SPEAKER_03: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_03: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_03: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: The Lord be with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_03: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_03: Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your church, and because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: A reading from Genesis.
SPEAKER_02: The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed to the ford of the Jabbek.
SPEAKER_02: He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.
SPEAKER_02: Jacob was left alone.
SPEAKER_02: And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
SPEAKER_02: And when the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip with a sock on his hip socket.
SPEAKER_02: And Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
SPEAKER_02: Then he said, Let me go, for the day is breaking.
SPEAKER_02: But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me.
SPEAKER_02: And so he said to him, What is your name?
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Jacob.
SPEAKER_02: And then the man said, You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel.
SPEAKER_02: For you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.
SPEAKER_02: And then Jacob asked, Please tell me your name.
SPEAKER_02: But he said, Why is it that you asked my name?
SPEAKER_02: And there he blessed him.
SPEAKER_02: So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.
SPEAKER_02: The sun rose upon him as he passed, Peniel, limping because of his hip.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_04: Psalm 17.
SPEAKER_04: Hear my plea of innocence, O Lord.
SPEAKER_04: Give heed to my cry.
SPEAKER_04: Listen to my prayer, which does not come from lying lips.
SPEAKER_04: Let my vindication come forth from your presence.
SPEAKER_04: Let your eyes be fixed on justice.
SPEAKER_04: Weigh my heart.
SPEAKER_04: Summon me by night.
SPEAKER_04: Melt me down.
SPEAKER_04: You will find no impurity in me.
SPEAKER_04: I give no offense with my mouth as others do.
SPEAKER_04: I have heeded the words of your lips.
SPEAKER_04: My footsteps hold fast to the ways of your law.
SPEAKER_04: In your path, and my feet shall not stumble.
SPEAKER_04: I call upon you, O God, for you will answer me.
SPEAKER_04: Incline your ear to me and hear my words.
SPEAKER_04: Show your marvelous loving kindness.
SPEAKER_04: O Savior of those who take refuge at your right hand from those who rise up against them.
SPEAKER_04: But all my vindication I shall see your face.
SPEAKER_04: When I awake, I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.
SPEAKER_00: I am speaking the truth in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I am not lying.
SPEAKER_00: I consciously tried by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I have great thoroughly and unfortunately anger in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Glory to you, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself, but when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.
SPEAKER_03: When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.
SPEAKER_03: When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late.
SPEAKER_03: Send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus said to them, They need not go away.
SPEAKER_03: You give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_03: They replied, We have nothing but five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus said, Bring them here to me.
SPEAKER_03: When he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and all ate and were filled.
SPEAKER_03: And we took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full, and those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
SPEAKER_03: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Praise to you, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Our story from Genesis is undeniably one of the oldest stories in the Hebrew Bible that there is.
SPEAKER_03: And I have to tell you, it has extreme appeal to me because for a number of years of my life, I was involved in a often underrecognized American cult, and that is the cult of wrestling.
SPEAKER_03: So unlike major sports like football and basketball, wrestling, especially in the South, is almost underground and has its own breed of fans and participants.
SPEAKER_03: And not only did I wrestle in high school, but I was a walk-on in my college.
SPEAKER_03: And later I ended up starting a wrestling team at a private Christian school that I worked at.
SPEAKER_03: And because we were Christian high school, we came up very quickly with the moniker for our team, Christian wrestling, and the tagline was God's only sport.
SPEAKER_03: And sure enough, this is the only time in the Hebrew Bible and in the Bible itself, so including the New Testament, where God perhaps gets physically involved.
SPEAKER_03: So wrestling does not get a lot of publicity.
SPEAKER_03: A lot of people don't necessarily understand the rules and situation, but actually the story we have today embodies a lot of the modern rules that we see in both high school and collegiate wrestling, and a lot's riding on the ambiguities in the story.
SPEAKER_03: So if I can set the scene, I'd like to.
SPEAKER_03: Remember that Jacob was born wrestling with his brother in the womb.
SPEAKER_03: And Jacob's not a very good wrestler, it turns out, because he loses the match with Esau.
