Soul Food

Sermon by James W. Crawford

Third Sunday in Lent, March 10, 1996

John 6:1-9

Back in the early '80s our family enjoyed a wonderful sabbatical in Scotland. We found ourselves frequently driving through the glens and around the mountains on day trips, hiking in the rain, boating in the rain, exploring castles in the rain. With four children, two of them rambunctious little boys, we often found ourselves hungry and desperate for a place to stop. But stops with appetizing food appeared few and far between. If only, we said, these Scottish outbacks knew about Burger King. How about a Big Mac in Glen Coe; or a smiling Colonel Sanders overlooking Loch Ness. But no such luck. We'd find ourselves munching some inedible North Sea mystery fish, or maybe haggis and 'neeps.

Now that crowd we read about a few minutes ago, what do they anticipate for lunch on their great outing? They follow Jesus across the lake with nary a brown bag in hand. And Jesus, noticing the paucity of food, detects hunger among them. Jesus glances at Philip, and he asks how his small company might buy bread for so large a cohort: 5000, and that isn't even counting women and children. Philip looks around. He sees no Pizza Hut on the beach of the Sea of Galilee. No sign of a Wendy's in Capurnaum. A Whopper, a coke, some fries might solve the problem instantly, but, sadly, no fast food; and even worse, no money. Jesus and his friends are broke, and as Philip sarcastically remarks, "Even a month's wages couldn't handle this gang." Things look bleak. This crowd, gathered for a massive testimonial, will roast in the sun. They will collapse without food and drink. Then Andrew observes the littlest boy in the huge gathering with two barley loaves and five fish, just two biscuits and five little perch! For the disciples, with no money and that scrawny snack, it is hopeless. Nothing can be done. And for the five thousand, the shelf is bare. It is look elsewhere for lunch or go hungry.

Then the mood changes. Jesus invites the crowd to be seated. He takes the little tyke's bread and fish, offers prayer, feeds the crowd, and orders the ton of scraps left over picked up and crammed into a dozen large baskets. The crowd is replenished, renewed, restored.

Now, of course, we could try to figure out exactly what happened. The most popular speculation about this great event entails the little boy's generosity inspiring like generosity in thousands of others. Everyone possesses ample food, and the lad's initial offering triggers, among that vast horde, an eagerness to share.

I like that. The enthusiasm provoked by such generous motives needs always to be laid before us. Nonetheless, as inspiring as this perspective may be, I think John goes deeper. John makes this point and more. John tells truth beyond the facts of the narrative. Rather than offering us a biography of our Lord, John and his church reflect on the meaning of Christ. Encyclopedia Britannica and the World Almanac would never publish John's facts. The historic accuracy of those facts is essentially beside the point; their truth lies in their symbolic power. In the case this morning, John tells us that food filling our hungry stomachs can in no way match the satiating presence of the living Christ. John tells us that just as Jesus feeds that famished five thousand from his own hands, so the living Christ feeds us on Boylston Street, the Back Bay, the South End, Beacon Hill, Jamaica Plain, Brookline, Winchester, Andover, you name it.

And Jesus' food? His bread? His offering to us? You are loved! Hear that? You are loved! John tells us the generous love of Christ permeates, it undergirds creation itself; it is available as food nourishing us, carrying us through contingencies and crises, the tragedies and triumphs of our lives. John tells us what we see, what we know, what we bet on in Jesus Christ provides a staple for our lives more real, more vital, more sustaining, more life giving than the staples keeping us alive everyday: bread and water. Hear! Receive! Believe! You are loved! Now, that's soul food!

Soul food! This food, more than food sustaining and supporting us minute by minute, day by day--this sure and certain conviction that we are loved--this is the undying refuse-to-lose love that would not be crushed on Calvary. It promises that through whatever happens to us--yes, even amid those circumstances appearing most loveless--there resides behind this universe with a magnitude as grand as the galaxies and an intimacy as close as the hairs on our heads, there resides One nourishing us with love and care, the true staple, the true bread of life, enabling us to forge new possibilities amid the tangles and meltdowns of our lives. Our assurance of this undying, never failing, life-affirming love for us comes to us as we grapple, along with generations of Christians, with the meaning of this Cross dominating our room. What do we see here? What blazing message does it send? This empty Cross proclaims love can act through and transform, even a bloody Cross, from an instrument of torture to a banner of hope. It testifies to power taking an apparatus for a violent execution and refashioning it to a sign of enduring, patient, persistent and finally conquering reconciliation grounding our life together, providing nourishment for our hearts, souls and minds that even when bread is scarce, bears us up and feeds our courage. This Cross and its radiant meaning is the very source and root of our soul food. Here, if you will, right from the hands of the living Christ, we are offered the bread of life.

