, and with gifts.  And because we’ve been freed from the false idea that our dignity or our gifts can earn our salvation or a better standing before God, we’re now free to use our own dignity and gifts to recognize the dignity and gifts of others.  Of all others.  Even those we don’t really like, or who make us uncomfortable, or who live so far away.

            It’s overwhelming, and we can’t do it alone.  But we don’t have to.  In fact, we’re not even supposed to try.  God saved the world, not us.  But God works through ordinary things to make miracles happen.  Ben Franklin had it wrong.  God doesn’t just help those who help themselves; God helps people to help each other.  God multiplied five loaves of bread and two fish into a feast to feed five thousand.  Was the bread magically multiplied, or were those with food within the crowd inspired to make it a potluck?  I don’t know, and I don’t really care.  The disciples only knew that what little they had probably wouldn’t even make a dent.  But they gave it anyway, and what little they had grew and multiplied – somehow – until all had eaten and were satisfied.  Including the disciples, who were just as hungry as the rest of the crowd.

            Some of us may feel like old ragged shirts, useless, too far away, too insignificant, or too limited to make a difference.  There is so much need, so many ministries, none of us can possibly support them all, not with the finances God has blessed us with (and which have probably taken a substantial hit recently), and not with all the other wonderful gifts God has given to each of us.  But all of those many different ministries are God’s work in the world, through ordinary people, accomplishing miraculous things.  Through the waters of baptism we become members of the Church, which is the body of Christ.  None of us is the body of Christ, but we all contribute our own individual dignity and our own individual gifts.  The body of Christ is bigger than any one person, bigger than any one congregation, bigger than any one community, bigger than any one denomination, bigger than any one ethnic group, bigger than any one nation.  The body of Christ is bigger than anything we can imagine, but we’re all necessary for its working in the world.  And, in turn, it’s the body of Christ that is necessary for our working in the world.  It’s the body of Christ that enables us to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, that allows us to use our gifts in new and different ways, that allows us to benefit from the gifts of others.  It’s the body of Christ that can take what little you have and transform it into lifesaving resources for your neighbor, and take what little your neighbor has and transform it into lifesaving resources for you.  It’s the body of Christ that enables a single ragged old shirt to provide cover and warmth and hope to a family that has lost everything else.  Because within the body of Christ, no one is ever truly lost.  Amen.