SPEAKER_03: Esau's born first.
SPEAKER_03: He's not a good loser.
SPEAKER_03: So Jacob spends the rest of his life, at least his young life, trying to wrestle Esau out of being firstborn.
SPEAKER_03: But of course, we know you can't actually do that.
SPEAKER_03: So even though Jacob wrestles his brother out of the birthright, wrestles away the blessing from his father.
SPEAKER_03: He's got the accoutrements of being firstborn.
SPEAKER_03: He still isn't.
SPEAKER_03: Then he goes to his uncle's house.
SPEAKER_03: He's so afraid his brother Esau is going to kill him, he runs away.
SPEAKER_03: He goes to his uncle Laban, and sure enough, it turns out his uncle Laban is a little bit of a wrestler as well.
SPEAKER_03: Laban wrestles seven additional years out of Jacob.
SPEAKER_03: Jacob returns the favor by wrestling Laban's cattle away.
SPEAKER_03: Laban is so mad that Jacob thinks his chances are better with his brother Esau, who 21 years ago said, I'm going to kill you, than with his uncle Laban, who 21 minutes ago acted like he was going to kill him.
SPEAKER_03: So Jacob flees, and our story tonight today is the night before Jacob meets his brother.
SPEAKER_03: I've got to tell you, one of the things I love about going on pilgrimage is things like happy accidents.
SPEAKER_03: So this story has been very, very central to me because of my wrestling background.
SPEAKER_03: But when we were in Jordan in 2019 as a parish, we were coming back to Amman, having visited the city of Jerache, an old Roman ruin, and we stopped on a hill because the sunset, not the sunrise, was unbelievably gorgeous.
SPEAKER_03: And what we didn't know, happy accident, is that this, in fact, is the Jabbok River, and Pennyale is right over here.
SPEAKER_03: That's the place where the story happens.
SPEAKER_03: Now Jacob is going to send all of his wives and servants and cattle across the Jabbok.
SPEAKER_03: He does that during the day to try to distract and appease his brother.
SPEAKER_03: Now do notice he certainly sends himself last.
SPEAKER_03: So he's offering his brother all of his children, all of his wives, all of his wealth, and takes it does that first.
SPEAKER_03: So he tries to minimize his risk that Esau is going to kill him.
SPEAKER_03: If Esau starts attacking the wives and children, then Jacob will have the opportunity to flee.
SPEAKER_03: He's done that.
SPEAKER_03: And it's the night before he goes to meet his brother.
SPEAKER_03: And then this curious scene happens where a man comes and wrestles with Jacob all night.
SPEAKER_03: Now I want to tell you this was a PhD seminar I took when I was thinking about being a professor of Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_03: And this was my this was my paper for this PhD seminar, is this particular story and all of the ambiguity that's based in it.
SPEAKER_03: And ambiguity number one is who starts the match?
SPEAKER_03: The story doesn't tell us.
SPEAKER_03: We don't know.
SPEAKER_03: So we can imagine that Jacob does or that this person does.
SPEAKER_03: Who is the person is ambiguity number two.
SPEAKER_03: Is this a bandit who's coming to rob Jacob in the night?
SPEAKER_03: Is it God?
SPEAKER_03: Jacob sure says he's seen God's face and lived the next day.
SPEAKER_03: Is it an angel?
SPEAKER_03: Because after all, surely God won't lose a wrestling match if God's all powerful.
SPEAKER_03: Is it Esau?
SPEAKER_03: Is it possible that Jacob is wrestling Esau in the night?
SPEAKER_03: Another possibility, this one's going to sound very strange, but in an ancient Hebrew thought, there were spirits that lived in particular places, like spirits of rivers and spirits of trees, particularly tall ones.
SPEAKER_03: So Hermann Gunkel, a Hebrew Bible scholar from Germany in the 1800s, identified that Jacob is wrestling the river spirit that guards the place for essentially the right to cross.
SPEAKER_03: Is Jacob wrestling as the sixth option?
SPEAKER_03: Is he wrestling himself and trying to shake down his identity as to who he's going to be?
