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Sermon, Sunday July 27th, 2014
Grace UMC, Rev. Kate Floyd
Matthew 14:13-21
I spend an inordinate amount of time and energy thinking about baby food— Now that
Daisy, our daughter, is 8 months, we’ve been venturing into the world of solids.. We’ve
discovered there are many rules about how/when/why you feed your baby. I had no idea
about the abundance of guidelines and regulations and strong opinions until feeding a
baby became one of my primary jobs in life.
The primary rule, that came from our pediatrician, is that: food until 1 is just fun. That
takes some of the nutritional pressure off and her main point is that this is a time for
experimentation. Also, underneath it all, is the message: don’t stress out about it. She’s
getting the nutrition and calories she needs from formula.
That being said: there are still many rules to follow (and I would argue some stressors).
The old rule was that a baby’s first solid food should be cereal; the new rule is that
veggies and fruits are perfectly acceptable first foods; in fact, even preferable. Some
people say to start with veggies since fruits are sweet and babies have a preference for
sweet foods; others say that your baby is going to like sweet foods better no matter what
you start with, so it doesn’t matter. We went with avocado, which is now a favorite.
And while feeding her solids IS fun—watching her explore and taste and learn and throw
sweet potato chunks in her hair and mine—it’s not quite as light-hearted endeavor as my
pediatrician said: You have to wait three days between introducing each new food. This
is so if your baby has a reaction, you can pinpoint that it was the yogurt and not the
berries, because the yogurt was the only new food.(At this stage, she can have egg yolks
but no egg whites as they are very allergenic; no honey before one because it can lead to
botulism; do not add salt or give your baby any food with added salt—can damage
kidneys; wait on acidic foods; and though she enjoys tofu, the jury is still out on
soy…wait until they are 8-10 months for broccoli; don’t make your spinach at home until
10 months because of the risk of nitrates in the cooking liquid…(keep it in the fridge for
48 hours/freezer for a month…if spoon has been put into a container don’t use any of that
food again because of bacteria).
With all these rules out there, we’ve decided to make most of our own baby food. The
advantages are that we know what is in her food, where it was prepared, that our hands
and kitchen are clean. The bonus is that it’s much cheaper than buying it anyway. I didn’t
anticipate having to think so much about food and food preparation.
Jesus lived in a culture where rules about eating were important. Making our own baby
food isn’t the same as keeping Kosher, but many of the principles are: it was important
for people to know where their food came from, who made it, who served it. Because
keeping Kosher isn’t as simple as avoiding pork…it’s about ritual purity, and knowing
who caught and cleaned the fish and if they did it in the proper and humane way; that it
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was appropriately blessed; that the kitchen in which the bread was prepared was cleaned
and any meat was fixed in a separate pan than dairy. Keeping Kosher means spending a
lot of time thinking about food and food preparation.
And as we know, food is central to Jesus’ ministry. Well, surprise surprise, today we find
Jesus, yet again, with a group of people and they are eating together. I read a quote by
scholar John Dominic Crossan this week calling Jesus a “party animal” because of all the
time he spent eating with folks. Although, today we meet Jesus when he is decidedly
NOT in a party mood. He has just learned that his friend, cousin, prophet, John the
Baptist has been beheaded. Killed by Herod. So he goes up alone to a mountain to pray.
The crowds, though, don’t want him to go. They want to keep listening, keep being in his
presence. The disciples say: Jesus, the place is deserted, the day is done…send the
crowds away. But Jesus says: they are hungry. Let’s give them something to eat. You
know the disciples’ response, this is one of the most familiar passages in scripture. They
protest, saying: But Jesus, what do you mean we need to feed them dinner? All we have
is a couple of fish and 5 loaves of bread, it’s not enough for us let alone thousands. Tell
them to go home and figure out their own dinner.
This is one of my all time favorite stories from scripture. And I doubt I’m alone in that—
this is one of the few stories that is in all 4 Gospels…Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and
it’s even in Matthew TWICE. This is a significant story in the life and ministry of Jesus,
an important story for those of us who follow Jesus. It was for the earliest Christian
communities and it is for us today.
So what happens? Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives the bread to the crowd,
instructing the disciples to give them something to eat. Miraculously, everyone there had
plenty to eat…thousands upon thousands were filled and there were still 12 baskets
leftover. Jesus turned what seemed like a scarcity of food into an abundant feast.
“Abundance” is one of my favorite words. In fact, Anne Cumings teases me because I
use it, well, abundantly! When I write birthday greetings on someone’s fb wall, it’s
usually: abundant blessings on your birthday! I say: abundant thanks for your ministry.
And I’m sure you’ve heard me say a hundred times: God’s abundant love in sermons,
prayers, reflections. What is it about abundance? There’s something about the sense of
blessings so great that there are baskets of them leftover that I just can’t get enough of.
God’s abundance is miraculous and it is real and I love this story of God’s abundant feast
with five loaves and two fish, an amount that seems scarce.
