Fifteen Seconds

 Matthew 16:13-20

A flash of light.

A stroke of insight.

It only lasts a moment. And then it’s gone. 

Don’t ask me to describe it or explain it or teach it or even understand it. 

It’s like a lightning strike, or the sudden release and the baby is finally born. That moment when you see him across the chapel and you think to yourself, “That is the man I’m going to marry.” It was like that half a second my freshman year of college when I thought I finally understood calculus. And then, poof, it was gone. It’s the polaroid picture of your kids getting along at the amusement park, right before the first one pushes the second one into the bushes and the second one throws up cotton candy on your shoes. 

It was that moment, ages ago, all of us kids crammed on benches at the dinner table, when Dad was trying to teach us proper, formal, table manners. We put our elbows on the table and switched our knives and forks and stuffed paper napkins down on shirts and spoke with horrible English accents and laughed and laughed. Dad wasn’t so pleased, but for half a second, we were all getting along. No one was punching holes in the walls or chasing each other with knives or throwing cutting insults across the room. There was plenty of macaroni and cheese, enough for seconds, and we all drank our milk and ate our peas without whining or threats or pleading.

These moments are just that, moments. Split seconds in time. The taste of creme brûlée on the tongue, or that first sip of coffee in the morning, and then it’s gone. 

So much will go wrong after that. After those oh so brief half seconds of understanding or insight or just joy. I’ll lose my temper. I’ll say the wrong thing. I’ll let the baby cry too long and I’ll sleep too much and I’ll let the laundry pile up. I’ll get distracted and overwhelmed. I’ll take the final exam and forget that one important thing and then cry in the bathroom stall because of the A- that will result. I won’t have the skills to get through the hard stuff, so I’ll think catastrophic thoughts and make rash decisions and make everything even worse. 

Or normal life will just simply take over and overwhelm. The cat’s puked another hairball in the sunroom and he keeps scratching at his ears. The groceries, the rent, the strange orange goo that’s accumulating in the corners of the bathtub. The kids whine. We worry about their reading levels and their social interactions and their emotional maturity. My car needs an oil change. We need to mow the lawn again and weed the flowerbeds and have the same unproductive conversation about hiring a plumber to fix the mainline in the basement. Maybe next year. Maybe with our tax refund. The boys are due for dentists appointments. We should probably take our cat to the vet someday soon.

Most of our lives consist of the mundane. The boring. The repetitive and the tedious. Or worse, the mistakes, the hurts and failures and screw ups that seem to undo all the good we’ve ever done or been. Or at least, that’s what we tend to focus on. Like Eeyore, we wander around the hundred acre wood thinking about all the uncomfortable things, all the tedious things, all the things that have gone wrong.

But once in awhile, sometimes, we get those oh so brief moments when things make sense, when we get something right, when we are exactly where we need to be, doing exactly what we need to be doing. Dare I say it? We feel good.

That’s why I find it so interesting that the lectionary splits up Peter’s messy humanity into two parts. This week, we get the moment when Peter gets it wondrously, gloriously right. We get his moment of triumph. We get a taste of the good. Next week, we’ll see him when he gets it all horribly wrong. 

If you haven’t figured this out about me yet, I’m a “both/and” kind of person, rather than an either/or. Things are usually pretty grey for me, neither black nor white. Things are always more complicated than they first appear, and I try to hold on to the “dialectic” - this idea that there can be two opposing ideas, two opposing events, two opposing thoughts happening at the same time. And they could both be true. 

We’re both sinner and saint. We’re living in an age of horrible atrocities and unprecedented hope. We can have mental illnesses inherited through our genes and we can also learn skills so as to change and improve ourselves. We can make all the right decisions and still have difficult lives. We can be both victim and perpetrator. We are stewards as well as pillagers of this place we call Earth. We have the capacity for horrendous hatred and misunderstanding, and we also have the ability the capacity to forgive and embrace and understand and sacrifice. The same earth that bears Hitler and white supremacy and antivaxxers and deadly tsunamis is also the same place where Yeats was born and penicillin was invented and democracy was, at least, attempted. 

