A Place at the Table

Sermon preached at Good Shepherd, Pocatello and Emanuel, Blackfoot.

Matthew 14:13-21

¹³Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. ¹⁵When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” ¹⁷They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Meggan Manlove

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. This morning we have texts about feasts and abundance and more than enough. Fittingly, the texts also give the preacher an abundance of themes and entry points. They are also so rich in imagery that they ask for little interpretation. 

For my part, after reading these texts and then going on walks in my neighborhood, I kept giving thanks for the birthday party I was able to attend last Sunday evening. This new call of bishop has introduced me to amazing new people, from my sisters and brothers in the Conference of Bishops to our amazing synod staff to the many faithful people showing up in congregations. But all of these relationships are new and take energy. I am energized by this work but it’s a new rhythm and I have needed nourishment, just as I did as a parish pastor for 18 years.

I had my friend’s birthday party on my calendar, but I sent a quick text Sunday afternoon just to make sure it was still on. She replied, “I’m serving chicken and sweet corn so come hungry.” This friend is particularly gifted at pulling together kind, fun, and interesting people. Most of us at this event have known each other for many years, through our birthday friend or because of our own relationships. 

Can you recall a dinner party where the food was not gourmet, but it left you so satisfied? When the conversation just flowed? Where friends were genuinely curious about one another’s lives? Where you felt completely seen but also cared for, not because of what you do or what you’ve accomplished but because of who you are? That’s how my friend’s parties feel to me. 

I walked in Sunday evening and the food was being prepared. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. My senses were awakened. As I saw kind and familiar faces I began to relax. The conversation flowed as we caught up on one another’s lives. These are all people who when they ask “How have you been?” I trust that they are genuinely curious; it’s not an expression of mere politeness. After our feast on summer harvest and chicken, we started playing games. My old Lutheran camp director used to say that we were not facilitating recreation, but re-creation. That’s how I felt around the board game table that evening. As we laughed at ourselves and the game, as the conversation flowed, as I continued to feel loved just for who I am, there was re-creation. I was nourished in so many ways. 

My experience at my friends’ many dinner parties and games nights, I think that’s something of what happened when Jesus fed the multitude. He sees, first, a real human need. The people are hungry, and they need something to eat. He feeds them out of compassion, and that is important. 

It is important in contrast to what has just happened. Herod has just had a dinner party quite different than the one I told you about. It was a banquet whose mood was shaped by power and fear and ended with John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Herod provided food for those who are not without food as a demonstration of his power. In sharp contrast, Jesus feeds the five thousand because he has compassion for them. It is an alternative to the envy and greet the Herods of this world cannot avoid.

It can be tempting to dwell here on Jesus meeting the crowds’ physical needs and that being an inspiration for us to feed the hungry. I am grateful that so many congregations in our synod have taken up feeding ministries and that ELCA World Hunger encourages such outreach and does its own amazing work globally. But there is so much more to this passage. 

There is rich symbolism in the bread and fish. Five loaves of bread would remind that crowd, and maybe us, of the five books of Moses. Two fish help us recall the pillars of the Old Testament: the law and the prophets. In other words, food and scripture are rightly tied together. As my friend’s birthday party reminded me, there can be no strict separation between body and would. The words we read in scripture are the words of life, every bit as essential for our ability to live as bread and fish. After all the work my former congregation did in affordable housing, it was natural for me to ponder a move in that direction—going full time into the nonprofit world. But I still believe so strongly that the words of the gospel have the power to give life. The message about God’s love poured out abundantly through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is a world so many people still need to hear. So, here I am.

Beyond my friend’s dinner parties, the other meal that sustains me is the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the foretaste of the feast to come. And this morning’s passage, the feeding of the five thousand, directs our attention to Jesus’ feeding of his disciples with his body and blood. Jesus break bread in our lesson this morning. He anticipates that his body will be broken. Jesus feeds the five thousand with bread and fish provided by the disciples, but he will become for us the bread itself. Just as the bread that fed the five thousand will be more than was needed, recall the twelve baskets of leftovers, so Jesus’ body will never be exhausted. Today we will feast on the meal once again, as the followers of Jesus have done for millennia.

