10) Templomban

Az iskola gyülekezete különösen is fontos számunkra. A mindennapokban az iskolai közösséget éljük, de nagyon felszabadító volt megélni az elmúlt hetekben, hogy szinte naponta derült ki néhány kollégáról, hogy ő is keresztyén, neki is fontos Jézus szeretetének továbbadása, így egész tartalmas találkozásaim voltak már rögtön az elején.
Pl. egy angolszakos kolleganő bejött az irodámba (na jó, munkaközösségi szoba, de egyedül én használom ;)), hogy ő csak imádkozni szeretne velem. Hazudnék, ha nem lepődtem volna meg első (! na jó, lehet, hogy második) találkozásunkkor, de aztán nagyon megnyugtatott az a melegség és természetesség, amivel az egész beszélgetés folyt, és valóban őszintén tudtunk imádkozni a végén.
Aztán a biztonsági főnök, a pályaválasztási tanácsadó, a zenekarvezető, és még sorolhatnám, hogy milyen különböző beosztásban vannak itt keresztyén emberek, akik mind tesznek is azért (csoportvezetés, zenélés, egyéb gyülekezeti önkéntesség), hogy a közösség keresztyén jellege erősödjön.
Örülök, hogy része lehetek ennek, és a vasárnapi istentiszteleten jó megélni a közösséget.

Mindig gyönyörű zene van, itt András klarinétozik, a koreai Sharon orgonál, és a német Isabelle hegedül:

 Múlt vasárnap épp öregdiák-hétvége volt, egy annak idején másfél évet idejáró német lelkésznő jött röviden bizonyságot tenni:

 Barbara olvassa fel a lekciót, ő egyébként művésztanár (és most gimis igazgató is) az iskolában már vagy 30 éve, és a fenti gyönyörű batikokat is ő készítette. Van belőle néhány különböző szett (pár), ezeket az úrvacsorai alkalomra szoktuk feltenni.

 Pastor Raja, az iskola és a gyülekezet lelkésze:

 Nicole, egy mizorámi hölgy - aki kollégiumi nevelőként dolgozik - énekel:

 A gyülekezet:

 Ez még júl. 29-i kép, amikor én prédikáltam, a háttérben egy másik batik. Az első padok azért ürültek ki, mert igehirdetés előtt a vasárnapi iskolások kimentek ;)

 

Ez a kép még februári látogatásomkor készült Rajával, akkor még nem tudtuk, hogy tényleg találkozunk-e a nyáron ;)

   

Itt pedig az istentisztelet utáni kávézás, Angelikáékkal a háttérben.

 

Ha már hosszú a poszt, legyen még hosszabb, idemásolom az első igehirdetésemet Jn 6-ról (meg utána még egyet NBW-től), az alapötletért köszönet Réz-Nagy Zoli barátomnak:

KIS Church – Kodaikanal, 29 July 2018

o   Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our worship. It’s good to stand here at this pulpit where I have preached my last sermon here more than 13 years ago… My name is BM, I used to be the associate pastor of this community and now I am back with my family to volunteer at KIS. I would like you to take a look at your left and to your right and greet those people with the words: “I’m happy that you are here.”

o   Opening hymn: RH 89 – Joyful, joyful, we adore thee…

o   In the name of the F/S/HS...

o   Psalm 14 – RH 746 (responsive reading)

o   Prayer: Heavenly Father, we come to you as your thankful creatures, but also ones who have fallen. We ask you to come to us as we worship. We would like to meet you today in in our hearts, and ask you to make our hearts, minds and body ready to be able to meet you. We would like to meet you in songs, in prayer, we would like to hear your voice in the message. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

o   Announcements (from bulletin)

o   P&W songs – Louis & co.

o   Readings – Cecilia and Donald

1 Sam 21:1-6 David and the Holy Bread

21 ^[a] David came to Nob to the priest Ahimelech. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” ² David said to the priest Ahimelech, “The king has charged me with a matter, and said to me, ‘No one must know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment^[b] with the young men for such and such a place. ³ Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” ⁴ The priest answered David, “I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.” ⁵ David answered the priest, “Indeed women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey; how much more today will their vessels be holy?” ⁶ So the priest gave him the holy bread; for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.