We get both sugar free gummy bears and Reese’s peanut butter cups. We get lima beans and sweet corn right off the cob. We get flowers and thorns. It’s all a dialectic. A both/and. We get the Rock, the founder of our church who is both an impulsive, fumbling idiot, and a faithful, devoted, beloved, follower of Christ.

But our lectionary splits it up. It splits Peter up. And today, we get his glorious moment, we get the peak of his career, the highlight of his life, his ultimate insight: Peter tells Jesus who he believes him to be: “The Christ, The Messiah, The Son of the Living God.” We get Peter’s half of a second when he actually gets it right. We get that moment. Even as we know, that soon, poof, it’ll be gone. But today, we get the snapshot of Peter getting it amazingly, gloriously, inspiringly right. 

It’s just a moment. That’s it. That’s all it is. One brief moment when Peter’s flailing around, shooting at whatever moves, making impulsive decisions and shooting off at the mouth actually hits the target. If he keeps trying, if he keeps showing up, if he keeps bending his bow and letting go, no matter how off his aim, no matter how blind he might be, he will, eventually, hit the bullseye. And Peter keeps trying. He keeps casting his net out there, because eventually he knows, no matter how many times he fails, someday, he going to catch something. 

And boy does he like to cast his net out there. He jumps out of boats in the darkness in the middle of a raging storm, he denies Jesus’s suffering and gets called Satan, he wants to build three little houses on a mountain until God speaks and he falls on his face. He’s the first to offer answers to Jesus’s questions, and the first to question Jesus’s answers. He’s going to get in to big fights with Paul at the church’s inception. And when Jesus warns him that he will deny his love for him, Peter rejects the warning, insisting that he will be faithful to the end. And what does he do? He denies him. He rejects him. Three times. 

Peter’s life is full of flailing around and mistakes and failures and sin and broken promises. It’s full of good intentions and missteps and impulsive decisions. But sometimes, not out of his own skill or knowledge or keen understanding, but sometimes, out of his sheer luck, out of his sheer pluckiness, out of his insistence on never giving up, out of his relentless attempts to try again, sometimes, he gets it right. He hits the target. Grace moves in front of him, and lets him hit it at its heart.

So let’s just take a moment to breathe it in, shall we? Let’s just take a moment to mark it. To note it. To engrave it in our minds. This one time, Peter got it right. It comes and goes in a flash. It’s such a surprise when it happens. 

We’re so anxious to move on to the next thing that we often miss it when it happens. Everything gets lined up just so, everything is precariously balanced, perfectly aligned, for just a second, and then, just as suddenly, it’s gone. Everything is wrong again. Everything is broken. There’s more work to do. Back to the grindstone of tedium and boredom. Back to worrying about our retirement portfolios. Back to the apologies and tripping over our words and our feet. Back to regret and fear and so many mistakes. 

Richard Rohr writes, “Dan O’Grady, a psychologist and Living School student, told me recently that our negative and critical thoughts are like Velcro, they stick and hold; whereas our positive and joyful thoughts are like Teflon, they slide away. We have to deliberately choose to hold onto positive thoughts so that they can “imprint.”

Neuroscience can now demonstrate the brain indeed has a negative bias; the brain prefers to constellate around fearful, negative, or problematic situations. In fact, when a loving, positive, or unproblematic thing comes your way, you have to savor it consciously for at least fifteen seconds before it can harbor and store itself in your “implicit memory;” otherwise it doesn’t stick. 

We must indeed savor the good in order to significantly change our regular attitudes and moods. And we need to strictly monitor all the “Velcro” negative thoughts.”

Bad stuff sticks in our brains like Velcro. The good stuff slides away, like they’re on Teflon.

