Menlo Church 950 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 650-323-8600 Series: Seven Words April 2, 2017 John 6:5-13 Thanks Abby Odio Hello, everyone, and welcome to those of you at all of our campuses. It has been quite a weekend for our church. At each of our sites yesterday, we had folks out serving in their local communities. Across our whole church, we completed 33 different projects around the Bay Area as part of our Serve Day. So all of you who were a part of that, way to go. We're glad to have you with us today as we continue in our series Seven Words to Change Your Life. This week the word is thanks. Thanks is a theme that appears over and over again throughout Scripture. Most of us would agree thanks is a good word to live with, a good word to say. Those of you with children know it's one of the first words we teach our kids to say. Thanks is polite. It's proper. It's the necessary response to certain acts of kindness directed toward us. In the book of 1 Thessalonians, Paul writes to a community of relatively new believers, people who are just sort of learning how to live the "with God" life. He offers them some rather mind-blowing insight around what this life looks like. He says, "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." The word will in this verse is from the verb thelo, which in the original Greek is understood as God's best offer to people, which can be accepted or rejected. Essentially, what Paul is telling this community is there are two ways to live. There is the way of thanks, and this is God's will, God's best, the life you were created to live, or there's the way of ingratitude, and that way will lead you away from God. His final words to this young, struggling church couldn't be more applicable for us today. Essentially, Paul says, "Say thanks. It could change your life." If you survey Scripture, you'll find thanks is an expression Jesus himself uses quite often. What's interesting is in our day, in our time, gratitude is an expression exclusively used when a person experiences exceedingly good fortune, like when a professional athlete wins a big game or when someone wins an Oscar or even when they think they've won an Oscar. (Too soon?) Sam and I actually discovered a couple of months ago that we're going to have a baby early this fall. We had our first appointment, and we saw that little heart beating, and I couldn't believe the gratitude that overwhelmed me in that moment. For the majority of us, gratitude is something we experience as a result of really, really good circumstances, but it's interesting, if you look at the life of Jesus, you'll notice he said "Thanks" in some of the most unlikely moments. For instance, the night before his crucifixion, knowing he would have to endure the great pain and a brutal death within hours, we read that Jesus took the bread and he gave thanks and broke it. The night before death thanks. Another time, Jesus' friend Lazarus has just died. We're told he has been dead for four - 1 -
days, and Jesus is so upset by this news that he weeps. Then he does something you wouldn't expect. He prays, and the first words out of his mouth are, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me." In the wake of a painful loss, thanks. It's a bit puzzling, really. Some of you might know the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who lived during the World War II era. He strongly opposed the atrocities committed against the Jews by the Nazi regime. In 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He spent a year and a half in prison before being transferred to a concentration camp, and he was executed shortly thereafter. Bonhoeffer did some of his most profound writing during his time in prison. One such reflection included this line: "It is only with gratitude that life becomes rich." That's a staggering comment if you consider the world of Bonhoeffer in that moment. Isolation, uncertainty, deep grievance at the state of the world and his country, and still thanks. Still, life held for him a richness and a joy that few on the outside looking in could make sense of or understand. There's a columnist for the New York Times named David Brooks, and he has an article on gratitude where he observes this: "Most people feel grateful some of the time after someone saves you from a mistake or brings you food during an illness. But some people seem grateful dispositionally. They seem thankful practically all of the time." With the rest of the article, he goes on to unpack this rather peculiar and uncommon disposition of gratitude that a certain few people embody. A certain few people say "Thanks" all the time. Jesus, Bonhoeffer, and others throughout history have embodied this unique disposition. They lived in such a way that this word thanks was spoken in both conventional and unconventional moments. For Jesus, thanks wasn't a proper word. It wasn't an obligatory word. It was a reality-shaping, life-enriching, daily spoken word that bound him to God the Father in such a way that regardless of circumstances he could say, "This is the good life. This is the rich life. This is God's best right here, right now. Thanks." Bonhoeffer uses that word richness, and it's a rich word. It might imply happiness, but it also goes beyond happiness. It implies a deep soul satisfaction, a sense that regardless of circumstances I stand on unshakable ground. The encouragement of Paul and the example