Ephesians 3:14-21

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. ¹⁶ 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, ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. ¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ²⁰ 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, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

John 6:1-15

6 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.^{[a] 2} A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. ³ Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴ Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. ⁵ 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?” ⁶ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. ⁷ Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages^[b] would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” ⁸ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ⁹ “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” ¹⁰ Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they^[c] sat down, about five thousand in all. ¹¹ 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. ¹² When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” ¹³ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. ¹⁴ 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.” ¹⁵ 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.

o   Offertory hymn: RH 572 – Pass it on

o   Receiving the offering with prayer: Gracious God, we thank you for your gifts that you’ve been giving us and now we ask you to take our offering as a gift that we would like to bring to you as a community. Bless the donations, bless our church council as they bring decisions to allocate these and we also ask your blessing for our Sunday School children and teachers as they move out to deepen their knowledge on you. Guide us with your Holy Spirit, amen.

o   Sermon on John 6:1-15

A very interesting thing happened to me almost two weeks ago. Mr. Jo called me to ask to lead the devotion next day at the assembly at Ganga Compound. I did not have to much time to think about what kind of message I could bring to the children and staff there, and I ended up selecting this very gospel passage about feeding the 5000.
There I focused on the boy who actually had something that Jesus could multiply and use it for the blessing of everybody – telling the ES and MS kids that they sure have something (creativity, time, caring attitude, listening ear, etc.) they could give Jesus to use it for the blessing of others in this new school year. And the same afternoon I received the biblical texts for today’s service from pastor Raja after he had already asked me to lead worship this Sunday, and was surprised to see that I’ll have to preach on exactly the same gospel passage. Anyway, today I had brought you a different type of message:
When we got up today, I believe most of us took the most important symbol of religion in our hands. What would be the most (or one of the most) important symbol of religion? BREAD. It could be some sliced sweet that we grabbed in Hilltop last night packed in paper; it could be the whole grain toast served in the dining hall for breakfast, or it could be some nice dosai or idli our nicest family member made for us – but let it come in any form, the bread is one of the most ancient religious symbol.
Some of the ancient findings show us some stone devices like graining stones. The most ancient one is like 11 thousand years old. They used them for handling grain of wheat. So, bread has been present since, and we can even read about how devotees put sacrifices of bread next to their dead or to their idols of deities.
That’s why there is no surprise in the fact that one of the items of the Tent of the Covenant described in the Old Testament was also the Table of Holy Bread (or: Table for the Bread of the Presence!) where 12 loaves of bread had to be kept from week to week. This is how we read the instruction from Ex 25: ²³ You shall make a table of acacia wood, two cubits long, one cubit wide, and a cubit and a half high. (…) ³⁰ And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me always.
The Bible does not tell us much about the bread – not because it was not important enough, but rather they assumed it was well known by all. These loaves of holy bread were changed every Saturday, and the old ones were eaten by the priests, but only by them, nobody else could eat them.
We have a story (1Sam 21) about King David when he actually had to flee from Saul, and he did not have a chance to take any food with him, so he decided to go to Nob where the Tent of the Covenant stood. (as you know this Tent is represented the presence of God!) He asked the priest there: „Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” He had no ordinary bread, only holy bread, and David ended up eating them and giving to those who were with him. And believe it or not, it had no consequence at all, we do not even read any bad things happening to them because they did what they were not supposed to.
One thing we can learn from this: these loaves of bread reminded those who entered the Tent of the Covenant that even in the uttermost moment of famine God had not left his people. God had always provided when the people were in trouble. These 12 loaves of bread have become the symbol for the providence of God. This is my first good news today.
This is how we have actually a set of stories of bread in the Bible:

-          putting the 12 loaves in the Tent of the Covenant

-          God providing manna (and quails) to the people during wandering in the desert (Ex 16)

-          having allowed David to eat this holy bread from the

-          then the disciples of Jesus plucking grain on a Sabbath (Mt 12)

-          then the feeding of the 5000 (Jn 6)

