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August 9, 2009 Sermon

Echoes of Belonging (Ephesians 3: 14-21, Mark 8: 1-9)

Rev. Sally Harris

We remember O God the many ways you have nurtured us and lead us to this place. We remember how Jesus, moved with compassion, nurtured those who stayed with him for three days. And in our remembering we too come to be nurtured and to nurture. Come, Spirit come that we may be a people of memory and of hope. Amen

Do you remember the first time you discovered the echo of sound? The time when you raised your voice and almost before you ended calling out, it was copied exactly and returned to you by the stone. Echoes never cease to amaze me – it is as if the mountains have secret hearing and voice. Their natural stillness and silence suddenly breaks forth in an exact mimic of the human voice, indicating that there is a vibrant heart in the depths of silence. Hearing one’s echo out among the lonely mountains seems to suggest that one is not alone. Landscape and nature know us and the returning echo seems to confirm that we belong here. We live in a world that responds to our longing; it is a place where the echoes always return, even if sometimes slowly.

The hunger to belong is at the heart of our nature. Cut off from others, we shrivel and turn in on ourselves. Our hunger to belong is the longing to find a bridge across the distance from separation to connection. Every one dreams of a place of belonging where one is embraced, seen and loved. Something within each of us cries out for belonging. We can have all the world has to offer in terms of status, achievement, and possessions, yet without a sense of belonging it all seems empty and pointless. Like the tree that puts roots deep into the earth, each of us needs a place to belong in order to bend with the storms and reach toward the light. Like the ocean that returns each time to the same shore, a sense of belonging liberates us to trust fully the rhythm of loss and longing.

In post-modern culture there is a deep hunger to belong. Increasingly people are feeling isolated and marginalized. Our society is haunted by fragmentation – broken pieces. Many of the traditional shelters are in ruin. Consumerism propels life toward the lonely isolation of superficiality and individualism. The ‘global village’ has no roads; the ‘global economy” has no neighbors; all is faceless. Technology seeks to unite us – look at the popularity of “Twitter” and “Face book.” Language that a couple of years ago was nonexistent but now these are household words. Yet can virtual reality replace essential relationships? Many believe these are indicators that we are in the midst of a spiritual crisis of belonging, for the deepest nature of the soul is relational. It is the very nature of our souls to long to belong. Yes our souls are ancient and eternal, seeking to weave us into the great tapestry of spirit that connects everything everywhere. This is the balance at the heart of the universe: each of us is utterly unique and yet we live in the most intimate kinship with everyone and every thing. Our sense of belonging is not just a dependency or crutch. Our hunger to belong is the desire to awaken each of us to the reality that we are participants at the heart of creation. This is not new knowledge. Our sacred writings tell us - For this reason I am in awe before the creator, from whom everything in heaven and on earth is named. (Eph. 3:14) All our longing is but an eternal echo of the Divine Longing who created us and sustains us.

And from the eighth chapter of Mark we too are reminded of our belonging. Our reading tells of the second feeding narrative when Jesus notices that the people who've been listening to him for three days have run out of food. He's been here before, back in chapter six where he fed the five thousand. But hunger, longing, isn't a one-time experience. And Jesus was moved by compassion - a Greek term that means that his insides are turned over. Jesus has this strange bodily sense of an emergency. He cares about the hungry and knows something must be done.

At first Jesus doesn't say anything about how the people's hunger might be satisfied. He just points out the need: "they have nothing to eat". Perhaps he's hoping his disciples will remember the last time this happened, and start looking around for a few loaves and fishes. But disciples can only ask: “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?” How can you feed these people with bread in the desert?

You can sense the resistance in the disciples' question. It's the resistance of pragmatism, of efficiency, of "the real world." - the world of isolation and scarcity. But Jesus has abundance on his mind, he knows the echoes of longing and belonging so he doesn't even answer their question. Instead he moves on, asking a question of his own: "How many loaves do you have?" And after the disciples do a comprehensive analyst of all resources available, they answer: "Seven." It's enough. Jesus tells everyone to sit down and wait. This is no random miracle, a chaotic moment of descending manna. No Jesus has compassion and patience. He is well schooled in the transformative generosity of God. Having sat the people down he then blesses the loaves and gives them back to the disciples, asking merely that they share the resources available – no more, no less – just what is on hand. There is no need to go looking or buying more stuff – what is here is enough.

Mark uses four words to describe what Jesus did: took, gave thanks, broke, and gave. The words are familiar; they are Eucharist words. Out in the desert, in that remote place, Jesus uses seven loaves to conduct a sit-down thanksgiving dinner that matches the needs of the people with the generosity of God - the longing of the people with the belonging in God’s world.

And his actions are transformative. The bread stays exactly what it is--bread--yet it becomes something it never was before: a carrier of all the hidden, powerful gifts of God. The crowd stays as it is, but it becomes something it never thought it would be: a people entitled to what they can't provide for themselves. The remote place stays as it is, but it becomes something that no one would ever expect: a viable place of existence, the arena for the reign of God. Jesus has put into practice the generosity of the Creator.

Gifts, when they are blessed and broken and given, have immense potential. How could anyone take seven loaves (plus a few fish) and feed four thousand? But the narrator says that all ate and were full. Signs of unlimited generosity are abundant and visible. We don't often experience the world that way. And so we give thanks for the good news of Mark's Gospel, where we are reminded to listen for the echo of belonging. We are not alone; we live in the abundance of God’s world and are sustained by the generosity of the Creator.

May that be reflected in how we live with one another and at the table now set before us. Amen. (Resource: John O’Donohue & W. Bruggeman)

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