Signs of Christ, a Youth Dialogue Sermon

Youth Dialogue Sermon for July 29, 2012   

Lectionary Link

Katie’s cell phone rings…

Katie sheepishly looks at Fr. Phil and says:  Oops.  Sorry, I forgot to turn my cell phone off.  I’ll do it now.

Fr. Phil:  You might as well answer it and see who is calling.

Katie: Hello, yes, that’s my order.  How much is it?  You need a credit card number…Just a second…

Katie: Fr. Phil, can you give your credit card number over the phone?

Fr. Phil:  Why?

Katie:  For this sermon today, I wanted to prove that you could feed 5000 people, so I ordered pizza for 5000 from Domino’s and they would like to have your credit card number.

Fr. Phil:  Sorry, I can’t afford that kind of miracle.  You’ll have to cancel the order.

Katie to caller:  Sorry, I’ll have to cancel the order.  Bye. Bye.

Connor: So, Katie, I guess now you want to check in at facebook or do you have time to deliver this sermon?

Katie: I was just doing a set up for feeding of the 5000.  That was quite some miracle.  It does raise all sorts of modern questions.

Connor:  Well if the bread and the fish were multiplied, I wondered how it was served.  Do you think the entire crowd ate sushi?  That a lot of sashimi to serve in the hot sun.

Katie: I doubt if it was raw fish; if the bread was served in its baked form and not as raw wheat, I expect that the fish was cooked or perhaps it had been dried and cured in salt.

Connor:  Do you really think that Gospel is about a miraculous generation of food for 5000 from five loaves and two fish?

Katie:  Probably not; in the Gospel of John the word for miracle is “sign.”  A sign is something that points to something else.  What do you think the “signs” were pointing to?

Connor:  Well, signs can point but they sometimes fail if they are not understood or heeded.

Katie:  What do you mean?

Connor:  The most famous sign in America is the eight-sided stop sign and your driving instructor has tried to teach you that this sign is not just a recommendation nor is it street decoration.   You are actually supposed to come to a full stop.

Katie:  Don’t make fun of my driving.  If the Gospel stories about the feeding of the 5000 and the calming of the storm are signs, what do these signs mean?

Connor:  I don’t know but I might take a guess.  I think the little boy who donated his lunch is important to the story.

Katie:  Why is he important to the story?

Connor:  As a young boy, he probably did not care or feel restricted by dietary laws.  So, when he saw the need for food, he simply offered his food for a group picnic. 

Katie:  And Jesus blessed his gift and suddenly everyone was fed.

Connor:  So it could be that lots of people carried picnic lunches with them but were afraid to share because of rigid dietary laws about food preparation.  This little boy shamed them into sharing their food without being afraid of dietary laws.

Katie:  That is certainly a reasonable meaning.  But the fact that the writer places the event near Passover may also be significant.

Connor:  Why do you say that?

Katie:  The early followers of Jesus understood a change in the meaning and practice of the Passover Meal.  They understood that Jesus changed the Passover Meal into the Eucharist.  The Eucharist became the Christian family meal.  It became a meal of Christian family identity.  And the feeding of the 5000 was a sign that the Passover was no longer a “closed” or exclusive meal, it was a meal that was open to Jews and Gentiles.  That was quite a miraculous change in religious practice.

Connor:  We need to be careful about seeing the Eucharist as a “closed” or exclusive meal when in fact it expresses our wish that all people can join in God’s meal of love, thanksgiving and friendship.

Katie:  We need to remember too that the Gospel writers compared Jesus other great prophets and they told his life story using the pattern of the story of the famous Moses.

Connor:  Yes and Moses was the one who led the people into the desert where there was not food.  He prayed to God and God sent the people of Israel the special bread from heaven called “manna.”  So the Gospel writer is trying to say that just a Moses was a sign from God, so too Jesus is a special Sign from God.

Katie:  So the feeding of 5000 turns out to be quite a Sign of how Jesus Christ changed the religious life in Palestine and in the life of the world.

But what about the Signs of walking on the water and calming the sea?   I guess today that sounds too much like Harry Potter.

Connor:  If this means that we wish that Jesus would intervene in every hurricane, typhoon or tsunami then we might wonder about God’s selective intervention.

Katie:  A storm represents the power of nature.  And the worst power in nature for humanity is the experience of death.  Human experience requires that we know about danger in life and that we know about death.  We might even think that people are different from other animals because of they way in which people reflect upon death.

Connor:  Jesus walking on the water and Jesus calming of the storm were Sign stories in the early church.  They were Sign stories which were not written until the disciples experienced the Risen Christ.  The risen Christ was a Sign that death was to be but a doorway into another way of life.  And if people could know this, they would be able to live with faith instead of fear.

Katie:  We are tempted to live with fear if we think that everything can be lost in the event of death.  Jesus, when he was known as the Risen Christ gave people a way to live with faith even with the knowledge of danger and death as probabilities in life.

Connor:  So the Gospels were written as Cue Cards or Signs to us.

Katie:  And what do the Signs say?

Connor:  Have faith, not fear.

Katie:  That is a good slogan for living: Have faith, not fear.  Amen.