Sermon: “Possibility”
wayne mclaughlin
Leeds Presbyterian Church
August 2, 2020 – worship through Zoom
_________________
Kings 4.42-44 2nd CEV
42 A man from the town of Baal-Shalishah brought Elisha some freshly cut grain and twenty loaves of bread made from the first barley that was harvested. Elisha said, “Give it to the people so they can eat.”
43 “There’s not enough here for a hundred people,” his servant said.
“Just give it to them,” Elisha replied. “The Lord has promised there will be more than enough.”
44 So the servant served the bread and grain to the people. They ate and still had some left over, just as the Lord had promised.
Matthew 14.13-21 CEB
13 When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. 14 When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. 15 That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
16 But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”
17 They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”
18 He said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers. 21 About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten.
SERMON TEXT:
DICKINSON
In 1862 Emily Dickinson wrote this poem:
I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—
Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—
Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise— [1]
“I dwell in Possibility” says Dickinson. Emily Dickinson grew up just before the Civil War. Her family was part of the Calvinist tradition, but held to the newer, updated Calvinism of the New England Congregationalist families. They were “Whiggish” in their politics. The party known as the Whigs stressed social order. In the words of historian Louise Stevenson, “Whiggery stood for the triumph of the cosmopolitan and national over the provincial and local, of rational order over irrational spontaneity, of school-based learning over tradition folkways and custom, and of self-control over self-expression.” [2]
You might remember that Abraham Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party when he was elected to the House of Representatives. But the Whig Party began to splitter over disagreements about how to handle the slavery issue, and in 1856 Lincoln identified with the new Republican Party as he ran for the Senate.
There was a revival meeting in Dickinson’ town in 1850. Many young people were converted—saved, and she saw the peace in their faces. But she refused to take part in the meetings. As we would say today, it “wasn’t her thing.” She felt a deep desire in her heart for spiritual sustenance, but the “churchy” form of faith was not what she chose. Instead of living in the House of Creeds she chose to dwell in the House of Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—More numerous of Windows—Superior—for Doors—
Emily Dickinson chose to dwell in poetry rather than prose. She chose possibility over the Whiggish tradition of order and custom and coloring inside the lines. Her spirituality took on a new form of poetry—with dashes everywhere—the short, stabbing lines of enigmatic phrases, not always clear to the reader, but packed full of meaning. She was a doubting believer, and a believing doubter. She chose to dwell in possibility.
JESUS THE MAGICIAN
In today’s reading from Matthew 14 Jesus invites us to dwell in Possibility. There are 5000 people, not counting women and children. (There’s a whole sermon in that little phrase—“not counting women and children.” But that’s for another day.) Commentators on this passage guess that when we add the women and children to the statistic, there was probably 10,000 people in the crowd.
Stop and think about that number. Have you ever been to a gathering of 10,000 people? A concert? A political convention? A protest? I know it’s nothing compared to a full Bryant-Denny Stadium, but it’s a lot of people. The disciples were concerned about the crowd. Someone, I don’t know if it was Andrew or John or Nathaniel or Judas, but someone went to Jesus and suggested that the people be sent away to the surrounding villages to buy food for supper. The disciples didn’t want hundreds of people fainting because of hunger or low blood sugar. They were concerned.
And that’s when Jesus shocked them:
You give them something to eat!
Can you imagine standing there close to Jesus and seeing him turn toward you and point his finger at you and say, You! You fix this problem. You solve this crisis. You find a vaccine for Covid-19. You dismantle the systemic racism in America. You feed the poor. You build the church back up. You get young people interested in Christianity. You give health care to everybody. You get people to love one another. You! Yeah, you.
You put your hands up and say, I’m sorry Jesus, I don’t have enough food to feed all of those people.
Jesus says, Where do you live? You point over there and say, That’s my house over there.
Jesus says, Oh, I see. You live in the House of Prose. You got to move out of there and move into a House of Possibility.
I’ll tell you what you do, he says. Find out what you have to work with. Go out and search among the crowd. See what food you can find. Do an inventory of resources. Then come back and bring me what you got.
