Multiplication Tables

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:9-12

A great old story goes like this.

There were two elderly sisters who lived together in a big, crumbling house they had inherited from their parents. One had deep religious convictions and believed that God blessed her and met her every need. The other had nothing but anger, bitterness, and skepticism in her heart and resented her sister’s faith. In fact, they had only one thing in common: neither had much money.

One day, a beggar seeking help rang their doorbell. The faithful sister answered, listened to his sad story, and managed to find just enough food in the pantry to make him a sandwich. The grateful man thanked her, but, noticing the dilapidated surroundings, asked if she could spare what she’d given him. “God will take care of me,” she answered.

The bitter sister saw what happened and could not control her wrath. In a fit of spite, she went to the jar where she kept her meager savings and shook out every last penny. She marched to a local store and purchased enough groceries to fill four big bags. Then she put the bags on the front porch of their house, rang the doorbell, and hid behind a bush.

When the faithful sister came to the door she could not believe her eyes. “Praise the Lord!” she exclaimed at she stared at the overflowing bags. “Look how God has multiplied the small kindness that I did for a stranger!”

On hearing these words, the other sister stepped from behind the bush and laughed mockingly. “You’re such an idiot,” she said. “I’m the one who bought all this stuff!”

For a moment, the faithful sister stood speechless. Then she started to weep. “Oh, God,” she said between her tears, “you are even more amazing than I had believed. Not only did you provide me with all these beautiful groceries. You actually got the Devil to pay for them!”

Like the faithful sister, we believe that God provides for us and that God multiplies exponentially the good that we do for others. Indeed, we encounter this theme over and over again in the New Testament—for example, in this beautiful passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. And we find it in some of the miracles performed by Jesus.

Now, in my view, whenever we approach one of the miracles of Jesus we should remember how the Gospel of John ends. It concludes: “But there are also many other things that Jesus did. And, if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain all the books that would be written.”

In other words, the New Testament recounts only some of the miraculous deeds that Jesus performed. And it seems fair to assume that those miracles were remembered and retold because they are particularly important and instructive. The reported miracles of Jesus therefore deserve our attention not just because of their astonishing qualities, but because they have something deeply significant to teach us.

Those miracles can be analyzed and categorized in different ways. We might divide them into groups based upon what Jesus did, or when in his ministry He did it, or who received the benefit of the miracle. But, for purposes of this sermon, I want to separate His miracles into two categories that might not have occurred to you.

Some of the miracles performed by Jesus move a person from death to life or from illness to health. We might think, for instance, of the raising of Lazarus or the healing of the Centurion’s servant. In these instances, God’s love lifts someone from the lowest point imaginable to that place we call survival.

In other miracles, though, Jesus moves people from survival to that place we call abundance. Consider, for example, the miracle where Jesus feeds thousands of people by multiplying a few fish and loaves of bread. Importantly, Jesus did not just provide people with enough to eat; He gave them more than enough. The gospels tell us there were twelve baskets of leftovers!

And this abundance is qualitative as well as quantitative. For instance, at the wedding feast at Cana Jesus does not just turn the water into wine; he turns it into really good wine, much better than what they’d been drinking. Indeed, it probably wouldn’t strike us as much of a miracle if one guest turned to another and said “gee, this tastes like the stuff I get at the grocery store that comes in a box.”

Now, these “abundance miracles” have three important things in common.

First, the gospels make a great deal of them. The story of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes shows up in all of the four gospels—in some gospels more than once. Very few stories receive similar emphasis.

Second, these miracles relate to food and drink. This should not surprise us. We all understand that feeding others serves as an expression of love.

As a personal aside, I will note that few people understand this as well as the big, boisterous Italian family that I joined when I married Lisa. Her ninety-plus-year-old grandmother, who I adore, treats a vacant spot on your plate like a personal insult. I remember one afternoon where I started to fill up a bit after feasting on pasta, sandwiches, meatballs, and ribs. As I paused to catch my breath, her grandmother appeared at my elbow and offered me a donut.

Alas, the idea that food is love rules in our own home. Indeed, the priority it receives is reflected in a sign that Lisa, like her mother and her grandmother, has hanging in the kitchen. The sign says “mangia e statti zitto.” Roughly translated, this means “shut up and eat.”

A third, and critical, point about these miracles is that they are given to the community—not to any particular individual. The community shares in the nourishment and in the abundance and in the joy that they bring. There is no miracle in the gospels called “Jesus feeds the five guys who worked the hardest” or “Jesus feeds the ten people with the most impressive resumes.”