of Jesus and the testimony of Bonhoeffer all point toward this truth that the level of richness we will experience over a lifetime is directly linked to the frequency and the sincerity with which we learn to exclaim that one word: thanks. All the time thanks. I say learn, because in our culture this disposition does not come naturally, nor did it come naturally for Jesus' disciples. It required a process of learning to see the world on fundamentally different terms. A couple of summers back, I was backpacking in the Olympic National rainforest up in Washington. I was with my sister and a close friend of ours, and, lo and behold, it started to rain. Our plan was to backpack for five days, but a few hours into the hike we were soaking wet and reconsidering whether we wanted to keep going or turn around and find a warm hotel somewhere. We stopped for lunch, and my sister pulled out her phone to look at the weather report. It wasn't good. Rain was predicted for the next two days. As we considered our options, a man coming down off the mountain overheard us. He'd just finished the hike we were attempting. He sort of boldly offered his energetic opinion to us. He said, "You can't turn around. This hike is fantastic." - 2 -
To sort of legitimize our perspective, my sister showed him her phone with the weather report, but instead of agreeing with us, he motioned to her phone and said, "That is a fantastic weather report." Then he went on to explain, "The waterfalls will be full. The valley will be green when you reach the top. There are tree canopies all along the way that will keep you dry." He finished with the words I really remember. He said, "The rain is what brings this place to life." See, learning to respond to Paul's invitation to the church to us is not as simple as just saying "Thanks" more, though hopefully that will be a result. What Jesus is inviting us into is an entire reframing of our perspective, a step into an entirely different paradigm. The rain is what brings this place to life. It's not a reason to turn around. There's a story we're going to look at today about Jesus' disciples, where they, too, are learning how to live in this new way. In John, chapter 6, we read that Jesus has just crossed the Sea of Galilee and gone up the hillside. He's with his disciples. His reputation is spreading, so people are following him. Big crowds are following him. John writes, "When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, 'Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?'" It makes sense that Jesus would ask Philip. We know from Luke's account of the same story they are in a place called Bethsaida, and Bethsaida is where Philip is from. Philip knows the places. He knows the closest In-N-Out. He's seemingly their best bet at finding food, but Philip responds practically. He says, "It would take more than half a year's wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!" Notice Philip's mind immediately goes to what they lack. They lack the necessary resources to feed anyone without money. This makes total sense. Philip lived in a world where 70 percent of the people hovered at the extreme poverty line. That means 70 percent of the people barely had their basic needs for life met. Scarcity was not a foreign idea; it was a lived reality for these guys. In Roman culture, the poor majority relied on the wealthy for survival. They were expected to express gratitude, to express thanks to the rich, but, to be sure, this was a misled notion of gratitude. At its core, it was sort of a way of keeping the poor in their place, of maintaining social order. This cultural norm perpetuated certain ways of seeing the world. The wealthy thought they were entitled to what they owned, indebted to no one, and the poor lived with this sense of burdened indebtedness to the wealthy. This is the world in which Philip lives. You don't buy food for thousands of people when you can't buy food for yourself or for your family. You don't borrow that kind of money. You'll be forever bound, even enslaved, to the wealthy. You have to be shrewd in this economy of lack. You have to hold your cards close. You have to be on the lookout for rainstorms. But Andrew, another of Jesus' disciples, is standing right there, and he has a different read on the situation. Same circumstances, but Andrew sees something different. Andrew exclaims, "Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?" Notice the difference in the experiences of these two. Where Philip sees want, Andrew sees wonder. Even in the mundane, he sees possibility. Just to name it, we live in a world where Philip's temptation is our temptation. Oftentimes, we default to want instead of embracing the wonder of the moment. This want can take all sorts of forms. For Adam and Eve, it took the form of wanting the fruit instead of - 3 -