SPEAKER_03: I think the ambiguity is really, really important, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
SPEAKER_03: As the scene unfolds, we don't actually know how the match is going.
SPEAKER_03: And if you've ever wrestled, and I had an older brother who introduced me to wrestling long before I took up the sport, it can be extremely intense.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, I would tell you, and I hope you don't feel put down by me saying this, I am confident that wrestling is the hardest sport that there is.
SPEAKER_03: And a collegiate match is seven minutes long, a high school match is six minutes.
SPEAKER_03: And I would have people tell me that's such a short time.
SPEAKER_03: And I think only people who have not participated in the sport would say that because it is 100% anaerobic and aerobic at the same time.
SPEAKER_03: You know, three minutes is actually a really long time to wrestle.
SPEAKER_03: Jacob does this all night, so presumably for hours.
SPEAKER_03: We don't know if there's any scorekeeping.
SPEAKER_03: We don't know if there's hitting or kicking and or biting involved, and we don't even know if Jacob is racking up points or if he's just being beaten senseless, quite honestly.
SPEAKER_03: But we do know that to the story it's really important that Jacob not see the opponent.
SPEAKER_03: Because if Jacob sees the opponent, all of the wonderful ambiguity is gone.
SPEAKER_03: And of course, if the opponent's actually God, the tradition says that if you see God's face, you die.
SPEAKER_03: And having Jacob die prematurely would not work out very well for the patriarchal narratives in Genesis.
SPEAKER_03: So the opponent could have been beating Jacob all night, but all of a sudden needs to get away.
SPEAKER_03: And perhaps Jacob's been thrashed, but he's holding on to his opponent's heel, just like when he was born.
SPEAKER_03: It's critical that the opponent get away before the sunrise.
SPEAKER_03: For what it's worth, in the contemporary sport of wrestling, especially in folk-style wrestling that happens in high school and college, if you're tied with an opponent at the end of three two-minute periods, that's high school, or a three-minute, a two-minute, and two-minute period, that's college, you embark on a sudden death overtime.
SPEAKER_03: That is, the first person to score any kind of point wins.
SPEAKER_03: If you go through that period and no one scores, you get another overtime.
SPEAKER_03: Same rules.
SPEAKER_03: If nobody has scored, then there's a coin toss, and uh the winner of the coin toss can pick to be on the bottom position or the top position.
SPEAKER_03: If you're on the bottom and you get away, you got 30 seconds, you win.
SPEAKER_03: If you don't get away, you lose.
SPEAKER_03: And this is like uh third sudden death overtime between Jacob and the opponent.
SPEAKER_03: The opponent has to get away, and Jacob just won't let go.
SPEAKER_03: So the opponent does something that is also ambiguous.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, the read we got today is that the opponent touches Jacob in his hip and puts his hip out of socket.
SPEAKER_03: Again, Jacob could have been mauled all night, but this really says his fortitude.
SPEAKER_03: He's not letting go.
SPEAKER_03: And certainly the story goes on.
SPEAKER_03: Jacob walks with a limp, and there's another explanation that says this is why uh in kosher food laws uh this part of the hip meat is not eaten, because this is where Jacob was touched by the opponent and his hip was put out of socket.
SPEAKER_03: Now you have to know that putting your hip out of socket takes uh superhuman force.
SPEAKER_03: So that would lend us to think this is either the river spirit or it's an angel or it's God.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: Esau is unlikely to be able to hit Jacob in the hip and knock his hip out of socket.
SPEAKER_03: But you should know that there's another way.
SPEAKER_03: Uh Hebrew only has 10,000 words in the whole language and often resorts to euphemisms.
SPEAKER_03: It seems like Hebrew in the Bible was actually written by 16th century Puritans from time to time, because there's no words, frankly, for uh for sexual things or for organs.
SPEAKER_03: So, for example, often in Hebrew, um feet is a word in Hebrew that's a euphemism for male genitals.
