7-28-2024 There Is Plenty To Go Around by Rev. Marie Duquette

Today's Gospel invites us to consider: What we do with the fragments and how we will know when we get to the shore. The Olympic Opening Ceremony nudges us to consider answers we might not otherwise have considered. 

Transcript

7-28-2024 Plenty To Go Around 

What a week!  [Yes Yes!] What a week! The news of our president stepping down at the end of this term. The news of our Vice President stepping up to be nominated for President. A woman. A woman born of a black father and South Asian mother.  The Zoom calls which began Monday with black women having the largest Zoom call to date. Raising money, and then all of the calls of groups that followed day after day after day, I was in the white women's Zoom call. Uh, and I can tell you, definitively, that what I heard was unlike I had ever…anything I had ever heard when white women come together. [Okay]   The primary message was ‘Listen to black women. They know how to get this done.’ And so these Zoom calls all started happening. People, thousands of people, gathered online. Millions of dollars were raised, but more than that, these groups talked about strategies for coming together. Naming the ways we have not been united and beginning to create a vision for how we might be more united going forward. And aside of politics, in that, there is a holy thing happening. This coming together of people in new ways, in larger numbers, for one purpose. And if that weren't enough, on Friday, the 33rd Summer Olympic Games in Paris kicked off in an opening ceremony. That was a three-hour Gayla including depictions of French culture; design, fashion, art, music, dance, history, and the way that love is expressed around the world, and especially in France. And for mainline Christians in the USA, those events lead us into today’s Gospel: two stories of fear and how the presence of Jesus speaks to that fear. 

The first, a fear there would not be enough. Surely there won’t be enough food for all these people, Jesus. And of course, there was more than enough in fact, when I picture this scene, the feeding of the 5000, and I’m not just saying this because of the Olympics happening in Paris (or the fact that I am French)…but when I picture this scene, these five loaves of bread are always baguettes. Did you know that in May of this year, the French surpassed the Italians in making the longest baguette? A team of 18 bakers began preparing the dough at 3 in the morning which resulted in a 461 foot long baguette, earning them a spot in the Guiness Book of World Records, and dethroning the bakers in Italy who previously held the title. 

And while we don’t really know the recipe for the bread that fed thousands in today’s Gospel, or the shape, we do know there was enough that after all had eaten, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of bread fragments. Seemingly enough to feed even more, should they show up.

And then, in the second half of today’s text, we read of the disciples in a storm, in a boat, in the rain, on the water, and the fear that was in the boat with them.

The fear evidently was so intense that when Jesus shows up, the disciples want to take Jesus into the boat for themselves, but instead, immediately the boat reached the land. 

This has me thinking about how often Christians try to keep Jesus to themselves. Jesus – the bread of life. Believing there might not be enough to feed “these people.”

And it happened again when the disciples want to take Jesus into the boat with them, when instead, Jesus leads the disciples to the land…to the place that would unite them with “these people.”

Which brings up two questions. What are the fragments we need to pick up? 

And

How will you know when you’ve reached the shore?  What are the fragments we need to pick up? 

And

How will you know when you’ve reached the shore?  The Opening Ceremony of the Olympic games has caused some controversy among Christians who were offended by some of the depictions of Greek and French culture and historical references. In particular, there was a scene that many thought was an irreverent reference to Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, his largest piece of work, the Last Supper. You’ve seen it. They thought that the scene that was created as part of the storytelling of the opening ceremony was mocking that painting. The scene in the opening ceremony is a group of drag queens who are indulging in a feast at a long table. Some misguided Christians assumed it was mocking the Last Supper, when in fact it was actually a depiction of an ancient Greek Bacchanal, which is an uncontrollably promiscuous, extravagant and loud party. It didn't have anything to do with the Last Supper. It was about Greek. Greek Olympics. Similarly, near the end of the ceremony, there was a human riding on an electric horse across the top of the Seine, carrying the Olympic torch to its final destination. Some Christians interpreted this to be a reference to death, riding a pale horse, as referenced in the Book of Revelation. When in fact, it was Sequana, Goddess of the Seine, the River in which the boat procession took place. The boat procession replaced the usual parade of athletes, with boats of athletes from each of the countries participating. The second to last boat in this process was the Olympic Refugee Team. 

The International Olympic Committee began including a Refugee Olympic Team in 2015. They are included to send a signal about what an enrichment refugees are for our Olympic community and for society at large. A member of the IOC said, “Watching them compete is a great moment for all of us, and we hope everyone will join. The athletes are welcome in our Olympic community, among their fellow athletes – competing with them, but also living with them together under one roof.”

Refugees! Glory! So, when I think of the fragments that need to be gathered, I think of fragments that are people. Drag queens who some Christians think do not deserve a place at the table. Refugees whose lack of housing had them sitting on the sidelines for decades before finally being invited to the table of the Olympics nine years ago.

And it doesn’t stop there. We need to gather the fragments of people who live in fear of getting sick because they have inadequate health insurance and fragments of people who cannot afford housing and are now, in some places, restricted by law from sleeping outside.

We need to gather the fragments of congregations who are overwhelmed, post pandemic, with how to continue being the church when the expenses of building in which they gather are more than they can afford. We need to gather the fragments of children who get to school hungry and go to bed thirsty for a form of love known as listening. 

And when I ask myself, how will I know when we have reached the shore? I think about the moments when Christians see the world not through the eyes of Christianity but through the eyes of love. When I see people saying out loud, on thousand people zoom calls: I let you down and I will do better. When I see people appreciating Avant Garde art and not focusing on one part of it that is not to their liking. When I see people cheering and dancing in the rain at a boat parade that includes a team of refugees. Then I think, we are getting near the shore. Perhaps the storm is being stilled in a way we could not anticipate and now we cannot deny.

Celine Dion closed the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics in Paris on Friday. It would have been enough to hear her sing a French ballad with the power and poise that defines her. But there is much more to the significance of her closing the Olympics with her voice. 

Dion had been absent from the stage since 2020, when the coronavirus forced the postponement of her tour, and moved it to 2022. That tour was eventually suspended in the wake of her being diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder causes rigid muscles and painful muscle spasms, which were affecting her ability to walk and sing. Since then, and in order to return full voice to sing at the Olympics, she has required therapy “physically, mentally, emotionally, vocally.”

The song she sang was Edith Piaf’s “Hymne A L’Amour.” Piaf wrote it about the love of her life,  boxer Marcel Cerdan. It is a beloved love song to the French. Cerdan died soon after she wrote the song, in a plane crash.

The last line of this song, that had such profound meaning to Piaf, who wrote it, and to Dion, who sang it, and to all of those, myself included, who heard her perform it Friday. The last line is:

Dieu réunit ceux qui s'aiment, which means, God unites those who love. God unites those who love was the note that closed the opening ceremony of the worldwide Olympics. God unites those who love. Maybe that’s why Jesus always, without exception, calls his followers to LOVE. Because LOVE unites. And People united is a beautiful, healing thing. When people are united, fear is diluted. When people are united, food can be stretched so that no one goes hungry. When people are united, there is a sense of at last reaching the shore and the storm being calmed. It looks like the kind of hope that can best be felt by those who were living in despair.

And the good news today is that we too, are the fragments being gathered.

And the shore is the place where we get to share the hope we have by being gathered together with those still seeking a place at the table.