So. The Session of First Calvin Covenant Presbyterian
Church is gathered in the fellowship hall for its monthly meeting, which they call
whether they need it or not, and Pastor Roy is droning on about whether or not
they should pay their head-tax, which he’s against, because the Presbytery has done
something he doesn’t like. Suddenly,
there’s a blinding flash of light and a huge puff of smoke, and when it clears,
there’s Jesus himself, standing beside the pastor, who proceeds to faint dead
away. Jesus is brushing something off his
Brooks Brothers suit, saying “Angel dust . . . it gets into everything.” And he looks down at the pastor,
gestures and suddenly Pastor Roy is in his chair, staring blearily around.
And
there is dead silence as the elders stare at Jesus with mouths agape, and Jesus
looks back at them and says “What? Is it
the suit? You don’t expect me to wear a
robe and sandals in this weather, do
you?” Doug, noting that Pastor Roy was
still out of it, and feeling that his position as clerk demanded that he take the
initiative, speaks up: “Uh, no . . . that’s not it . . . we’re just wondering,
well . . . what are you doing here?” and
Jesus says “Didn’t you believe me when I said ‘Lo, I will be with you, even
unto the ends of he Earth?” And he
shakes his head, saying “Never mind. Listen
. . . I’ve got a job for you. See those
people out there?” And they look out the
window and there’s a huge crowd of people of all races and genders and
socio-economic classes, and Jesus says “There’s five thousand of them. Where are
we going to buy them something to eat?
Is there a Costco open this late, or how about a deli? Hard to get good pastrami at the right hand
of God . . .”
And
the members of the Session of First Calvin Covenant Church look uncomfortably
at one another, and the finance committee chair says “Uh, Lord . . . we don’t
have the budget for that . . . we
have to pay the minister”—at which Pastor Roy perks up—“and the secretary and
the choir director, and our building needs a new roof, and what about the
Little Sisters of Perpetual Anxiety?
They depend on the little bit
we give them every year.” And the head
of Missions nods her head, saying “We only have a tiny bit of our budget
allocated to emergency needs,” and the Trustee representative chimes in with “and
besides . . where are we going to put ‘em
all?”
And
they shuffle their feet, and look increasingly hang-dog, and Jesus just stares
at them, until the Deacon rep says “Well my son over there” and she points to a
sullen teenager in the corner “my son
has 5 Big Macs and a couple of super-sized fries, but that wouldn’t be nearly
enough . . .” But Jesus says “Go outside
and sit ‘em down” and Lo! The crowd sits
in the parking lot, and it sits in the street.
It sits in the highways and hedges and all over the church lawn (the grounds chair mutters about how it’ll
never recover). And Jesus says “Bring me
the burgers and fries” and he takes them and give thanks to God, and begins to
hand them out the to the people in the crowd, saying “take, eat all you want.” And the disciples—oops, I mean elders—begin to move back, behind their
savior, and their eyes dart nervously around, because you never know what a
hungry crowd’s gonna do, especially when
you run out of food.
But
you know what? They don’t run out of food. Jesus
just keeps handing it out, and handing it out, and somehow it doesn’t run out. And they
don’t quite see how it happens, there’s
no special-effects flash and bang . . .the food just keeps on coming, quietly, steadily.
It just keeps on coming.
And
when everybody has been fed—when they’d all had seconds, and even thirds—Jesus
tells the elders to go out and gather up the leavings, and they don’t even roll
their eyes at the thought of anything left, they’d seen enough to convince them
anything was possible, and sure enough, they gather up twelve of those reusable Kroger shopping bags full of Big Mac and french fry leavings, all mooshed together in a
gooey mass of meat, pickles and potatoes, along with those little seeds that
get caught in your teeth.
And
after Pastor Roy is cited by the police for not having a crowd permit, and after
they file back into the fellowship hall, Jesus stands in front of them and shakes
his head “I can’t believe you were
skeptical, that you didn’t think it could happen.” Pastor Roy speaks up: “Well, you can hardly blame
us, we’ve never actually seen a
miracle . . .” But Jesus says: “Don’t you get all those stories in your Scripture? Haven’t you read about all the signs I
performed, all demons I cast out . . . Why I even raised old Lazarus from the grave, for heaven’s sake. And you know
this bears at least a slight
resemblance to another sign I did beside
the Sea of Galilee.” And he smiles.
The
elders look at one another uneasily, while Jesus continues: “That should be a
big, fat hint: what was the point of those
signs, which you call miracles?” The
Deacon representative timidly raises her hand, and feeling like he was back in
the synagogue, Jesus calls on her: “Susan?”
“That you’re the Son of God?” she says.
“Well, yes . . . but all the
signs point to that . . . look: I’ll
give you a hint. Think mustard seeds,
water into wine, and leaven.” Then he
disappears. Poof!
Well,
that gets ‘em looking for Bibles—“there’s gotta be one around here somewhere,” the
clerk mutters, “after all we are a
church”—and finally they find some in the library and after they dust them off
and pass them out, they first look up the water into wine, and Joyce reads it
aloud. When she gets to the end, they
all begin to talk at once, and remembering his role as moderator, Pastor Roy
says “one at a time, one at a time” and looks at the chair of Christian Ed.
“Well,”
she says, “What jumps out at me is
that the jars were filled to the brim, and I got the feeling that there was plenty
to go around. After all, those wedding
parties went on for seven days, and there
was a lot of wine drunk.” There are
snickers at that, and the pastor says “Ok, ok . . . so how is that like our miracle?” “The abundance,”
someone says, and another says: “it’s grace
. . . grace is abundant, there's always more than enough to go around.”
“Aha!” says Pastor Roy. “Grace is
abundant. In fact, it seems to me it’s super-abundant, there’s more than enough. Now. What
about the mustard seed, and the leaven?”
Which sends them scrambling once again to their bibles, looking up the
parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, which are, conveniently, back-to-back. And again
they all begin to talk at once, and again
the pastor has to restore order, and this time he looks to the chair of
building and grounds, the one so worried about his lawn. “Fred?”
“Uh . . . the mustard seed is so little, and the tree it produces is so big, and it’s got room for birds and bees
and everything. And the leaven’s the
same way, it just takes a little bit,
a little tiny bit, and the whole loaf
is changed, it’s transformed.”
“And so?” prompts Pastor Roy, proud of
himself that for once that he has resisted the urge to preach. “What does that say for us?” And one of them pipes
up: “Maybe we’re called to step out in
faith, use the little we have.” And
another: “Maybe we’re to be confident
that the little we have, the little we give,
is enough—in the hands of God—to transform the whole world, to bring about
God’s just reign on earth.”
Pastor Roy smiled and says “Bingo!” as
if he’d thought the whole thing up. But
inwardly, he is praying and thanking God
for the life and witness and forgiving grace
of the man from Galilee. Amen.
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