Mark 6:30–34, 53–56
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Lord, may we hear your voice in the words spoken in your Name. Amen.
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This morning I doubt whether many of us could say much at all about
Elisha, the prophet of God who followed in the footsteps of
Elijah. Some of us might remember that he’d inherited a
double portion of Elijah’s spirit as Elijah was taken up to
heaven in a chariot of fire. Others might recall how he’d
miraculously multiplied a poor widow’s tiny store of oil – so
she and her children could pay their creditors and live on what was
left. But I doubt whether many of us would have mentioned this
short story of the man from Baal Shalishah bringing the first fruits
of his harvest to Elisha, the man of God – and Elisha then
feeding a multitude with the man’s modest gift.&nbssp; And neither
would I – except that I’d just read the story in its larger
context and realized that the man from Baal Shalishah had brought his
gift to the prophet in the midst of a massive
famine . . . out of gratitude to God for
the rains that had finally arrived. And maybe because I remember
a deep drought we had here in Georgia a number of years ago, a drought
so deep that farmers in the Midwest, at their own expense, began to
truck hay to cattlemen and dairy farmers here in Middle
Georgia – just so their livestock could survive – When I
remember that, I can appreciate the deep significance of the man’ls
gift . . . and understand why Elisha
was prompted to share that blessing.
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For who knows how many months and years that farmer had scanned the
skies, hoping and praying for rains that never seemed to come? Then,
finally, the rains had arrived, drenching the fields of corn and
barley – and giving everyone hope. In that moment the man
realizes whom he has to thank for this great gift. So as soon as
he has harvested those crops, he walks the 30 miles from Mount Ephraim,
where Baal Shalishah was, to Gilgal, where he presents the offering of
twenty barley loaves and a few ears of corn to Elisha, the man of
God. Elisha, in turn, offers the gift to a big crowd of hungry
people. And lo and behold, just as Elisha had trusted it would,
the gift given by the grace of God feeds everyone, with food left over
to spare.
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So this is a story about gifts and gratitude – and the blessings
that flow from them. And the question is – whether this is
a picture of how we’re meant to live all the time, even in times
of scarcity – or whether we are meant to pay more attention to
more “rational” voices around us – like the voice of
Elisha’s servant, questioning whether twenty loaves could feed
hundreds of people. Given the last year or two and what we have
all lived through, this is a fair question, a practical question for
our times.
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As I thought about that this week, I suddenly remembered another
gift – an even smaller one – that also had a huge
effect. (And if I have told this story here before, I hope
you will understand why — because the gift, though quite
small, had a huge effect on me.)
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Years ago, when I was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, our group
visited Petra, the center of the old Nabatean kingdom in southwestern
Jordan. The wonder of the place is that it’s hidden in a
rugged canyon deep in the Jordanian mountains. In fact, the place
is so secluded no road actually goes there; the city is only
accessible through a cliff–lined mountain pass, so narrow that
only horses walking single file can make it through. So on that
cool spring morning we travelled on horseback through that narrow
mountain pass – so closely bordered on either side by steep
cliffs that not even a shaft of sunlight could break through. The
silence was broken only by the creak of my saddle and the occasional
cry of a hawk, high in the sky overhead. Finally, when I had
begun to wonder if we would ever get there, the dark, narrow pass
widened – and there, ahead of us, gleaming in the sunlight was
the splendid red–columned city of Petra. It was a magical
scene – far more exotic than anything I’d imagined.
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If you have ever seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark then
you’ve seen Petra. It’s a tiny but elegant city
that was carved thousands of years ago right into the face of red
sandstone cliffs. In the sandy square in front of those
red–columned buildings graceful Nabatean women in long,
colorful dresses tended to food they were grilling on charcoal
braziers. Nearby, their children led donkeys and camels by
bridles decorated with multi–colored tassels. And farther
down the canyon their elder brothers raced Arabian horses – much
as American teenagers race their cars in a drag race. I spent a
happy morning exploring some of the nooks and crannies of this central
area before I decided to walk farther down the canyon to visit a distant
temple site.
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Suddenly, at my left side, I became aware of a little Nabatean girl,
maybe six or seven years old, drawing close to my side. She had
the dark, curly hair and big dark eyes of all the Nabatean children,
and she fastened those eyes on me shyly as she pressed something into
my hand.
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“Gift,” she said softly. “Gift.”
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I looked down. It was a flat piece of red sandstone with a thin
band of black across it – a very pretty stone. But it
wasn’t the stone that opened my heart. What touched my
heart was the shy gesture of this little girl, half a world away from
my own home, coming up to me and giving me a gift with no strings
attached. Granted, it was a simple gift, but it made a big impact
on me. For behind the gift I sensed the generosity that prompts
all gifts, the wondrous generosity of God.
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In that moment I learned something about the nature of giving. I
learned that generosity is contagious, that one gift precipitates
another. For touched by the child’s gift, I immediately I
put my free hand into my jacket pocket to see if I had anything – a
coin, a piece of candy – that I might give her in return. You
see, I wanted to return that generosity so the gift could keep on
giving. And this, I think, was an impulse from God.
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Now some people, hearing that story, have argued, cynically, that the
child had been taught this behavior as a way of getting tourists like
me to give money to her. But in that moment, cynicism
wasn’t the effect of her gift on me. The effect of her
gift on me was to give thanks – in wonder – to God. A
God who is always giving to us, out of love.
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You see, as I think of the child’s gift of a stone to me at
Petra . . . back to the man from
Baal Shalishah offering the best of his harvest to the man of
God . . . and then to Elisha’s
generosity to the hungry crowd – I can’t help thinking that
what moves us all is the loving generosity of God himself. Amy
Carmichael, missionary to India in the 19th century once
said, “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without
giving.” What moved us all – the farmer from Baal
Shalishah, Elisha at Gilgal and me at Petra wanting to give back to
the little girl – was a sense of God’s love, coming through
these gifts to us all.
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And isn’t that, after all, what we really need?
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Amen.
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