Year A, Proper 13

August 3, 2008

The gospel passage just read is a story well known in the early church and is a narrative told every year in Sunday Schools around the world. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all include the “miracle” of the loaves and fishes in their accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. The four evangelists, each with a different theology, a different cultural upbringing, writing to a different audience with diverse issues pressing in on them, considered the feeding of the 5,000 an essential event to be recorded. Countless sermons have been given on the significance of this miracle. Pages and pages of commentaries dissect the action. Was the food literally divided? Is it all just a metaphor for God’s grace realized in the person of Jesus? Where do we put our reason? Is this a place for blind faith? The intensity and angst of these questions reminds me of my grandmother’s old Texan saying, “Lordy, they’re just sitting in their rockers, straining gnats.” 

If that reference seems obscure, what she meant was folk miss the essence and the big picture. They worry themselves with incidentals. Capturing gnats, missing the sunset. The particulars, the long division of the bread and fish equation is a distraction. The core truth revealed in this passage is this, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform!” “The Lord works in mysterious ways, his     wonders     to     perform.” When an idea, an initiative, a plan, a notion, action or event is of God, a way will be made. Obstacles are dealt with, barriers give way, resources appear and laws of economics, time and science give a little. Planets align, karma appears, “coincidences,” God incidents unfold. Nothing thwarts God’s plan. His will is always realized.  It is surprising and confusing that with our long history and experience with our Almighty Divine Creator, we forget this essential truth. It is surprising and confusing that we are skeptical and worried by accounts of miracles. The very word is a testament to human misunderstanding. A miracle is something accomplished outside of human expectation and human capacity. 

Well, of course. Everything, absolutely everything initiated, conceived and executed by God would be a miracle. His actions could be nothing else. All God does is outside human, mortal expectation and capacity. Above, over, outside, superior to humanity is the essence of God. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. The Lord our God excels us in all things. He moves in ways mysterious to us – his wonders to perform.

And Jesus said “Bring them here to me.” 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 crowd. And all ate and all were filled. And those who ate were about five thousand. Jesus looked up to heaven. Jesus appealed to the Father. “Thy will be done.” What do you want accomplished in this moment? And the Father answered, and all ate. A miracle? Please! This is just another moment of God being God. Every day, God acts in the world in ways outside our expectation and understanding. Every day God parts seas of human obstinacy and shines light through human intolerance and makes pathways through human muck and discord and general ineffectiveness. Every day, God’s will prevails. Too often, we’re about straining gnats and we miss the spectacle. Too often, our focus rests on the mundane and we overlook the Divine presence. But, occasionally, we raise our eyes and we recognize God’s clear imprint. The imprint of God, the reality of God, the movement and will of God is inescapable in those moments. 

A few days ago, several of your friends in this parish had an experience of Divine intervention.   Twenty-three of us lived through the mysterious ways of God. It began the morning we left for Costa Rica. Eight o’clock Saturday morning, all 23 missioners were in this parking lot on time! It was a miracle! We are never on time en masse at this church. Clearly it was God who got us moving that morning. Everyone had his or her correct documentation. Everyone had his or her required bags, clothes and a spare. Everyone got through security. Everyone boarded before the plane took off. No one was left behind. After a completely uneventful flight, we all made our way through immigration and baggage claim and foreign security. We walked outside the airport, not speaking the language, not knowing who would meet us, not knowing where we were going and in the crowd and throngs, we found our deliverer. We all fit on the bus. All our bags got tied down. We made it safely through San Jose, scary traffic and narrow mountain pass roads. In Gualapis, we all had beds and toilets and running water. Some of us even got hot water!

Even in the height of tourist season, rooms with malfunctioning air conditioning were quickly switched out. In a week without clean towels, no one caught scurvy or the plague. At every meal all nine days there was something every one could eat. No one went hungry. No one stayed sick. It was a miracle. It was the hand of God present in our midst. Sunday, after church in a very, very warm building, parishioners served us lunch they had worked on all morning long. There was enough for everyone. Then we began our work. We didn’t speak the language. We weren’t professional contractors. Tools were primitive, communication convoluted, projects changed midstream and we adapted. In the unknowing, in the what next, what now, we endured and prevailed. Concrete – wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full was fabricated in a way we had never seen. Rebar brackets were fashioned by bending steel rods around three nails set into two wooden planks. Can you imagine! We made our own steel structures. They didn’t arrive assembled from the mill. Greg Thill and I were the mill. He was the master, I was the apprentice. 

Jeff Haas, Scott Hundertmark and Wes Thill dug a 20-foot by 1 foot by 2 foot trench to specifications, marked by a piece of green string that moved every time someone walked by! They dug and chopped roots and clawed out rocks while Vince Boyle, Rustin McWhorter, Cindy Cadle and Kelly Tinsley mixed sand, gravel, cement and water and trucked it over hoses, planks and broken coconuts. They shoveled the heavy mixture to the trench. It was a spectacular process until the rains came and filled the trench with water. All that work under now fresh mud. The sun came out, we dug again. Daphne, Sarah and Kate, with no graphic art experience, transposed a mural created by Evelyn Fischer onto a blank outdoor classroom wall. Painstakingly, they outlined, shaded and filled in the intricate details. Suzanne, Kate and Sarah painted the exterior walls and extensive trim of the entire church building. The free form ladders held. Though OSHA would have been appalled, it was a “miracle!” At the Santa Cruz site, Amy Sparks kept the youth members safe from the perils of construction debris and mishaps.

In San Lucas, Philip Lloyd and Jean Claude Thill did master tile work in the second parish. With contrary instructions in a foreign language, they graciously complied and finished their exact work on schedule and in pristine form. Liz Gail, Jane Holmes, Hartley LaDuke and Tracy Tinsley painted the cinderblock parish hall.   On some days, they painted in the dark. Up and down the ladders, one coat, the walls sucked it in. Another coat, the walls sucked it in. They never wavered. They just kept painting.  At both locations, Mike Tinsley, our project manager, never let the mounting confusion or frustrations move him from a solid place of calm and generosity of spirit.  A miracle? Certainly God’s hand was in our work and in our dispositions.

In a very warm parish hall, Gretchen Thill and Sally Johnson taught 15 women how to sew simple, versatile dresses, shorts, pillows and bags. Rain blew in, wetting the floor and the fabric. Electric cords got soaked and the missioners adjusted. Hot, dirty, tired, sometimes frustrated, 23 strangers in a foreign land, came together to serve God’s purpose. The Lord works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. 

Outside human expectations, above human capacity, God prevailed and 23 mortals accomplished work above their skills, extended grace beyond their patience, endured inconveniences over their tolerance levels. If you asked them, they’d tell you, it was a joy. It was a privilege. They say, “I’d do it again.” This is the story of a modern day miracle. People sacrificing time, money and comfort to serve their Lord by serving their brothers and sisters in Christ and coming through the experience of abundantly blessed. This is not what we would expect. This is a mysterious outcome. God’s will, will not be thwarted. A way is always made. 

So, considering the loaves and fishes and reflecting on our own parish mission trip, the question is raised, what surprising thing is God doing in your life? Where is your miracle? How is God moving his wonders to perform with you? Do you know? Can you see? Every day, He is present.    Every day, He is unfolding his plan for you. Can you see the daily God incidents? Are you straining gnats or do you recognize the spectacular? May we all raise our sights. May we all come to expect God’s miracles – clearly, frequently, routinely.

Amen.