Faith and Multitudes

Thursday, January 25, 2007 -- Week of 3 Epiphany -- Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 944)
Psalms 50 (morning) // [59, 60] or 118 (evening)
Isaiah 49:13-23
Galatians 3:1-14
Mark 6:30-46

Reading Mark's version of the feeding of the multitude speaks to a personal anxiety for me today. Mark's story opens with the busyness of the apostles who gather around Jesus to tell him everything they've been up to. Jesus invites them away on retreat. (Today is my day off.) But on their way to the deserted place, a crowd with many needs interposes itself. Out of compassion, Jesus teaches them until late in the day.

The disciples tell Jesus to dismiss the crowd to return to the villages to find food. Then Jesus offers a challenge: "You give them something to eat." As ministers and vestries and boards of trustees have done for centuries ever since, they made a budget. Five loaves and two fish for five thousand hungry mouths.

For more than a year I've been working with an incredible group of disciples to pull together the resources to build a much-needed supportive and transitional housing facility through Seven Hills. We face a daunting challenge. Right now we need to raise a little over $500,000, going person to person, foundation to foundation. I wake up worried in the early morning hours. "You give them something to eat." Where will we get that kind of money? It feels like it will take something on the magnitude of the five-loaves-and-two-fish-for-five-thousand.

Yet I know, from the beginning, that homeless ministry has been founded on faith. We've never known where the resources would come from, and they've always been supplied. I count on that. We all work real hard, yes, but it is work grounded in head-shaking faith. I only wish my stomach and my sleep would follow my faith.

Speaking of faith, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul we read some more of his passionate argument about the centrality of faith. Chapter 3 opens "You foolish Galatians!" (Chuck used that as the title of a Galatians Bible Study.)

For Paul, the conflict is between our trying to earn our standing before God -- which is impossible, he says -- and our accepting our standing before God as a gracious gift mediated through Jesus. Keeping all of the law is impossible, and Deuteronomy 27 curses everyone who does not keep the entire law. In ancient thought it was believed that a counter curse was required to break a curse. Christ's death by crucifixion broke the curse of the law, because "cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" (Deuteronomy 21:23).

Therefore, Paul urges, believe in Christ's cross as freedom from the curse of trying to earn your standing before God. Abraham is our model, says Paul. Abraham believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Abraham believed the promise God made that all of the nations, including the Gentiles, would be blessed through him, through his descendants. (Descendants, or descendant? That's tomorrow.) Abraham lived out of that belief and he was reckoned as righteous.

As someone who feels weighed down by the pressure of "performance" -- measured right now in a half-million dollar increment -- I need the faith of Paul and the inspiration of Jesus feeding the multitudes. Okay... I believe... Now maybe I can even feel my stomach settle a bit.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, AR