John 6:1-21
July 30, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
If you’ve recently tried calling your bank to order new checks or check with the airlines on any schedule changes, your call was no doubt answered by a pleasant but dispassionate voice inviting you to spend the next hour or so trapped in a kind of electronic purgatory! When I would cancel our daily SF Chronicle to go on vacation, I would hear this woman’s voice on the other end of the phone. I would press the # key whenever my answer is “yes.” It felt like I was talking to someone without actually doing so.
My absolutely worst experience was trying to fix some computer internet problem when the voice on the end kept on asking me to repeat my complaint and I’m trying to say it again and again in my Boston accent to connect me to a real person. Welcome to IVR or “interactive voice response”—ways for you to feel like you are talking to a real person without actually doing so.
On an annual basis, companies spent some $7.4 billion to update their IVR systems, placing more and more layers of menus and information between themselves and their customers. In other words, many companies have found that it simply costs too much in terms of time and personnel to spend time chatting with us about our needs. Besides, you can’t really talk about the weather when there’s a good likelihood that the person on the line is actually in India! Trying to find a human to provide assistance at the other end of the line is a postmodern pipedream.
Some consumer advocates are fighting back. There’s a guy named, Paul English who is providing consumers with “secret codes” to connect directly with a customer service representative. Some ideas are “pretending you are using a rotary phone” or consistently pushing the “0” key when prompted. English has put up a website named, “Get Human” where he lists more than 100 companies that you and I use daily and their codes for getting quickly connected to an actual human being.
Have you seen the new Jack in the Box TV commercial? This wise-crack truck driver comes up to the take-out window and asks for Jack. The food server directly contacts Jack who happens to be flying in a helicopter someplace to answer the truck driver’s question. Now that’s accessibility!
Responding to Immediate Needs
When we need something badly we want to talk directly to the person who can get it for us rather than following the path of the most resistance through a maze of menus. Service call representatives who are probably overseas are no substitute for someone who will really listen and respond.
A good example of getting what you need when you need it is in the story of the feeding of the 5000. That this incident occurs in all four gospels is a clue that it was an important story about the ability of Jesus to provide very personal and powerful service to the people. The point is that the people had an immediate and pressing need and requires an immediate person to address that need and an immediate response to meet that need.
The crowd that gathered by the Sea of Galilee had some definite needs. John 6:2 tells us that many had come for healing, seeking the cure that getting close to Jesus might provide. Not only that, they were likely far away from any town or village that could provide them with Jack in the Box hamburgers. These people were hungry—physically and spiritually.
Jesus knew this and was about to give his disciples a lesson in customer service. Jesus turned to Philip and asked, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Jesus knew that this was a problem that cannot be easily addressed. He knew that Philip couldn’t just call up the local bakery and keep pressing “0” until he gets the baker himself.
The disciples are thinking scarcity rather than abundance. Philip does the math—six month’s wages wouldn’t be enough to give all these people even a bite of food. You can almost imagine the disciples circulating among the crowd with people recognizing them as Jesus’ closest companions and asking them questions: “Can we see Jesus up close? Got anything to eat? Can you tell me if I can get healed here?”
The crowds were like the huge call volume overwhelming the circuits and you get to hear, “Please stay on the line. All of our operators are busy with customers. Your call is important to us.” The disciples wanted to distance themselves from the problem by simply pointing out to Jesus that there was no way that the crowd was going to get their needs met. It’s being lost in that electronic purgatory!
That’s why the disciples frequently saw themselves as like the secret service whose function it was to keep the crowds from getting too close to Jesus. They kept the children at bay, until Jesus reminded them that “such” are the kingdom of God. They tried to keep the blind and disabled from getting too close to Jesus as well. They saw themselves as an insulating layer of menu between the people and the Christ—as though Jesus needed their protection.
Inaccessibility to Jesus
Too often the history of the church reflects this same situation—making Jesus inaccessible to the people. In many churches, no one dares to come up to the front of the sanctuary where there are organ pipes, candles, and stained-glass windows. We think of these things as “holy of holies.” The professional clergy with vestments and the powers assigned by the church and the state for ministers to officiate at weddings and funerals makes us like the disciples keeping you away from getting too close to Jesus. And the church and with all of its bureaucracy can give you a pretty good idea that people can have a hard time connecting with the authentic God.
The story in the Bible today is about feeding, but it is essentially a story about access. Will these people have access to Jesus who can—and will—feed them and respond to their questions and meet their needs?
Most churches and we are no exception, have answering machines on our church phones that can make it difficult for people to have access to God. I’m not saying that if a caller gets to talk to one of the church staff that we are God. But in a real sense, aren’t we spokespersons for God after all? If a caller gets discouraged punching in menus after menus only to end up leaving message on the church phone machine, are we making it easy for people to have access to Christ?
Christ can bypass our church as he bypasses his disciples to become accessible to the people. There is still a menu but this menu is of loaves of bread and fish. Jesus says, “Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you.”
