“The love of Christ,” Paul writes, “surpasses
knowledge...” In other less elegant words, it is not with cognitive powers that
we can take in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 hungry followers of Jesus or
understand the story of Jesus walking on the water. These astonishing images
become fruitful for us when the eyes of our hearts are opened to mystery.
God’s Word means to make us shiver, to experience awe, to
grasp what is beyond our abilities. No wonder people who do not enter into
Christian fellowship (or that of other faiths!) find us a bit off-center. What
we take in as narratives of hope and joy sound simply preposterous.
Let us rejoice this day in the sheer enormity of what God’s
Word holds out to us as nourishment. Let the preacher name some of the many
daily miracles that abound in our current lives, in the midst of the
congregation. Where is hope emerging? Where is love making itself plain?
John 6:1-21
The common theme of the two
stories is the response of the people who receive a gift of grace from Jesus.
In the first story, Jesus meets the physical needs of the crowd by providing an
abundance of food from a very limited supply. The crowd responds by trying to
draft Jesus into their preconceived status quo notions of power structures.
From this, Jesus withdraws. In the second story, Jesus meets the needs of the
disciples by rescuing them from a storm at sea, and calming their fears of the
unknown. The disciples respond by welcoming Jesus into their presence without
condition or expectation. In doing so, Jesus does in fact join the disciples in
the boat, rather than withdrawing as he did with the crowd. Following Jesus'
lead, rather than insisting Jesus follow our lead, is the way we sustain our
relationship with the Good Shepherd. – Stephen H. Fazenbaker
2 Kings 4:42-44
Reflecting the Great Multiplication in John 6, this
short lection in 2 Kings recounts Elisha's miracle of feeding one hundred
people with twenty loaves of barley and an indeterminate amount of grain from
one sack. Although the miracle is in no way similar in scope to Jesus' feeding
of the five thousand, we are reminded that God has always provided for us, and
we may trust that God's provision, both physical and spiritual, is eternal. –
Stephen H. Fazenbaker
Ephesians 3:14-21
Beginning a lection with “For this
reason” automatically prompts a question: is the author saying, “because of the
reason I just gave,” or “because of the reason I am about to give you”? If we
were working through the entire letter, we would have to spend time on this
question; however, for our purposes, we will trust that the lection we have
been assigned is inclusive, and therefore the latter is the answer to our
question. In fact, verses 14–19 comprise one sentence in the Greek, so we are
safe in our assumption. If we substitute the word “pray” for “bow my knees” in
verse 14, and read “I pray that …” as “I pray so that …” in verse 16,
the meaning of the long opening sentence of this lection becomes clear; and
when we consider the lection as a whole, we discover a prayer in the form of a traditional
collect, containing all of the traditional elements: the address to God (v 14,
“Father”); the attributes of God on which the prayer is based (v 15); the
petition (vv 16–19a); the intended result of the petition (v 19b); and the
final doxology (vv 20–21). – Stephen H. Fazenbaker
Steven H.
Fazenbaker is director of the Wesley Foundation at the Georgia Institute of
Technology.
Homily Service 42, no. 3 (2009): 88-99.
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