So let’s just take fifteen seconds to soak this in. Fifteen seconds to note that Peter gets it right. Jesus does. Jesus takes it in. Even as Jesus knows Peter to his very core, even as he knows that Peter is going to crumple under the pressure and betray and argue and question, Jesus stops, he takes a moment, and he praises him. He gives him a new name. Peter, “The Rock.” And on this rock Jesus will build his church.

It’s such a fascinating metaphor. Peter as a rock. Peter as a rock when in reality, he’s really just all heart. Soft, mushy, vulnerable, full of emotion. Peter, the cornerstone of the church. No, not the immoveable, unchangeable, quarried stone upon which towers and temples and political ideologies will be born, but rather the broken, flailing, impulsive, impetuous actions of a man, a human, a mind whose good thoughts will slide off like teflon, and whose bad thoughts will stick like velcro. It’s the ultimate dialectic. Peter as the firm foundation. Peter as the bedrock upon which all of this will be built. 

Peter is not stable. At least, not at this moment. He isn’t strong. He’s far from unchanging. But he got it right. Once in his life, he hit the mark. The Church is founded by a guy who was so persistent, so stubborn and insistent and eager and idealistic that he always showed up, he always put it out there, he always took the risk, and one time, one time, he actually got it right. 

The church is built, not of brick and mortar or four by fours or even limestone and marble, but of humans, people, and their soft mushy impulsive hearts, people, who keep trying, who keep putting themselves out there, folks who keep failing and trying and failing again. Folks who are all heart. 

And the church is founded and funded and encouraged on by folks who, on the rare occasion that they actually get something right, take the time to savor it, to note it, to name it, to tell a story about it. The church is a bunch of people saying and doing the wrong things, being open to change, being willing to repent, and then taking fifteen seconds or so to pay attention when they actually do get it right. Fifteen seconds to focus on the good. Fifteen seconds to turn towards the good. To try again. 

Our lectionary today reminds us that Peter gets it right. Once. He got it right. And our lectionary reminds us to take fifteen seconds to let it soak in. Lean in to the good. Lean in to Jesus, the Messiah. That’s our foundation. 

That’s our start. That’s what we get. That’s our legacy. Let’s make it stick.

Thanks be to God.

The Ultimate With

Matthew 14:22-33

  Every three years, this passage comes up in our lectionary, and every three years, I struggle with what to do with it. I’m all about it when God comes to us in the human form of Jesus. It gets harder for me to relate to when Jesus comes to us in the form of God. These so called “nature miracles,” where Jesus defies all the laws and breaks all the natural rules and upends the delicate balance on our earth, are tough for me. This walking on water, the raising of the dead, the multiplication of something out of nothing, changing water into wine, they don’t make sense. I want to understand them. I want them to make sense. I want a logical explanation that does not offend my Post-Enlightenment sensibilities.

See, I’m the guy in the back of the boat, while everyone else is bailing out the water and shouting out commands and battening down the hatches, I’m the one sitting somewhere in the back, asking all the questions. My brow is super furrowed. I’m chewing on the inside of my cheek. I’m shrugging my shoulders and getting existential while everyone else is fighting for their lives. This is a good time to read a book, I think. It’s a good time for some whiskey and a deep discussion about romanticism or ontology or eschatology or questioning the benefits of a capitalist structured society. When things get hard, I get cerebral. I contemplate. I ask questions and I doubt. 

I want to get up, get moving, make a difference and actually do something, but I get paralyzed, I get stuck, I start questioning the meaning of it all. It’s a survival mechanism, even if I’m actually doing nothing to promote the survival of any of us on this boat as it is being crushed by the wind and the waves. But maybe if I get to the heart of the problem, maybe if we root out why the boat is sinking, why it’s not more seaworthy or why the thunder crashes so loudly or the lightning flashes so brightly, maybe if we got to the bottom of all this chaos, we’d be able to unravel it, unwind it, set it straight and even again. If I figure out how Jesus is walking on the water, how he’s defied the laws of physics and rejected the pretty sound and intractable theory that is gravity, maybe I’d get to the heart of what this passage really means for all of us today.

