Sunday July 28th, 2024 Worship

So we went on family vacation and we only lost Grammy twice! After the first time, I threatened to put an air tag in her shoe, and maybe we should have! We were at Kylemore Abbey, and while we walked around the Abbey she was going to take a little break from all the walking and go to the gift shop where we were supposed to meet her when it was time to go back to the bus. Well, that time comes, and Grammy is nowhere to be found in the gift shop! We split up and all of us are looking for her, asking if people have seen an older woman about this tall using a walker. She didn’t have her cellphone with her, so we kept wandering, checking everywhere, including every single bathroom. Eventually we found her, just casually drinking a Sprite in the restaurant, completely unaware that we just spent the last 15 minutes looking for her.
That story is just one example of why I feel like going on a tour is a bit like herding sheep! We’re told when and where to meet, but that doesn’t always mean that everyone shows up on time, or where they are supposed to be. Our bus driver, Peter, said that he’s had tour guides before who were so strict about keeping a schedule that they would tell him to leave people behind, but he assured us, “I’ll never do that.” Luckily, ours wasn’t one of those tour guides anyway.
While it seems like a small thing, Peter’s mentality helped us a lot. It was filled with grace and care, and a desire to leave no one behind. I see the same themes echoed in our Gospel story today when the fragments are gathered back up instead of left behind. It would have been easy for the people to simply toss the leftovers aside, noting that these pieces couldn’t possibly be of any value. When, in fact, Jesus is reminding us through this miraculous experience that the fragments are in fact greater than the starting sum. That what didn’t seem of value to the people was actually cherished in the eyes of God. That human understanding of worthiness is different than God’s sense.
While I feel weird equating people with bread and fish, I don’t think this story is just talking about bread and fish either. While it is a fantastic story to talk about the importance of stewardship and how we can accomplish many things when everyone chips in what they can, I think we lose sight of the heart of this story if we only look at it from this perspective. It’s why I noticed this last week that the theme of the fragments was really sticking out to me.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus easily could have sent the people packing, back off to where they had come from. After all, it was getting late, they weren’t supposed to be there anyway, and how were they supposed to feed all these people! But, Jesus doesn’t do that because he sees how much the people need to be near him, to hear his teachings and to experience the wholeness that he can restore to their lives. And, I think Jesus knows too just all that he can do to bring this community together in a way that no one has quite been able to do before.
As we look at what this means for us today, I think it’s especially important in these divided times when we want to cast people and their beliefs aside, to completely dismiss who they are and what they have to say, to remember that God gathers together the fragments. It’s not even saying that we have to like each other or that we have to agree, but we are called to see the humanity and the dignity in one another. This diversity of our world and in our churches is a gift from God because how amazing is it to get to have so many experiences of the world and the opportunities to learn from one another. It’s one of the few places left where people from different backgrounds, political ideologies, life experiences gather on a weekly basis in fellowship.
Getting to experience new perspectives of the world is also why I love to travel. It opens us up to new ways of being in the world and gives us new perspectives. Instead of wanting to get rid of that, we are invited to see that what we want to discard, God is saying, well wait just a minute here! It’s like the story of the shepherd going back for the lost sheep. While it doesn’t make sense in our brains, God reminds us that even the smallest one is still important. And, trust me, the Irish farmers we met had a lot to teach us about sheep!
So, this is one of my favorite Gospel stories, not because of what Jesus or the disciples explicitly say or do, but because of the miraculous nature of bringing the community together. People from different places and backgrounds and social standing gathered together on a hillside and breaking bread with one another. Now, I know that there are many different interpretations of how this much food is produced, but I have always thought about it as a sign of the community caring for one another. When the child puts forth their five loaves and two fish, then the others take what was in their pockets too and share it with those among them. The miracle isn’t that so much food is leftover, but that people shift their thinking from “mine” to “ours.” Realistically, with this much food leftover, it means that some people had way too much with them, while others might not have had enough, and instead of sticking with this disparity, all are fed with twelve baskets full as leftovers. That is what is so miraculous about this story to me!
We got to live this similar experience of care out on our trip where we were surrounded by 38 strangers, some of whom we became fast friends with and others who we might never have talked to if it weren’t for this experience we were having together. But, despite the fact that none of us knew each other and that we had many differences, people took care of one another. Whether it was helping us make sure that Grammy had the best time that she could, checking in on one another when we noticed people missing for the day, inviting people to join the group so they wouldn’t be alone, or helping the two women who lost their passports search everywhere for them. It’s an experience that I have never quite had outside of a tour group before, but our Gospel provides a witness to what this kind of communal care can look like. Because it doesn’t always mean physically feeding one another, but sometimes the social and emotional nourishment is just as important. And, we are given the task of thinking about what this feeding of the 5000 can look like in our world today, when bread is broken and divisions crumble. Not in a false sense that ignores the harm and the reasons that the divisions were created in the first place, but as a first step to heal and to begin to shift our mentality from “mine” to “ours.”
To conclude the stories of losing Grammy, the second time we lost Grammy, we were at Kilkenny Castle about to go on a tour. It’s an old castle with three stories and a lot of stone steps, so we talked to the guide and Grammy and it was decided that because of her knees she would spend her time just on the first floor looking at all there was to see. This included a massive hall of paintings, so there was plenty to see! They split our tour group into two smaller groups, and when we got done in the second half we found Grammy and one of the women we became friends with from Boston sitting on a bench outside. Not quite where we were planning to meet her, but at least she was visible this time. As we approached, we then got to hear the story of how this woman and her family found Grammy wandering on the second floor during their tour, as Grammy is just giggling while this is being recounted. Since we were coming in the tour behind them, they could have easily just had Grammy wait until we met up with her, but instead this woman and her family helped Grammy get around, they carried her walker up and down the stairs for her, they listened to her stories. They had no obligation to do any of those things, but it was beautiful to see the way that other people took care of her too. Again, it seems like a small thing, but it’s moments like that where I have hope in what our world is and what it can be.