This is a message I'm sharing with a community along Highway 212 where hundreds of Minnesotans lined the highway holding American flags as a convoy escorting a hearse carrying the body of SPC. James Wertish toward his home in rural Olivia. Hector is my hometown. Readings are from the New Testament in the Bible: John 6:1-21 & Ephesians 3:14-21.
Many people who followed Jesus up that mountain probably didn’t have a lot going for them. They were free to hike nine miles in Upper Galilee to see an itinerant preacher and sit in the grass. They were loners who lacked community, isolated individuals who needed to belong to someone, something, somewhere. There they were fed. I’m a big fan of everyday miracles. In this story I see the miraculous in that these disconnected, lonely lives sat down together and began to share. They discovered a joy and fulfillment that comes from knowing that you belong to each other.
This week Hector and other towns along Highway 212 experienced an everyday miracle as 100s of people lined up along the highway, waving flags, and welcoming home a fallen soldier. Many did not know SPC. James Wertish, but you were present for him, for his family, and for your community to grieve together and be a part of a deeper connection, the act of belonging to each other. After watching the video and reading articles about the event I was struck by the words of Paul in Ephesians 3:14-21 with new meaning. Here is a loose translation of how I read his prayer:
I fall down on my knees and pray your inward person be renewed day by day through the wear and tear of life’s challenges and tribulations.
So often the realities of life’s unfairness, tragedy, and chaos wear us down. Like Philip, who is asked how to feed the 5000, we see a hopeless task. Or, like Andrew, we scavenge to do our best and admit it’s not enough. These two disciples display the heartbreaking blend of hopelessness and frustration that comes with facing situations beyond our resources and control, situations that bring us to our knees in prayer or despair.
When we are convinced that things are hopeless it is difficult to set our mind on thinking of solutions. We just want to curl up under the covers and disappear for a while. My personal red flag is when I notice myself saying, “What’s the point?” That’s when I know; I’ve given up and closed my mind to possibilities. I recognize hopeless thinking to be a sign that something big needs to change in my life. That’s not easy. It’s a call for a shift in perspective. Feeling hopeless is a call for hope.
Such a shift in perspective occurs in our story from John 6. Jesus hears the words of Philip and Andrew, he feels their pain, and with a knowing look does something crazy. He takes what little they have, blesses it and trusts completely that the people will be fed, and they are. They are not only fed they are fed to a sensation of ultimate fullness with fragments to be gathered. How did that happen? I don’t know. What I do know is that this was a powerful experience of community, faith, and hope. It was a miracle by being a shift in perspective; just like that line of flags on Highway 212 was a miracle, shifting isolated grief for one family into communal grief for a whole county.
Following this powerful event, Jesus returns to the mountaintop to be alone. In the other gospels this time away is due to grief as he learned his cousin, John the Baptist, had been beheaded. We can only assume for this text that such grieving drove him into a time of prayer and escape from the crowds. While away the disciples struggle to cross the waters in a terrible storm. Notice that in this text, the storm is not stilled. You see, God can be present and reveal God’s glory in the midst of the storm. If the storms of your reality are blowing hard and you’re filled with fear, hopelessness, or grief divine presence is still with you. You don’t have to wait for the trials of life to calm down before you can get God.
I think that’s what Paul was leaning toward when he prayed in Ephesians 3. He wanted us to understand that we need to be renewed day by day and that renewal is an inner transformation. He speaks of Christ dwelling in our hearts. Dwelling meant to take permanent residence, not just a temporary lease. And the heart referred to our inner being, not just our emotions, but our mind and spirit, the things that make us who we are. Allowing Jesus to sustain us, transform us, encourage us, and strengthen us to the depths of our beings is what he’s praying for. Then he concludes that we should share this knowledge in one, undivided community. It is hard to imagine in our world of war, isolation, and division this “oneness” that Paul addresses again and again in the Letter to Ephesus. Yet, we just experienced it this week. One community of strangers united for one reason, to grieve as one for a young man whose favorite saying was, “No regrets.”
“No regrets” is an attitude that lives through tragedies, grows strong with trials, sees the calm after the storm, and knows the end is a new place yet to be explored. “No regrets” is to face the hopelessness with a look of hope. May we come to the table and receive the bread of life with no regrets. Then go forward in confidence to be the bread of life for others, with no regrets.
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