SPEAKER_03: It turns out that palm is another one that is a potential euphemism for male genitals, and so in this story, uh the translation in Hebrew, the Hebrew language says that the opponent hit Jacob in the palm of his hip.
SPEAKER_03: So it's very possible it's his hip.
SPEAKER_03: It's very possible, though, that the opponent gives Jacob a low blow.
SPEAKER_03: Low blows can be demoralizing when you're a freshman wrestler, I have to tell you.
SPEAKER_03: But beyond the freshman year, people do not resort to the low blow because more often than not, it does not encourage someone to give up, but it rather steals their will to overcome flagrant injustice in a wrestling match.
SPEAKER_03: So it's very possible the opponent gives Jacob a low blow and a boomerang.
SPEAKER_03: We don't know which one happens.
SPEAKER_03: Either way, it's such a low blow that Jacob walks with a limp here on out.
SPEAKER_03: And that is certainly a possibility that a human being could do, whether it's a bandit or Esau.
SPEAKER_03: As I said, it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_03: Time is running out.
SPEAKER_03: The opponent is going to lose this third sudden death over time.
SPEAKER_03: And Jacob says, I won't let you go unless you bless me.
SPEAKER_03: As I mentioned, Hebrew is a word poor language.
SPEAKER_03: What's curious in the Hebrew Bible is that there are two words for blessing.
SPEAKER_03: One word for blessing is always positive.
SPEAKER_03: Like when we bless God, that's positive.
SPEAKER_03: There's another word for blessing, though, that has a dual meaning.
SPEAKER_03: The word can be translated either as bless or curse.
SPEAKER_03: And context is the one that provides the clue.
SPEAKER_03: So it's helpful to hear that when we're reading scripture, every translation is an interpretation, particularly in situations like this one.
SPEAKER_03: And I want you to hear that the word here used in Genesis is of case number two.
SPEAKER_03: This could be a blessing or it could be a curse.
SPEAKER_03: Jacob says, I won't go unless you bless me.
SPEAKER_03: And the opponent says, What's your name?
SPEAKER_03: Jacob replies, My name is Jacob, which means lots of different things.
SPEAKER_03: Wrestler, supplanter, heel grabber in the sense of used car salesman who puts sawdust into motors, swindler, crook.
SPEAKER_03: Why his parents would name him that is tough.
SPEAKER_03: So heel grab is literal, but the figurative meaning is this guy wrestles and tries to snatch and get all he can, and sure enough, that's who he is.
SPEAKER_03: Well, the person says, your name is no longer going to be Jacob, it's going to be Israel.
SPEAKER_03: Which means, curiously enough, somebody who wrestles against, strives against, grabs the heel of God.
SPEAKER_03: The opponent says you have wrestled against God and humans and you have prevailed.
SPEAKER_03: But they put to you now is wrestling and striving and trying to sweep swindle and cheat and get whatever you can out of God, is it a blessing or is it a curse?
SPEAKER_03: And this is the moniker for the chosen people of Israel.
SPEAKER_03: These are the people who wrestle against God.
SPEAKER_03: Again, just to make sure we are tracking the ambiguity of the phrase, this is like saying, bless your heart.
SPEAKER_03: There are moments in which having your heart blessed is really sweet.
SPEAKER_03: Most of the time, having somebody bless your heart, though, is deprecatory, and you do not want your heart blessed.
SPEAKER_03: Which one happens to Jacob?
SPEAKER_03: Jacob asks the opponent, well, what's your name?
SPEAKER_03: And the opponent, see, this is again important, does not undo the ambiguity of the scene.
SPEAKER_03: The opponent says, Why do you ask my name?
SPEAKER_03: Now there's a couple of reasons for that.
SPEAKER_03: Perhaps the opponent's name is too wonderful to behold.
SPEAKER_03: Knowing the name, again, undoes the ambiguity that I'm going to return to in a second, that I think is critical for the story.
SPEAKER_03: Third, if this is God's personal name, it hasn't been given out yet.
SPEAKER_03: That doesn't happen until the burning bush scene in Exodus, which is several chapters away.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, that's in another book.