You see, John paints a picture of Love's capacity to feed us what we starve for most. And what happens? How do we respond? The crowd in the passage blows it. They understand Jesus backwards and upside down. They clamor for a king! They recognize one who might provide what they think they crave most: charismatic political leadership. "Give us a king," they cry, and then seek to inaugurate him by acclamation. Remember how Jesus responds? He turns his back. He heads further up the mountain, shunning what we call these days, "a draft."

Are we getting a message here friends? Is John sending us a little reflection on Christianity and politics? Perhaps. It may run like this: Although politics is vital and exciting, although it shapes an enormous part of our lives, it does not provide the clue to our salvation. I have to tell you I watched Robert Dole last Tuesday evening as he celebrated his Jr. Tuesday win in New England and laid out his political ambitions for the enthusiastic clubhouse crowd with him. He picked up the rhetorical cudgels and swore he would give us a balanced budget and a constitutional amendment, to boot. He promised to stand firmly against abortion and plug for an amendment on that as well. He will fight for jobs, he will reform welfare, and, by golly, after all this Congress has done, as he says, to work the will of the American people, much of it vetoed by Bill Clinton, now that the heart and soul of the Republican party has been recovered, he will now veto Bill Clinton.

Pretty heady stuff! Now I want to congratulate Bob Dole because frankly I do believe he represents more or less the soul of the Republican Party and I think his candidacy will take a lot of the poison out of the pending campaign. But I have to tell you, that what he offers, what Bill Clinton offers, what Steve Forbes offers, what Patrick Buchanan offers--what any of these would-be kings offers is hardly soul food saving the world. The kingship, the style of approach to our desperate human need lies not with Bob Dole or Bill Clinton. What we are fed during the weeks of this heated rhetoric: the fury of those who would crush one another with ad hominum and threatening polemic fails to nourish our souls. Bosnia, balanced budgets, Whitewater, and downsizing.

No, what Jesus brings us are not the trappings and propaganda of political power, not the claims and triumphs of the monarch or president. On the contrary! In Christ Jesus we recognize One who takes risks saving those whom the politicians these days condemn. We find one who is no xenophobe, but rather one who breaks down the boundaries between nations and people and creeds and races. We see one known as the great physician whose whole life focuses on healing the emotionally distraught, the most physically ill, the deeply troubled. He brings life where it seems to dribble away; he disperses love where it gets tromped on, he radiates hope where cynicism reigns. This Cross stands for all time as a judgment on our political opinions, it throws a revealing light on the interests of each of us, our family, our friends, our crowd, and what we are willing to do to protect those interests. The Cross reminds us that anyone pretentiously calling themselves a Christian coalition had better be careful, for when a crowd proposed a Christian coalition for the very first time on that Galilean mountainside the Christ spurned it. They had got him wrong, and he withdrew to the mountains in solitude.

And John deflates not only our politics. He tackles our religion, too. When Jesus feeds that five thousand at Passover, he surpasses what John conceives as conventional religion. We encounter someone transcending our religious practice. In Christ, says the Gospel, Someone grasps us who is more real than the sanctuary we gather in, more alive than the liturgies we devise to transmit Christ. Do we have beautiful architecture here? Of course. Do we listen to glorious music here? Yes, we do. Do we speak of God, of Christ, of love for one another, of service to the world? Do we use the language of prayer? Are we both moved to commune with God as well as to know an encounter with God? Yes, yes, and yes, again. But we dare not confuse these liturgical props, these dramatic symbols, these human constructs, these aesthetic masterpieces with the living, loving Christ.

These orders of worship, these great transepts, these glorious windows, this stunning Cross, this ethereal music, these stumbling, mumbling sermons are simply pathetic efforts to point toward Truth. They offer at best blurred mirrors of the Divine love inspiring them; they prove broken lenses on the hope they seek to transmit. Bread really comes from the hands of the living Christ, the one whose invitation to you and to me and to this troubled world to walk in his way and live in his light lands him, for Love's sake, on a Cross, and urges us to a loyal and courageous discipleship.

In a few minutes we will be leaving this place and many of us will be going to lunch. That is necessary, and I say, "Enjoy." But I pray this day--this week-- you may encounter in the gracious touch of a friend, the forgiveness of an adversary, the recovery of a child, the healing of a wound, in all of this and more, the nearness of a Presence: feeding, restoring, sustaining, nourishing--yea, blessing you with soul food.