John 6:1-21

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little."

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world." When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

After my experience in Detroit as part of the ELCA Youth Gathering last week, I have a new appreciation for the logistics involved in feeding thousands of people. You see, approximately 30,000 Lutherans flooded the streets of downtown Detroit for five days…and we all had to eat!

On our first day in Detroit we thought we’d be smart and beat the dinner rush around Ford Field, where the evening worship would be held. Channeling our inner Florida earlybird personas, we headed to dinner at 4pm only to find everyone else had the same idea!

I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar: we’d walk past restaurants with lines out the door and think if we walked a little further we’d find a less busy restaurant. The further we walked, the fewer options we found, so we decided to just pick a place and wait in line. Of course, the line at the restaurant next door seemed to be actually moving, unlike ours. So we left our place in line and went next door only to find out that we wouldn’t be seated until the time that worship was supposed to start. Dejected, we walked to worship hungry, resolved to eat something afterwards. That night we got back to the hotel around 11pm. I don’t know what everyone else did, but by that point I was more interested in sleeping than eating.

Surely someone on the staff of the ELCA Youth Gathering was in charge of the logistics of making sure all 30,000 participants would be able to eat. And I’m not even going to claim this person did a poor job. I just can’t imagine the difficulty of the task. I mean, there are only so many places to eat in downtown Detroit. It’s not like the Youth Gathering food coordinator could simply create more food for five days. We were limited by the city’s lack of resources.

In today’s gospel story, Jesus puts his friend Philip in the position of the food coordinator for five thousand people. Jesus asks Philip, with a knowing wink, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip doesn’t realize it’s a rhetorical question. He looks at the crowd and says, “I have no idea; we wouldn’t make enough money in six months to give everyone a crumb.”

After all, there are only so many places to eat on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. It’s not like Philip could simply create more food for everyone. He knew they were limited by the lack of resources.

We know, however, a lack of resources is no problem for Jesus. Jesus is the Son of the God of abundance, provision, and limitless resources – a God who delights in giving good gifts to his beloved children.

So, Andrew takes a lunchbox offered by a kid, containing five loaves of bread and two fish, and gives it to Jesus saying, “This is all we have.” What happens next? Jesus takes the “this is all we have” and transforms it into something that is more than enough for everyone.

This story begs the question of us: How then are we to act given that we worship the Jesus who takes our “this is all we have” and transforms it into something that is more than enough for everyone?

What difference does it make that God is defined by abundance, not scarcity?

One of our speakers at the Youth Gathering was Mikka McCracken, a program director for ELCA World Hunger. She began her speech by claiming “Our faith and our church can make a difference so that all are fed.” She concluded with the truth that “Hunger is not caused by scarcity; hunger is caused by inequality.” Our faith in a God of abundance demands us to recognize that there is enough food for the one billion people on earth who are food insecure. Our faith propels us to make our offering of “this is all we have” and let Jesus transform it into something that is more than enough for everyone.

Global food distribution and access is not the only challenge that our God of abundance can overcome. Think of other areas in our lives that are ruled by our fear of scarcity.

What might our immigration system look like if we truly believed that God provides enough for everyone?

How generous could we be with our time, emotions, and material resources if we could face each day trusting that we would not lack for anything?

What would Jesus accomplish through the congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America if each congregation spent less time worrying about not having enough butts in the pews and envelopes in plate, and instead offered our “this is all we have” to Jesus, knowing Jesus would transform it into something that is more than enough for everyone.

We will certainly all have a role to play; something surely will be demanded of us. But the grace is in knowing that it’s not all up to us. God has the seemingly-impossible logistics all taken care of. We simply have to be ready to release our fists clenched around the things we claim as ours, and instead offer the open palm of generosity and selflessness.

In a profound way, that’s what the city of Detroit did for our denomination last week. The city opened its hand, revealing its crumbling infrastructure and beautiful architecture, its rough neighborhoods and its smiling faces, its poverty and its pride, saying only “This is all we have.”

And for five days, 30,000 young people launched into their streets with all their brightly-colored t-shirts, obnoxious songs, constant high-fiving, eagerness to serve, belief they could make a difference, and infectious joy. For five days, what Detroit offered was more than enough because it was really God who was providing. We pray that city would continue to offer itself to the world; and we pray that we would continue to offer ourselves to Detroit and all who are in need, because that is where God is at work creating something out of nothing, hope out of despair, and abundance out of scarcity.

And here’s a video to show a little more about our experience in Detroit….

John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

Preparations for today's sermon started a couple of weeks ago, by preachers and pastors more disciplined than me, of course. I know this because social media feeds and Facebook pages that cater to pastors and preachers, like me, started offering their unsolicited 2 cents – before Pentecost Sunday, last week, even – about ideas and inquiries and warnings against what should or should not be said when describing and explaining God on Holy Trinity Sunday.

And I gave up on that years ago, to be honest – pretending I could do justice to the Doctrine of the Trinity in a single sermon, I mean. And I like to remind myself what David Lose, who used to be a professor of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary and now is the President of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, said a few years ago, about his rule of thumb regarding the Trinity: that anyone who says they understand it, isn’t to be trusted.

So, rather than go down the road of doctrine and dogma and textbook definitions when it comes to the nature of God, as some may be doing today, I thought I’d share with you something new that got my attention, as I read this very familiar Gospel story this time around. It’s just one little word Nicodemus uses when he shows up to meet Jesus, under cover of darkness.

