over the water

My father was three years old when war broke out in 1939. The following year, decreased food imports because of submarine activity led to the rationing of meat and other food items in Britain. As the war continued, more foods were rationed. Each family’s allowance was itemized in a book to be shown to the shopkeeper to claim one’s rations. Adults were allowed one egg per week. Even after the war, rationing continued; in fact, it was the year after the war ended that bread was added to the rations list. Rations were finally lifted the year my father turned eighteen. He had gone through all of his childhod savouring and saving every last scrap of food, to make sure that there was always enough to go around.[1]

So it was the remainder that got to me, at the end of it all; the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. These were surely not gathered up to be thrown away. These broken pieces had to mean more than mere leftovers.

We can imagine the scene. The people sit on the ground beside the water’s edge, on the grass. You can hear the psalm murmured among them:

The Lord is my shepherd; he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. (Psalm 23)

But the men are counted in military formation, apart from their women and children; they sit by the thousand, regimented, with the women and children off to the sides.

You have spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. (Psalm 23)

At the centre of it all, Jesus takes fish and bread, looks up to heaven, blesses and breaks the loaves, and gives them to the disciples, who in turn share them amongst the crowds, those counted and those besides. And when all was said and done, they gathered up twelve baskets full of broken pieces.

Those who live with rationing – those who go hungry so that their children can eat; those who can’t heat their houses or who have to choose between shelter and much-needed medicine; the underfed, the underpaid and underappreciated – they know what it’s like to pick up the broken pieces around the edges, that others leave behind.

There are other broken pieces.

I’m thinking of the people of Gaza, after a failed ceasefire, suffering the continued killing of their children. I think about the brokenness of a region, a country which has so far failed to forge a nation of peace out of peoples at war; too many broken pieces on both sides of the security division, but especially those children. I remember that horrible phrase, “collateral damage”; those counted afterwards, besides.

I’m thinking of the broken families that peel off a part of their own hearts, and send their children across another border fence, seeking safety through desert wanderings, hoping for the best. Broken pieces of families living in fear of becoming leftovers; unimportant side characters in a story centred on the gangs and their violence; disposable red shirts; those counted besides.

On Friday, international inspectors were finally allowed back into the area where the Malaysian airliner was shot down, presumably by Russian rebels, over Ukraine two weeks ago. A reporter told of belongings strewn across the fields, untouched; the broken pieces of so many lost lives, tossed aside by the explosion and the crash. And on the ground, and all around; so many broken pieces besides.

In western Africa, in the midst of a different kind of terror, not of anyone’s making but the opportunism of disease, care workers risk their own health and wholeness to gather in the sick and minister to them. They carry grace into the valley of the shadow of death, and those walking through it lean on their shoulders.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. (Psalm 23)

In Gaza, an Episcopal hospital, Al Ahli, continues to pray for the peace of Jerusalem not only in words but in action, binding the wounds of the broken, bringing grace into the valley of the shadow of death.

Grace is not scarce, not even here, nor in Guatemala, nor in Guinea nor in Gaza; grace is not scarce, and it is never rationed; and it is never thrown away.

Of course, the central action of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is that of the Eucharist; Jesus takes bread, blesses it – which means to give thanks for it – breaks it and distributes it to the hungry.

But Jesus employs his disciples throughout this episode, and in its aftermath. First, he tells them, “You feed the people.” Do not let your neighbour go hungry, for bread or for grace. Jesus feeds the disciples first, then he has them go out and share what they have received with the others; moving through the sections of five thousand men, with women and children besides, distributing the bread and the fish, and the blessings. Finally, when all is said and done, he has them gather in and gather up the broken pieces. Nothing is tossed aside. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is left to be trampled underfoot. And no one is left out.

The Eucharistic prayer that we have been using this summer contains the petitions:

Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name. (Holy Eucharist II, Prayer C)

Whether we identify with the disciples in the story, who serve as the primary ministers of food, of grace; whether we see ourselves among the crowds, following, waiting, hanging on Jesus’ every word as it feeds us; whether we feel at times as though we are the ones who get the broken pieces; prayers answered differently than we might have liked; still, it is grace, to know that God hears our prayers, gives us our daily bread, one way or another. “We who are many are one body, for we all share in the one bread.”

We bring our own brokenness to the altar, to the Lord, and we are told to go now and gather up the remainder, so that nothing is lost; that we may worthily serve the world in Christ’s name. The feast of grace that we share is not for us alone. It is for those besides, who hunger for the body of God, who thirst for grace. No fragment of grace is too small to share. None is too broken to be gathered in.

Lord God of our Fathers and Mothers; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.

Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread. Amen. (Holy Eucharist II Prayer C)

[1] rationing information from http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/war/rationing2.html

Frederick Buechner says that parables are like jokes: if you have to have it explained, it’s just not worth it.* In some ways, this parable says the same thing about itself. The last line of Jesus’ explanation is that those who hear and understand it – the ones who get it – those are the ones in whom the seeds take root and grow and bear fruit. If you get it, you’ve got it.

Perhaps this is a rare opportunity for spiritual self-congratulation. We consider ourselves, after all, part of the inner circle of disciples who understand Jesus, who hear him and who get him, so we are by definition, aren’t we, good soil, that yields a fine harvest. If we look at this church, and its nearly nine decade history, we can see some of the good that has been done.

Eighty-six years ago, in January 1928, the first meeting to form an episcopal congregation in Euclid took place. The first service was attended by 39 adults and 19 young people in March of that year. In December 1928, the Church of the Epiphany was named as a Mission of the Diocese of Ohio, and building began not too long afterwards. This building was first dedicated more than eighty years ago, in 1933, and the extensions completed twenty years later. In the meantime, in 1947, the church was incorporated as a parish and a nonprofit in the State of Ohio.

Since 1959, which is the first year for which I have good records easily at hand in my office, so just in the last 55 of its 86 years, in less than two-thirds of its life in this city, this church has baptized 888 people. It has blessed the beginnings of 481 marriages. It has raised up at least one curate, who came here as a young transitional deacon, to become a bishop. Last year, in one year alone, this parish offered the gifts of God to the people of God 3615 times. In 2006, the number was over 6000. It is impossible to calculate the number of people that this parish has touched, served, prayed with, prayed for;

To borrow a phrase from another parable: “You good and faithful servants!”

Of course, we know that sowing and growing and the harvest are not one-off events. They are a cycle. The farmer cannot sit back after one good harvest and live off it for life. She has to go back out, in the spring, and renew the soil, refresh the earth, reseed the rows, and wait all over again to see what takes, what gives.

So it is with ministry. It is never a once-and-done affair, no matter how successful it may once have been.

In the old country, crop rotation would be a way of making sure that soil didn’t get used up and worn out. A field that grew wheat one year might grow barley the next, and in the third year it would lay fallow, that is, nothing would be sown; the soil would rest and regather its strength, so that it would be healthy and have sufficient nutritional substance the next year to grow a new crop. Soil that was reused over and over, especially for the same crop, farmers found, would become stale and exhausted, and the harvest would gradually weaken and falter. It seems so wasteful in our economy to let a whole field lie fallow for a whole growing season; but the wisdom of the long view says that it is worth it to take care of the soil so that the soil can take care of the harvest for the long haul.

It’s ok if everything doesn’t look the same year by year, season by season. Of course, that doesn’t mean we get to rest on our laurels, but it does mean that we shouldn’t get too anxious if every harvest is not as rich as the ones that we remember. There may be something new trying to grow, that we have yet to recognize.

The landscape around this church has changed in nine decades, as landscapes will. The landscape of the lives of those of us who have been around for a few of those decades has transformed itself from generation to generation, seed time to harvest.

Cycles rise and fall, the seasons in their sequence come and go; nothing stays the same. The landscape has changed; there may be more rocks in a field that used to be loamy; there may be new pathways across old meadows. Some fields that once were well-tended may have become overgrown with weeds. Other plots have opened up where once nothing grew, because someone went out with a hoe and a vision and broke open the earth to give it a fresh outlook on life.

I’ll be honest: I don’t know quite where we find ourselves in this parable today. On an individual level, each of you is quite capable of praying through that dilemma for yourselves, and hearing the call of God on your souls, where your soil needs food, rest, or celebration. As a congregation, as a community, we know that we have some work to do, to align ourselves with the landscape around us; to get to know all over again the soil in which we are planted, so that we can grow most effectively within it; because nothing stays the same.

Here’s the thing that I find most strikingly hopeful about this whole parable, though. Every single time we read it, year after year, that sower goes out and sows the seed this way and that, across pathways and rocky ground and thistle beds and good soil; indiscriminately. This sower is not concerned about who grows the best. The sower doesn’t learn from one outing to the next to restrict the seed to one good area. The sower continues, against conventional wisdom, to seed everyone, everywhere, with the word of the kingdom; because even the cracks in the sidewalk sometimes bear fruit, and even the birds of the air need to be fed by the seed that falls on rocky ground.

God speaks through the prophet: “’My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from the heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”’

Whether or not we get the parable, or the joke, God’s word does not fall flat; whether or not we get it, whether or not we see it, God’s word is not wasted, but it shall accomplish God’s purpose, and it will succeed in the thing for which God sent it.

Thanks be to God.

• Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, revised and expanded (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 81