SPEAKER_03: The opponent leaves.
SPEAKER_03: Jacob calls the place Pennyale because he says, I have seen God's face and I've lived.
SPEAKER_03: And again, it's a real place.
SPEAKER_03: It's right there.
SPEAKER_03: What about this ambiguity business?
SPEAKER_03: I have to tell you what I think is really.
SPEAKER_03: Interesting having wrestled is that there is in every match ambiguity as to who the opponent is.
SPEAKER_03: So I will tell you some matches you are wrestling the opponent who is in front of you.
SPEAKER_03: And you win or lose based on their effort, but also what you put into it.
SPEAKER_03: So I would tell you, you are often also wrestling against your own pain threshold.
SPEAKER_03: Being technically advanced as a wrestler does not guarantee victory.
SPEAKER_03: Having ins and outs of tricky maneuvers, including low blows, like we hear about in the story, does not guarantee victory.
SPEAKER_03: My college wrestling coach, in fact, told me that we were all a bunch of, I'm trying to think quite how he used the term here, weak-minded is probably the most correct term, because there was a wrestler at another school who broke his leg and continued to wrestle the match with a broken leg.
SPEAKER_03: And when the referee said, you can't wrestle with that broken leg, he said, ow.
SPEAKER_03: This was a demoralizing story because it told us what our coach expected of us, which quite honestly uh would have put me in a superhuman realm if I'd been able to produce, but I couldn't.
SPEAKER_03: I will also tell you sometimes there are superhuman opponents.
SPEAKER_03: Like once when I was in college, I went to an open tournament and I wrestled as an opponent.
SPEAKER_03: He was much older, he was 25 years old, and I was only 19.
SPEAKER_03: Um, this guy who'd taken third in the Olympic qualifiers.
SPEAKER_03: So um he was older, he was in my age group, um, sorry, my weight class, and uh I will tell you at 149, he is the strongest human being I've ever encountered.
SPEAKER_03: And wrestling somebody who's taken third in Olympic qualifiers is sort of like wrestling God, or at least an angel.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I would tell you, I did not prevail against my adversary, even though I was really happy to lose based on points.
SPEAKER_03: Um, there is this other, I think, interesting thing that when you think about wrestling against, and I can tell you, having an older brother who wrestled, in some ways I was wrestling against my brother and his achievements, and wrestling to find my own identity because I came second every time I went on the mat.
SPEAKER_03: I was wrestling against the expectations, real or imagined, of my parents who were at every single match for me, and of people who knew I was in the wrestling cult when they would come to matches.
SPEAKER_03: One time we had a match during school hours and the gym was packed.
SPEAKER_03: It's probably the only wrestling match I've ever been to that was packed.
SPEAKER_03: I was wrestling against their expectations.
SPEAKER_03: And by wrestling against so many opponents at the same time, I was striving in my own way of thinking, I was striving against God.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I do think this is important to draw a couple of thoughts here before we look at feeding 5,000 people.
SPEAKER_03: I think my faith life actually has me wrestling against ambiguous opponents, and more often than not, I think my faith life has me wrestling against the wrong ones.
SPEAKER_03: That is to say, uh, I grew up with this tradition that God uh doesn't particularly like us but loves us a whole lot, uh, so much so that God will die for us so that we don't have to go to hell.
SPEAKER_03: But in general, we're not very pleasing to God because we're kind of worthless, filthy rag kind of people, and we're always messing it up, and that's just really painful for God.
SPEAKER_03: So to be honest with you, a lot of my spiritual life has been trying to wrestle with sin and perfection and trying to wrestle into God's good graces.
SPEAKER_03: And I would tell you, I think I've been wrestling the wrong match for a long time.
SPEAKER_03: Instead of wrestling to believe, and I mean really believe in the core of my being, that there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I can do to God make God love me less, instead of wrestling to accept that and exude that.
SPEAKER_03: I've spent a lot of my spiritual life wrestling for God's acceptance.
SPEAKER_03: It makes me wonder who started the match?
SPEAKER_03: Jacob or God?
