Proper 13A – 2005 Nehemiah 9:16-20 Psalm 78:14-20, 23-25 Romans 8:35-39 Matthew 14:13-21 July 31, 2005 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi God our Mother and Father, we come to you as children. Be with us as we learn to see one another with new eyes, hear one another with new hearts, and treat one another in a new way. Amen. This prayer, Seeing with New Eyes, formed a central part of daily worship and reflection at Camp Bratton-Green this past week. It was part of our staff and camp Eucharists, and it centered us in worship at the close of each day while at camp. It’s a prayer about doing something new … something different … something unexpected … something beyond the status quo … something transforming. It’s a simple prayer that speaks as much about us as it does about the other. It’s meant to. It moves us towards respect, understanding dignity and one another. Now if I could sum up the week at camp in one word, that word would be HOT! It was a scorcher of a week. It was dizzying hot. It was miserably hot … it was just plain H-O-T. But … it was also great fun. We laughed together, we built each other up, we told old stories and made new ones, we caught up with friends and made new ones, we ran and swam and fished and boated and jumped out of trees and made lots of arts and crafts projects, we had skits and took nature hikes, and we drank lots and lots and lots of water. It was a great week, and I can’t wait for next year. Camp just has that way of capturing folks—allowing them to be themselves, discover a new reality—to experience the love of and for God and vice versa. Intertwined throughout the junior high session was a theme … Reflection’s Got the Best of Me. Not grammatically correct by any means it was Reflection Has, not Reflections plural, Got the Best of Me. We focused on everything from desire and longing, to sin and separation, from judgment and playing God, to confession and redemption. And framing it all, we considered readings from the scriptures dealing with light and darkness, mirrors and reflections. Reflection’s Got the Best of Me, as we discovered, can mean several things. On the one hand, reflections … negative self-perceptions, those things that catch and consume us, those things that the world around us is telling us to be, those things that entrap and entangle our lives, those things like vanity and ego and you name it can get us down … literally getting the best of us. But on the other hand, reflections … the way in which we reflect the light of God, the way in which we can see ourselves for who we truly are as children of God and others, as well, the way in which we help others to let their light shine in this world of ours that is too often times too lonely a place, especially for kids … is what each and everyone of us is called to do. And this means that the freedom to be one’s self and to live into one’s potential as a child of God that so many find at a place like Camp Bratton-Green is meant not just for that place but in this world in which they … we must move and live and have being the other 51 weeks out of the year. It’s a simple message that needs repeating. As the week started, there was this tree, or what was left of a tree, brought into the chapel. It was something meant to focus us during evening worship—something to hold our attentions and imaginations. It was partially dead and, in all honesty, was really ugly. It had fallen during a storm, and the leaves on one half of the tree were dead from the get-go and the other half continued to die in our very midst as the week continued. But the tree was sold to the campers as a reflection, or a memory, tree. It was something meant for us to bring new life to. So as the week progressed, the tree became transformed. The tree itself did not change, but the way we viewed the tree did. It changed before our very eyes. The dead and dying leaves remained—those that didn’t fall off anyway—but every night there was something different, something else added, giving new dimension and meaning and life to the tree. It was kind of like a reverse Giving Tree, if you’re familiar with that book by Shel Silverstein. We added lanterns, then lights once it was too dry to use the lanterns, and we added mirrors and disco balls and aluminum foil ornaments and shiny stars and tinsel, and we gave a new life to this otherwise dead and dying and insignificant thing that got a lot of rather negative comments during the daylight hours, when it could simply be seen as firewood. At night, however, the tree was transformed. And, it became something transform-ing, as well. And on the last night, our prayers of thanksgiving and confession and longing and hopefulness filled the tree on tiny slips of paper hung from each branch, symbolically giving life and purpose in the midst of what had otherwise been given up on. Reflection’s Got the Best of Me … Today’s gospel lesson picks up immediately following the murder of John the Baptist. Upon hearing news of his cousin’s death, Jesus withdraws to a boat to be alone, to find space, to find time away, maybe even to find himself. Jesus withdraws from the crowds into a lonely place. We’re told it’s deserted. It’s a place for him to be by himself, to