Kristin's Sermons

I was having lunch with a friend of mine this week, and we started talking about all the things we have to do and how busy we are.

She said, "Sometimes I look at all I have to do--all I'm responsible for--and I just feel scared."

Does that sound familiar?

Sometimes life can seem overwhelming. Work, family, keeping up with the housework and the bills (and all our other commitments) can seem like more than we can handle.

How much more, then, do we feel overwhelmed in the face of all the suffering and evil in the world. We hear so many stories--every day--of other people's suffering, near and far. Too many stories; too many causes. We could give all we have--all our time, all our lives-- and still it wouldn't change the world's problems of war, poverty, and disease.

"I'm just one, ordinary person," you might think. "What can I do?"

This morning's bible lessons invite us to imagine what God might accomplish with simple, ordinary things.

Jesus and his disciples were out on a hillside with thousands of people who had followed them there to hear Jesus' teaching. Evening is approaching, and people are getting hungry.

Now, you might argue--as one of the disciples does in another gospel text--that these hungry people are not the responsibility of Jesus and his disciples. Remember: no one invited them to follow. Really, the disciples were trying to get some time alone with Jesus. If these people would just go home (leaving the disciples alone), they could get their own dinner!

Other disciples are just worried. These people have followed them here because of their need. As Mark described them last week, they are like sheep without a shepherd. They deserve to be fed. But with what? There simply isn't enough.

But Jesus has another plan. "Where are we going to get bread for these people to eat?" he asks. "Well," Andrew says, "there is a child here with five loaves of bread and some fish."

Some people say that the reason the child has barley bread is to emphasize the ordinariness of the whole thing. Barley was inexpensive, ordinary food. It was kind of like saying today, "Well, we have a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."

But Jesus takes these few, ordinary resources and makes something extraordinary out of them. Jesus distributes these loaves of bread and two fish among the thousands, and all have enough to eat and there is more left over.

Most of us have felt overwhelmed at some time in our lives. We've feared--maybe quite appropriately--that our own resources just wouldn't be enough to get the job done.

But have you also felt the wonder when you've completed such a task, and you know in your heart that it was the power of God that multiplied the loaves and made it turn out okay?

Someone must have told this story to a certain nun, who came to her superiors with three pennies and a dream from God to build an orphanage in Calcutta. They tried to discourage her, saying that she could not build an orphanage--or anything else for that matter--with three pennies. But Theresa told them that with God and three pennies she could do anything.

Of course, not all of us can be Mother Theresa.

We're just ordinary people.

But another Nobel Peace Prize winner recently challenged that idea, too.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke at the National Youth Gathering a few weeks ago, and he had a few things to say about ordinary people.

He talked about his people's struggle against the apartheid regime, and the skepticism of the world as South Africa approached it's first free elections. Could the government really change hands--and apartheid end--without widespread violence and chaos? Few believed it could.

But it did. And Tutu attributed that amazing fact to three things.

First, he said, the world prayed for us. The prayers and support and demonstrations of people around the world helped to make freedom possible in South Africa.

Second, he said, was Nelson Mandela, and other extraordinary leaders who could come back after a lifetime of oppression and torment and, instead of revenge and retribution, seek reconciliation.

And the third reason Tutu gave for the success of South Africa's transition to democracy and freedom is the amazing courage and strength and grace of ordinary people who are willing to forgive what has been done to them and move forward. "But," he said, "in my theology, there are no ordinary people. Some people are V.I.P's, but every one of us is a V.S.P.: a very special person, because we are all made in the image of God."

The Ephesians text we read this morning has a lot of personal meaning for me. I read it--for the first time, it seemed--when I was in Africa. I was experiencing for myself that Christians are all one family in God, and I felt that just being in Africa was far more than I could have imagined just seven months before.

Then I came home from my eight weeks in Africa, and within four weeks I was moving into my apartment in Detroit for my internship year. And I was scared. Not so much of the city, but of being alone, and perhaps most of all of internship itself. What if no one liked me? What if I failed? What if I was no good at this, and found out this really wasn't a calling for me at all?

The congregation was beginning a fifty day spiritual adventure which included daily bible readings. So in my first week there, I opened the devotional book to the day's reading, and there it was in Ephesians: "And now to the God who is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine." I almost laughed with relief, and I'm sure I cried.

"I don't know what I'm doing here, Lord," I prayed that night. "But I know you're here with me, and I trust that whatever happens here, you will bless these next twelve months with gifts I couldn't even imagine now." And of course, God did. Because, among many other things, I met my husband, Lee, just three months before that year was over.

We may be ordinary people, but we also know that God uses ordinary people and things to do the extraordinary. That's what the sacraments in the church are all about. We take the most ordinary stuff of all--some bread, some wine (which was the daily table drink in Jesus' time), some water--and we combine it with God's word and it becomes an act of grace.

It becomes an extraordinary event of forgiveness and grace, and a promise of God's eternal love and care for us.

Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and distributed it that day among thousands of people who had followed him there in search of a shepherd, and they were fed.

We, too, have come in search of a shepherd. We come hungry, overwhelmed by our own responsibilities and the needs of others. And when we gather at this table and take bread, give thanks, and distribute it to all who are here, we know that Jesus has promised to be here with us.

When we pour water on the head of young Kyle in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--as we will at our 10:00 service today--we witness a miracle of rebirth. Each of us is reminded of our own baptism and the new life we have in Christ Jesus.

And now, to God, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine; to God, who takes the ordinary stuff of life and makes something extraordinary; to God, who takes our limited resources and our limited selves and sets them to work healing a broken world; to God be glory in Christ and in the church forever and ever. Amen.