Signs and Destination

Pentecost 10, Proper 13

August 1, 2021

The Rev. Timothy C. Nunez

Each year we meet a group of old friends for a weekend at Cocoa Beach. It’s a great time and we’ve watched each other’s kids grow up. One of the traditions that has developed is that on Saturday morning I make a run to Krispy Kreme. It is about a 30-minute ride each way, but that’s ok. Usually I have the company of Brian Hall, our friend’s son who I’ve known since he was an infant and he’s now 23 or 24.

The key to Krispy Kreme is to get there when the “Hot Now” light is on. Then you get the hottest, freshest donuts. They are good, but fresh is best. And sometimes if you’re buying several dozen, they’ll offer you one while you wait. You watch them take a straw and hook the donut up off the conveyor, stick it in a little piece of paper and oh, man, is that good! The hottest, freshest donuts right off the line melt in your mouth. You can almost smell them!

If I’ve done my job with that opening, you are now thinking about donuts, really great donuts. Now carry that into today’s Gospel.  Jesus has just fed the 5,000, which was really great but it has the potential to create one problem and expose another. Remember that the people’s hunger was merely the presenting issue, which Jesus shaped to God’s glory. It established an eternal witness to his own identity that has been shared ever since. We are still talking about it and it has been translated into almost every language. There are people right now translating the Bible into obscure dialects and languages.

The witness is the point, but do you see what is happening? One hazard in the miracle is that it could create a dependency. The people are still out in the wilderness. They are hungry again. They want to be fed that free meal of barley loaves and fish again. But Jesus did not stay there and open an all-you-can-eat-forever feeding ministry and franchise.

The problem with the dependency issue is clear enough. It’s like when one of my college roommates got a credit card offer in the mail and ran up a big bill – several thousand dollars. His dad gave him a good talking to and paid the bill. What do you suppose my friend did? He ran it up again. His dad gave him another scolding and paid the bill.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

When God does something for us we must celebrate the blessing, but we have to look past it, look through it, to Him. Don’t fall in love with what Jesus did; love Jesus.

Another hazard in the miracle is that once they’ve seen a miracle, people want to see another, and another. When the people realize that Jesus is not going to feed them again, rather than absorb what has just been revealed or asking to know more about “the food that endures for eternal life,” they ask for other signs and cite an example from their past when God provided manna in the wilderness.

Now I’ll admit that there is a bit of magic in the Krispy Kreme “Hot Now” sign. There’s a Krispy Kreme about three miles north of my old office in Orlando. I’d drive by it pretty regularly and most of the time I’d pass it by. Occasionally I’d stop and get a treat, you know, for the office. But whether or not I stopped the “Hot Now” sign made me smile. Why? Because I have a very strong affection for what it represents.

The sign is no substitute for the thing it represents. Don’t fall in love with the sign, love where it leads. Love its destination.

Second, people can develop an appetite for the signs instead of what they represent. We might even covet the sign more than what it represents. People do collect signs and they like old signs. Look at Manny’s or Cracker Barrel. Here, the people asking for more signs refer Jesus to the signs God gave through Moses during the Exodus. What they miss is that the signs didn’t particularly work.

The people didn’t look at the parting of the Red Sea that saved them, the pillar of fire and cloud that led and protected them, the water that gushed from the rock when they were thirsty, or the manna and quail that fell from the heavens and follow God to live happily ever after. No, when they got half a second they made a golden calf and started worshiping that. And they grumbled all the time.

In fact, their failure to truly grasp the signs and follow God faithfully became an integral part of the witness to the Exodus which was formational to them as a people. They knew their ancestors failed to follow the signs and wrote songs, well psalms, about it.

Psalm 78 captures this beautifully, but the portion we read this morning stopped maddeningly short of making this point. We just needed one more verse, and why they cut it off when they did is beyond me. That verse, Psalm 78:30, is one of my favorites in our BCP translation. If you would, please turn to page 697 in the Book of Common Prayer in your pew. We’ll pick up at Psalm 78 verse 28:

28

He let it fall in the midst of their camp *
    and round about their dwellings.

29

So they ate and were well filled, *
    for he gave them what they craved.

30

But they did not stop their craving, *
    though the food was still in their mouths.

All of this illustrates how highly confrontational Jesus is. He is confrontational even to the ways they’ve understood God’s revelation. God’s revelation has historically come to them in 3 ways: signs (which include miracles), the traditions of religious life that bear the faith forward symbolically from generation to generation, and the written witness in scripture – which literally means “the writings,” important things written down so they don’t forget them.

The danger of the strong analogy is that you will leave here thinking about donuts instead of looking through the illustration to fix your eyes and your heart on Jesus. The danger of a healing is that we might condition our faith on God performing as we would like. The danger of a beautiful liturgy and beautiful hymns is that we would focus on them instead of the One to whom they point us. The danger of ministry in the community is that we might love meeting people’s needs and neglect to share Jesus with them. The danger of scripture is that we can use it as a rule book to prove our point rather than using it and the opportunities to share it as a witness to God.

Jesus comes to us by all these means and more and fulfills them in the process. But we have to stay focused on him.

AMEN!