SPEAKER_03: And what if God came up on the eve of Jacob meeting his brother to say, Jacob, let this go.
SPEAKER_03: Be reconciled.
SPEAKER_03: I'm on the side of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_03: I want to give you my blessing to be reconciled.
SPEAKER_03: And Jacob started the fight.
SPEAKER_03: I wonder what would have happened if instead of holding on, trying to take something from God, trying to earn redemption or a class raise in the kingdom of heaven, Jacob had enough trust in God to just let go so that God could give a blessing instead of Jacob trying to steal one.
SPEAKER_03: What's going to play out in the story is that Esau meets Jacob with open arms.
SPEAKER_03: And I think it's a fair read to say Esau is tired of living in exile from his family.
SPEAKER_03: He wants his family made whole.
SPEAKER_03: But Jacob cannot trust his brother because Jacob himself is not trustworthy.
SPEAKER_03: And so rather than believing in redemption and forgiveness, Jacob believes in wrestling.
SPEAKER_03: And I put this question to you as we think about our spiritual journey.
SPEAKER_03: Do we believe and trust in God's goodness?
SPEAKER_03: Or do we believe in wrestling and wrangling out of God and wrestling and wrangling out of other people?
SPEAKER_03: Are we so threatened by opinions, be they political, or thoughts on, frankly, the sin of the world, whether that's race or whether or not people are wearing their masks during COVID?
SPEAKER_03: Are we so threatened by those that we turn them into cutthroat wrestling matches when instead maybe we're called at these river crossing moments, at these opportunities for transition and go into a new land or even to return to an old one and be reconciled, that we turn them into fisti-cuffed battles.
SPEAKER_03: So fast forward, Jesus has been teaching a bunch of people, 5,000 men, we don't know how many women and children all day long, and it's getting late.
SPEAKER_03: The disciples have some foodstuffs among them.
SPEAKER_03: They brought food presumably for themselves.
SPEAKER_03: And maybe 10% of the residual would come up with some really bad wine by our standards, like two buck chuck from Trader Joe's, maybe some olives if you were lucky, or some olive oil to go with the bread, pomegranates or figs, and if you live near the Sea of Galilee, maybe some fish.
SPEAKER_03: So the disciples have got some loaves and they've got some fish.
SPEAKER_03: We don't know if the loaves are just mini loaves like biscuits, or if these are in fact five, two-pound loaves, which would provide a meal.
SPEAKER_03: Like one of the meals for the disciples and for Jesus as well.
SPEAKER_03: Keep in mind the disciples have been listening and learning all day.
SPEAKER_03: They're tired of listening.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you've been doing a lot of Zoom meetings during this quarantine.
SPEAKER_03: It's really easy to be exhausted by your own learning.
SPEAKER_03: And then there's all these other people who need taking care of.
SPEAKER_03: And so they say, and I think not without compassion, Jesus, consider their needs.
SPEAKER_03: These people are hungry, they've been here all day, and it's time to send them so that they can take care of themselves.
SPEAKER_03: So would you do that?
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus starts an interesting match here.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus really throws down a new wrestling match with his disciples and says, We don't need to send them away.
SPEAKER_03: You give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_03: They reply in due course, right?
SPEAKER_03: Look, we don't have anything close, what it would take to feed these people.
SPEAKER_03: All we've got is enough meal for ourselves.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, we're just trying to take care of ourselves, and we only seem to have enough to do that.
SPEAKER_03: I know that feeling.
SPEAKER_03: What do we have left for so many people?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, imagine that Jesus is at a protest and there's all these people protesting, and they gotta eat, and what are they gonna do?
SPEAKER_03: Abandon their protest and go home?
SPEAKER_03: Some of them may or may not have money.
SPEAKER_03: They don't have to necessarily be poor people in the story.
SPEAKER_03: But Jesus says to his followers, you give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_03: Share some nourishment with them.
SPEAKER_03: And in this way, the the story I think recalls the parable of the sower.
SPEAKER_03: Remember that the seed that falls on the good soil produces 60, a hundredfold as to what was sown.
