July 29, 2012/Proper 12B - Pentecost 9 - John 6:1-21/2
Samuel 11:1-15/(I Samuel 8: 10-18)
The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, Saint Timothy’s School for
Girls, Stevenson, MD
Of Cabbages and Kings
The world is a hungry place. People are hungry for food, for
jobs, for love, for care, for leadership that cares. The list of our hunger
goes on and on. What the Bible knows is what we all know - all of our hunger
centers around a spiritual void. We are hungry for God. That hunger is very
real, and yet we deceive ourselves into believing we can feed that hunger with
other things like food, money, fancy clothes, fancy cars, more technology, more
stuff. We accumulate so much stuff, stuff that we believe says something about
who we are - stuff that we somehow mistaken for who and what we are. We
accumulate so much stuff that our homes overflow with stuff, until we have to
go beyond the home and rent self-storage spaces. That is, we have to store the
excess amount of our self somewhere else, so that our self becomes fragmented,
separated into different places. We become a problem to ourselves - or what we
believe is what we are, what defines us: the clothes we wear, the house we live
in, the cars we drive and so forth.
This, in all likelihood, is mostly a Northern Hemisphere
problem. It is a problem driven by our desire to be like everybody else -
especially those who have more than we have. And it is becoming a world-wide
problem as our principal export is a life-style based on the accumulation of
more and more stuff. The whole world desires to be just like us.
This is all driven by a belief that there is not enough
stuff in this world, so we had better stockpile as much as possible for
ourselves. This perceived scarcity of stuff leads to trade imbalances, the
stealing of resources from other parts of the world, and eventually manifests
itself in trade wars that can soon turn into outright warfare. So then we need
to accumulate more resources, more stuff, dedicated to the protection of what
we already have. We end up demanding leaders who can assure us that our stuff
will remain ours forever and ever.
Into such a world steps Jesus. Rome had conquered Israel and
turned it into a client state, exporting all its goods to other parts of the
Empire, and charging outrageous taxes on those goods at the same time. It was a
dangerous time to be a client of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Rome
demanded full loyalty.
So along comes Jesus. The Jesus in John is declared from the
first verse of the Fourth Gospel as God - the Word, the logos - in the flesh.
Indeed, this is the only way to make sense of someone who can take five barley
loaves and a couple of fish and feed thousands of people with lots and lots of
leftovers! Barley loaves, as opposed to wheat loaves, is the food of the poor.
The lesson here is quite simple, and yet one that we refuse to accept: The need
of the world is not too great for our resources if it is the Lord who directs
the use of those resources.
A mighty big "if".
Meanwhile, the people try to make him King. That would seem
to be appealing. Look at how people in every conceivable human community clamor
to become "king." Right now we are looking at two individuals who
will marshal millions if not billions of dollars for the right to become or
remain "king” of the United States of America. Look around the world where
competing individuals and groups of individuals resort to violence to gain and
maintain "kingship."
Then look at Jesus. Nothing doing. As soon as there is a
hint that the people might make him the next king, he sneaks off to be alone.
Why, we might ask ourselves? It might have saved him having to go to Jerusalem
only to be crucified, dead and buried. Why would he turn his back on what
others count as the ultimate goal?
Here we may do well to recall that Jesus appears to have
studied scripture pretty carefully. At every possible turn of events, he can
marshal quotations from every corner of Hebrew scripture. So no doubt at this
juncture he very well may have the eighth chapter of the First Book of Samuel
in mind. This is the episode when Israel demands that the boy prophet Samuel
appeal to God to give them a king - because, after all, all the surrounding
countries have kings, so we should have one too.
This signals a lack of trust in the God of the Exodus, who
up to this pivotal moment, had raised up judges to pull the tribes together in
times of great danger. When the danger passed, so did the judge, and folks went
back to life in their tribal clans with their diffuse political connections.
But at the time of Samuel, with threats from surrounding kingdoms, the people
demand a king to unite them and make them strong. God tries to dissuade Samuel.
Samuel tries to dissuade the people in chapter 8 of First Samuel, saying, in
effect, " A king will take your
sons and make them soldiers and send them to war; and take your daughters and
make them his servants; he will take your fields and produce, and tax you on
all of it; until you will wish you had never asked for a king, but by then it
will be too late." The people persist and God gives them Saul, which did
not work out particularly well. And then David, and, well, look at what happens
to David in this Sunday's episode in 2 Samuel 11:1-15. After failing to pull
off a cover- up of his indiscretion with Bathsheba, he uses his authority of
the military to have her husband Uriah killed in battle. Then comes Solomon. Under
the reign of Solomon, the consolidation of power and goods becomes so acute
that the people attempt a social
revolution, so unhappy are they with their once desired “king.”
Verna Dozier, a wise lay-leader in our church, in her book The Dream of God, called this demand
for a king the Second Fall after the episode in The Garden. The third fall
happens early in the life of the church, at the time of Constantine, when the
church goes from being an alternative to the Empire and allows itself to become
the Empire – the Church becomes King. The impulse is the same in 2 Samuel as it
is under Constantine - we want to be like everybody else. And yet, to this day
we are still looking for a way out of being an Imperial Church and somehow find
our way back to the very beginning – to being an alternative to the Empire, not
a cover-up and support for it.
For as anyone can see, Jesus will have none of it. And yet,
we continue to hitch our wagons, our stars, our souls and our very being, to
the belief that with just the right "king" all shall be well.
We find ourselves clinging to models of leadership and
institutional power that the Bible repeatedly warns us against. And we wonder
why it no longer works. Again, read about David and the so-called Wise One,
Solomon, and see how quickly it all fell apart even then, approximately 900
years before Jesus.
It is no wonder that God decided the only way to get our
attention was to come down himself and be one of us. God in Christ invites us
once and for all to give up any notions of being like everybody else as having
any life-giving sustainability. The accumulation of power and stuff will never
fill the spiritual void that keeps us from becoming the people God wants us to
be.
Our portion of the gospel ends with the disciples heading
off in a boat across the sea. They run into rough waters and high winds. When
all seems about lost, Jesus appears. The text is not entirely clear - it could
mean he was walking on the water, but it can also mean he was "on the sea
shore." So we can read this to say there he was, on the shore, to welcome
them ashore when after much hard work and treacherous time they approached him
and the shore. He simply says, "Be not afraid." Note, as soon as they
see him, as soon as he says this, they are immediately safe ashore!
Can it be that for St. John the meaning is to be found in
the peace that pertains once we willingly receive Jesus to be our companion?
Companion - literally one with whom we share bread. He who is the Bread of
Life, the Bread from Heaven, the True Bread - our manna, our sustenance, our
daily bread. Christ is the guide of life whom we follow, says William Temple,
in the strength that he supplies into the way of Peace.
That's pretty much it. We can continue to trust in our
appointed and elected leaders, and trust in the accumulation of more and more
stuff. Or, we can trust in Jesus, who withdraws again to the mountain to be
alone. What if we were to withdraw day by day to be alone with Jesus? How might
we allow him to be our daily bread? The need of the world is not too great for
our resources if it is the Lord who directs the use of those resources. Once we
trust in the Lord, we will find ourselves on the other shore, safe and secure
from all alarm with nothing to fear. Our deepest and true hunger can and will
be satisfied, if only we will continue to row our way to the other side – his
side – to the country that needs no king. Amen.
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