Sermon for August 2nd, 2015
John 6:1-21
1After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.
5When 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?” 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8One 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?” 10Jesus 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. 11Then 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. 12When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14When 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.” 15When 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.
16When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
Celtic Christianity: The Warmth of Hospitality
For as long as I've known her (and that's since we were 16) my wife, Amy, has wanted to go to Ireland. As often happens with married couples, her dream eventually became my dream, too. Over the years, we accumulated quite a bit of "Ireland paraphernalia--calendars, keychains, coffee-table books, posters--basically ways to "keep the dream alive" that we would someday make the trip.
One poster that Amy had was called "the Doors of Ireland." It was a giant poster covered with pictures of Irish...doors. Doors to people's houses. It sounds odd to say it now...who takes pictures of people's doors, and why are the doors in Ireland any more special than any other doors? The doors on the poster were pretty, painted in bright colors, but I don't think I really started to appreciate the poster until last month, when we finally made our long-anticipated trip to Ireland.
On our very first evening in Dublin, we took a walk through the neighborhood where we were staying, past countless houses, apartments, shops, and churches. Those doors in the poster? They weren't famous doors, or exceptional doors, or even the "best of" doors. No, pretty much ALL the doors in Ireland are that way--brightly painted in every color imaginable: Fire-engine red, clover-green, neon-pink, lemon-yellow, ocean-blue, orange, purple, turquoise... They were framed and fringed with Greek columns, frosted windows, or sometimes, hanging Ivy; capped with stone or wooden arches, and bright brass knobs and knockers squarely in the center of the door (we actually came across a large store in downtown Dublin named "knobs and knockers"--that's all they sold!).
It wasn't just the nice houses, either. Even the most run down, dingy townhouse had a bright, beautiful door in front of it. It was as if there was some kind of unspoken competition in Ireland, with every house, every door screaming out, Pick me! Knock on me! Come in through me! Come in! Come in! Welcome, welcome!
Sometimes I think that here in the United States we would prefer to hide our doors altogether, so that no one can see them, lest they might actually come in through them, and bother us. For that matter, most of us don't even use our own front doors--we just come in through the garage. If Amy decided to paint the front door of our house pink, it would probably take me a month to notice.
There are plenty of stories, most conflicting, about the origins of the "Doors of Ireland." My favorite is that a famous writer in Dublin painted his door bright red and his neighbor's bright green so that when his neighbor came home drunk he wouldn't confuse them any more.
But I have a different theory, and it's related to a core principle of ancient Celtic peoples--one that I think has survived in their Irish descendants. It's the principle of hospitality. It's actually a cherished value in many ancient cultures: You open your door to the stranger and go out of your way to welcome him in, because it might be a God in disguise. Or better yet, because somewhere down the line, you might be the traveling stranger in need of hospitality.