-          and finally the last supper (Mt 26)…

I am an organizer. I remember when I first read this story of the feeding of the 5000, my gutt just asked me how on earth they could keep them in order? If you’ve organized some events for a larger crowd and it involved catering, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Actually, right now (!) in Hungary, there is a huge youth jamboree is going on, this is a Lutheran Youth Festival called Szélrózsa (Windrose/Compass Rose) I used to organize for the last couple of years. This jamboree of (almost) 2500 youth organized for the 12th time in every other year in Hungary started this Wednesday and ends today, and I’m thinking of them right now as they try to sit down this many people and have them fed. Not only by real bread, but with the symbol I just told you about: sharing God’s providence with them.
Shall we break this down to logistics? If we do that, lots of questions could be raised: as we read from the gospels, they were to sit down in groups of fives, so altogether 1000 groups had to be served by the disciples. If 12 of them did this job, it’s still 83 groups per person. In one small group there was five men, and you can add approximately this number of women, not even counting the children. So, there was at least 10-15 people in each group, so at least 1,5 kg barley bread to have them optimally filled. So, one disciple must have taken 124 kg food from one place to another, altogether 1,5 tons (!) of food had been distributed.
If you want to imagine the gospel account in real life, you would fail. This is not something to be taken literally and teach it to students of logistics like how you can distribute food very effectively. It’s not about that. There is a well-known scholar of religious history, Wellhausen who just pointed out that in oral history the numbers often tend to change. There is a classical allegorical explanation of the church that the five loaves could be the five books of Moses (the Torah), the 12 baskets refer to the 12 apostles, and the 2 fish would be the Prophets and the Writings. This is how this feast actually changes the law into gospel, the old covenant into new covenant where the apostles distribute the bread of gospel to the people. The reformators have even emphasized that this story also wants to tell us that Christ practices his pastoral duties not only focusing the mind and soul, but also the body. Christ would not let his own people lack the most essential things for life. This is my second good news today for you.
Who do you think these people were in this big crowd? We know it from the gospel of John that this was quite close to the Passover time, and some pilgrims have already started for the feast. But in Jesus’ time there were a lot of people who just could not go to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. General workers in Galilee who just could not leave their every day duties behind. Their religion would have required it, but they just could not take a couple of days off to take the long trip. These kinds of people add up our crowd today. Those who would like to celebrate, but they would have to put their everyday earnings for their families above their religous duties. They are at least as full of expectations as those who had gone on the pilgrimage. They would all look for abundance as they experienced it in the first exodus, they would all look for the great providence of God. And here they understand it: abundance is there where Jesus is. He is the one who gives, who creates this abundance. That’s my third good news: abundance is where Jesus is.
The bread from heaven comes there where Jesus is. This is what we can read a couple of verses later in the same chapter: ³¹ Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” ³² Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is that which^[g] comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” ³⁴ They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
From this we can understand that the bread actually belongs to heaven. That’s the origin of it. This is where it came down, this is where it belongs. But came to us anyway to dwell among us. This is what we read in our Ephesians-text today: and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. This is what we do every morning: so when we take the bread in our hands for next breakfast, let us remind ourselves to the origin of it, and realize that the source of abundance is where Jesus is and he came to show and give us this abundance regardless where we are.
Regardless of the fact whether we are faithful and law-keeping pilgrims somewhere in Galilee, or organizing huge youth events in Hungary or preaching in this beatiful corner of the world called Kodi School. The main point is that God wants us to realize that abundance is there, where Jesus is. This is how we can share the prayer of the crowd in John 6: Sir, give us this bread always! I believe this is why we are all here. This is why Pastor Raja is here. This is why the musicians and praise&worship leaders are here. I believe this is also why I’m here. To talk to you about the great providence of God, to confess that Jesus Christ would not let his own people lack the most essential things for life, and the abundance is where Jesus is. And if we believe this and live by these here in Kodai School and in our church then we can really make a difference.
Amen.
Benediction: May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, may the Lord look upon you with favor and give you + peace. Amen.

Extract from Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon (not to be used in the sermon, but for CE youth group): http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2015/07/sermon-on-the-feeding-of-the-5000-preached-for-pastors-musicians-and-church-leaders/

But I just couldn’t bear to preach a “Jesus wants you to be nice and share your juice box” sermon to you today since I suspect you learned that lesson already in Nursery school.

