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Sermons:
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Ordinary Miracles
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?
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