In my opinion, this is where the so-called “prosperity gospel” that you hear televangelists talk about loses its way. When we focus on abundance for us we’re being selfish. When we focus on abundance for others we’re being selfless. And giving some sense of abundance to those who spend most of their lives striving just to survive can make a huge difference.

I recently heard an interview with a psychologist who had closely watched the ordeal of the Chilean miners trapped for months before being rescued. He said that there was a particular moment when he realized that the miners were psychologically healthier than he might have thought. A mechanism had been put in place to get food to the miners while they were still underground; some peaches were delivered; the miners tasted them, didn't like them, and sent them back. This was a wonderful sign because it showed that they had moved from surviving to living.

We see an expression of this idea in the way our own church does business. When this church volunteers to bring food to a shelter we typically provide dessert in addition to the basics of meat, potatoes, and vegetables. We do not do this because brownies and ice cream sandwiches are two of the four major food groups. We do this because we understand that offering a bit of abundance to those who have very little is good for their souls—and for ours.

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I suppose that Sara Miles, who wrote the book Take This Bread, does not fit the stereotype of a churchgoer. Her parents were strident atheists. And for most of her young adult life her views about religion vacillated between indifference and hostility.

Then, one day, for reasons she still does not understand, she walked into a church and took communion. In that instant, her life was changed. She became a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. She believed, and knew that she had been fed and was called to feed others. So, in the year 2000, she opened a food pantry at an Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

The small piece of bread and slight sip of wine Sara Miles consumed that morning has, shall we say, multiplied. St. Gregory’s food pantry now buys between nine and twelve tons of food each week. And the pantry distributes it—for free—to anyone who comes and asks. It turns out that's a lot of people, about 800 per week, all fed as the result of a single, Christ-like impulse.

And so it goes. We replay the miracle of the loaves and fish over and over again, each in our own way, each act of kindness and generosity multiplied by the relentless and divine mathematics of love and grace. We labor to bring every last person on this tired old planet to the point where they can survive. On occasion, we even manage to show them a little of that glorious thing we will all experience when the kingdom of God has been finally and fully made known: that thing called abundance.

The Lord is watching.

The people are waiting.

The table is set.

What will you bring to it?

Amen

Calling All Angels

Scripture: 1 Timothy 2:1-7


It was a sunny Saturday morning and my parents were looking forward to getting the weekly grocery shopping out of the way. As they walked up the steep parking lot toward the supermarket, they approached a woman who was steering a cart down the slope toward her station wagon. Her cart hit a bump and an apple bounced out and began rolling away.
Without thinking, my father snatched the apple up and gently tossed it to the woman. She caught the apple in her hands, smiled, and thanked him warmly. He beamed with self-satisfaction.

Unfortunately, when the woman let go of the cart it took off down the hill. She and my father ran after it. Other people tried to grab it as it raced by. One of those well-intentioned individuals let go of their own cart in an effort to intercept hers. That cart took off, too.

The carts careened down the parking lot. Like a couple of All-American running backs, they faked out all of those in pursuit, wildly shifting direction back and forth as the flimsy wheels hit cracks and ridges in the pavement. The customers chasing after them did their best to keep up, but they had to dodge the crazy litter of groceries that the carts were leaving in their wake. As you might imagine, this episode did not end well, despite the fact that it began with a kind and gracious gesture.

It has always seemed to me that the events of that bright weekend morning say something interesting about human nature. After all, the incident unfolded as it did precisely because my father tossed the apple without thinking and because the other customer grabbed for the woman’s cart without considering what might happen next. Both of them acted out of an immediate, spontaneous, almost instinctual impulse to come to someone’s aid.

This happens all the time, and often on a much grander and more spectacular scale. Perhaps some of you know a regular feature of Reader’s Digest called “Everyday Heroes” that catalogues such events. The magazine recently told the story of a Minnesota man who dove in front of a moving train to save a woman who had fallen onto the tracks after fainting. In another issue, it described how three female college students rushed into the perilous waters of a Florida bay to save a drowning fisherman.

Some of these stories actually involve multiple layers of spontaneous, self-sacrificing heroism. For example, the magazine profiled a Kentucky truck driver who crashed his rig in order to keep from crushing the family in the minivan that had stopped in front of him. And then it went on to spotlight the husband and wife who were driving by, saw the wreckage, rushed to the overturned rig, and at the last possible second hauled the trucker from his burning vehicle.