SPEAKER_03: That's a really, really high standard.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to tell you that if you hold that standard in a wrestling match with God, you are probably going to lose.
SPEAKER_03: That has been my standard of point scoring in my spiritual life for a long time.
SPEAKER_03: God expects me to convert 60 people to Christianity or to improve the lives of a hundred people.
SPEAKER_03: It's such a high standard that I often feel like I'm losing.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to suggest to you, I think it's because we frame the match the wrong way.
SPEAKER_03: What if instead of wrestling with God, and what if instead of hearing Jesus telling his disciples, I've thrown down the gauntlet, you feed all these people, or you have lousy faith, what if Jesus is saying, we actually need to do what wrestling taught me to do more than anything, examine our own pain threshold and go deeper because there's a hungry world out there.
SPEAKER_03: In moments of tiredness, in moments where it just seems like we can barely survive, there is something that all the research I've read suggests, which is that compassion is not like the commodities market.
SPEAKER_03: There's not only so much to give around.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, the more we practice giving compassion, the more we have to offer.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes compassion brings us to the conclusion of saying, no, I cannot help you.
SPEAKER_03: But we do that with compassion and we set boundaries.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I think we jump to the no without having done the struggle.
SPEAKER_03: And in this story, Jesus invites the disciples to struggle.
SPEAKER_03: Notice that they don't come up with the solution.
SPEAKER_03: They come up with a very, very limited resource that in the hands of Jesus is not just enough, it's more than enough.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus asked his disciples to accompany these people who have come, who are starving for nourishment, in this case, physical, but I think so often in our own cases, that nourishment people are starving for, ourselves included, are things like hope and justice.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus asks his disciples to dig deep, to wrestle against the limits they'd set for themselves, to increase their compassion on behalf of those who are hungry.
SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the day, not only does everybody get a meal, but there's more than enough.
SPEAKER_03: Now at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas, we say that we can do more together.
SPEAKER_03: And my prayer is we hear this story in the middle of a starving world.
SPEAKER_03: People whose physical needs might be met, but who are socially isolated, people who are politically isolated, as we hear messages, be they on social media or through targeted ads, that it's either this or that.
SPEAKER_03: That it's either we vote a particular way or we hate America.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus is asking us to try and nourish a hungry world with hope.
SPEAKER_03: That we wrestle not against God to try to earn our place of merit, but we wrestle in order to make sure that God's undying love is known to all.
SPEAKER_03: And sometimes that means wrestling with the way we use language.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes that means wrestling with the way that we look at people that we drive by in our cars.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes that means wrestling with our own tendency to call people things instead of call out behaviors.
SPEAKER_03: I pray that we will do more together and that we will wrestle with ourselves, with our pain threshold, with our ability to offer compassion so that we can feed, like the disciples, like Jesus, an increasingly hungry world.
SPEAKER_03: And I pray that we will have the wisdom, the discernment, and the serenity to know when to let God go in trust and faith so that we can wrestle battles that are more proper and more life-giving.
SPEAKER_03: Let us renew and reconsider our faith in the words of the Iona Creed.
SPEAKER_03: We believe that God is present in the darkness before dawn, in the waiting and uncertainty where fear and courage join hands, conflict and caring link arms, and the sun rises over barbed wire.
SPEAKER_03: We believe in a with us God who sits down in our midst to share our humanity.
SPEAKER_03: We affirm a faith that takes us beyond a safe place, into action, into vulnerability, and onto the streets.
SPEAKER_03: We commit ourselves to work for change and put ourselves on the line, to bear responsibility, take risks, live powerfully and face humiliation, to stand with those on the edge, to choose life and be used by the Spirit for God's new community of hope.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We pray you and we thank you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For the courage you can create, and the resistance that you make every day.
SPEAKER_01: Encourage those in despair, and lead us all into fullness of life.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, hear our prayer.
SPEAKER_03: And now the peace of the Lord be always with you and also with you.
SPEAKER_03: And uh grateful to report that we had a successful food distribution on uh August 1.
