"Take Heart" - Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Take Heart
Epiphany 5 – Narrative Lectionary 1
February 8, 2015
Grace, Mankato, MN
Matthew 14.13-33

We have jumped a long way from last week’s reading from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in 6 and our mediation on the Lord’s Prayer. In this current section, the rejection of Jesus in his hometown and the continuing opposition from the religious leaders prompts him to stress teaching to his disciples. He does this while healing and performing wonders. Here, we encounter two well-known miracle stories, each of which we could feed on with much left over. Both of these have generated much conversation, particularly about “did this really happen.” I think more fruitful exploration involves asking what the readings say about God and how we participate in God’s ongoing acts of creation.
Let us pray…

I was reminded of a joke this past week. It seems there was a scientist who claimed that God was nothing special because this scientist had learned how to create a human being, just as God did. When challenged to prove his claim, the scientist proceeded to so by saying, “First you take some dirt…” All of a sudden, a voice from heaven interrupted the scientist saying, “Use your own dirt.” So it was I read with interest the Free Press story about the English Parliament. It was voting to allow genetic scientists to experiment with the creation of an embryo from three parents to avoid genetic abnormalities. This news prompts a lot of theological, social and moral questions that are very important, but it also highlights our ongoing participation in God’s ongoing creative work.

That’s the commonality that links the two wonder stories in today’s reading. One thing that links these two miracle stories is that both look back to Genesis 1 and the creation story. When Jesus tells the disciples to feed the crowds and they claim they have nothing, except five loaves and two fish, they have no idea that the very creator who formed the universe out of nothing, making all the life giving food in the process, can take their nothing and make a lot of something out of it. And when they are in the small boat battling the chaotic forces of nature that threaten to overwhelm them, they will see this same creator who tamed the chaos at creation do the same again on the Sea of Galilee.

I think that these two stories typify the Christian life, what it is like to be caught between faith and doubt. Isn’t it interesting how the same disciples who witnessed the abundant feeding of the multitude are now scared stiff? Yet, note that Jesus doesn’t say they have no faith; he says they have little faith. But as we know, it only takes the faith of a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, through which Jesus does extraordinary things. That’s the kind of faith that can uproot mountains and throw them into the sea.

Furthermore, remember earlier in Matthew, when Jesus was tempted by Satan. We noted that his mocking, “If you are the Son of God” can be translated, “Since you are the Son of God,” a confession of faith. When Jesus comes to his disciples on the water, a better translation of “It is I” is “I am,” the divine name of God. Peter in effect says the same thing here: “Since you are, command me to come and be with you.”

Author, theologian and preacher par excellence Barbara Brown Taylor puts legs to these stories by admonishing us to “stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead.: For the same creator who brought order out of chaos at creation still does so today. The one who made the universe out of nothing, provided food at creation and manna in the wilderness for the Israelites, and fed the multitudes still does, taking our nothing and make abundant something. And as we look forward in Matthew to the Lord’s Last Supper, his crucifixion and death, we remember that this same God can bring life out of death. That’s a lot of something out of nothing.

So we ask ourselves, where is God overcoming our fear, sending us out into uncharted waters? When we stumble, where is God taking hold of us in forgiveness, mercy, love and grace, ready to make something out of our nothing? As my former colleague, Pr. Michelle Rem often asked, “Can we dream a dream so big only God can fulfill it?” My brothers and sisters, take heart, for the Lord of creation continues do wondrous things, calling us to risks ourselves in the going creative work, taking our nothing and making incredible something. Amen.