find solace, to think about what’s happened, maybe to grieve, maybe to consider his own future, maybe to wrestle with his own humanity. Maybe … simply to reflect. … This place is barren. There’s no life there. Villages are far away. This is a place—somewhere—that others had given up on. There is nothing in the midst of this unfruitful and unfruit-filled place. Nothing, that is, but Christ and the crowds gathered there. Jesus, it would seem, could have continued to be consumed by loss, overwhelmed by the news of John’s death, but, we are told, he gets out of the boat. He got out of his solitude and loneliness. He got out of interior reflection on the dim light left in John’s absence. He gets out of that boat to act on compassion, shining forth a new light—a new light that is not consuming, but life-giving. We’re talking quality and quantity here, folks! Jesus was moved to work miraculously in the midst of that dry and barren and increasingly dark place—literally as night fell—and among those who had come in search of true healing and wholeness. In the very midst of all that was dying in front of them, Jesus gave, and he gave abundantly. Blessing, breaking and giving bread to his disciples, the multitude was fed … in this place, far from anywhere they or anyone else who witnessed the miracle may have expected to find something new … to find nourishment … to find transformation. And what’s more, there is bread so plenteous that some 12 baskets were left over, carefully gathered after all were filled. There was more than enough … There was more than anyone could have fathomed. … Aren’t our own lives filled as abundantly? Aren’t we called to work miraculously in this world of ours? Before the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the disciples’ sight is impaired by their lack of vision at what is truly going on right in front of them, something of which they are already part. They see Jesus with their own eyes but don’t understand his true greatness. They, once again, can’t seem to grasp it all, and their worrying gets in the way. It shortens their sight. It muddies the waters and makes their mirrors reflect dimly. But then, Jesus reveals a little more to them. Out of very little comes a great deal, and it is shared most abundantly, yet very preciously. Jesus’ feeding of the multitude is more than meets the eye. There is the miracle of folks being fed—of a lot coming from virtually nothing. But there is also contained herein a formula that Matthew will repeat in the Last Supper account. It contains language and imagery—overtones for what has become our own sacramental gathering around this table for Eucharist, that we may be fed and fed abundantly. And, it is much more, too. Jesus, before the miracle and before the disciples throw up their hands, lost over what to do to provide for those gathered with them, gives, what I think, is also a charge to you and me today … in this world of ours and in all the places that are bare and need a new light shining into the darkness. He tells them: “… you give them something to eat.” Give them something to eat. You do it. … You … You simple creatures of flesh and blood, you mortals here with me … you that have gathered to be transformed. “[Y]ou give them something to eat,” and you yourselves will be transformed … God is calling us out of the places in our lives and this world that would otherwise constrain and consume us, that we might live and that we might have life abundantly. Jesus is calling us, urging new life for us and for those around us … that our Reflections Get the Best of Us … not in ways in which we get caught up in endless cycles of what we’re not, but freeing and empowering us to be what we are … children of a living God. And as such, we are called to go forth in the name of Christ, bearing light into those dark places, telling people “Expect a miracle!” and giving hope … here in our very midst and even far away. We are being called into transformation … to be transformed and to transform. And, Jesus says to us: “… you give them something to eat.” And we must … We are called to nourishment. We are called to sustenance. We are called to action. We are called. And in all of it, we are not alone ... We are called into union here at this table, and more importantly, in that world out there starving with its own hunger pains … realized or not. God our Mother and Father, we come to you as children. Be with us as we learn to see one another with new eyes, hear one another with new hearts, and treat one another in a new way. May we ever reflect the heart and hands and eyes of God to this world of ours. May we ever strive to feed those around us who hunger for the love of God. May we ever be nourished in so doing, that Christ’s light may shine forth in this hungry world of ours, filling it with hope and love and transformation. May God’s power working in us do infinitely more than we could ever ask or imagine. In Christ’s most holy name. Amen.   1. A prayer from the Corrymeela Community (20th c.), Northern Ireland and found in The Bridge of Stars: 365 Prayers, Blessings and Meditations from Around the World. Marcus Braybrooke, ed. London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2001. Page 85.