Perhaps you
have heard a version of this parable wrapped inside a well-worn joke:
There was a
preacher who fell in the ocean and he couldn't swim. When a boat came by, the captain
yelled, "Do you need help, sir?" The preacher calmly said "No,
God will save me." A little later, another boat came by and a fisherman
asked, "Hey, do you need help?" The preacher replied again, "No
God will save me." Eventually the preacher drowned & went to heaven.
The preacher asked God, "Why didn't you save me?" God replied,
"Fool, I sent you two boats!"
Replace the
main character and the setting and you get a similar lesson: we do not always see
in the moment where God is acting, when Christ is most present and how the Holy
Spirit is moving throughout our lives. We are prone to misread we mistake
silence for absence and activity as substance.
God knows, we are human, and we struggle with setting priorities,
shifting through life’s many choices and knowing what really matters most.
Where and how do we spend our time, energy, resources, worries, passions, and
doubts? We hunger to be fed and filled, yet all around us are temptations and
distraction to experience the thrill and trend of the moment – the latest and
updated version of whatever that we convince ourselves that we must have.
Part of
what we do when we gather to pray and worship is to redirect our very real hunger
away from what is fleeting and perishable towards what is everlasting and eternal.
Or at the very least, teach us and remind us to know the difference – and to
learn where to look for the true bread of life.
Many
believe that the purpose of the entire gospel of John can be found near the
very end in the 20th chapter vs. 30-31: Now Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But
these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
So when we
hear passages about signs from God: take note.
Over four
weeks we are camping out in the 6th chapter of John. John speaks a
different kind of language from the other gospels. It cares less about sequential history than
he does with painting a larger more expansive understanding.
We get from
John the great “I am” statements from Jesus:
I am the light of the world
I am the door
I am the good shepherd
I am the resurrection and the life
I am the way, the truth, and the life
I am the true vine
And, as we
heard again this morning and will hear again next Sunday: I am the bread of
life
The 23 times Jesus uses these I am statements in John links Jesus to the
God who spoke to Moses in the Exodus story. God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I
AM".
Hear Eugene Peterson’s translation in the Message of this passage: Jesus
says: “Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for
the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the
Son of Man provides.”
How are we doing in reading the signs around us and deep within us ? Are
we on the right course of knowing the difference between that lasts and what
fades away?
In
anticipating of our many anniversary festivities next month, I have been
reading our parish history and marvel and the foresight of the founders of this
church. Two Academy students, William Waters and Frederick Thompson, walking
through the cold on Christmas morning in 1864 to Epping to receive the Bread of
Life of Holy Communion. The tireless Caroline Harris, in whose memory our
parish hall is named. It is written that she “limited her diet and her comforts”
and wrote for friends around New England to raise support for the first church
building. They began something that did not fade away. It took root in this
community. They and other founders saw a need, sacrificed and contributed, and
planted something that lasts today and will live on into the future. When we
support the work of a congregation through energy, time and money, we connect with
the kinds of choices that Jesus set out to all those who came to him looking
for food to eat.
For today
then, let me end with a different take of the joke without the punch line.
There was a
person who fell into the ocean couldn't swim. When a boat came by, the captain
yelled, "Do you need help?" The person said: Well, actually I do. I’m
afraid, uncertain, far from home. I lose my way sometimes. Get off track. I am
at times lonely, insecure and uncertain.
I fail to see the good things and decent people around me. I need to
love and care more, worry and consume less.
And the
good news is that the person who fell into the ocean didn’t have to go to
heaven to learn this less. God sends us
boats. A lot of them. And lifelines. And
wake-up calls. And second and third
changes, and many more.
And God in
Jesus offers us food – the good kind – that feds our soul.
August 2, 2015
10 Pentecost, Year B
The Rev. Mark B. Pendleton
Exeter, NH
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