In John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand, it’s not the disciples who are distributing the bread and the fish, Jesus is distributing the food himself. You can see for yourselves that Jesus himself is walking among the crowd and handing out bread and fish. That’s some serious personal contacts! He is not insulating himself from the crowds but he invites the people to take a seat on the soft grass and begins to act like the host of a Jewish meal, extending the invitation, making his guests comfortable and then distributing the food himself.
Miracle
Some scholars believe that when Jesus simply pointed out the boy’s act of sharing his lunch that that encouraged everyone else to do the same. But such interpretation misses the real point of this story. This was a miracle!
Jesus had not only given these people food, but in a larger sense he also gave them himself—his touch, his compassion, his word. Later, he would go so far as to allow himself to be broken and his sacrifice distributed as grace for all people in need of hope.
The crowd responds with ultimate customer loyalty and satisfaction. They want to make Jesus king. Jesus would be king, but not according to their definition of power and prestige. His call would be for them to serve others and give of themselves, following his example.
Three Sundays ago, a homeless woman came to our church in the morning. Since our church doors were opened, she had access to us. We have helped this woman before. Since she was mute, she asked for paper and a pen to write me a message. She wrote: “I was so frustrated to find money. All closed. I’m disappointed. I need $10.00 for sanitary napkin pads and wash my clothes and food. I have a small load of dirty clothes need to wash out. I didn’t get my SSA check yet. It had been hard times. Please help me. Where is restroom please?”
I knew I didn’t have even $10.00 in my wallet. So while this woman was using the restroom, I went up to the kitchen while Lea Wong was helping with breakfast to see if she had $10.00. She was accessible to meet an immediate need.
I don’t know if I or we have been scammed again. I don’t know if by giving this woman $10.00 would encourage her to come back again. But what I do know is that we were accessible for this woman who was in need. There are many ways that we are service representatives for God’s kingdom work.
Some of you know this little seven year old boy named Tommy who is dropped off by his grandfather for Sunday school on Sunday mornings. Tommy is a very polite little boy who waits for me to come in so that he would not feel awkward to eat a waffle for breakfast on my tab! Sometimes he eats two waffles! Joe Chan knows that I don’t have a running tab that comes due at the end of the month. But when we feed waffles to children like Tommy, we are in fact making Christ accessible to the children in our community.
The good news is that people don’t have to wade through a myriad of messages and menus in order to have access to Jesus himself at FCBC! When this happens, we can also see miracles happening right in our midst like the crowd of 5000 did when they ate bread and fish.
Accessible in Scary Times
Some of us just returned from a CONFAB cruise to Mexico. It was a terrific time and as you can imagine, we ate more than five loaves of bread and two fish. Forgive me for this insensitive joke about a cruise boat.
From the cruise ship, everyone can see a thin, bearded man on a small island, shouting and desperately waving his hands.
“Who is it on that island?” a passenger asks the captain.
“I have no idea…but every year when we pass, he goes nuts.”
Unfortunately, life is more like this man who has been marooned on a deserted island than a Carnival cruise to Mexico. It’s more like when the disciples were attempting to cross the sea to Capernaum when the winds stir up and the sea becomes rough. It is evening and Jesus is not with them. It was dark and the Light of the World was not there. Life is like being in a storm and you start to row for miles after miles trying to get across the rough seas.
It is then that Jesus appears walking on water and approaches the boat. He addresses their fears by saying, “It is I, do not be afraid.” Jesus is accessible to the disciples during scary times and he is accessible to us when our lives are going through scary times too.
We come to church to be a member of this fortunate group of people who have been with Jesus, who have looked at this Jew from Nazareth and have seen the very face of God. With him, we gather for a mere meal, break the bread, pass the cup, and are surprised to find ourselves in the presence of God. God is always accessible!
With Jesus, we launch out on uncharted seas, without a star to guide us, into the stormy gale. And there, just when we think all hope may be lost and we are frightened beyond words, hope comes to us in the form of the one who says, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
Do you know why we keep coming to church? Surely there’s something attractive about the warmth of the fellowship and just maybe the quality of my preaching!
No, the real reason why we come to church is because we meet Jesus here—not every Sunday, but enough to keep us coming back Sunday after Sunday. He comes to us, embraces us, and we can go on with life. I pray that what we do in this church makes God accessible to you and to all those who come seeking for Jesus.
We don’t need to press # for Jesus. Jesus comes to us when we are hungry. He comes to us when life is scary. Jesus tells us to not be afraid. Let us strive to make Christ accessible to the world through our faithful discipleship of service in his name.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, you could have been distant from us but you chose to come to us in the flesh to feed us when we are hungry, heal us when we are sick, and comfort us when we are afraid. Thank you, O God for our Savior Jesus the Christ who is accessible when we pray and trust him with our lives. Bless us with the opportunity to minister in his name through this church in the world. Amen.