Every time we gather for worship we pray “give us this day our daily bread,” the fourth petition of The Lord’s Prayer.  In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther writes that God gives daily bread, even without our prayer, to all people, though sinful, but we ask in this prayer that he will help us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanks. The word daily cautions us against worrying about the future and reminds us to be content with what the Lord provides.

The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew’s Gospel is representative of the meaning of the Christ-event as a whole. The story portrays God’s act in Jesus Christ in meeting human need. The story shows the disciples’ involvement in meeting those needs. Jesus’ charges his disciples: “You give them something to eat.” The source of the feeding is God, but the resources are human. The work of the disciples, the “bread” of human effort, is honored, used, and magnified by Jesus. 

The story illuminates God’s unqualified mercy.  The feeding of the crowds is not contingent on the crowd’s obedience. They hear and follow but make no other continuing commitment. To Jesus’ disciples, the people who do commit, there is the command to give something to eat. God provides all that is daily bread. We are called to be instruments of the feeding.  

Every time gather around the altar, we remember that we are recipients of God’s unqualified mercy.  We eat together, friends and strangers, just as the people on the hillside who were served by the disciples.  Everyone is welcomed at the Lord’s table. There is always an abundance of bread and wine, forgiveness and new life. We sometimes call the Lord’s Supper the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving. We give thanks for what God gives us through this meal. Leaving this place, we trust that with God’s help we will obey Christ’s instruction, “you give them something to eat,” whether that is food for the body or food for the soul, “you are seen and you are loved.”   

Hope Lutheran Eagle, Sunday after interim pastor finished

Romans 8:12-25

¹²So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—¹³for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

 ¹⁸I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

²⁴[Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field;²⁵but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
 ³⁶Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; ³⁸the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, ⁴²and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”

Sermon – Meggan Manlove

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. This morning we have the second of seven parables Jesus tells in Matthew 13, all to explain the kingdom of heaven, or reign of God. You want to follow me, Jesus implies? You want to be disciples? Let me tell you a story and open your imaginations. 

This is second parable centered around seeds and harvest. If sowing seeds is complicated in early scripture verses by soil conditions that hinder growth, the problem in verses 24-30 concerns the intrusion of a hostile force. The field owner has an enemy who introduces weeds into the field. As the weeds take over the field with the crop of grain be ruined. Even those of you who do not farm but raise vegetables or flowers know well the challenge of weeds!

I only need to step out of my subdivision to be reminded of the Idaho farmers’ relationship with weeds and the ongoing process of controlling the tares while letting the crops grow.  We watch and wait to see the final outcome at the harvest. It’s appropriate, at least for those of us in an agricultural setting, that this parable is part of the summer lectionary, while we watch and wait for what we hope will be a bountiful crop. 

Maybe you all are great at waiting. I struggle. When I sit with the paper every morning, I feel like I’m hovering on a threshold, like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I think part of this uneasiness is simply a result of the continual news feed I have access to. Still, it often seems as if ours is the most anxious time in history, at least from what Margaret Guenther calls our selfish perspective in a remarkably affluent and outwardly secure corner of God’s world.  We live with heightened awareness of the unease, the shakiness and uncertainty, the sense of foreboding that is part of the human condition.   

We are not alone in this, however. There is a universality in the Apostle Paul’s depiction of an anxious time of suffering.  All creation, he tells the Romans and us, is poised: waiting for fulfillment, waiting with eager longing for something. There is the same universality in the story Jesus tells: the field is almost ready for the harvest, but it is far from perfect.  What should be a bountiful crop of wheat is going to be half weeds. But until that harvest, when there will be a drastic sorting out, weeds and wheat must be left to grow.  If the wheat flourishes, the choking weeds will also flourish.  We wait for the time of decision, the irrevocable sorting out that comes at the end.