basking in the wonder of what God had provided in the garden. For some of us, want can lead to this hurried impatience, a tendency to pass by opportunities for connection with others in the name of important work or a full calendar or a lot to do. For some of us, want replaces wonder, because we become too comfortable, too familiar with the way things are. We take for granted that which inspires wonder, always on the search for more compelling, more intriguing experiences. I was recently on a plane, and my personal TV screen wasn't working. After endless failed attempts to get it to work, I was incredibly frustrated, and my mind went directly to want. "I should demand a new seat," I thought. "I paid for this ticket. I'm entitled to endless reruns of Friends episodes for the next three hours." Then it hit me. "Abby, you are flying on a seat in the sky, moving through the air. Leave your broken computer alone. Look out the window." And I did. By that time, we were coming over the Sierras, flying into the sunset. It was awe inspiring. Notice John includes very specific detail about the nature of the bread and the fish. He tells us the loaves are made out of barley and the fish are small. Those are actually really significant details for us as the reader. In that day, barley was the cheapest of all bread. It was a poor man's bread. Believe it or not, it had this sort of stigma attached to it. In Hebrew tradition, certain laws existed around the kind of offering required of a person who had committed the act of adultery. With most offerings there was some kind of meat mixed with a combination of flour, wine, and oil. Generally, it was just regular flour that was used. However, in the case of adultery, Jewish law stated the flour must be barley flour, because barley flour is the food of animals, and adultery was considered an animal-like act. Then there's the detail included about the small fish. Picture for a moment an Alaskan king salmon, 36 inches, 50 pounds. We're talking about a real fish here. Now take the image you have in your mind and imagine the very opposite. That is what this boy had in his basket. It's a little six-centimeter, oily, sardine-like fish, likely a fish that had been pickled for the sake of preservation. The boy probably had two of these fish to help him swallow that dry barley bread. The point is the meal itself was terribly ordinary, terribly mundane. This was not a feast. This was a poor man's meal, but nonetheless Andrew stopped to notice it. Andrew wondered at it. Our journey to assume this disposition of gratitude, to live out God's best for us, requires we learn to pay attention to the wonder incited by the grand exclamations, the sunset from 30,000 feet in the air, but it also calls us to pay attention to the ordinary, to the six-centimeter sardine, and even perhaps to find wonder in the heart. I have a friend from high school who was diagnosed a few years ago with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Over the last few years, her cancer has spread. She recently received her eightieth cancer treatment. She sent a picture from this treatment with her 5-year-old son by her side. She is still very sick, but her sickness has not compromised her sense of wonder. In a public post this week, she shared this: "In the past two days, I've gone to a birthday party, a wedding, church, and on a walk. Not to brag or anything, but my life is amazing with a side of awesome." Think about that. It's a rare thing to meet a person who lives with such a deep sense of wonder around something as simple as going on a walk. It's unheard of to meet a person with such wonder about going to church, but she's doing it. The rain has brought her world to life, so to speak. See, our ability to live God's will, as Paul encourages us to do, to be always grateful people, is dependent on our ability to open our - 4 -
eyes and see possibility, to see beauty, to see potential in our everyday experiences, to be people who live constantly in the presence of even the smallest wonders. The Christian writer G.K. Chesterton made the accurate observation He said the world will never starve for want of wonders but only for want of wonder. In other words, it's not reality that's the problem. It's our inability to notice, to be wowed, to have the necessary humility needed to open ourselves up to the reality that God would use something outside of us and outside of our own efforts to bless us. Wonder is the means by which we open ourselves up to receive from God. Friends, this is so important, because when we lose our sense of wonder, our capacity for gratitude, it shrinks. It shrivels. Our world becomes reduced, like Philip's, to the equivalent of what we can do for ourselves. So as you go about your week, take note of your own default mode. At any given moment, are you more prone to want or to wonder? Do you find yourself perpetually frustrated by what's missing or are you taking the time to be awed by what is? How this week might you shift your focus to be a little more like Andrew, a little less like Philip? It might mean slowing down your usual routine of life. It might mean starting a list on your phone of the things you see today that wow you. It might mean starting a tradition with your family, where at the day's end you ask the question, "What did you see today that caused you to experience wonder?" But the story doesn't just end with wonder. Wonder is actually the doorway to gratitude. It opens us up to see the world differently. John continues. "Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, 'Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.' So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten." Jesus takes the ordinary loaves and these unimpressive little fish and gives thanks for them. It's funny. If I put myself in Jesus' shoes, I would likely have waited to give thanks until I was sure the bread and the fish had made the rounds, sure that I wouldn't be embarrassed, that it had been enough, but that's not how Jesus does it. I would