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10
th Sunday after Pentecost (year b)
Proper 12 (17)

HumorPastorCare: Clergy on the Move  | Peace & Justice


    

Texts & Discussion:

2 Samuel 11:1-15 and
Psalm 14 or
2 Kings 4:42-44 and
Psalm 145:10-18
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21

Other Resources:

Commentary:

Matthew Henry,    Wesley

Word Study:
Robertson

This Week's Themes:

God's Generous Provisions
Christ's Abiding Presence
Human Sinfulness


 

 

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 Texts in Context | Imagining the Texts -- First LessonEpistleGospel | Prayer&Litanies |  Hymns & Songs | Children's Sermons | Sermons

  


Sermons:

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Ordinary Miracles
John 6:1-21
by Rev. Karen A. Goltz

“The Old Ragged Shirt”

Once there was an old ragged shirt

Who always had his feelings hurt.

He lived in a closet with the other clothes

But he wasn’t worn as much as those.

You see, our little shirt had grown too small,

Or the person who owned it had grown too tall.

He seemed no longer to be of use

Except to hang on his hanger, sad and loose.

The other shirts bragged and said,

“We keep our person warm from fingers to head.”

The pants were proud that they were a covering,

And told the little shirt he was useless; that he could do nothing.

The little shirt fought back at first,

So full of anger he wanted to burst.

“I’m not useless,” he said, his voice starting to rise

But the others laughed so hard they had tears in their eyes.

Our poor little shirt so wanted to serve,

But as the others kept laughing he lost his nerve.

And he said to himself, “They must be right,

I can’t cover or bring warmth, so why should I fight?”

And he stayed on his hanger so sad and alone,

But what was in store for him he couldn’t have known.

One day he was taken and put in a box

With old skirts and handkerchiefs and even some socks.

He stayed there a while scared and confused

Wondering if he would be thrown out or – maybe – reused?

Then someone took him out and cut him in strips

And sewed him to other clothes along his sides and his tips.

And as he looked around he was able to see

He was bigger than ever, and he realized, “There’s more than just me!”

His days as a shirt were over and through,

No longer old and ragged, he was beautiful and new!

Joined together with others something great had been built—

He was now part of a gigantic warm quilt!

He was sent to a place that helps people in need—

People without homes and have children to feed.

He was given to a family who’d lost everything they had—

All that was left were the kids, Mom, and Dad.

With the help of kind strangers they made a new start

With their new quilt which was truly a gift from the heart.

You see, our poor little shirt, which in its original form

Was no good for a covering or for keeping someone warm

Was now part of something of great width and great height

That keeps a whole family warm and covered each night.

-Karen Goltz

            Have you ever felt like that ragged old shirt?  You want to help out, but you feel trapped by circumstance, by your geography or your resources.  “I know there’s injustice in the Middle East,” you might say.  “But I’m in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  What can I do from here?”  Or maybe it’s something like, “I know there are a lot of people in need, homeless or hungry, but there are so many of them, I can’t possibly feed them all!  And right now I can barely take care of myself.  How much good can my little contribution really do?”  So we pull back within ourselves, we tell ourselves that the problems in the Middle East are too far away for us to do anything, and don’t really affect us here anyway.  We tell ourselves that the people in need are just lazy, looking for free handouts and taking advantage of the system, and it’s best not to encourage that sort of behavior, all the while hoping that we ourselves won’t have to use those services.  We work hard and take hold of our Bibles and proudly quote, “God helps those who help themselves,” not realizing that it was actually Ben Franklin who said that, and it’s not a passage from scripture.

            It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, because there is so much need in the world, including our own.  People all over the world, in the United States and elsewhere, are hungry, homeless, suffering injustice.  There are so many who are sick, lonely, or in need of guidance.  There are so many organizations like Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Social Services, Prison Ministries, Habitat for Humanity, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, just to name a very small few, that need our help.  There are so many ministries to support, so many needs to fulfill, that we can’t possibly address them all.

            When Jesus saw the large crowd, he asked Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”  I imagine that question must have panicked Philip.  Five thousand people.  Show of hands: who among you is willing and able to provide a satisfying meal to five thousand people?  I had trouble finding a caterer I could afford for my wedding, and I only had seventy people to feed!  It seems impossible, as it did to Philip.  One of the other disciples, Andrew, at least looked to see what they did have to work with.  He found a boy who had five loaves of bread and two fish.  And that little bit of food seemed so insignificant compared to the size of the crowd that it didn’t seem worth handing out at all.  But Jesus insisted that they did anyway.  And when everyone had eaten enough to be satisfied, the disciples gathered up twelve baskets of leftover bread.  Twelve baskets of leftovers!  That’s more bread than they’d had to start out with!

            The feeding of the five thousand is generally accepted as a miracle.  How else could five thousand people eat and be satisfied, and have more leftovers than they’d had food to begin with?  An alternate theory I’ve heard, proposed by some skeptics, is that some of the people in the crowd had brought some food of their own, and when they saw Jesus’ generosity, they were inspired to do the same.  If even one fifth of the people there had brought their own loaf of bread, that’s a thousand loaves, more than enough to feed five thousand people.  So, according to this alternate theory, this wasn’t a miracle at all, but rather the biblical proof-text for potluck suppers.

            I’m not sure if I buy that theory, but to me, it’s not worth wasting much time worrying about.  Sure, it seems to take the magic and the romance out of the story, but does that make it any less mysterious?  Any less miraculous?

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