Sermon, 7/25/21. Trust: A Proven Game Plan

9 Pentecost

Psalm 14; II Samuel 11:1–15; Ephesians 3:14–21; John 6:1–21

He [Jesus] said this to test him [Philip]; for Jesus himself knew what he meant to do. John 6:6

I. The Abuse of Trust
I must confess: The temptation was great to use the account of David, the man chosen by God to be king of biblical Israel, as the rationale for a long “hellfire and brimstone” sermon regarding the men and women in our own day, [those] whom we have elected to lead us but who have abused our trust. Individuals who proclaim that they are Christian and that we are a Christian nation, individuals who claim on the surface to desire our common good, but who have violated and continue to violate before our very eyes that trust which we have placed in them.  And I would have Holy Writ to support me in my reflections.  However, that is not my intention this morning,

Still, it is appropriate to recall how that violation of trust and abuse of power came about with David. Initially, David came to our attention as a ruddy, good-looking, God-fearing shepherd boy who defeated Goliath, and engaged clandestinely in an affair with Jonathan, Saul’s son. However, he allowed himself to be corrupted by the power that he eventually came to wield.

Fortunately for us, the prophet Samuel (always the truth-seeker and truth-teller, like prophets before him and those who followed) does not cloak or whitewash David’s all-too human faults.  And it is because of prophets such as Samuel that we moderns are made to see more clearly the hand of God in the created order, and how we may yet work through our own deficiencies in order that we might place our trust in reliable hands. 

I review with you: David had been chosen by God to be king over Israel.  Despite all the wives whom he had inherited from Saul upon Saul’s death (and polygamy was still acceptable in those days), David lusted after the wife of Uriah, one of his army lieutenants.  Because he is king and can do whatever pleases him, David, through his fixer, gets Uriah’s wife into his bedchamber and, subsequently, pregnant.  And in so doing, David violates not one but two of the Ten Commandments, the rules that governed society of biblical Hebrews:  “Do not commit adultery,” and “you must not covet your neighbor’s wife.” (Exodus 20:14 and 17)   

David attempts to hide his indiscretion.  To escape responsibility, David orders Uriah home from the battlefield, thinking that the man Uriah will surely desire to take to his marital bed.  When Uriah doesn’t, because of his loyalty to his troops in the field, David directs his fixer to devise a plan that eventually gets his lieutenant killed, [thus opening] up the possibility of David’s marrying the woman, seemingly out of sympathy and loyalty.  However, David violates another commandment with this plan, a third commandment, namely that which says: “Do not commit murder.”  (Exodus 20:13) 

David was held accountable for his abuse of power and disregard for the Covenant of Trust that God had established with the people of Israel, whom God has rescued from slavery.  God sends his prophet Nathan to pronounce judgment on David.  Disloyalty and further shame and murder will henceforth plague David’s house.  Once held in highest esteem, David sinks into disfavor and dishonor.  And it takes one of the house and lineage of David, who possessed and possesses unimpeachable character, to set the record aright.

II. The Restoration of Trust
Jesus of Nazareth offers an alternative to the example that David offers, and that alternative is exhibited in the familiar story of the boy who had some bread and a couple of fish.  In that almost unbelievable tale, we have laid before us how a simple action of trust can alter life for the greater good of humankind. 

I want you to imagine the following: The sun, in its daily rounds, pushes on westward and evening begins to descend in the east.  Just as a boy, a minor, is getting ready to eat the dinner that his mother or father had packed for him, the shadow of a very tall man blocks the waning rays of the sun from his eyes.  And what is more, the stranger points to the Teacher, the man who has been healing and preaching, and tells the boy that the Teacher would like to have the boy’s provisions.  Surely, this request, coming from this stranger, is a scam; surely this stranger wants this for himself.  Because, in a crowd as large as the one in which the boy finds himself, there is no way that this alleged Teacher could know that he, this boy, even exists. 