But crashing waves and assailing winds are not always conducive to deep philosophical contemplation. 

I just read a statistic that says the average life expectancy of a transgender woman of color is 35, and whoosh, a wave comes crashing down on top of me. 150 people died in the explosions in Beirut this week, and thousands were injured. Whoosh, crash, down comes another wave. We’re at 161,000 corona virus deaths in the US. Slam, another wall of water rushes over my head. Jeff Bezos makes $2,489/SECOND, 4,000 churches close in the United States every year, my city no longer recycles strawberry or blueberry containers and people keep wearing their masks below their noses, and I lose my balance, I lose my sense of direction, I don’t know which way is up and out and into the open air. I’m tossed overboard. And all I can see after that is that everything is awful. Everything is wrong. Nothing makes sense, and injustice and heartache and brokenness are everywhere. Let’s give up. It’s all so unfathomable. It’s all so unclear. There are no certain answers. Let’s just go down with the ship.

Even while I’m here, at the beach, and the weather’s been beautiful and sunny and not too hot and the water is clear and cool and the boys aren’t even fighting and we just saw a bald eagle soaring overhead, I still tend to focus on how wrong everything is, how unfixable it all is. I sit back in the back of the boat, arms crossed, resigned to accept our fate, resigned to the sinking of the ship, even when something strange, something mysterious starts to appear. 

And then, of course, ugh, then there’s Peter. Peter’s so…optimistic, even if he’s getting it all gloriously wrong. While everyone is bailing and shouting and battening and rocking in the corner in the fetal position, Peter’s looking out into the horizon. Peter is looking out. Peter is seeing something. He calls to us. He points. We all stop and stare. The bailers and the captains shouting orders and the batten-ers and the rule followers and the direction takers and the sullen whiners and the navel gazers all stop what they’re doing and look up, look out, look beyond the immediate needs of their tiny sinking boat. Is it a ghost? An aberration? Are we just exhausted and hallucinating? Is it a leviathan come to swallow us whole and make us pay for our lack of faith? Are we finally getting punished for all those things we can’t fix? First it was this wretched storm, but storms we’ve seen before, storms we can handle, but now this? 

And the vision speaks. It says, “It’s just me. Don’t be afraid.” 

It’s coming closer. It’s starting to take the form of a man. And through the lashing of the rain and the wind whipping at our hair, we can see a familiar looking cloak. And as we’re rocking back and forth, stumbling, trying to maintain our balance, we can see a dark beard, a recognizable form. A body. A similar build. He carries himself the same way. He has the same gait. And, coming closer, he has that same smile, that same smirk that says both “I love you,” and “you’re ridiculous.”  Could it really be? Could it really be who he says he is? 

Now. Stop right there. Pause the tape. I want to know a few things. If this is Jesus, and if he can walk on water, why in the world would he send us out on to the lake? I mean, if a guy can walk on water, can’t he also, you know, predict the coming of hurricane force winds and lashing waves and storming seas? If a guy can walk on water, can’t he also get all this wind to stop? If he can heal and feed and hover over the surface of the waters, if he can raise the dead and turn water into wine, if he can walk on top of the sea, then why can’t he also find justice for the murdered, for the poor, for the hungry, for the earth? If Jesus can defy the laws of physics and upend the theory of gravity, then why can’t he fix all of this for us? The boat is swaying, the wind is knocking us over, the waves are crashing down and I want to press pause, I want to stop and ask, “Why?” I want to have a conversation. I have questions. Come back to the back of the boat Jesus, and let’s work this all out so that it makes sense in my brain. I need a file to put this in. Is there a doctoral degree program that I can enroll in to clarify what in the world is going on here? Some commentaries I can read? At least a few footnotes? What does all of this even mean? Shouldn’t we understand this a little bit more before we take the risk, before we trust what is happening, before we step out of the boat without fulling comprehending the consequences of these events? I know, let’s form a committee. A task force? A think tank? Let’s have a congressional debate. Let’s organize a three day conference at the Hilton Hotel. We can include a free continental breakfast. Let’s understand and know before we move forward, before we…make a mistake…