We human beings are a baffling, complicated lot. The daily news brings us abundant evidence of our weakness and willfulness and selfishness and sinfulness. As the grand old hymn puts it, we are “prone to wander” and “prone to leave the God [we] love.” The light came to earth, the Gospel of John declares, but something persists inside us all that loves the darkness.

Yet there is abundant evidence that a spark of divine goodness burns inside of us as well. The many acts of kindness, generosity, and self-sacrifice that we witness seem to confirm the assurance, found in Second Timothy, that God endowed us with “a spirit of power and love and self-discipline.” In a passage we all know well, Jesus invited us to find that indwelling light, to bring it out into the world, and to let it shine before others so that they might see the good works that it inspires.

Still, we cannot content ourselves with saying that we will listen for the voice within that urges us to do good things and follow it. There is, after all, nothing uniquely Christian about helping other people—we hold no monopoly on good deeds. The question therefore arises of what, if anything, distinguishes a Christian who serves food to the homeless from an agnostic shelter volunteer who does the same thing. If, as the hymn suggests, “They will know we are Christians by our love,” then we might fairly ask how our love differs from that of anyone else. And the answer, I want to suggest to you, lies not in what we do but in why we do it.

Certainly, we do good things for some of the same reasons non-Christians do. We are moved by compassion. We find such service gratifying. We want to do our part to promote social and economic justice. We seek the blessing of an income tax deduction. But the scriptures invite us to engage in good works for reasons that are much more important and fundamental to our identities as followers of Jesus Christ.

One of those reasons relates directly to our belief in the doctrine of grace. We believe in a God who loves us, reaches out to us, and cares for us no matter who we are, what we have done, or where we have wandered. It is a gift we cannot earn or repay—but we can act as if we wanted to try. So we go forth into this world loving and caring for people just as we find them because this is what God has done for us.

Furthermore, the gospels assure us that when we do these things we do not just show our love for God’s children. We show our love for God himself. I was reminded of this just last weekend, when I had the privilege of helping members of this congregation serve food to those in need at the Jackson Interfaith Shelter.

I always have the same experience when I do this sort of thing. I look at the people and wonder about their stories. Where did they come from? What brought them here? Were they chased to this place by poverty or domestic violence or substance abuse or mental illness—or simple misfortune? Do they still dream—or do their nightmares leave no room for that? Will a day come when I will be on the other side of the counter, standing in line with them?

Without fail, as I am pondering these things a passage from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew comes into my mind. I hear Jesus reminding us that when we give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty it is just as though we are doing it for Him. And, then, my eyes are opened and I see—in each and every one of their faces—the presence of the living God.
This perspective does not just inform the action; it defines the action. You see, in our faith, putting a piece of chicken on a homeless child’s plate is not just conducive to theology. It is theology.

Such actions are also expressions of our thankfulness. As in all of life, what we do speaks louder than what we say. Saying we are grateful shows we are polite. Living like we are grateful shows we are indebted. It shows we are committed. It shows we are transformed—or, at least, that we are working on being so.

I’ve been reading a book by N.T. Wright, a Bishop in the Church of England and a leading contemporary Bible scholar, called After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. The book is filled with nuance and I cannot do it justice here. But I want to offer a summary of one of Wright’s central points because I think it is so intriguing and inspiring—and maybe a little daunting.

Christians, Wright observes, live in a state of anticipation. As an article of faith, we believe that God’s plan plays out through a great, unfolding drama that will culminate in the ushering in of a new kingdom. And we believe that God invites us to have a part in that kingdom.

In this life, we therefore have—in Wright’s words—an “astonishing vocation.” We are called to be “genuine, image-bearing, God-reflecting human beings” who seek to learn “the language of God’s new world.” Wright is a scholarly, sophisticated, and subtle thinker so he would not put it this way, but since I am none of these things, I will: my friends, we are angels in training.

And this holds true for all of us because, as Paul’s letter to Timothy declares, our God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” All of us have value. All of us have something to contribute. All of us are summoned to come into the light and into the life that God calls us to live.

Think of it this way. What God wants and what the world wants are often at odds. But what God wants and what the world needs never are. And what God wants—and what the world needs—is for all angels to report for duty: right here; right now.

So dust off some wings. Try them on. And do what you can to be messengers and instruments of God’s peace, and love, and grace.

The alarm is sounding.

And God is calling all angels.

Even those in training.

Even me.

Even you.

Amen.