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Breaking the Hardened Heart
St.
Mark’s Episcopal Church
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. George D. Smith
2 Kings 2: 1-15
Ephesians 4: 1-7, 11-16
Mark 6: 45-52
But their hearts were hardened.
Illusions versus realities. This is the continuing theme that
links last week’s Gospel reading to the one we have just
heard. Last week, the 5,000 men, plus the other 10,000 or so
other women and children, dined on five loaves of bread and
two fish. There was enough to eat to satisfy the biggest appetite
with leftovers to feed untold others who were hungry. The illusion
was that there wasn’t enough food to feed the crowd. Five
loaves of bread and two fish were like a drop of water in a
bucket that needed to be filled with water. The reality was
that there was not only enough to go around but more than enough
for everyone. It was Jesus who showed that the way to see and
experience the reality of abundance – the reality of God
- is through taking, blessing, breaking and giving. He took
what was offered from the crowd – five loaves and two
fish. He blessed the loaves and fish and thanked God for this
gift from the earth and the work of human hands. He broke them
and gave them to the people. And there was enough – more
than enough.
But their hearts were hardened and ours along with them. “Jesus
came toward them early in the morning, walking on the sea.”
It must be a ghost, and the disciples are terrified. No, in
fact, it’s Jesus in the flesh who gets into the boat with
the disciples. Well, there must be some other explanation. Jesus
may have walked on ice, not water, according to a recent article
published by a scientist at National Geographic. A cold snap
which lasted for a few days may have created a slab of ice 4
to 6 inches thick on the lake, strong enough to walk on. If
that seems implausible, the other explanation is that Jesus
simple walked along a stretch the shallow water along the shoreline
to the fishing boat, which was actually stuck on a sandbar.
This gave the illusion of Jesus “walking on the water.”
In fact, the disciples couldn’t have been that far off
because the text even says that Jesus could “see”
them struggling. If Jesus can’t walk on water, he certainly
doesn’t have the “super” hero vision needed
to see several miles out into the Sea of Galilee either. For
the purists who adhere to the text and want to experience the
miracle of walking on water for themselves, Israel’s National
Parks Authority has authorized construction of a submerged bridge
on the Sea of Galilee, 13-foot wide and 28-feet long, 2 inches
below the water’s surface - which will allow anyone to
simulate Jesus’ miraculous walk.
But the disciples did not and perhaps we do not understand about
the loaves. For they were broken. Did they not recall their
elementary Sunday school lessons and Scripture from the first
chapter of Genesis: “a wind from God swept over the face
of the waters.”? God is on the water in creation and continues
to go wherever God pleases, through the garden of Eden, inner-cities,
leafy suburbs, slums and palaces, church synods and conventions,
battlefields, cemeteries, prisons, hospitals, factories, the
Internet and computer hard drives.
Is Jesus’ walking on water an illusion or reality? To
experience the reality, we must take, bless, break and give.
Of these actions, it may be hardest to break. You may take and
bless, even give, but to break is to go against our securities,
certainties and desire for control. To break is to shatter the
illusion of permanence and to tear at the fabric of our world
view. It is to look into our own hearts and see our limitations,
hurts, loss and fears. Who wants to do that? The greatest lesson
from today’s Gospel may be the realization that God comes
to you - is coming to you – is seeking you, and will come
to you across the water, the desert, and through your best defenses.
But it won’t be as you expect or as you want, which is
terrifying, like a ghost in the night at the foot of your bed.
So we need to break our expectation that it is up to us to find
God.
While on a morning run last week, I saw a curious advertisement
on the top of a taxi with a web address: seektheguru.com. A
catchy name, very religious sounding. I didn’t think more
of it until I heard a short and odd advertisement on the radio
for “seektheguru.com.” It is the dot com that should
have made me more skeptical than curious. I went to the web
site to check it out. The site opens with a uniform tan-brown
background; a parchment scroll drops down and unrolls to count
increasing percentages as the content loads. The scroll disappears
and Tibetan bell-like music plays; a branch with leaves sprouts
across the screen, which give way to a red-robed Dali-lama who
appears adjacent to a series of earth-tone ovals containing
words such as “enlightenment,” “journey,”
“tranquility,” and “seeking.” Another
piece of text reads, “find me, and $10,000 may find you.”
As it turns out, the truth of seeking the guru is that enlightenment,
tranquility, happiness and other religious-sounding satisfactions
may be obtainable if you subscribe to Comcast cable and telephone
services. You might even win $10,000 if you enter the contest
to find the guru. Wouldn’t it be great is faith were something
you could buy, control and use as you needed it, with the possibility
of a prize on top of everything? You could just go to Target
and ask the greeter to direct you to the faith aisle. Try that
sometime and see what reaction you get. Perhaps they will take
you to the laundry detergent. Their hearts were hardened…and
squeaky clean.
Hardened hearts are in evidence all around us. Israel continues
to bomb Lebanon, destroying the country’s infrastructure
and civilian lives in pursuit of Hezbollah, which ironically
strengthens its resolve to oppose, bedevil and ultimately destroy
Israel, firing rockets that reach cities in the center of the
country, including Tel Aviv. The death toll mounts. Ten Israeli
soldiers are killed versus forty from Hezbollah. Scores of civilians
are dead. The destruction adds up to billions of dollars in
destroyed roads, bridges and utilities. The international response
is confused, tepid and poorly led. Violence is met with violence
– and the most violence will win. At least that is the
assumption underpinning the military strategies. Meanwhile,
closer to home, a homeless man on Main St. asks for money from
passersby. People walk by, quickening their pace, averting their
eyes, skeptical of how a quarter or dollar might be spent –
certainly on alcohol or drugs. This will only make the problem
worse they tell themselves. Gee, there seem to be a lot of homeless
people in Glen Ellyn these days. Instead of asking for money,
they should be spending their time looking for a job.
It is in the letter to the Ephesians that we hear, “walk
in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us.”
To walk in love means to walk with broken hearts – broken
of illusions of control; broken of the expectation that it is
up to us to find God; broken of the conviction that violence
wins; broken of the desire to judge and hoard; broken of the
idea that faith is something that we can get if we only try
hard enough; broken of the illusion of self-made security; broken
of the notion that unity is at odds with diversity. Yet amidst
all of the brokenness is the best news of the day that is made
clear at the end of the Gospel reading. It is that even if we
can’t break these things, that we can’t break the
loaves, the violence or our hearts , that if we can’t
take, bless, break and give, Jesus will get into the boat with
us anyway.
Amen.
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