But, ugh, there goes Peter. As usual, stepping out before he knows what he’s stepping in to. “If it’s really you,” he shouts, “command me to come out to you on the water.” He’s always rushing forward, rushing ahead. He’s always acting before he’s thinking. He makes assumptions and he wastes money and never has a plan and he never stops. So of course, I smile a little when he starts to sink. That’s what you get for being so impulsive. That’s what you get for not thinking things through, for not being practical, for wasting your resources, for using up your endowment, for risking it all. That’s what you get for being all heart and no head. Heh. See, Peter. I told you. Stay back in the back of the boat and think about things before you act. Be wise for a change. But now it’s too late. Now you’re sinking. You should have known better. Use your brain. You always act on your first impulses and now look at the mess we’re in.

Now we’re all in big trouble. Peter didn’t think it through, and now, amidst the crashing and the lightning and the thunder, we have a man overboard. What are we going to do now?

Amidst the chaos, I hear that familiar laugh. I hear his gentle reprimand. I see his strong, rough carpenter’s hands reach down and lift Peter up. 

I don’t know how to end the story, but I’m a bit smug. Suddenly, Peter’s not sinking anymore. Of course, the guy who jumps in without thinking has been rescued. Suddenly, the boat stops rocking. The waves stop tossing. The thunder stops rolling and it’s just us. It’s just Jesus.  

None of it makes any sense. None of it is logical. Nothing about this day went according to plan. What does any of this mean? 

I don’t know. I really can’t say. Maybe if I could recite the passage in the original Greek or write my own commentary or go back in time or speak Aramaic or spend a year in seclusion pondering these events, I’d get it, I’d understand, it’d all make sense. But I guess I only know a couple of things:

I just know that when things are chaotic and frantic and falling apart, when we are losing our grip and living in confusion and we don’t know how to fix it, when a virus and cancer and racism and poverty and hunger and political division are sinking our ship, it’s Jesus who comes to us. It’s Jesus who enters in to our mess, strangely, miraculously, ghostly. Jesus reaches out to us. Jesus is the ultimate With. 

And I guess I just know that we don’t have to “get it”. We don’t have to understand it. We don’t have to fully comprehend what is going on here in order to experience the presence of Christ. Faith is not logical assent. Jesus, as the ultimate With, shows us that, as Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “the truth of the story is that [our] abundance of faith or lack of faith does not deter God from drawing close.” Jesus, With us, calls us out of the boat, into the treacherous, uncertain waters, and asks us to do illogical, incomprehensible, strange and uncertain things. None of it makes any sense. 

And I know there’s still a lot of pain and heartache out there in the world, outside of my little boat. And I still want to fix it. Even if I don’t know what to do and I don’t know how.  I just know that being a part of Christ’s mission means getting out of the boat, it means leaving the shore, it means uncertainty and mistakes and some sinking. It means reaching out for Jesus even as he reaches out for us. It means entering in, trying, making mistakes, being uncertain, going to the places where we don’t really want to go. Jesus is out there, With. Jesus calls us to join him out there, With.

And I also know that there’s something to be said for Peter’s impulsive action. There’s something to be said for his immediate, unthinking, spontaneous, reckless response. He knows Jesus is the ultimate With, he knows Jesus can be found in the most treacherous of waters, he knows Jesus is found in the mess and uncertainty and danger and hopelessness that is the real world, the world outside of the boat, the world outside of my head, the world of brokenness and mistakes and sinking and being lifted up. Peter is willing to risk his doubt. He is willing to risk it all on the off chance that that hazy, ghostly vision out there on the stormy seas just might be Jesus. He knows that, as Matthew Skinner says, “if God might be encountered anywhere, God will be found in places where the regular delineations and predictable endings don’t apply as before.” He knows, as Skinner says, “Sometimes incredibly turbulent places are also ‘thin’ places, where God breaks through.” He knows, “It’s the nature of faith — humble, active faith — to be willing to throw oneself into a disorderly world and expect to encounter Jesus there.” 

