July 25,2021
Sermon given by the Rev. B. Hartsough
Today our readings are full of imagery. In Samuel, we have King David getting to know Bathsheba and then desiring to own her. King David sets up a plot to kill her husband. Later in his life, King David will be shown the seriousness of what he did, and he will live with the consequences. It is a complicated story about murder and desire. In the gospel reading of John, we have the feeding of the 5,000. The passage ends with Jesus walking on the water.
We can get swept away in the midst of these big, dramatic stories. Today I am going to focus on a part of the gospel that is easy to miss. In the Gospel reading, Jesus gave thanks, blessed the bread and fish, and multiplied the bread and fish. The people ate as much as they wanted and were satisfied. There were 12 baskets left. The number 12 here can be symbolic to mean the 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus came to gather the Jewish people back to God so that none would be lost.
Then Jesus tells his disciples, “Gather up the fragments, so that nothing may be lost.” If we focus on the drama, we can miss this important line.
The gospel scene reminds me of what we do at the Eucharist. We bless and share bread and wine. When we are done, we gather up the crumbs and wine. We gather the leftovers because they are consecrated bread and wine. But if we remember Jesus’s words in today’s gospel, we know that the leftovers are blessed and part of the whole loaf of bread and the whole cruet of wine. They symbolize that ALL of us are part of the body of Christ. Christ came to bring and to keep all of the pieces together. None are to be lost.
If we listen carefully to Jesus’s words in this passage, we hear a few important points. First the fragments are blessed and a part of the whole. There were many fragments-12 baskets in today’s gospel passage. Fragments are important. Fragments are to be gathered and not lost. This last point the altar guild knows, the fragments are NOT disposable.
Last week I preached about the mission of the church as gathering and uniting. We gather those inside and outside of our church doors, especially the lost fragments. Fragments fall away from the whole, the main loaf of bread, the cruet of wine, the pieces of fish, members of the church. Fragments remain and dangle until they are gathered.
We are blessed children of God. All of ourself is blessed even our fragments.
We gather up the fragmented pieces of ourselves as part of our Christian journey. It is a way that we continue to grow so that we can gather others.
King David left fragments of his life dangling. There were issues he didn’t deal with. His ungathered fragments led to guilt, grief, remorse, and a very troubled family.
This week, I reflected on what we do with the parts of ourselves that are left, our fragments. Those parts that dangle inside of us. The parts that we haven’t gathered into ourselves. We all have fragments, and we all need to know what to do with them.
I recalled how I had to learn how to gather up some of my fragments. Most of you know that I was a foster child that experienced abuse. I am NOT recalling it here to prove that I suffered more or to gain sympathy. I am using it as an example of gathering up our fragments. The label, “foster child” carried a stigma in my young adult life. I didn’t willingly volunteer the information of my childhood. When I attended parties, classes, and other social functions, questions about family came up. My childhood is hard to explain. It was to explain that in a sense you are part of a fragment of a family. And then there is the statistics and the research. Statistically foster children are more likely to be criminals, end up in jail, drop out of school, and to need government help. Sometimes I shared and frequently I was pre-judged.
This fragment of myself, that of being a foster child, dangled. It sat as a separate part of me that made me feel disjointed, unsettled, and unsure of myself. But at the same time, it tried to consume and to define me. I learned that part of growing as a blessed child of God, involves a constant regathering of the fragments of ourselves.
I carried being a foster child as a fragment until I worked on understanding it and accepting it. Accepting it meant learning not to be afraid to share it. It meant seeing that being in foster care saved my life. It meant that government systems work when they intervene in situations to save lives. It also meant being ready to be judged by people as I shared the truth about my childhood. I have learned that people criticize or judge others’ circumstances. This judgement is usually the result of a lack of understanding, jealousy, and fear. Gathering our fragments makes us authentic, honest, Christians. We will be judged but we need to gather anyway.
Fragments like my accepting my childhood past must be gathered into ourselves and they must be shared. God wants us to be whole. Whole as the body of Christ and whole inside of ourselves. What or who do you need to gather up? What are your fragments?