Andrew had been dispatched to get the food from the boy, but Andrew did not tell the boy the reason for the request, because he himself did not know, other than that Jesus had sent him to ask.  Moreover, from my limited understanding of how we humans think, had Andrew told the boy that the Teacher needed the boy’s lunch in order to feed the thousands seated on the grass and up on the knoll, that would be preposterous, unimaginable.  Healing was one thing, but to think that the Teacher needed his small provisions, barely enough for one little boy, in order to feed 5000 men, plus women and children, that would have been science fiction at its best, to use a modern-day descriptive.

What did the boy dare say?  Surely the boy has to be afraid.  Scared is perhaps an even stronger descriptive.  What could the boy have said, living in a society where children had no rights, where just being seen, just being present, could be cause for physical abuse?  Could he, the boy, have said: “Go pick on someone else?”  Was he just speechless?  Above all, how did Andrew—and Jesus—persuade the boy to share his food?  Was it fear or trust that moved the boy to part with his food?  Would you have dreamed of sharing your lunch with the Teacher, without negotiating a favor?

I ask these questions, in order to lead us away from our centuries-old ‘wonder and awe’ at a miracle, in order to explore a different dimension of this story.  I pose these question, for I fear that we people of faith, sitting in the comfort of our beautiful sanctuaries, often forget that these recorded stories of Jesus of Nazareth gain their validity precisely because they describe for us real people. To be sure, [they are] centuries long removed from the earth, but nevertheless real people who were so moved to trust The Teacher that they handed over to him their very existence.  We know the outcome of this story.

As people of faith, we doubt not for a moment that Jesus could have fed 5,000 or more people without asking for any human help.  We need only recall the temptation, as recorded in the gospels, which the devil laid before Jesus who was coming off his fast of forty days:  ‘Command these stones to be turned into bread,’ the tempter said.  So, we know that such power lies within Jesus.  John writes that he is the living Word through whom everything was created.  But Jesus honors the boy by asking his help.  And this is the crux of the matter.  Through Andrew, Jesus invites the boy into an act of stewardship, in which the boy gives what he has, so that God may bless an extremely hungry crowd.  This unknown, nameless, perhaps frightened boy hopes and trusts that he will not go hungry, when he hands over his food.

We remember that this is God’s design for the universe.  Genesis records that, at Creation, God created us in God’s image.  Both the man and the woman share this image.  God created humans for a special relationship—a covenantal relationship based on trust, in which we are God’s precious possession and therefore a holy people.  To be holy is to honor God through acts that demonstrate trust.  God created us for [a] relationship (a game if you will) with us forever.  It is what I should like to call a win/win situation.  When we win, God wins, and when God wins, we win.  But it is also true that no one truly wins until everyone wins.

This story, which we have called a miracle, further gains its significance as it is a child, not an adult, who is approached to make it possible for the word of God to be made more real.  How we may have imagined the child’s response tells us something about ourselves.  The ways we imagine this story reflects our usual instinctive responses when Jesus asks us to be stewards of the bread in our lives and the fish we have worked so hard to catch.  In response, we may wish to ask ourselves, what can I accomplish with the five loaves and two fish in my possession?  Is my trust in that request as firm as that of a child, not yet encumbered by the negatives and negativity around us?

We would do well to imagine that hunger is often not at all about comestibles, about tangible food.   Many around us are hungry.  Sometimes, to be sure, for food, but more often for love that reaffirms our intrinsic worth as a person.  For friendship.  For respect.  For satisfaction from how we earn our daily bread.  For jobs that support loves ones.  For justice.  For hope.  For trust in those whom we have chosen to represent us.  These forms of hunger are not foreign to our own being.

Jesus enlists his closest followers, and even a small boy, to address these hungers and, in so doing, to restore trust in God’s eternal plan.  In receiving the child’s gift and using it to bless all the hungry with food, Jesus shows us who he is, and that he is one whom we can trust.  Although of the house and lineage of David, Jesus, through his actions, could not be more completely and totally different from David. Rather, he was come to make real the possibility of the win/win situation of creation.

It is my firm belief that God longs to have us join in the divine game of blessing.  When we place our trust in this eternal game to distribute barley loaves and fish, Jesus performs miracles with and in our lives.  It is a win/win situation.  That, so I would submit, is a game plan worthy of trust.  Amen.