Often during the work week, I stay at a
friend’s house in South Bend. She is
the head of the Irish Literature department at the library at the University of
Notre Dame, her husband is a professor at Western Michigan University. So they bought this tiny little two bedroom
house in South Bend as a sort of rest stop for my friend Aedin, and she’s
invited me to stay whenever I want. This
past couple of weeks, she’s been away and I’ve had the house to myself, and I’d
gotten quite used to being there alone.
But Thursday night sometime while I slept, she came in. I didn’t hear her at all, but next morning
early I found a sticky note near my bedroom door, saying, “Hi Barbara! Don’t
worry, it’s only me!”
“It’s only me.” If you take a few seconds to think about it,
those few words are full of meaning.
“It’s only me.” Don’t worry, you
are safe and secure.
But
this little word, “me” is a really kind
of a big word. “Me,” is a small word
that attempts to encompasses all of who I am, which is to say, my experiences,
memories, thoughts, fears beyond knowing---more than any one word can describe.
“Me,” in this sense is so much more than
“only.” “Only me,” when we look closely,
is absurd, it is a contradiction in terms.
Writer, and teacher, Patty de Llosa
takes up this thought, “Usually when I, you, we, think about the question
of “Who am I?” we associate it with the
great enigma of being human . . . usually when we take it up, we suspect it’s
unanswerable, and . . . . move on. But the other day it took me by surprise. I was
caught up saying something I didn’t believe, and an inner voice asked, ‘Who is
this person?’ That’s when the great revelation came to me that we are asking it
all day long, deep inside.”
“Everyone is caught up in the question,
from the small child who cries for his mother or says ‘Look what I can do!’ to
the elderly woman who dreads a maneuver across the street with a cane, to the
Olympian athlete trying to maintain her edge. All of them are asking ‘Who am
I?’ all the time.”
“It may take the form of ‘Can I do this?’ or ‘What are people thinking
of me?’ or ‘I’m better than he/she is’ .
. . and deep inside us---we all know this, know that we don’t know how we are
doing or what the outcome will be. Life’s
other name is uncertainty. So whenever
we wake up from functioning on automatic pilot and become conscious of
ourselves in any moment, we are asking the question, ‘Who is this person who I
am?’”
“Ever since that experience, I’ve begun
to notice it more often. The question is always there, below my mind. In fact, I’ve come to conclude that the state
of asking ‘Who am I?’ may be what we call Presence. Perhaps it should be
an active verb so we could say I am presencing the miracle of my being
in the world. Here and now, in this place.”[1]
Clearly we are created in God’s image in this
matter of “presencing . . . the miracle . . . .
of being in the world.” Remember when
God startled Moses from the Burning Bush?
God identified Godself as an active verb: “I am who I am,” which, at
the same time may be translated, “I shall be who I shall be.” Because, in ancient Hebrew, there is no
sense of time, of past or future---everything that IS, is in what we would
describe as the “present tense.” Or, you could also say that in Hebrew, all
tenses are covered, so God identifies as “I am who I was, who I am, and who I
shall be.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am.)
In
this morning’s gospel (John 6:1-21) this question of identity comes up again. “When
evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started
across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark . . . .the sea became rough
because a strong wind was blowing.” It
is dark, and it is dangerous to be on water in a big storm. Then we learn they
had rowed about three or four miles, which---as the Sea of Tiberius is eight
miles across---was halfway. They are in out in the dark, in the center
of a storm, well out into the middle of a lake with waves high enough to swamp
their little boat. It sounds a lot
like “A Perfect Storm,” on an inland lake in antiquity. Could things have gotten any worse?
Apparently so, because the next thing they see, through the lashing waves, was what had to be a ghost or spirit, coming
toward them. Was this a spirit coming to
take them down into Sheol? John tells
us, “ . . . . they were terrified.” Well, who wouldn't be? I would’ve been, too. Wouldn’t you?
"It
is I; do not be afraid," he says. “Don’t worry, it’s only me.” “Then,” says the Gospel-writer, “they wanted
to take him into the boat, but immediately the boat reached the land toward
which they were going.” The experience went from being desperately dangerous
and frightening---to calm, safe and secure---as soon as they recognize Jesus
right there in the midst of it with them.
The text doesn’t tell us Jesus gets into the boat with them. He doesn’t.
Even if he isn’t in exactly the same boat they're in, however alone they may
feel, Jesus is nevertheless with them. Who Jesus is, is always more important
than where Jesus is, from the
perspective of his followers---even to this day.
Which is one reason why the first reading
this morning is important (II Kings 4:42-44.) It is a miracle story about a hundred people being
fed from just twenty loaves. In this,
the first reading is a lot like today's Gospel reading.
Both stories are about hungry people being fed, even though the
resources at hand seemed terribly inadequate.
But even more than that, it is a story told to identify the “man of
God,” by his works. Elisha accepts the loaves
from someone, and by the grace of God, all one hundred ate, and had some left over. With this, Elisha is identified as a true
prophet who intercedes for the people, and stands for God. With just twenty loaves, a hundred hungry
people are fed. If everyone got the same
amount of bread, that’s about one loaf divided among five people---which would be a stretch
especially given that there were leftovers.
At the same time their bellies are filled, their hearts and minds are
comforted---they know that their God is among them, caring about them, by
caring about and for their needs.
Now
we have Jesus, another man of God, who in like fashion, takes the little bit
available and feeds a multitude, and then some.
But in this case, far fewer loaves of bread are in hand to feed many
times more people. Jesus doesn’t have
twenty loaves. He has only five. He is not going to feed a hundred people with
twenty loaves, but five thousand people, with only five loaves. That is one loaf for a thousand people. There is not even a remote possibility that
one barley loaf could stretch that far, except by the grace of God---at work in
Jesus. One might think a loaf of bread
might be stretched among five people, which was good enough for Elisha’s
“miracle.” But there is absolutely no
way on earth to stretch five loaves among five thousand---with more bread left
over than was had to begin with---unless it is done by the grace and power of
God. It’s no wonder the people began to say, "This is, indeed, the prophet who is to come into the world." A
prophet, and far more than a prophet: God is here, in the midst of the people,
caring for them---filling hungry bellies and hungry hearts all at the same
time.
In this way, Jesus identifies himself for
us. He was not only a prophet---Jesus
was God presencing right there with them, just as he was when he walked
across the stormy sea to be with the disciples as they crossed over. Jesus is God-with-us. Jesus is God who will be with us in the
future as he was 2000+ years ago. No less now than then, Jesus may
not be in exactly the same boat we’re in, so to speak---but because of who he
is, he is with us all the same. Jesus is there in the dark crossings-over
of our lives. Jesus is with us when
times are lean and we are hungry---if not for actual food, then for good news. When we are fearful and in the dark about our
lives, or about the direction we’re going in; when we feel trapped by
circumstances---Jesus may seem to suddenly show up out of nowhere to surprise
or startle you: “It is I, do not be afraid,” he says. “Don't worry, it's only me!” Don’t worry, because even though you may not
see him, he is here presencing--as
close as your own heartbeat. He is
God-with-us who, as Paul puts it---is “at work within us,” from where he “is
able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
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