Mark 6: 30-44
Mar 11, 2010
Jay Alanis
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and may we all experience the freedom of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen.
I preach as a guest this morning, but perhaps more importantly as a brother in Christ and a member of this community, and so with the freedom of the Gospel I welcome any visitors to our worship this morning. Bienvenidos! as we say in south Texas.
By a serendipitous communication of the Spirit (think "worship committee" here) I was given this text from the Gospel of Mark because it was the text from the daily lectionary; so with your indulgence we will deviate from the Lenten text that you would have heard concerning figs and bearing fruit. Besides that, I believe there is a Lenten message here for all of us.
Richard Foster in his book, Spiritual Disciplines, writes that "fasting is ... a spiritual discipline that enhances our sensitivity to the Spirit." And while I may agree with that idea for those who normally eat well, I would hasten to add that for some, fasting may be a way of life due to economic hardship, and not a choice of Christian piety. I would suspect that for some of the folks in today's Gospel, not having enough to eat may have been "the rule" rather than the exception.
So before we hastily jump to the "miracle" nature of the feeding of the 5,000, let's examine some of the characteristics of this Gospel. First, the disciples report what they have done and taught. They are involved in ministry; they have followed Jesus, learned from him, and now are sharing what they've learned with others. We might call this "contextual education," field learning and hopefully a mutuality of engagement for all of us have something to teach one another. Then you have Jesus telling them to remove themselves from the crowd in order to rest awhile. During Lent, we may refer to this idea as the practice of solitude or silence in order to recoup one's energies and to listen better to what the Spirit may be saying to us. Now when Jesus sees the large crowd, He feels compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He felt compassion, "com pasión", a moving of the heart in the direction of the one who suffers. This too is a Lenten discipline that we are invited to enter into more deeply in order that we might understand better the suffering of others and make a move towards solidarity and companionship with them. I hasten to add that this discipline is not restricted to Lent but becomes a way of life for us who follow the One in solidarity with us.
Now hear comes the real learning part for his followers. When they see the hungry crowd and turn to him for help, he tells them in no uncertain terms: "You give them something to eat!" This is a "categorical imperative." It's a mandate given by Jesus to his followers: "You do it!" This is perhaps a way of saying that they have been given creative resources to imagine beyond themselves and their own individual capacities." He is pointing them to community as the source of life and sharing with others. This too is a Lenten discipline that we are invited not to lose sight of and even increase. Today, "community organizing" has become popular in some circles and our Interfaith ministry in Austin is a reflection of this notion.
So Jesus turns and feeds the crowd of 5,000 men with the five loaves and two fish. Notice I said "men" because that's what the Gospel writer records. So today we would encourage the Gospel writer to practice a Lenten discipline himself! He needs to notice that crowds usually contain women and children and not to notice them habitually is to render them invisible and inconsequential; that's an act of violence in today's culture. So here for our Lenten discipline we are encouraged to practice a "hermeneutic of suspicion" anytime we notice a text that dismisses anyone as of no value or worth.
This is particularly true as we celebrate International Women's Day this week and we remember the struggle for equality that women have waged against unjust systems that would render them voiceless and inconsequential. Dr. Alicia Vargas who teaches contextual education at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Oakland, California remarked recently at our Tri-Synodical clergy conference in San Antonio, that when she graduated from seminary there were 20 positions available in her synod, but she was not granted one interview because she was a woman and in addition, she had a Cuban accent. She spoke to us about the Biblical notion of distributive justice, not of the entitlement kind that sustains and justifies unbridled capitalist greed, or the retributive kind that punishes the wrongdoer, but the more egalitarian kind. She quoted from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 3 to make her point: "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none. And whoever has food must do likewise."
She went on to remind the church that, quote, "The vast majority of the biblical references to distributive justice have to do with justice in the face of the oppression and vulnerability of "the least of these" in society. Any individual or group, any country or institution, even the institution of the church, that enjoys the power to oppress others of less power given their race, ethnicity, gender, economic status (which is in itself a consequence of the power differentials in a society), is called by the biblical witness to heed the principles of biblical justice in the manner of distributive egalitarian justice ..." "This imperative, she remarked, is implied in Jesus' New Commandment for us: love your neighbor as yourself."
The challenge for us today during our Lenten discipline may mean to ask the question: How do we move from charity to justice, from handouts to asking the question, why do folks go hungry in a world of plenty? That's a question that has been posed by many of us, including the Rev. George Johnson of the Hearts for Justice Conference in San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico. This year's conference focused on the plight of the poverty of women and children not only in the developing nations but also those within our own borders. We see them in Austin, at the Caritas ministry downtown, at the church pantry ministry of San Francisco de Assis and at the ministry of St. Martin's Lutheran church as they reach out to our brothers and sisters of Agua Viva Lutheran Church in Laredo on the banks of the Rio Grande River.
