b11Pentecost 7 ~ July 23, 2006 ~ A sermon preached by The Rev’d Erl G. Purnell, Old St. Andrew’s Church, Bloomfield, CT
Isaiah 57.14b-21; Psalm 22.22-30; Ephesians 2.11-22; Mark 6.30-44
Remember when you were in 5th grade and you first came back to school in the fall? The teacher, Mr. Langdon in my case, was tan and all smiles and classmates buzzed with summer adventures. After the all-school assembly, seats were assigned, attendance taken, and the Pledge of Allegiance recited. Then you were asked to write an essay about what you did over the summer.
Talking with my friends about the summer in the hallways or on the playground was one thing—easy—but putting three months of NOT-school between the pale blue lines of tablet paper, that was hard, really hard. At age 10, for me to organize my thoughts well enough to write a coherent essay was simply impossible. My brain worked in terms of fastballs and sliders, pounds of pressure in the tires of my Schwinn, swimming laps under water, and the taste of hot dogs with relish and mustard on them at Pirate games. I knew Mr. Langdon wanted me to write about those things, but doing them and writing about them were at opposite ends of a very long life of learning how to write well.
In more recent years, whenever I’ve come back from vacation, I’ve always felt compelled to write something for Mr. Langdon…just to show him that I did listen and did learn what he said about writing, even though it took forty years of practice to get any good at it.
So, here goes. This is for Courtney Langdon, God rest his soul.
On my summer vacation we went to Washington State to visit with my kids. I had my 60th birthday out there. It was one of the five funnest days of my life. Why? Because my kids said they were taking me sailing and I like to sail. But what really happened is they totally surprised me by arranging for me to fly an open cockpit bi-plane over the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound. I’d always wanted to fly a bi-plane, in part because that’s about the closest you can get to the real thing and because my grandfather—we called him Grandfeathers because he was one of the original Naval Aviators, #68 in fact—used to tell stories of flying bi-planes during World War I. Next time I go to visit my kids, I’m going to fly that bi-plane again except this time I’m going to fly it upside down.
My vacation, Part 2. We also went to Victoria, British Columbia on a ferry with our rental car. It only took an hour and twenty minutes to cross from Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria. I had been there last summer and loved it and so much I wanted to return for a better look. One of the really cool things about Victoria is that the harbor is also a seaplane base. It’s almost as if there’s an air force operating out of the downtown with planes taking off and landing constantly, even as boats and the ferry come and go.
Besides the floatplanes, Victoria is simply a place of exquisite beauty. It’s a delightful, clean, modern city highlighted by the people, the climate, the natural setting, and Buchart Gardens, perhaps the most wonderful and famous garden in the western hemisphere. We walked for miles and miles, ate delicious food, and reveled in a spirit of civility and peacefulness that’s so common among Canadians. Four days wasn’t long enough in Victoria, so we pledged to return as soon as we could.
My vacation, Part 3. Then we went to Vancouver, a huge city of some 550,000 residents. In fact, Vancouver is probably the most densely populated place in North America, even more people per square mile than Mexico City or New York. On the peninsula that is Vancouver, building after building rises to compete with the breath-taking mountains off to the west. Each apartment has a balcony and a spectacular view. Stanley Park comprises about a quarter of the peninsula and we walked around its eight miles of perimeter. As with Victoria, we walked the city, ate great food, and melded into the international mix of faces. The visit was splendiferous.
Mr. Langdon would have also asked his 5th graders to say what it is they learned over summer vacation. I always thought that was among the dumbest of questions a 5th grade teacher could come up with. We weren’t in school during the summer, so how could we be learning anything. I usually tried to think of something sort of school-like, like I added up the miles on the map of the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia when we went to see my grandparents. I probably should have said I learned how to do a hook slide into second but I didn’t.
So, what did I learn this summer? Well, one thing I learned was that there aren’t very many churches in Victoria and Vancouver. After a while, we noticed that we had seen only three or four the whole time we were in Canada. It was a funny thing, which started us wondering where people worshipped. And that’s the second thing I learned—where people in British Columbia worship.