The contrast of the parable of the wheat and weeds and the passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us that we are not there yet. Both passages suggest that this is a time of waiting, of letting things grow and unfold. But it is also a time of looking forward to some sort of resolution, an end time. We live in the “already, not yet.”  We are poised on the threshold.

For a congregation waiting to call a new pastor, today’s passages might assure you that you are part of a whole communion of saints waiting. We wait edgily, not for random, terrifying destruction. This is not the kind of waiting people are doing in Canada, checking every minute to see if the wind has changed direction and then knowing the fire is coming to your neighborhood next. 

We are waiting for something different. We wait, in Paul’s words, “to obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” As Jesus says in the parable, we await the coming of God’s kingdom. In different ways, Jesus and Paul are heralding the inbreaking of God’s rule on earth, the fulfillment of all our hopes and prayers when we pray—sometimes mindlessly—that God’s kingdom will come on earth and God’s will be done in every corner of the earth.

We wait. If we knew precisely how and when the waiting would end, then our life in Christ would be simply an exercise in religious persistence. It would be like standing in line at the grocery store checkout or waiting in the dentist’s office for someone to call our name. The tension in that kind of waiting is more boredom than anxiety.  

But waiting for the inbreaking of the kingdom is like no other kind of waiting. It is not the routine, humdrum marking of time in our daily lives, or the terror and dread of devastation. I liken it to a certain degree to first-time campers who had never been to camp but had their bags packed and jumped into the cars with joyful anticipation. Ours is waiting in deep deep hope for something that is not seen, yet yearning for it with a longing that is beyond words. This yearning for the coming of the kingdom is yearning for God.

Both Jesus and Paul use powerful images of growth and fruition.  Paul, who surely had little if any firsthand experience with the wondrous process of human birth, tells us that all of creation—which means all of humankind, all of us—is groaning in the pangs of childbirth. Just as the field of wheat with its intermingled weeds grows at its own pace, so birth cannot be hurried. Birth happens when it happens.

But what about those noxious weeds? What about the judgment Jesus makes so very clear in the parable?  I’m in no hurry for that final day—I’m happy to muddle on for a bit, living in the promise of things hoped for but not seen. Just having the promise is enough for now. Sometimes I find myself thinking about the weeds and wondering whether they have anything to do with me. I try to persuade myself that Jesus is talking about someone else, someone unworthy of saving, all those people who surely have no place in God’s kingdom. Surely, he is talking about those weedy people whom I would consign to the compost heap if not to the cleansing fire. It is much more comforting to hope that I am pure wheat and that the weeds are quite disposable.

But maybe the concept of weeds is more complicated. What if we are not pure wheat, but have some qualities of the weeds in us, qualities that we need to be free of before we can be truly fruitful. Or maybe we fail to grow and thrive because—fine-quality wheat that we are—we let ourselves be choked and thwarted by the weeds around us.

We bounce back and forth between these two pictures. On the one hand, the people of God are filled with the yearning for God. On the other hand, they are part of God’s garden, active and growing toward the ultimate harvest. Both images remind us that we are living in a not-yet time. We live in radical trust that God’s promise will be fulfilled. We wait. We labor. We hope for that which is not seen, but somehow knowing that what Paul calls our glorious liberty as children of God is all that truly matters.  

For all the harshness of the parable’s verdict on the unrighteous, the good and evil dualism is tempered. Because the world, the church included, encompasses both good and bad, none can presume to be good while others are not. In our Lutheran language, we are all both saint and sinner. And because the verdict belongs not to us but to God, and God is patient to allow the complexity and ambiguity, the people of God are not to condemn others.

That does not mean we should not call out injustice in this waiting time. Of course we should. And we, who have had glimpses of the kingdom of heaven, can work to change systems that harm and destroy. Knowing God’s love and grace, how can we not want to share those gifts with everyone we encounter?