We live, though, in a world of scarcity, especially when it comes to food. There’s
actually an abundance of food in our world, but the way our economy functions means
that many in the world still go hungry. The ability to feed oneself and one’s family is
scarce.
Our vision statement, here at Grace church, centers on food. We discerned together that
our vision is to feed our surrounding community, spiritually and physically, reaching
outward with God’s love while intentionally welcoming all in the name of Christ. We are
in the middle of a four-week series on our new vision; last week we talked about spiritual
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nourishment, this week we’re focusing on physical nourishment…how do we feed
ourselves, how do we feed our community? As part of our extensive visioning process,
we came up with images that represented how we believed God was calling Grace to live
into the next chapter of our ministry. The preponderance of the images you came up with
centered on food: there were community gardens, picnic tables, banquet tables, potlucks
filled with every kind of food and every kind of person.
A church’s mission never changes: to make disciples for Jesus Christ for the
transformation of the world. A church’s vision DOES change. A vision is where the
community’s needs meets the congregation’s unique ability to respond. So a vision
changes over time: anytime the congregation changes, the vision needs to change. Any
time the community changes, the vision needs to change. We were intentional about
understanding the needs of our surrounding community and how we are uniquely gifted
as a congregation to respond.
One of our greatest gifts is feeding people and also eating with one another: to feast
together at the sunshine club; board meetings; men’s breakfasts; Wednesday night
community suppers; we love to break bread together: to break pie crust, eggs, barbecue
pork. We’re good at offering food and we are especially good at eating it. We know this
about ourselves—it’s one of the ways we are gifted as a congregation.
One of the things we learned about our community is that there is hunger. Food insecurity
is real. A high percentage of our neighbors are single mothers, between 18-25, with 2, 3,
4 kids at home. And these women, make $3,000/year. That’s not enough to feed your
children everyday. There are seniors who live in senior towers, on fixed incomes, that
don’t get 3 nutritious meals/day.
I can laugh about the intricacies of preparing an organic peach/apple/pear puree for my
baby, and how “stressful” it can feel, but My God, My God what a privilege it is to be
able to feed my baby and to feed her nutritious food. That’s a rarity around the world, but
it’s also a rarity within a few blocks of Grace church.
The ability for women to feed their children enough food day to day is scarce. The food
rules in our world, in our surrounding community, are defined by scarcity.
So here we are, Grace church, with a desire to live into God’s vision for us, and we are
not only a community that loves food, but we hear together, again and again, Jesus’ story
of feeding the multitudes. Of abundance breaking into what seems like scarcity.
It’s remarkable that Jesus was able to feed so many with so little. Do you know what else
is remarkable? That the people, five thousand men plus women and children, so let’s say
ten thousand people….who were bound to keep kosher, who spent an inordinate amount
of time and energy and resources thinking about how to prepare their food…ate this food
without knowing anything about it! They trusted Jesus so much that they threw caution to
the wind and stopped letting their rules about food consume so much time and energy.
It’s not that Kosher stopped being important (those are God’s rules, after all), but they
were willing to trust what they did not know, could not see, and put their full faith in
God’s provision for their meal. That’s miraculous.
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Last week, when we talked about spiritual nourishment, we said that the world’s logic (of
death, destruction, greed, and violence) is not the same as God’s logic (of love, peace,
justice, and most of all life). Well, the world’s rules about food (scarcity, insecurity,) are
not the same as God’s rules about food (abundant, nourishing, pleasurable).
The women in our community have to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about
food—acquisition, preparation, making choices between light bills and milk, a child’s
lunch or dinner. Necessary rules of scarcity.
Where do our community’s needs and our congregation’s unique ability to respond
intersect? You’ve discerned that central to our vision is feeding people. Thinking about
hunger can be overwhelming. It’s tempting to think that our resources are too scarce to
even make a dent. All of us are trapped in a mentality of scarcity—the world preaches to
us that there are NOT enough resources, that we need to hord our own bread and fish;
that there is never enough; that we can’t trust in grace that we cannot see. We, as
followers of Jesus Christ, are called to reject the world’s call of scarcity and discern how
God is calling us to live out of the good news of abundance. And we already do in many
ways:
HELP, needles and prayers; kitchen; tutoring…school supplies, eating dinner.
We don’t have a 10-point plan for addressing hunger in our community, at least not yet,
but we have identified that this is central to God’s vision for Grace church and our
community and I’m excited to see where we discern we can make a difference. And I
believe with all of my heart that we, Grace church, can make a significant impact on
physical nourishment in our community. More than that, how we can live out of a sense
of God’s abundance.
Our resources may seem scarce, but if we toss caution to the wind, and really trust our
gifts in the hands of Jesus, he will take them, bless them, break, and give. And we will
experience an abundant feast, eating together, all of us recipients of the grace that never
runs out, with baskets and baskets of grace left over. For God’s real dream is that all of us
eat together…like those strangers on the hillside of the sea of Galilee…here and now and
in that life to come, at the table where nobody ever goes hungry. This is God’s abundant
promise! May it be so. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Sermon, July 27, 2014