And I know there’s still the good. The waves are warm today and the sun is out and the boys aren’t fighting and we spotted a bald eagle soaring through the sky. There’s a kiteboarder out there, harnessing the wind so that he can hover, mysteriously, miraculously, just above the water. I don’t fully understand how he’s doing it, how he gets that kite up there, how he’s strong enough to hold on, how he looks like he’s defying the laws of physics and the theory of gravity and conquering the waves and the wind. I don’t know how any of this works. But it works. And it’s good. 

And that’s how the story ends. We all gather around Jesus. We are with him. We look like drowned rats. We’ve been through the wringer. The storm has come and we’ve almost sunk and we’ve been terrified for our lives, but at the end of it, we come to know who Jesus is. The Son of God. The ultimate With. 

Thanks be to God. 

A Whole Lot of Nothing

Genesis 32:22-31

Matthew 14:13-21

2020 has been a doozy of a year, and we’ve still got five more months to go! Let’s see. We’ve had raging forest fires in Australia, plane crashes in the Middle East, riots in India and locusts in Africa. We’ve had floods and protests, racially motivated killings, killer bees, unprecedented high temperatures, civil unrest, earthquakes and the death of a beloved basketball player along with his daughter and friends. The Olympics have been postponed, our kids are home from school and staring at screens for far too long, the pools are closed, Megan and Prince Harry have stepped down from their royal duties, the President has been impeached, the economy is in rough shape, the unemployment rate reached its highest since the Great Depression, oh, and we’re all stuck in our houses because there’s a global pandemic that has killed over a half a million people worldwide, including over 150,000 in the US alone. 

And our little church is struggling to hang on, to hang in there, for a little bit longer. We’re anxious and concerned and waiting for God to show us whatever the next step should be for our tiny, little community. All this, and now the onions have been recalled.

I was telling our book group on Thursday that I’ve studied and worked and filled my toolbox full of tools that I can’t really use right now. It has me feeling pretty useless. I mean, I can do community and feeding and connecting and reaching out. I can go to the least of these and hear their stories and connect to their lives. I can write a sermon. I have communication skills and I have a passion for metaphor. But to be honest, I don’t really have the particular skills needed to face the specific challenges we’re facing these days. I can’t balance budgets or put in an IV. I’m not good with technology. I don’t make fancy webpages and I’m not very charismatic. 

I’ve never been popular. I don’t know how to get people to “follow” me or subscribe to my channel. I haven’t done enough community building or anti-racism work, I’m not a trained therapist, and I’ve never built a business. I’m filled with self-doubt and a good helping of anxiety. I was not built for such a time as this. I have not prepared for the struggle that is 2020. I have two empty hands, a mortgage, some used furniture and a voice. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. 

Compared to what the world needs, it feels like a whole lot of nothing. 

Or, at least, almost nothing. As good as nothing. Might as well be nothing, considering how much the world needs right now. I’ve been plunked down in front of a hungry world with nothing but the desire to relieve a little pain, with nothing but two empty hands and some empathy for those who are hurting and starving and waiting for some healing.

And yet, here is Jesus, with us still, telling us, telling me, “You feed them.” You heal the sick. You comfort the mourning. You find the lost. You heal the earth and fight for justice and end corruption and greed. You do it. You. 

These worlds we enter in to today are just as messy as ours is now. Our passages today are so very human. So very fleshy. And hard. Wrestling and hunger and deserts and crowds of sweaty, noisy, coughing people, and broken hips and dead fish.

First is Jacob who is in the middle of a frantic race to save all his stuff, because surely his brother, Esau, from whom Jacob stole his birthright, is coming, and surely, Esau is gonna be pissed. 