The disciples do as he says. They find only five loaves of bread and two pieces of salted fish. They present them to Jesus.
Now. What happens next seems magical, doesn’t it? It’s like those magicians we have all seen who reach into a hat and pull out a rabbit. And we all say, How did he do that?
Elisha fed 100 people with twenty loaves of bread. That’s more doable. Twenty loaves for one hundred people. You give each group of five people a loaf of bread. Each person will get a chunk of bread. But 10,000 people and five loaves. That’s one loaf for every 2,000 people. Each person might get a tiny crumb, if that.
How did he do it? Was Jesus a magician?
PROTESTS
When George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, and everyone saw the video, it couldn’t be denied. Immediately a few people in his neighborhood went to the streets in protest. They were joined by others from all over town. Then people of other cities took to the streets in protest of such cruel injustice. Then people in cities across Europe and Asia and all over the world marched on behalf of George Floyd. What began as a local protest grew into a global protest.
How did it happen? Can we explain it? Yes.
The spirit of Amos and Hosea and Isaiah and Jeremiah was in the bones of good people, and suddenly the ankle bone connected to the leg bone, and the leg bone connected to the hip bone got to moving, and a movement sprang to life. The Spirit of the prophets, and the Spirit of Jesus swept through the world, and the Voice from the Burning Bush was heard throughout the land—Let my people go!
VACCINE
People are dying at a scary rate from a tiny, little virus. There is no vaccine yet. But scientists and researchers working at UAB and laboratories all over this nation, and all over the world are hard at work to find the right combination of little pieces of God’s creation to put together to make the medicine to stop the pandemic. God has given us the answer. It’s right there somewhere in nature. God has given the vaccine. It’s up to the researchers to discover the natural materials and the right combination to make the cure. And it will be found.
And it will be called a miracle. Not magic, but a miracle. Not just 10,000, but hundreds of thousands of people will be cured or saved from death when the scientists who dwell in the House of Possibility put their fingers on it.
ENOUGH
When we live in the House of Prose we keep telling ourselves, It can’t be done. No way. But when we dwell in Possibility we have more windows to look through; we have more doors to open; we are able to gaze up at the vast sky and see possibilities.
Followers of Jesus do not dwell in prose. We look around to discover our resources. We don’t overlook anything, even if it’s small. Then we take what we have and offer it to Jesus. We give it up to the creative power of the Holy Spirit.
Then Jesus gives it back to us. Jesus blesses it, breaks it, and gives it back to us. And magical things happen. People are fed. Children are healed. Women are seen as equal to men in value and worth. Skin color is made relative. The one human race is recognized for what it is. Hatred is converted to love and respect. Privilege is recognized and renounced.
Like the disciples we look around and say We don’t have enough. There is not enough. And sometimes we look within ourselves and say, I am not enough. Because someone has told us we are not enough. That we don’t measure up. That we are somehow inferior. But Jesus says to us,
Bring me yourself.
Offer yourself up to me.
And I will give yourself back to you.
And you will know deep in your heart
that you are enough.
That you are not inferior.
That you are precious and worthy.
That you are loved with an everlasting love.
Don’t put yourself down anymore.
You belong to me.
PARADISE
Emily Dickinson begins her poet this way:
I dwell in Possibility— / A fairer House than Prose— / More numerous of Windows— / Superior—for Doors—
The last two lines say:
The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise—
Paradise is all around us.
Heaven can be seen if you look through the right windows.
The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise—
If we take our narrow hands, not narrow minds—
and spread them wide, being broad-minded,
we can scoop up some of Heaven for ourselves.
Jesus took the bread,
gave thanks,
broke the bread,
and gave it to them
to distribute.
They ate the Lord’s Supper.
All were filled.
All were satisfied.
And there were twelve baskets
of leftovers.
One basket for each of the twelve Apostles
to take home and put in the microwave.
And the Apostles’ families had fish sandwiches
for at least five days.
__________________
1. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. R. W. Franklin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), no. 466, p. 215.
2. Roger Lundin, Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 12-13.