But before I tell you where and because this is a sermon and you may have come to church to hear something theological spoken from the pulpit, there are two things in Mark’s story about the feeding of the five thousand I’d like to mention. In Jesus’ day, people of different social strata stayed with their own kind. Peasants stuck with other peasants; the merchant class barbequed and partied with each other; landowners and the elite socialized and inner-married. The marker for such social separation was always strictest around food and eating. The boundaries were fixed. Jesus has taken an extraordinary step by eliminating these conventional restrictions such that 5,000 people of different social standing, not including women and children (maybe a total of 7 or 8,000), sat on a hillside in Galilee and shared a meal.
Mark picks up on this incredible oral tradition and frames it beautifully in his Gospel. For Mark’s contemporaries, it would have been impossible to miss the fact that the rabble were eating with the elite. So, Jesus, through Mark’s eyes, makes the bold and radical proclamation by way of this event that all people are equal and worthy to sit together. Nobody should ever be excluded from the table. That’s what Jesus was trying to teach. He wanted different people to be together, to change their way of living and so to inhabit the kingdom of God. It worked that afternoon and set a standard for all the years since.
The other thing that is prominent in Jesus’ Kingdom of God program is about food itself. “Give us this day our daily bread,” he’s quoted as saying by Matthew and Luke. If all people were valued equally in God’s kingdom—like on that Galilean hillside—then all people always deserved food enough to sustain them.
Enough food was a huge problem for most people. Jesus declared that there should always be enough food for everybody because what food we have can and should be shared. Mark took this Kingdom of God program bullet-point and drove home the message by stating twelve baskets of bread and fish were left over. In other words, there really is enough! This guy from Nazareth is bold and powerful in his approach to social justice. On that afternoon, the kingdom of God was indeed gathered on a hillside in Galilee. And that’s what Jesus called Good News.
Which brings me back to the question of where in British Columbia people worship. Well, the answer is quite simple and extremely obvious: Starbucks! If there are 550,000 people in Vancouver, there are at least 2,200 Starbucks, that’s a Starbucks for every 250 humans. Often they are on opposite corners. There are also other denominations besides Starbucks. There are Blenz coffee emporiums and Seattle’s Best and Tim Horton’s and Moka, not to mention myriad neighborhood coffee bars. There is even a website called Coffeecrew.com which seems to be an on-line gathering place for coffee-trade workers, those folks known as baristas.
Sometimes when I’m driving to church on Sundays I have to remind myself why we keep coming to Old St. Andrew’s. One reason is to gather together in fellowship and to worship. Another is because we often seem to forget what Jesus taught the week before and so we need to come back for another dose of Jesus-lessons.
In my brief research in British Columbia, it seems most folks actually remember the Jesus message about being nice, honest, and loving. And, they practice it almost to a fault. It’s quite refreshing. It may be because they are so Canadian (which can be translated: nice, honest, and loving), that they don’t need to hear the usual biblical reminders and preaching we require in the lower 48. Instead, you go to Starbucks (or one of the other caffeine spots) and celebrate life with the generosity of spirit Jesus pointed to on that hillside so long ago.
To the point, Victoria and Vancouver are extremely international cities. Probably because they’re on the Pacific rim, every single Starbucks has a complete mix of Anglos, First Nation people, Brazilian, Peruvian, Chilean, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Australian, and Kiwi at a table or in the queue. We had a waiter one night who was British, raised in Barbados, and a resident of Canada.
Now, to tie my summer vacation essay all together. I mentioned that the next time I fly that bi-plane, I’m going to fly it upside down. Besides loving acrobatics, there’s another reason. Jesus asked his contemporaries to look at things through fresh eyes, from a different perspective than the conventional. Flying upside down is the perfect metaphor because it forces you to see things in a different way. And maybe, just maybe, then I’ll be able to see the Canadian in myself that I know Jesus sees in me. And maybe if the spirit of Christ continues to spread as it clearly has in British Columbia, we’ll all worship more often—not just on Sundays—at the local Starbucks where there’s always enough for everybody and all sorts and kinds of folks gather in love and equanimity.
Amen.
Copyright © 2006. Erl G. Purnell
All rights reserved.