So in a last ditch effort to save his family - or maybe to just save himself - he sends them all across the river with all of his stuff and camps out alone. Where, somewhat strangely, he starts wrestling with some guy. And like a honey badger, Jacob keeps at this guy even after he’s been struck in the hip. Jacob is so worried about stuff and flesh and food and more stuff, he won’t let go until this guy blesses him. He thinks he needs more. What is Jacob expecting, I wonder? More wives? More children? More cattle and camels and goats? What does he need that he doesn’t have already? 

Don’t we always want more? If we just had that one thing or enough money or that relationship or that job or that notoriety, we’d finally have enough, we’d finally be content. 

Jacob is scrambling to save all his things, all this stuff that he has, and he demands more. What more could Jacob need? Whatever it is, Jacob doesn’t get it. Instead, he simply gets a new name. He wants to know the name of God, but Jacob gets the name instead. And a limp.

Struck in the hip, the tendons and sinews stretched, the ball pulled out of its socket, Jacob asks for a blessing and gets…essentially…nothing. Nothing more than who he is already. Nothing more than his brokenness. He gets less than nothing. He gets a limp and name. That’s it. 

And then in our New Testament reading, we get more bodies and their incessant, messy, need. A small city of limping, dirty, sick humans gathers in the desert, searching for the face of God, searching for some healing. 

They’ve got nothing, not even lunch. And they’ve come for something, anything, that will make their lives a little bit better, and they get tired and hungry instead. 

And what does Jesus do? Does He snap his fingers and make fish and chips and tartar sauce fall from the sky?

Nope. He gives them…nothing. Instead, he says, “YOU feed them.” Looking right at the disciples.

And they look at him pretty incredulously, I’m guessing, and then they look around, and then they say, “Uh, Jesus, we’ve got nuthin.” 

And they back track a little bit - “Well, ok. Almost nothing. Five measly loaves of bread and a couple of fish.” So, in comparison to all these hungry people, we have what is close enough to nothing. It might as well be nothing. It feels like nothing.

They’re not social workers, they’re not trained in crisis intervention, they don’t have degrees or pedigrees or businesses or bank accounts. They’re not firefighters or frontline workers or politicians or engineers. They aren’t immunologists or virologists or economists. They aren’t even chefs or grocery workers or food bank managers. They are totally unprepared to face the needs of the day.

The disciples see the face of God. God is right there, right in front of them. They’ve been living with and listening to and following Jesus around for a few years now, and they still have nothing. Nothing enough to feed five thousand. Nothing enough to even remotely address the needs of this ever-growing crowd.

It’s important to note that both of our stories today happen out in the wilderness - the wild “out there” where rebellion and wrestling with God happens. Both of our stories happen out there in the desert, where there’s a whole lot of nothing.

Psalm 78 asks, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?” In the place where there’s nothing. Where nothing grows. Where nothing stays alive for long. Where nothing thrives. Where there’s nothing but searching and fear and brokenness and barren land? Where there is nothing but emptiness and lack? Can God spread a table in the wilderness? Can God spread a table in the year 2020?

This miracle story, the only miracle story that is included in all four Gospels answers, “yes.” Yes. God can spread a table in the wilderness. But not without us. Not without our nothing. Not without our lack and flesh and mess and limping hips.

Jacob wrestles with God, sees the face of God, and ends up with nothing but a bum hip. He asks for God’s name, but instead, God gives Jacob a name - Israel, which means, “One who struggles with God.” 

The disciples follow Jesus around, they see the face of God, they call to Jesus to fix it, and Jesus turns it back on them, gives them the responsibility, tells them to do it.

“When you see my face,” God says, “you’ll struggle, you’ll probably fight, or argue, or look at me incredulously, and then you’ll walk away broken, limping, with “nothing” to offer.” And then God says, “ok, now, feed them.” 

Feed them from your lack.