Not that thousands of human beings sharing with their neighbors isn’t a little miraculous, it is, it’s just that there are 6 accounts of this miracle in the gospels. 6. And since there are only 4 gospels that means that in 2 of them a version of this story was told twice. So maybe it’s just too important a story for it to just be about people sharing their lunches.

Because miracles, and not lessons about sharing, are what we really need. So as crazy as it is – I believe in miracles – not because I think I’m supposed to but because I need to. I need to believe that God does what we cannot do.

Because if God just acted in ways we could – we could all just be our own Gods. And if history tells us anything,…it’s that we make terrible gods.

But I wonder if, like the disciples, we too make the mistake of not always realizing how different God is from us and what a good thing that is. That we have a God who can actually feed so many on so little. A God who created the universe out of nothing, that can put flesh on dry bones nothing, that can put life in a dry womb of nothing, NOTHING is God’s favorite material to work with. Perhaps God looks upon that which we dismiss as “nothing” “Insignificant” “worthless” and says “Ha! Now that I can do something with”.

The resource that Jesus had in abundance that day that a few loaves and couple fish became a feast for 5,000 people wasn’t the fried chicken and potato salad hidden under people’s tunics…the raw material that Jesus had was the need of humanity for a God that can do miracles. This need is an endless resource.

Maybe the mistake the disciples made wasn’t only that they forgot how God works, but also that they forgot that they too were hungry. They defaulted to “what do I have” rather than “what do I too need, and is that also what the people in front of me need?”. The disciples seemed to forget that their own personal need for bread, and not their own personal resources was the thing that qualified them to participate in the miracle of feeding thousands with nothing on hand. It was not their cooking skills, it was not their ability to preach enough Law that they guilted everyone into sharing; it was their own deep hunger which exactly matches that of the crowd. How often do we forget this ourselves? That what we really have going for us – the asset we all carry around is not homiletical chops or choral conducting expertise, or leadership training – it’s our own personal need for a savior. A need identical in quality and quantity to those we lead. And this need you and I have for Jesus, in not a scarce resource…the need for forgiveness and love and mercy has no limit. Let that be our nothing from which God creates real miracles.

Yet I myself so often forget this. I am too easily overwhelmed by the hunger of the multitudes and I look around trying to figure out what I have at my disposal that might feed them and I keep coming up short – short on compassion, short on skill, short on will. And I think of how God called me to this and needs me to feed God’s people and so I lean on my own resources and when I do I quickly see how little there is. A few loaves? A couple fish? It’s never enough.

That’s the irony. Maybe the more important and transformative the work is that you do the more you need to know that you are loved by God with or without doing that work. The more you need to know that when Jesus looks out and asks where are these hungry people going to get food he is including you in the category of hungry people and himself in the category of bread.

This is why the magic matters and cant be explained away through human reason – because if human reason were enough to love us and save us and create beautiful things out of dust then Christ dies in vain and the promise is null. No brothers and sisters, I want some miracles.

When I rely only on my strengths which, trust me, are few, when I think I have only my small stingy little heart from which to draw love for those I serve, when the waters are rough and storms are real and I am scared – filled with fear of what is happening or not happening in the church, filled with fear that I don’t have what it takes to be a leader in the church, filled with fear that everyone will see nothing in me but my inadequacies, I have forgotten about Jesus- my Jesus who’s making something out of my nothing and walking towards me in the storm. That’s our guy. The Man of sorrows familiar with suffering, friend of scoundrels and thieves, forgiver of his own executioners, resurrected on the 3^rd day, the lamb who was slain, the great defeater of death and griller of fish and savior of sinners.

 In him there is not one category of people who teach and one who need to learn. There is not one category of people who heal and one who need wholeness. There is not one category of people who minister and one who need care. There is just one category: hungry sinners in need of a savior. So together we come away with Christ to sit in the grass and be fed…and you are in as much need of being fed, healed and ministered to as those who you care for. Because the work you do IS important and it is transformative but you, my sweet, dear friends, are loved entirely and completely by God with or without doing that work.