“It’s funny how the nature of an object — let’s say a strawberry or a pair of socks — is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or as a commodity. The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store, red and gray striped, are warm and cozy. I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting machine. I hope so. But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as a commodity, as private property. […] But what if those very same socks, red and gray striped, were knitted by my grandmother and given to me as a gift? That changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship.”
Many of you in this community are very familiar with the book Braiding Sweetgrass, written by Robin Wall Kimmerer. After ten years of many important people in my life telling me I should read it, I finally got to it this spring, thanks to them. Among many things, this book illuminates the way our more-than-human world demonstrates abundant giving, and how our mindful receiving of the gifts of our world can fill us with a spirit of gratitude, and teach us to reciprocate in our own actions as interdependent members of this larger web of life that we are a humble part of. As we hear in this excerpt from her book, something changes within us and among us when we receive something from someone’s full generosity and grace, something changes in and around us when we embrace the miracle of gifting. Miracle: because, mysteriously, a simple item can transform into something far more powerful, and connects and binds us closer, beyond our expectations, and what we receive from that item has been multiplied far greater than the value of the item itself. Take a moment to ponder a meaningful gift that you once received – perhaps from a sibling, a child, an elder, a friend, partner, stranger – how did that gift change you? How did it feel to receive? What is that joy of receiving a gift, and feeling that connection, that relationship, grow?
Speaking of miracles and gifts, on this day of the Feast of the Body & Blood of Christ, we encounter in our gospel reading today a fairly well known story from the life and works of Jesus: the feeding of at least five thousand people. If you were at last Saturday’s protest at the Capitol, or if you’ve ever been to a football game or concert, you know what it feels like to be among thousands. And much like the energy of large events we may
have recently attended, in this crowd of 5000-plus that gathered to witness the teachings of Jesus, you can picture the anxiety, the excitement, the organized chaos. Shifting of bodies, shushing of voices, hungry and thirsty people. As the disciples and the crowd of over 5000 gathered, they witnessed the healing of the sick, and listened to Christ’s revolutionary message of liberation to a people occupied by an oppressive empire. Hope was surely palpable there, for so many people to have gathered.
And as the day was drawing to a close, Jesus’s companions began to worry about the well-being of the crowd gathered there. With just five loaves of bread and two fish packed with them, the most logical solution was to disperse the community and send them away. Yet when they suggested this to Christ, he replied, “You give them something to eat.” You could say part of the miracle was also that the disciples complied and followed through with Jesus’s crazy suggestion, as they sat the crowds down into groups of fifty. Imagine how you would respond, perhaps at the protest on the capitol square grounds this past Saturday. Thousands upon thousands are growing hungry. And if you were told by the event organizer to take your handful of water bottles and your box of energy bars to feed everyone there, would you laugh? I would.
But as this story goes, regardless of what was possible in the eyes of our every day expectations, there was a truth, and a reality, to be honored – people must be fed. They must be fed, or they will starve. And so with hope, somehow it was done. And it was a gift to all gathered there, without payment, conditions, or expectations. And, “a gift changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship.”
For those of you who grew up in a Christian tradition, this story has perhaps lost a bit of its sense of awe due to its familiarity. And oftentimes I think the focus gets placed solely on the mystery of how Jesus multiplied a handful of bread and fish to feed a city. But I think there are a couple more things for us to notice in this story today, as we pay attention to Jesus’s humanity and his actions and what they say about what matters in times of uncertainty. When this gathered community is in need, Jesus does not disperse them. He keeps the community together. Finding food for the night
is not a “them” problem. When in need, let us not disperse. Let us not isolate. We are connected, a part of one another.
Second, the gift of bread and fish that Jesus multiplies for the people is abundant. It does not say that the crowd divided up the portions conservatively to make sure each person had a bite. It says all ate and were filled. And 12 baskets were left over. Christ’s example of gifting is one of generosity, of abundance, of plenty, even in a time – especially in a time, of uncertainty and crisis.
How might this example inspire us today? In this community, rooted in benedictine hospitality, in this community, which provides refuge for our beloved on the margins, for this community, who tends to the 200 acres of prairie around us and beyond, this community that continues to gather in times of turmoil. How might Christ’s example of abundant gifts and steadfast community inspire us, beyond what we think is possible in the moment?
After attending the No Kings protest last weekend with many of you, I was on my weekly video call with my parents and brother. My parents live in Japan and have been watching the news from Tokyo about all the chaos in the US. And my mom asked, with genuine curiosity and interest, “do you think things will change and get better after these protests?”
I paused for a bit, because I noticed within me that I couldn’t say “yes” truthfully and confidently. But I said, “it has to.” Because it must. As we witness many things – genocide and warfare further expanding in our world, as we witness the slow fading of compassion when we grow dangerously apathetic in the normalization of what we witness, as we feel overwhelmed by the tearing apart of families, the disappearing of our neighbors, the violent acts and murders motivated by racism, politics, and queerphobia and bigotry in our communities and beyond, as we think of the earth we are poisoning – amid all of this, losing hope, dropping momentum, and numbing our hearts would be the end. So, friends, what is possible in this time of uncertainty?
If you’ve heard my homilies in the past you know I like to quote the same Vaclav Havel and Valarie Kaur quotes all the time and I’m sorry to bring them up again but we do live in a season where hope is the sweet
spirit that we must breathe in so deeply right now. Valarie Kaur: “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?” Hope is fighting for new life, birth, creation, in a time when it’s easy for us to see nothing but ashes and bones around us. And Vaclav Havel: “Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons […] Hope is an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands a chance to succeed […] Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but [hope] is certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”
A deep hope like this takes action through the strengthened hearts of this beautifully complex and diverse community here in this room. Some here are life-long Catholics, some here in our assembly are Muslim, Jewish, and/or Buddhist, some of us here are agnostic or atheist, humanist, Unitarian Universalist, Orthodox, Protestant of all the many denominations. And many of us find our church in the Wild – I’ve heard your stories of the sacred embrace of Great Lake waters, the trees that give and give and teach, the animals and sun and mountains and stars that gift us with joy and awe and humility with abundance. We are a beautifully diverse community here in this room. Friends who moved here far from their birthplace and first home; we are an intergenerational community, proudly LGBTQ and allies, BIPOC. And in this season of uncertainty and so much to hold in our call to love and justice, it is the gift that we have one another. This feeds us also.
Friends, it is no mistake or coincidence that at the heart of our tradition and faith is the feeding of people, in community. Even when we don’t know how, let us, in the spirit of deep hope, continue to gift and nourish our world, as Jesus did with unconditional grace, as we ourselves are also welcome to the table to be fed, this table of an abundant gift, where not one is turned away and ALL are filled, with leftovers, too.