Feed them out of your pain.

Feed them in the desert.

Feed them with your stories of heartache and hunger and feelings of rejection.

Feed them with the measly ration of five loaves and two fish and a bum hip.

Feed them with your nothing.

Because we are the hands and feet of Christ.

We are the holes in his hands and his feet.

We are the broken hips and the bruised ribs and the bleeding temples of Christ.

We are his cry to God, “Abba, Father! Why have you forsaken me?”

We carry with us the stories of heartache and pain and grief that are the flesh and blood of Christ.

And we offer that Christ to each other. And it is the face of God.

And there is enough to feed five thousand lost souls wandering the desert, searching for some hope, some healing, some answers, some chance to see the face of God.

It is enough.

It is more than enough. Enough to fill baskets and to-go boxes to take home with them. 

Our nothing, when it is a part of the Body of Christ, when it is blessed and broken - yes broken - is enough.

That’s the resurrection. 

Jesus still carries his wounds, his story, his pain and his suffering with him after he is laid in the tomb and raised on the third day. The holes in his hands and his feet are still there. The wound in his side is still there. He’s not healed, but rather, made whole. Made complete. 

And so are we.

We want our need and our pain and our bum hips to go away. We want to get past it. We want to ignore that we were ever hurt. Or that we ever failed. Or that we walk with a limp. We want to be able to say that we can’t do anything because we have nothing. Or we don’t have enough. Or we’re not prepared. Or we don’t have the skills. Or we’re not good enough. Or that the world just doesn’t want what we have to offer. 

So we don’t show up. We don’t share our nothing. We pass the buck. 

But because of who Jesus is, we are changed. Because we have wrestled with God, we are different. Our name has changed. We have been marked. And we can never take it back. We’ve been given a whole pile of nothing, and then told to feed them all.

Jesus says, don’t wish the need and the lack away. Don’t wish for your struggles to vanish. That nothing is enough. That nothing is exactly what you need to get the job done. Jesus wants us to draw closer to it. Live in it. Share it. That is wholeness. 

When you carry the scars around with you and you are no longer ashamed, when you can say, “come, touch the holes in my hands, place your hand in my side, see, I’m a little like Christ, I’m part of the body of Christ, and I’ve got a whole lot of nothing, but Jesus broke it and blessed it and now there’s so much food. And here, have some bread,” that’s wholeness. That’s what God calls us to. That is redemption and resurrection and freedom. 

This miracle story usually ends with us Christians divided in two camps. The first camp says that the real miracle is that a whole bunch of people got together and decided to share their lunch. And in the sharing, they realize they have more than enough to go around. The miracle comes from the people. 

The second camp is one where God defies the laws of physics and makes real food appear out of nowhere. This camp believes that the miracle resides solely in the hands of Jesus and his unearthly abilities. Look at what God can do with so little!

But here’s the thing. I need them both. I need a community that can come together and feed each other. And I need physics-defying miracles from God. I need Jesus to tell us to feed them. And I need Jesus to step in, and feed them. I need a God who takes a whole bunch of our “nothing” and transforms it into something, something that feeds and nourishes and satisfies. I need a God who needs me, broken, limping, me, my failures and flaws and ineptness, to show up with what little that I have. 

I need a God who needs me to be present and here with all of my faults and defects and lack of resources and not enough skills or knowledge. I need a God who can take all that nothing and turn it in to something. And I need you to join me. None of us can do this alone. Not even Jesus. Or, if Jesus could do it alone, he chooses not to, and that’s basically the same thing. 

Come, bring your nothing. Bring your brokenness and your heartache and your limp. Come before Christ. Demand a blessing. Wait and see what happens. He’ll tell you to pack up your nothing and get out there and get to work.

Oh God, give us patience. And perseverance. And peace. Give us nothing. Transform it into something. Something that feeds and nourishes and heals and connects and unites. Help us to see that with our nothing in Your hands, we can face the trials of this day.

Thanks be to God.