Sermon Preached by The Rev. Sam Frazier, Vicar

Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Haw River, NC

August 2, 2009

Proper 13, Year B
One of my favorite literary characters is Sherlock Holmes, who I think is probably the greatest detective character in literature.  Some of you may not agree, preferring a more recent character like Agatha Christie.  But I will stick with Holmes.  In all the stories about him and his assistant, Watson, he is able to find clues and facts where none seem to exist.  He is always able to solve even the most strange crime.

In a court of law, the judge, and the jury if there is one, insist on having proof whenever charges or allegations are made.  That proof must consist of data, of real, verifiable facts, because the decision making of our system of justice proceeds only on that basis.  By the same token, when it comes to God’s relationship with us and his activity in the world, more often than not we set ourselves up as judge and jury, requiring him to prove himself.  We demand proof that God loves us.  We demand proof that God is working his will in human society.  And when this proof we demand is not verifiable scientific data, then we lean back, sigh, and wonder if God really exists or if he is really at work in the world.

But our desire for proof is not new.  Over 3200 years ago, a group of Israelite clans and tribes, who had much earlier settled in Egypt, became tired of their bondage.  They were being used by the Pharaoh Ramses II as part of a vast construction team building a new city in the Nile delta region which Ramses was building in his honor and which he called Pi-Ramses.  Sometime during his reign which lasted from 1290-1224 B.C., those Israelite clans and tribes managed to break free of his control and escape Egypt.  They did not want to build his cities and temples and memorials.  They did not want to be his slaves.  You know the story of how they escaped their bondage in Egypt.  Remember how under the leadership of Moses and Aaron this group of Israelites left Egypt and traveled for 40 years through the Sinai peninsula.  This morning’s alternate Old Testament reading records one event which occurred during their travels.

It seems that the Israelites were complaining to Moses that they were hungry and had no food.  Some were even wondering why they had left Egypt.  They had no proof that God was with them and that he was protecting them.  All that they knew was that they were hungry.  After all that God had done to rescue and protect his people, they were demanding more from him.  More proof!  If God can sigh, he must have sighed.  But once more he provided the proof – he sent them food!  That night, thousands of quail flew into the Israelite camp, giving them plenty to eat.  Then in the morning they woke to find white flakes covering the ground.  They tasted like bread, so they could be eaten.  Once more, God had provided.  God had given the Israelites the proof they had clamored for.  According to the Biblical account, God performed these miracles for a reason.  He said, “then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”  But God’s words were ignored.  Again and again the children of Israel demanded proof from God, proof that he loved them, proof that he was involved in their daily lives, proof that he would protect them.

The Gospel for today is a continuation of that same theme: God’s people continue to demand proof from him.  Today’s Gospel reading is about an event that occurs just after the feeding of the 5,000.  This meal was a momentous experience.  In that event, God showed his true colors, not in the miraculous filling of 5,000 empty stomachs, but in giving those people a taste, a glimpse, a sign of the kind of relationship they could expect to have with God.

We are called to proclaim that whoever comes to Jesus will never hunger and whoever believes in Jesus will never thirst.  But at the same time we know that we and others still become hungry, and we still become thirsty.  Each year millions of people die from hunger and thirst.  So we who are well fed have a responsibility to work to develop food sources and to oppose those whose greed and oppression cause so many people in our time to suffer and die because of lack of food and safe water to drink.

After the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus left and sought solitude.  But many of the people who had been in the crowd tried to follow him, to follow him because they wanted more from him.  If he could feed them so miraculously, then he could also do other things for them, they must have reasoned.  When they finally caught up with Jesus, he turned to them and said, “You seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”  He was reminding them that they were so eagerly seeking him out because he had miraculously fed them, and not because of what that experience meant for them.  Jesus then chastised them and told them that they should have come to him because of the signs given, and because of what their experience means for mankind.  He was telling them that they should not come running after him because they wanted him to perform another miracle, because they wanted proof of what he could do for them.

He went on to say, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”  In so saying, he was trying to communicate to them that a faith based on wonders and miracles in the physical world is worthless.  It is worthless, he said, because the real gift of God is not bread miraculously produced for your body, but bread for your spirit.  And we get this spiritual bread by doing the works of God.  The people around him must have almost shouted out their response to him: “What must we do to perform the works of God?”  They wanted to know how they could earn the real gift of God, the food that satisfies forever.  Jesus told them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”  His answer is that we can never work enough to earn God’s gift, nor will we be truly convinced by miracles.  Our only requirement is to believe.  The immediate response of the people gathered around Jesus is the basic cry of all humanity: “Sir, give us this bread always.”

The Gospel says, proof is not the answer.  The Gospel says, miracles are not the answer.  The answer to whether or not God loves us; the answer to whether or not God is at work in our world, the answer to those questions is obtained by recognizing the signs of God’s love and activity in the world around us, and by believing.  There may not be any proof for you and for me.  There may not be a miracle for you and for me.  Yet God is very evident for those of us who believe.  St. Augustine put it this way: “We do not come to Christ by running or walking, but by believing, not by the motion of the body, but by the will of the mind.”

The ancient Israelites sought proof from God that he would protect them.  The Jews who gathered around Jesus wanted more proof, more miracles.  Too often we demand proof from God.  Too often we demand miracles from God.  But ultimately, the Gospel says, there is no proof.  Ultimately, there are no miracles.  Ultimately, it is simply you and me confronted with the reality of God’s love and activity in the here and now.  It is simply you and me making a simple but profound choice – Yes Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief.  Yes Lord, I believe that You have acted and that You continue to act in my life during every moment of every day.

Thanks be to God.  AMEN.