Collect O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. First Reading Ephesians 3:14-21 I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. The Gospel John 6:1-21 Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world." 1
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going. 'IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way', so begins Charles Dickens' great novel, A Tale of Two Cities set in Paris and London during the bloody days of the French Revolution. As one the great novels of the 19 th century and one of the most famous pieces of fiction ever written selling over 200 million copies, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities draws us to that paradox that lies at the heart of the human condition lived out in a world such as ours: the best and the worst thrust right up against each other. Over the past couple of weeks that juxtaposition of the best and worst of humanity has been writ large in current events. We have witnessed the worst of times in the tragic and twisted shooting in a theater in Aurora CO, where costumed movie-goers from as young as four months to as old as four decades old and more were met with the horror of a human being gone so profoundly awry that his own 2
costume of red dyed hair and bullet proof vest betrayed a deathly, maniacal fantasy that cost twelve people their lives and countless more terrible pain and suffering. It was an all too familiar sight of the celluloid world of fantasy spilling out into the reality of our everyday world, where the vulnerability of being human gives way to an almost super-human capacity to withstand and mete out suffering, and where people quite literally play games with other people's lives. From civilian lone killers dressed as if they were Rambo-style hollywood heroes, killing scores of young people from Virginia Tech to Norway, to child soldiers in Somalia and the Sudan playing war-games not of their own making, fought not with what most of us see our own children play war-games with - twigs and water pistols but with real weapons with real deadly force. Fantasy isn't supposed to be real, it is supposed to be the way that we test out how far it is that we have to stay within the boundaries of decent human behavior in order to live peaceably in this world. Fantasy is the game we play knowing that we can never play it 'for real'. Yet, there is an extent to which through our entertainment industries, through our story-telling, through our rabid desire to customize this world to our liking, that we have allowed fantasies of violence, and sex, and consumption to overtake us, to become real for us. The worst of times. Yet these dark outlines are not the only fantasies that we communicate to one another as beings in community with one another. The best of times have also been in the news and were on display this Friday with the wonderful spectacle that was and yes, I am biased here the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony. It was vibrant, it embodied the hope of young and old, it told a story of 3
human striving and human longing. 'Citius, Altius, Fortius,' "Swifter, Higher, Stronger', is the Olympic motto and the every-four year sporting spectacle reminds us that there is more to being human than the everydayness of our daily lives, and so much more hopefulness, so much more to believe in about who and how we are than the dark message of destruction that that lone Colorado gunman would have us believe about human existence. The Olympics remind us to be better, to strive longer, to reach farther, and to dig deep in our enduring of the trials that our own lives face us with. The best of times, the worst of times. The truth about this life is that we are always faced with that choice. Just think about your own life. Is this the end of a life-denying chapter of your life's journey or is it the beginning of new birth? Are you struggling to find your way in your relationships with others or are you preparing the ground for deeper meaning in how and who you are in relation to others? It's more than the simple adage of glass half-full or half-empty, it's about whether we truly have a home in our hearts for both pain and joy, for both hope and despair, for both love and loss. For whilst we can elect to live a fantasy of a life, pretending to ourselves that life's hardships are not present and real either for us or for others, the life that the Christian faith calls us to lead is one that is firmly grounded in reality. I was chatting this week with a representative from a neighboring church which is in the process of thinking about its future in relation to youth ministry. We covered the normal sort of bases until we found ourselves turning to what really mattered: that 4
for youth, and indeed for any of us, this Christian life is either real or it isn't. Either there is something tangible about our trust in a God we cannot see or know for certain is even there, or the conversation about God isn't even worth starting. Or put another way, either God can meet us at the heart of the tension between the best and the worst of our human nature or we truly are left to our own devices in this universe. I wonder, what is it that you believe about that? Is the talk that we share about God here in this place of worship and this community of faith just a nice story or does it cut through the surface of things to a deeper place? When the storm comes in your life, is it Jesus that you see walking across the raging waters toward you or do you feel like you are left there alone? Perhaps it goes without saying, but sometimes week-in week-out church-going can mask the fact that these are so much more pressing questions for your life than whether you like or don't like this or that hymn, or this or that configuration of seating, or for that matter this or that preacher. There is no better time than now to answer the question for yourself: is God real? Yet, this is exactly the point, precisely the precipice where faith is to be lived out. Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian, described the life of faith as akin to being suspended over 20,000 fathoms of water. Not perhaps your archetypal image of a seeker-friendly church yet an accurate image of the life of faith all the same. And so, when we encounter the Jesus we read about in the story of the feeding of the multitude, we are to find this Jesus amidst hungry people, among 5
the poor and the disenfranchised, among people for whom the power to selfdetermination is held by others. For the people among whom Jesus lived and moved about it was the Romans who reminded them of the worst of times. In our own age, we can just take our pick. Yet we also find this Jesus as the embodiment of an incredulous abundance: food for thousands out of five loaves and two fish. His is a stupendous grace, a love that always has more room for us than we have for ourselves. And the simple spaciousness that God has for us is enough to change everything. It is enough to take utterly tragic loss and lead the lost and the broken with cords of human kindness to a place of healing and hope. I know that this is true. I have seen it. I might even be bold enough to say that in some ways, I have lived it. God is real. Not just because He exists, but because He does meet us where we need to be met, and because He calls us and enables us to live into a full humanity that no other calling or caller in our life can equal. Yet this is not a knowledge that can truly be passed on from one person to another. We cannot say and know that they will believe it to the grieving families of Aurora CO, that God is with them any more than we can say to Olympic athletes that God is to be found in their striving to reach beyond themselves. Such a gospel has to be seen first-hand. It has to be lived to be believed. It has to be accepted as the free gift of a gracious God to be real for people. 6
Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities concludes with the guillotining of the story's protagonist, Sydney Carton. As he stands at the gallows, he shares these thoughts with the reader, 'I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss...in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come' Our lives are faced with the possibility of God, with the possibility of a beautiful city and a beautiful people arising from any abyss that life might cast us into, with the possibility that a life with God promises an abundance of grace and love beyond our imagining. The best of times and the worst of times will always be with us. The question that remains is this: in the midst of such times, is the possibility of God real for you? Amen. 7