July 26, 2009
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21;
John 6:1-21
We have two very powerful lessons today. The first about David. We have been following David’s story for several weeks, but now we are getting to the dark side of David. The side we meet this week is the side that was seduced by power and absolutely corrupted by it. Until this reading this week, we have known David as a wise and patient ruler. Now we see that David, from whose line Jesus is to come, was as unbearably human as the rest of us. He lusted after another man’s wife. And, because he could, he took her and he raped her. Then sent her back to her house pregnant with his child.
When he discovered that she was pregnant, he tried to get her husband, Uriah, one of his most able soldiers, to sleep with his own wife, a thing forbidden to soldiers when on duty. When that didn’t work, he sent poor Uriah back to the front lines and certain death.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even David, God’s chosen and favorite, was seduced by it.
But what does this have to do with you and me? No one in this room has that kind of power. No one we know, or at least few if any that we know, even come close to having the power to do the kind of despicable things that David did. Or do they? Do we?
By being white middle class Americans in the twenty-first century we have power we don’t even know, power, that we, like David, take for granted. I know not all of us in this parish are white, but a majority of us are. We have benefited, all of us from that middle class whiteness, and without giving it a second thought, no more thought even than David gave to taking Uriah’s wife.
I was reminded of that white power this week. I learned about white power and privilege years ago in an anti racism training that I was part of when I served as chair of the Episcopal Peace and Justice network. That class, taught by Ed Rodman and others from Massachusetts – I was living in California at the time – opened my eyes to the privilege that I have had all of my life merely because of the color of my skin and because I live in the United States of America in the twenty-first century.
I was reminded of that privilege by the Professor Gates incident this week. I know there have been apologies and explanations, and I know that there are two sides to every story. We cannot really know what caused this incident or who is right and who is wrong. But I could not help but wonder if race played a part in it. It certainly made me remember my anti-racism training.
For like David we have power and privilege and with that power and privilege comes responsibility to make sure we are not ever guilty of abusing that power and privilege to the detriment of those who do not have it. The first way to do that handling of power is to recognize it and to acknowledge how incredibly blessed and just plain lucky we have been – and are! – then to work, as Jesus did, tirelessly, to extend the privilege and the power to others, instead of taking advantage of it. We are to diminish it as best we can.
And, unlike David we need to remind ourselves constantly that the blessing and abundance in our lives is not given to us because we are somehow more deserving than others. We need to let go of the idea that we have worked hard for what we have and therefore are entitled to a little privilege and power. For when we do that we are most susceptible to abusing the power and privilege that is ours.
If you are sitting there thinking you have no power and no privilege that is particularly unique or profound, then I invite you to think about it further. Come and talk to me – I would relish that. Becoming aware of my own privilege was one of the most powerful pieces of learning I have done in my life, and being reminded of it this week in these lessons that coincide with Professor Gate’s arrest has again grabbed my attention.
At General Convention we eliminated the funding for anti-racism training, and frankly, I was feeling like we needed to move on to the next marginalized group, to identify them and work toward increasing their power and privilege the way we have with all people of color. But the truth is we are still racist. That thought I had of “moving on” is racist. We still have work to do, and for most of us that work begins in our own hearts and lives.
Which brings me to the second powerful and also well known lesson this morning: the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. This story is a story for our day and time. We cut the funding for anti-racism training because we are living in a time of scarcity and things need to be cut. We see it at the Episcopal Church budget level, some twenty-five million dollars cut. We see it at the diocesan level, some twenty percent cut; and we see it in our own parish budget. We see it in our own home budgets and in the lives and budgets of those around us. Like the disciples we could say, “There are too many people and not enough food.” It would take a whole lot more than six months wages to solve the financial problems we are all in, a whole lot more!
Yet this lesson from the gospel – told in all four gospels – is truer today than it was when it was first told. Jesus provides out of God’s abundance, and there is enough for all. There are resources for all. It’s here; it’s everywhere, if we can have the eyes of Christ instead of the eyes of a human being who sounds like and thinks like the disciples. We have the power and the resources to do the work God is calling us to do: feed the people; provide for them: shelter and work and meaning. We have the resources, with basketfuls left over. Basketfuls!
And we have the power and the privilege of our baptisms and faith to help us do it, not in any way we have tried in the past, not by benevolently sharing what we have, but by radically changing how we live. There is a new way, a way I cannot stand here and proscribe, but I can stand here and promise exists because this lesson is not a lie. It is not some mythical little story that can be explained away by saying that one boy shared his five loaves and two fish and all were – all were! – inspired to share what they had brought with them and to change their way of living, and that if we did too, then there would be no scarcity in the world. My friends, solutions to great social challenge cannot be humanly scripted. They are not humanly accomplished. The change of heart of the five thousand was a holy mystery. The people were changed because of the presence of Jesus. We need to find that kind of change in our own hearts and lives today.
This feeding of the five thousand story is the story of what happens when Jesus is at the center of our solutions to the complex scarcity we are facing. When Jesus is the center, then the solution will not be one of a quick fix, rather it will certainly be one that we would not come up with if we were left to our own devices.
The disciple was out looking for a solution, and he stumbled upon the boy who would share, and Jesus worked into that idea something that the disciple really had no way to imagine alone. In fact, they, the disciples, were trying to show Jesus how foolhardy it was to consider feeding all those people with so little.
Our foolhardiness is getting the best of us in this new era of financial challenges. But with God’s help, with Jesus as the center of our questions and the center of our feeble attempts at solutions, we will find an answer we do not expect. It will take team work, and it will take some time. But it will be better than we could ask or imagine.
So today, two familiar lessons! Two familiar outcomes! But don’t they both invite us toward the unfamiliar? That is the reality of baptism, to invite Jesus into the very center of our hearts and to live and be changed and transformed. Don’t both these lessons challenge us to get outside ourselves? Don’t they challenge us to get outside our familiar answers and to recognize our own vulnerability to the possibility of being corrupted, our own vulnerability to being enticed to hoard when we cannot imagine enough being there for everyone?
May we be brave; may we be faithful. May we trust that if we, by faith, act on a little, Jesus will take the next steps for us, through us, with us.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd