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St. George's Episcopal Church Roseburg, Oregon Proper 12 , 30 July 2006 Go To St. George's Home Page

2 Samuel 11:1-15
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21
Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going. (John 6:1-21)

Press "4" for Customer Service
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

[While holding a telephone]
     “Hello and thank you for calling MegaBuck Corporation. Your call may be monitored for our future entertainment. Your call is very important to us, but not as important as it is to you. If you are calling from a rotary phone, that’s a shame; you should move someplace that is in the 21 st century.

     “Our automatic voice system will allow you to answer our questions without using the telephone key pad. This will make you feel like you are talking to a real, live person. We know we are not fooling you, but what choice do you have? We don’t have to pay the computer any wages, provide health insurance, give it coffee breaks or let it take vacation, which keeps up our profit margin.

     “Please listen to the following menu options, since they have changed (they haven’t really, but we want you to think we have improved our service). When you hear the choice you want, say or press the number that corresponds with your choice. You will need to have in your hand your social security number, your driver’s license number, and your high school locker combination. Please enter these numbers every time you are asked, because even though you send us truckloads of money every month for our services, we have no idea who you are.

     “If at any time you wish to speak to a live a customer service representative, please dial 354-475-8127 and leave a message. We just love spending our first coffee break of the morning listening to how frustrated you became.”[1]

     A few years ago, at least one major company out there – an insurance company if I remember correctly – used humor to lessen the tension these automated voice systems can generate in irate customers. The menu went something like this:

     “Thank you for calling Wegotcha Insurance. If you are calling about an invoice or payment, press or say ‘one.’ If you wish to identify an agent close to your home, press or say ‘two.’ If you have a claim, and your personal agent is unavailable, press or say ‘three.’ If you want to hear a duck call, press or say ‘four’.” And indeed when you pressed 4, you heard a duck call. But few companies are so accommodating.

     Angel.com is the world’s leading producer of automated voice recognition systems; somewhere around 1400 companies use their products. But may customers don’t like automatic voice systems (particularly when they don’t understand you). So, some people try to get around the systems by pretending they have a rotary phone. Others constantly press the “0” key hoping to get to a real operator. Other more deceptive people will access the Spanish-speaking line, hoping to speak to a bilingual representative.

     Paul English, who has been leading a crusader against the use of automatic voice systems for years now, has put together a database of secret phone numbers and codes to get to a human when calling a company for customer service.[2] That data base is now available on a website called getHuman. If you are having trouble with your Capitol One card, and want to talk to a human, getHuman says to call 800-548-4593, and press “0” repeatedly. Having a problem with your Wal-Mart Credit Card? Just call 866-888-3868 and don’t say anything at all.

     When we need something badly, we want to talk to the person who can get it for us. We don’t want to follow the path of most resistance through a maze of menus. A computer or a room full of harried and underpaid service representatives just doesn’t cut it when we want to talk to someone who will listen and understand and do something.

     Who invented the concept of placing a system between the people and the person who can help the people anyway? The church perhaps? Doctors’ offices? Service departments at car dealerships? (Did you ever try to talk to the mechanic who actually services your car?) We don’t know who invented the idea, but maybe it was the disciples.

     Like the gospel of Mark we read last week, our reading today from the gospel of John speaks about the crowds. Jesus and his disciples were apparently a magnet for attracting people. In today’s story Jesus and the disciples encounter a crowd of people numbering 5000 men plus women and children (interesting how women and children didn’t apparently figure into John’s tally). And they had definite needs. They were coming because they had heard about Jesus’ ability to heal. They wanted the cure that they felt only Jesus could provide.

     You can imagine the disciples walking among the people and hearing them ask, “When can we see Jesus up close?” “Is this where I get healed?”

     The disciples probably then surrounded Jesus, telling him what the people had said. Jesus asked Philip where food was to be purchased. This was a rhetorical question; Jesus didn’t expect Philip to whip out his cell phone, call the local deli, press “1” for service, and “2” for delivery to get food. And Jesus knew full well that they had no money.

     The disciples became an automated voice system putting themselves between Jesus and the people. The disciples saw the huge call volume and they had no menu options to press that would get this crowd all they wanted. Jesus was the sole provider, and the disciples saw themselves as an insulating barrier between the people and Jesus. They were the ones who kept the children away, until Jesus reminded them that such are the kingdom of God. They tried to keep the sick and the lame from him too. Oh, please understand, they meant well; they were just being protective of someone they admired and loved. We all do that to some degree.

     While the other disciples were protecting Jesus, Andrew found, as it reads in Greek, a little boy with some barley loaves and small fish. All well and good, but this would be like have one bag of pretzels for a plane load of people! The gulf between the resources and the need was enormous!

     That’s when the real miracle happens. Suppose you have been in a minor fender bender on a Sunday afternoon coming back from Henry Estates. You get out of your car, pick up your cell phone, and dial the claims number on the back of your insurance card. And a real person answers. Not only is he a live human being, he identifies himself as the CEO of the company. He says, “How may I help you?” How would that make you feel? Like it was a miracle, perhaps?

     When I lived in California many years ago I had a problem with an overcharge on my bank master card. I wrote to the company, I called them; I played phone tag for months. They called Guido to collect from me. I eventually called a consumer help line that I found in the phone book, and I explained my problem. Not too long afterward I got a call at work. The caller said he was from the Attorney General’s office for the State of California. “Oh, oh,” I thought, “they are going to send me to jail for not paying that disputed amount.” But he said, “Your problem has been resolved, and you won’t hear from that credit card company about this matter again.” I later discovered that the attorney who called me was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General under then Attorney General George Deukmejian. Now that’s service.

     Service. And that is exactly what Jesus was about according to John’s gospel. The feeding story is not so much about Jesus answering the people’s cries or even addressing the disciples concerns about the size of the crowd. We don’t hear the people murmuring or complaining about being hungry. There is no restlessness or excitement from the crowd. This is not a bunch of people caught up in the mystery of the feeing: Will all the people be fed by some loaves and fishes? In this story at least, no one seems to care about that. This story is not about magic.

     This story is about Jesus the man and what he wanted to do in that crowd on that day for those people. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus blessed the meal and then waited while the disciples distributed the food. In John’s telling, it was Jesus himself who told the crowd to recline, as it is written in Greek, and then it was he who walked among the crowd handing out bread and fish. This is the CEO answering the phone on a Sunday, and then coming to your damaged car and giving you a ride home. What Jesus did was ask them to assume the position one would take at a banquet, and then he served them personally. Jesus gave of himself to be with the people. That is true service. And that was the miracle: The man himself cared for them.

     Jesus continues to feed us today in so many ways. We come to the communion rail each Sunday, and through a very mystical process we consume bread and wine, and feel ourselves spiritually empowered once again. We have a spiritual hunger, and through the symbolism of the Eucharist, we receive what we need. I don’t know how or why that is, I just know it works.

     But the other gospel accounts of the feeding tell us something else. In those gospels, when the disciples tell him about the large call volume all pressing the “feed me now” option, Jesus says to them, “You give them something to eat.” The onus is on us.

     Do we do, or do we give automatic responses like, “Isn’t there an agency that can help” or “He’ll just spend the money I give him on booze” or “I’m sure your family will help with that” or “I wish I could stay with you, but I have to go to the store,” or “Have you asked your pastor for help?”

     Or do we just say, “How can I help?” Isn’t that really what the idea of Jesus the Christ is all about? Isn’t it about seeing and feeling the immanent God incarnate in the world around us in the form of one another including ourselves? Isn’t it about working from a place of seeing God’s goodness in abundance all around us, and then acting as an instrument of that goodness and grace? Isn’t Jesus the human being in who’s words and actions we somehow see and feel the presence and action of the transcendent God? Jesus taught us how a human being can be godly by seeing the world and giving of himself abundantly. Jesus showed us the way. All we should do is follow.

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2 Samuel 11:1-15

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.” So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.” Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.”

Psalm 89:20-37

1 Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is no one who does good.

2 The LORD looks down from heaven on humankind
to see if there are any who are wise,
who seek after God.

3 They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse;
there is no one who does good,
no, not one.

4 Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread,
and do not call upon the LORD?

5 There they shall be in great terror,
for God is with the company of the righteous.

6 You would confound the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is their refuge.

7 O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people,
Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.

Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

John 6:1-21

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

Collect of the Day

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[1] The story about interactive voice response was adapted from Timothy F. Merrill. “Jesus Doesn’t use IVR.” Homiletics 18(4):42-46 (2006).
[2] Information about Paul English can be found at http://paulenglish.com/ivr/, and the database of secret numbers can be accessed through http://gethuman.com/.

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Copyright © 2006, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
27 July 2006

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