It seems that hunger is rampant in America as food prices soar and folks are forced to live with less, some seniors eating cat food because their pensions were wrecked by a greedy corporation. Even as we face an obesity illness in our country, [I read last week that 23% of Austin is obese] doctors are now informing us that this is a sign of malnutrition and under-nutrition, folks eating what the market produces for a profit and often with devastating consequences. So perhaps for our Lenten discipline we are called to strengthen our critical thinking skills so that we might be bold to ask the difficult questions of why things are as they are; we may discover that these questions have the power to transform us and the world around us.
This is a practice that I learned from my parents growing up in south Texas. We lived right across the street from the Lutheran church and my parents owned a grocery store next door to our house and faced Main street. My father had emigrated from Mexico with his parents when they fled the Mexican revolution of 1910. They knew what hunger felt like, and they didn't want that kind of suffering for their children. My father was so sensitive to this reality that he often remarked how he missed eating flour tortillas as a child because there was none to be had. This was the "Mexican manna," the pan del cielo.
When he opened his business in 1936 he covenanted within himself that no one would go hungry if he had the power to make a difference. He and my mother worked as a team. They gave purchasing credit to anyone who needed it and they charged no interest. That practice might not be popular in a capitalist system, but profit was not necessarily the motive. The motive was serving the community of the hungry and if folks had no money to purchase food they would extend credit to them; "Take what you need and pay me when you can," they would tell them. At times, folks did not repay, but somehow my parents managed to keep their business thriving; some folks would migrate north to pick the vegetables and fruits of our farms and my parents would supply their trip with groceries and clothes. They may not have heard back from some folks, but many did return with payment and gratitude and most of all with a life-long friendship.
During my growing up years, the U.S. entered into a labor program with Mexico called the Bracero Program, brazo meaning arm for labor. Thousands of men came to south Texas to work at the farms. My parents supplied them with groceries while they picked our vegetables and made the Rio Grande Valley the "garden of Texas." These were the arms of men who came across leaving families behind in order to be the suppliers of the food chain, the food that we would sell at our store and serve on our tables. These were the arms of a people reaching out to us, if you will, for a chance to work in a dignified way even if their wages were minimal. These folks had an accent that was different from my own and I wondered why. As a child I worked at the store and could not help but notice their poverty as I stood in a grocery store full of plenty. This world held questions for me, questions that were made even more critical as time went by. I would watch the news from Mexico City with my father and I began to notice that there were two sets of news in the world, one from the north, and one from the south, and often the questions and perspectives of the journalists were different, as if their world view was different. I felt as if I stood between two worlds. Perhaps your questions are like that, different, because of where you stand.
My Grandfather Felipe lived next to our home and next to the store. It was the daily practice of my mother to cook the meal and the first plate of food off of the stove was for my grandfather. She would place a flour tortilla on top of the food, wrap it up, and I or my brothers and sisters would take it to him. He was a widower and lived alone. This was also a sign of respect and dignity for a man who risked losing everything he owned in Mexico in order to ensure the survival of his family in another land across the River. It was a sign of love for him. My mother would also prepare plates of food from her stove and instruct us to take it to our neighbors to share. We did this often and I often saw her taking the plate of food to the fence where she would give it to the neighbor as a sign of her caring and sharing. Today, I am amazed at how much food shows up at my mother's home sent by caring neighbors who remember her ministry.
Our Lutheran church was right across the street from our home, so the faith was communicated to us in a sacrament of daily living. We reached out to others across fences and borders just as others reached out to us for dignified labor and service. We were brazos to each other in our community, linked together by a gospel of solidarity, of caring for one another just as you, my brothers and sisters, are brazos to one another in our community life and in the sacrament of daily living.
So perhaps the miracle of the Gospel narrative is that folks who normally stood up to eat because of their poverty, were now being asked to recline upon the green grass so that others might feed them. Perhaps the miracle is that folks who did not know each other previously shared a meal and in the process learned each other's names. Perhaps the miracle was that God's egalitarian justice was poured out on folks who did not matter to the powers that be, but who mattered to the Compassionate One. Perhaps the miracle for the disciples was that they could be a part of God's distributive and egalitarian justice for the world. Perhaps the miracle for us is that we notice that some voices are missing from these texts and we make room for those voices to be made present to us in our conversation. Elsa Támez, the Mexican New Testament scholar puts it this way: "Let the people find themselves in the text, and the questions will follow."
Doctora Mendoza, who is a doctor in Juarez, Mexico and who we visited on one of our cultural encuentro trips, gave us a recipe that she used in her ministry to the poorest of the poor in her community. She told us to "act in obedience to God's command to do for others, love will follow and compassion will follow love." It's not a bad recipe to keep in mind for our Lenten discipline.
When everyone had been served, there were 12 baskets left over, a sign that God's abundance knows no end in sight. We are the recipients of it today as we eat from the table of God's bounty. So come. eat, be brazos for the world and remember to bring your accent and your questions with you. Amen.