have waited until the cancer was cured, until the world was fed, until my child was healed, until my broken heart was mended, until the rain had stopped. Then I'll say, "Thanks." This is another unconventional "thanks" on Jesus' part. Jesus gives thanks to the Father first, and he breaks the bread and begins passing it around. The crowds are stretching their necks, partly with wonder, but partly with self-interest. "Will there be enough for me?" It has been a long day on that road. Then the most incredible thing happens. The bread doesn't run out. In fact, on the contrary, the more who take some, the more there seems to be. There are a couple of people in the crowd who are watching this unfold, and they're thinking back to what they heard John the Baptist say not so long ago. "For from his fullness we have all received grace after grace." I love how Eugene Peterson translates that verse. He says, "We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift." What Jesus knows is that all wonder leads us to God. All gifts lead us to the giver. The reason we are invited, like Jesus, to live in continual thanks is because God is unlike any other giver. There is no end to what he gives. The reason Jesus gives thanks before he distributes the bread is because he knows that whatever the circumstances may be, the generosity and the abundance of God can never, - 5 -
never be outdone by human need. So he says "Thanks," and when all is said and done, John says they gathered 12 baskets full of leftovers. That's more than they had to begin with. There's a Christian author named Virginia Owens, and she offers this insightful commentary on this notion of gratitude. She writes, "Thanksgiving is not the result of perception; thanksgiving is the access to perception." In other words, thanksgiving is not merely a way of living out positive psychology. It's not an effort to simply see the glass half full all the time. That may increase our quality of living for a time, but it cannot stand on its own. On the contrary, when we allow wonder to move us to thanks, we actually learn to live in an entirely different paradigm, an entirely different kingdom a kingdom of plenty, a kingdom of great abundance, a kingdom where the giving never runs out. On that day, on that hillside, Jesus used the bread and the fish to make a profound and bold statement about what his kingdom looks like, about the kind of King he is. Grace upon grace, gift upon gift. The more we live with wonder and that word thanks, the better we know that kingdom, the better we know that King. At the end of John, chapter 6, Jesus makes an incredible statement. He says, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." We all hold different circumstances today. For some of us, gratitude is really close to the surface. "Thanks" is an easy thing for us to say. For the rest of us, if we're completely honest, we sort of despise those people. We're living with great fear or worry or pain about something happening in our lives. I have a friend who has struggled for years with infertility. This has had really hard implications for her marriage. It was difficult to tell her we're expecting a baby. She rejoiced with us, of course, but there was real pain for her. Those of us in such places will find it difficult to say, "Thanks." Paul's encouragement that we give thanks in all circumstances It depends on our ability to wonder. Absolutely. But at the end of the day, our ongoing thanks demands that we cling to Jesus' self-proclamation as the truth. "The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." Make no mistake. Jesus is speaking here about his own death, about the great pain he'll undergo. He didn't just give barley bread; he gave himself, gift upon gift upon gift, until the only loving way to seal our eternal fate was to endure the pain of the cross. It's because we know that's where the story goes that we can embrace the small and large wonders of our world side by side with the pain and say a genuine and ongoing, "Thanks." It's because we know where the story goes that we can keep climbing up the mountain, rain and all, with a renewed mind and heart, having accessed a different perception entirely. The waterfalls will be full. The valley will be green. The view will be grand. The canopies will keep you dry. The rain is bringing this place to life. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you that indeed you are the giver of all good gifts. God, we thank you that you do not demand or expect anything from us, but that you give grace upon grace freely to us. God, we thank you that despite our circumstances, your gospel story is working itself out in our lives, that your good news is something we can hold on to, that your death and resurrection on that cross at the end of the day is where each of our stories is headed: to know life with you, to experience life with you. God, I pray for each of us, that there would be a renewed sense of wonder in our own lives, that as we go about our days this week you would turn our attention to the small things, that we would find great joy in - 6 -
unsuspecting places, and that that wonder would lead us back to you, back to the good Giver, back to a place of thanks, and that we would truly see our lives differently, that we would live on a different plane, God, that we would be a people who always ever say, "Thanks." We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. - 7 -