SPEAKER_03: And this is a really exciting project we've been doing throughout the pandemic, offering uh upwards of 40 pounds worth of fresh groceries to people who drive through our parking lot the first Saturday of every month.
SPEAKER_03: Huge thanks to our volunteers for helping that, and I hope it will make you happy to hear that we've had people just ask through email or phone call when they've read about this in the paper, do we need help and can they come and serve?
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas for helping us do more together.
SPEAKER_03: We are starting right now a Zoom series on a book called Bridges Out of Poverty.
SPEAKER_03: The Episcopal Health Foundation does trainings on this.
SPEAKER_03: Many credential teachers in the Houston area are required to do this because it it provides a really helpful schematic in how it is that people are able actually to make meaningful progress and how we might get behind them as an institution that promotes justice to do so.
SPEAKER_03: So I commend this to you.
SPEAKER_03: We're reading this on Sunday mornings, basically three chapters a week.
SPEAKER_03: You can join us on Zoom, but if you choose not to join the Zoom, this book is worth your while.
SPEAKER_03: Again, it's called Bridges Out of Poverty.
SPEAKER_03: Later this month, we'll be offering a study on Wednesdays that will be recorded.
SPEAKER_03: So there'll be an opportunity if if the morning time is not convenient for you, to join us later in the evening via recording and have questions answered through the meeting.
SPEAKER_03: This is a curriculum called Dismantling Racism.
SPEAKER_03: It's been put out by the Diocese of Atlanta.
SPEAKER_03: And it's relatively short, it's about six weeks long, six meetings.
SPEAKER_03: It's extremely thoughtful and accessible, and I commend it to you.
SPEAKER_03: It was frankly pinned with youth in mind, but is is really accessible and creative.
SPEAKER_03: And so we'll be doing that in the end of the month.
SPEAKER_03: So please do let me know if you're interested in joining us for the study Dismantling Racism.
SPEAKER_03: Our school is Set to open here at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas School, and that'll be pre-K3 all the way through the fifth grade.
SPEAKER_03: It's set to open on Tuesday, August to the 18th.
SPEAKER_03: As a religious institution, we are exempt from the judge's order in Harris County that has closed public schools through September 8th.
SPEAKER_03: We have a panel of experts, frankly, who have worked really, really hard to think about how we can do schooling safely but physically as well.
SPEAKER_03: And I just would be grateful for your prayers as we start.
SPEAKER_03: These are obviously extremely challenging times, not only for our school, but for families and for children and teachers.
SPEAKER_03: So please continue to pray for St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas School as we get ready to gear up.
SPEAKER_03: Many people have asked about McWurder and our normal school supply drive, and we've been told to wait.
SPEAKER_03: So I will have news as soon as it's available on what their needs are and how we can support them meaningfully.
SPEAKER_03: And just like Johnson Space Center across the street, we've been pushing that in two-week intervals according to case counts.
SPEAKER_03: Right now, the next targeted date is the 16th of August.
SPEAKER_03: That would be the Sunday right before St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas School opens.
SPEAKER_03: You'll see confirmation of that in our e-news.
SPEAKER_03: And again, we'll we'll ask people to sign up via Signp Genius so that we can have space distance spaced worship and Eucharist will be of one kind of bread only.
SPEAKER_03: So please do just notice, just pay attention to the e-news as the vestry makes that decision.
SPEAKER_03: It is a hard, hard time as we try to do things like be the community that's so meaningful here at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas.
SPEAKER_03: And huge thanks to people who are helping keep us in touch with, we have a care team that's calling in addition to our vestry.
SPEAKER_03: And thank you for your continued financial faithfulness, even though we're not able to gather physically.
SPEAKER_03: Extremely grateful for your support of St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas right now, and uh looking forward with all my heart to worshiping together safely and soon.
SPEAKER_03: And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray.
SPEAKER_03: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_03: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: May God, who by the Holy Spirit calls those of many languages and world views to proclaim Jesus' Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.
SPEAKER_03: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this day and remain with you always.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Alleluia, Alleluia, go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_03: Alleluia, Alleluia.