First, though, we need to remember how much it matters that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and about how significant it is that he came to Jesus very deliberately “by night,” so no one else would know what he was up to. The point of those details is that Nicodemus wasn’t supposed to be playing nice with Jesus. He and his fellow Pharisees were suspicious of, cynical about, and downright opposed to everything Jesus was up to. So Nicodemus was risking a lot by talking to Jesus – his status, his reputation, maybe even his life, knowing the rest of the story, the way we do.

So what caught my attention this time around is how Nicodemus says, in his very first question to Jesus in the dark of that night, “WE know that you’re a teacher who has come from God…” “WE know…” “WE…”

Not “I know…”, not, “I was thinking…” not, “I was wondering if you could tell me….” But “WE know that you’re a teacher who has come from God because no one can do the signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Now, maybe Nicodemus pretended his friends, the Pharisees, were in on this wondering with him. Maybe he said “we” like some people ask for advice for “that friend” who doesn’t really exist, only because they want to know something for themselves that they’re too embarrassed to ask.

But maybe, Nicodemus wasn’t in this alone. I often say in Faith Formation and other classes I teach, if it’s a question you’re wondering about, the odds are pretty good someone else is wondering the same thing, too. So, maybe Nicodemus and some of the other Pharisees really had been asking these questions and having these conversations and harboring some really faithful ideas about who Jesus was, and who Jesus wasn’t. And maybe Nicodemus was sent by his buddies. Or maybe he was the only one with enough curiosity or courage to go looking for the answers they all really wanted to find.

And thank God Nicodemus had that curiosity and courage to go and ask. Because I think he’s a faithful example for a world that’s full of Pharisees, still. You see, I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that each of us has Pharisaical tendencies in some way or another.

By that I mean, aren’t there some things each of us feels positively certain about? Some ideas we just know are right? Other ideas we believe just can’t possibly be? And don’t these things influence a lot of what we do? I’m talking about the stuff of politics and religion – those things you don’t talk about it polite company or bring up over Thanksgiving dinner unless you’re looking for a fight.

And to take that all a step further, don’t we harbor questions about God’s place in our life – questions about our faith, maybe – that we share with very few people, if we dare share those questions with anyone? Aren’t there questions we have – or questions we have had – about all of this faith stuff that are too hard or too embarrassing or too potentially heretical to ask out loud?

The thing about Nicodemus is that that’s the sort of question he was asking, according to his faith, as he understood things. And he showed up to Jesus looking, it seems to me, for some kind of text book answer; some kind of 50 cent word; some sort of theological treatise to explain who/how/what/why Jesus was up to, what he was up to. After all, that’s always what any good Pharisee is after, right? Black and white, cut and dried, right and wrong sorts of lines in the sand – proof – about how things are or how they should be.

And too much of the time, that’s what we pretend faith is all about: proof of right and wrong, governed by religious tradition… proof, cut and dried and measured against ancient texts… black and white evidence by or for or against some religious law or doctrine or dogma or definition as we understand it – or as someone tells us we’re supposed to understand it. (I kind of think Nicodemus might have been satisfied with a clearly argued “Doctrine of the Trinity,” that night in the dark with Jesus.)

Which makes Jesus’ response to him so funny and so faithful and so cool, because Jesus gives Nicodemus none of those things

Jesus says, “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above,” and “No one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” And he goes on and on with all this talk about being born of the flesh or born of the spirit and about the wind blowing where it chooses. And I can almost see Nicodemus’ head spinning with it all, maybe confirming what so many of his fellow Pharisees had been trying to convince themselves about all along: that this Jesus from Nazareth was just another fake… another heretic… some new-age kook, selling a new-fangled spirituality for those simple-minded losers down by the lake.

But see, what’s most amazing about Nicodemus and his encounter with Jesus, is that Jesus’ new teaching changed him – and that he let it. We don’t hear much about Nicodemus after this, except in Chapter 7 when he actually stands up for Jesus, in the face of some of his fellow Pharisees. And he shows up one more time, at the end of John’s gospel. After the crucifixion, it’s this Nicodemus who helps anoint Jesus’ body and prepare it for burial. However and whenever it happened, it’s fair to assume that Nicodemus was swayed, in some meaningful way by his time with Jesus that night way back when.

And my point in all of this, I suppose, is to wonder what would happen if we put down our text books and our dictionaries, even our doctrine and our dogma some of the time? And what if we put down the defenses and the distractions they represent for us, too? What if we let go of what we pretend is locked-in or set in stone or settled, hard and fast, about the God we worship and the Scripture we read? What if we made more room for a living God and a living Word that are bigger than our best, most faithful descriptions or definitions?

What would happen if we approached Jesus – and if we approached the God who meets us in one another – with honest, hard, holy questions and then let that God’s gracious, loving, forgiving – living, moving, breathing presence – reveal new things for us and change us in the face of our questions?

It can seem as risky for us as it was for Nicodemus, way back in the day. But my favorite thing about the Doctrine of the Trinity – this Father, Son, Holy Spirit stuff – is that it represents a relationship. We use it to describe a relationship between the many ways God is alive and evident in the world. And we use it to invite and encourage each other to engage a relationship with that living, loving God, just the same.

And when we dare to do that, like Nicodemus dared to do that, we might be born again – re-created – made new, in spite of ourselves. We might find we’ve entered the kingdom of God, right where we live. We might be changed – as God intends – by water and Spirit. And we might change the world, in return, by this grace we receive and then share in the name of this God who is Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, and more, surely, than we have yet imagined.

Amen

"All Detroit Has" – John 6:1-21

"Pharisaical Tendencies" – John 3:1-17