Genesis
32:22-31 Matthew 14:13-21
Some
of you will know exactly what I’m talking about when I say, “Guess what day it
is. Guess… what day.. it is.” That is of course the famous talking camel from
the insurance company commercial reminding his co-workers that it is “hump day”-
Wednesday – the middle of the week. While many of us think of our days as
markers of what we must do or endure, today’s scriptures remind me instead of something
I read in an interview with Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, published in Inc. Magazine.
The
article was about Bezos’ ability to maintain their culture as a “start up”
company even as they grow and become more established as one of the biggest
retailers in our country. In the article, he said that the basic idea is to
remember that every day is “Day 1”, and every year he sends out the original
letter that he sent to his stakeholders and employees that maps out a vision
for who they’ll become. For them, it is always” Day 1” because that day is
marked with urgency and with the need to establish themselves in different ways
from competitors.
Not
only that but “Day 2” is stasis. Followed by
irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death.
And that is why it is always Day 1. To be sure,
this kind of decline would happen in extreme slow motion. An established
company might harvest Day 2 for decades, but the final result would still come.”
While I think it is a slippery slope to compare our congregation
to corporate models of success, and I have no idea of his faith or lack
thereof, I think that does sound a bit like the idea of being reformed and
always reforming. Those are the protestant watchwords that are supposed to keep
us focused on the priorities of God, because every day is Day 1 for the church
and for those who follow the way of Jesus. Every day is a day when we must make
the choice between vitality and decline.
For Jacob,
the precious nature of his present moment is very clear. You’ll remember that
he tricked his father and his brother out of blessing and birthright. Then he
ran for his life and had a vision of God’s active presence along the way. Then
he went to live with his Uncle Laban, who tried treated him unfairly but ended
up losing almost everything to Jacob. So now Jacob is on his way home – perhaps
to claim that birthright of inheritance – and he has to get past his brother, whose
last words were, “I’ll kill him.”
The
report is that Esau is coming with 400 men. Jacob was obviously terrified. He
broke his family and all his possessions into two groups, hoping one or the
other might escape, and he sent them on ahead. He had to think. Maybe he
thought Esau would spare them if he wasn’t with them. That seems to work in the
movies. Maybe he was hiding behind human shields. We don’t know. What we do
know is that he prayed the longest prayer recorded in Genesis, confessing his unworthiness
and thanking God for every last little thing.
And
God showed up and said, “You want a piece of me?” In what is probably one of
the more bizarre encounters with God, Jacob wrestles with God through the night
and is placed in a position of weakness and yet holds on and demands a
blessing. He is given a new name as the one who wrestled with God and was not
destroyed, but he does not walk away unchanged.
How
often do we demand blessings of God? How often do we wrestle with God and even
expect God to prove God’s self through results? Yet how often are we willing to
accept the need to go forward with a new identity, a new purpose, a new
understanding of who we are and what we do in the world, because it’s always
Day 1 for those who follow Jesus?
The
disciples found this out the hard way, as most of us usually do, when they
responded to the needs of the crowd in a typical fashion. “Send them away,
Jesus. Send them away before their hunger becomes our responsibility.” That’s
the core of their concern for the people. The people chose to come out. Some
came because they were ill or in order to bring others who were, but they came
by their own choice. If they stay too long, well then, the disciples will feel
responsible, having drawn a crowd late into the day.
Have
you ever wondered what day it was for them? How could so many leave field and
market to go listen to this man? The common question from those that do not go
to what appear to be spontaneous mass events rings in my ears, “Don’t they have
jobs?” The only time I’ve ever done anything like that has been in times that
the march is convenient or the band was interesting.
We
don’t know if it was the Sabbath or not, but the fact that they gathered
baskets of broken pieces of bread and fish tells us not only about the abundance
of God’s providence, but also that they valued it. No matter what day it was,
because of God’s providence it became Day 1.
It
became Day 1 because Jesus turned the question to the disciples and said, “Yes,
you are responsible. You give them something to eat.” The disciples responded
as we often do, “Lord, we just can’t. All we have is five loaves and a few
fish.” Now, some will say that the miracle of this event was found in the
sharing of a few things. The likelihood that no one had anything with them is
pretty low, and the most miraculous thing that happened was the breaking of
hearts in the breaking of bread.
That
may be so, but I think there’s more to it than that. In both of these stories
there is a movement that Roger Gen describes in Feasting on the Word as
moving from separation to illumination to unification. In Moments of crisis we
are forced to take a step back. As we look for solutions within and without we
find that God is with us revealing the way, and that way unites us with one
another in ways that restore and create new life.
And
while conflict certainly brings it out, the reality is that every interaction
with another soul holds the same possibility. H. Richard Niebuhr talked about
these moments of encounters with others as opportunities for
“self-transcendence” where there is always a third person in the conversation.
That third person is God, who “does not come to rest until the total community
of being is involved.”
In
other words, every interaction is a chance to experience, express, and explore
the love of God. It can be in the check-out line as easy as it can be at
church, but it will not happen until we see their struggles and joys as ours
and then turn them over to God.
That’s
part of what we have been doing through the Presbyterian Disaster Response. It’s
what we’re doing through the FoodNet food drive. It’s what students from the UL
Soul Camp did yesterday as they did service projects around town and on our
grounds, and yet I almost missed it. I almost missed the chance to talk and
share stories and find out what motivated those students to trim hedges,
pressure wash and weed around our shrubs.
It
was because they understood what day it was. Do we? It’s Day 1 and there is
another flood in New Orleans. It’s Day 1 and there are massive shifts in our
government that impact the lives of the most vulnerable. It’s Day 1 and our
police are in such a pressure cooker that they are becoming more reactionary
while others become more defiant. It’s Day 1 and there are massive numbers of
people without homes in our nation. It’s Day 1 and babies are being born into a
world where there is violence and scarcity, because we have not looked to God
for the abundance of God’s grace and mercy and love.
Yes,
here in this place, it is Day 1, and this table has been set so that we can
start with the blessing that sets us apart. We are not set apart as better
than. We are set apart as the ones who create value in a new way – through
placing what we see as scarcity into the hands of the One who shows us abundance!
Here
we purge the brokenness that separates us from God and one another through the
breaking of the bread. Here we see in a new light what God has done. Here we
are united through the generosity of God’s heart with all those that are not in
this place and are yet yearning for God’s grace.
And
tomorrow will be Day 1. And we’ll do it again, in a new way, in a new place,
with a new person and a new face – always and only to God’s glory. As we lift
what we think will never be enough up to God, let us be willing to be
transformed by the blessing we receive – even if we walk away limping. Amen.
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