Sunday, July 26, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.

God in My Pocket

Mark Eldred
Coordinator for Worship and Adult Education, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 145:10–18
John 6:1–15

Preaching is reaching . . . p-reaching is a person reaching . . . preaching is a person reaching . . reaching through something . . . reaching in something, in the Word of God, reaching from something to something.

Preaching is a person reaching . . . to a person reaching . . . or to persons reaching . . . or to a people reaching . . . who are reaching back.

“Where two or more or gathered!” Preaching is a person reaching to a people reaching back.

Will you join with me in reaching through prayer:

Rise . . . Risen . . . Rising . . . Raised . . .
Rise . . . Risen . . . Rising . . . Raised . . .
May the words of my mouth
and the mediation of our hearts
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Rise . . . Risen . . . Rising . . . Raised . . .
Rise . . . Risen . . . Rising . . . Raised . . . Rise Up.
Rise Up. Amen.

Something has happened the last several times that I have preached, and I would like to share it with you. I came here, to this church, this past Friday morning with a finished sermon—or what I thought was a finished sermon—and by the end of Friday, I had to throw most of it away and start over.

It was a little eight- to ten-minute thing that replicated a seminary class to illustrate what the current conversation sounds like regarding literal versus figurative miracles in scripture. But thanks to Friday, I had to throw that out.

I think this “throw it out” might be directly related to a severe issue that I self-diagnosed myself with about three or four years ago. I know that I am new to you all, but I need to share something with you. I suffer from an ailment, a kind of syndrome, I guess. You see, I hate to admit this, but I suffer from God in my Pocket syndrome.

A syndrome is a series of consistent symptoms that always head in the direction of a quantifiable end. In a syndrome, the symptoms might change for each individual, but the end result is the same. My symptoms went a little bit like this: I’m too busy (too busy to even read the Bible—no, really, even as a seminary student); I’ll do spirituality tomorrow; I’ll be holy next week; I can’t talk to that friend about God because of X, Y, and Z; maybe they will laugh at me. I’m tired. I don’t have enough. I am not enough. I’m not worthy; I’m not qualified; I’m scared; I’m just a bad person—and my symptoms went on and on and on, always with the end result of tucking God away quickly and securely in my pocket.

Prior to seminary, when it was convenient for me to take God out of my pocket for a bit of air, then I did; sometimes at church, maybe among specific friends, maybe from time to time when I sang in choirs or when I needed something, or maybe a bit during an infrequent prayer. What I didn’t realize was that I was asking the God that I believe in to spend a lot of precious time in deep darkness, with my change and my keys and my wallet and my cell phone and my pocket lint.

I realized this God in My Pocket syndrome most when announcing to the world that I was heading to seminary. Looking back and recalling those responses that very first semester of seminary, it all hit me that for the majority of my life I hadn’t shared my faith with anyone—not even my family. I was, at my worst and at my best, hoarding the gift of faith that I have been given, and when the time came for me to own up to my faith, God stayed in the pocket. I didn’t understand why people were surprised about my attending seminary until I got up around a bunch of crazy seminary students that were turning God out of their pockets as well, fully and wholeheartedly.

I am here to admit that this past Friday I may have entered this wonderful building tired and drained and with God deeply tucked away in my pants pocket. I had my day planned out, much of which included finding a few spaces in the day where I would rest—perfectly healthy. Here I was in my own
church home, in this very room, with my God of convenience tucked tightly away in my pocket. It was like saying to God, “God, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do today . . . and you’ll just have to get back in that pocket.” Again.

In John chapter 5, just before today’s scripture reading, Jesus repeats twice that he “can do nothing on his own” (John 5:19, 30). In that chapter, Jesus goes on a rather long explanation of his having healed on the sabbath, foreshadows his last hour, and repeatedly expresses that he is not there to do his own will but the will of God, who sent him. He is never alone, and after this very long speech, Jesus is tired. Can you relate to being tired? If you can relate to being tired, turn to your neighbor and say, “Friend, sometimes I just get tired.” It takes at least two, preaching, and it takes both directions: people reaching . . . a person reaching to a people reaching . . .

In ancient Judaism, locals went to “the hills” to seek holiness. Local hills were given holy status as places of gathering. This practice declined with the rise of Jerusalem and the central temple as the only place for worship. In a sense, Jesus was returning to an age-old, pre-temple tradition by leading his disciples up a hill of holiness, both to rest and to seek what is holy. If Moses started here, then here is where Jesus would begin his end, where he would address the very center of his full humanness and full divinity.

It makes me think of the reaching that we do here—the place in the middle where words reach thoughts, the sacred space of sanctuary, whether it is on a mountain, here in this place, in a hospital room, or while sitting at home. It makes me think of that space outside of ourselves where we allow the presence of God to live. That is what I was squashing by keeping my God in my pocket—space that I didn’t expect to find at two concerts here this past Friday. I was tired. I thought I would stay a minute and the concerts would provide me a bit of rest and relief.

My plan for today’s sermon was to talk about this miracle feeding the five thousand and to give you a glimpse of how we wrestled with it one day in a seminary class, but to be honest, I remember that we went a good three hours and got little to nowhere. I do remember the end of class though. A student raised their hand, which may or may not have been me, and asked, “What if the miracle is the conversation that wasn’t spoken out loud in this scripture?”

Well, they let me graduate, and I’m ashamed to say that we never got around to answering that question, but I’m going to answer it now. The miracle, for me, is in the process. It is in the way that Jesus goes about his teaching and the scope of his reaching. It is in what is not said or asked out loud by him or his disciples.

Nowhere does either Jesus or his disciples’ question who the five thousand people were or might be. Nowhere does either Jesus or his disciples eliminate, segregate, or exclude. Jesus doesn’t ask the disciples to sort the five thousand by socioeconomic status or by test scores or by academic degree achieved or by strength of their individual faith—or by any faith, for that matter—or by culture or by ethnicity or by gender or by age. This table was open to all, not because of who they were, but because of their intent in reaching to seek it. People reaching.

Now I am not saying that there isn’t some great societal importance to rules, to ration, to procedure, to laws, to principals, to governance, to committees, and to process. There is some inherent good in considering how we do things. The responses of the disciples Philip and Andrew are from the pocket. They are questions that we all understand. “How will we pay for this?” They are rational. They aren’t necessarily wrong!

But when Jesus was asked to feed people, he showed an unimaginable love and charge, a God fully out of pocket, an unthinkable leap of acceptance that has changed me. He said, “Feed ’em! Feed ’em all! Every one of them.” Friends, where in this world do we ever see it done quite like that? That is miracle.

Friday I saw people walking into this sanctuary from all walks of life, all parts of Chicago, and all parts of the world. This room was open to all; we turned nobody away! At 11:00 a.m., a group of us sat in Buchanan Chapel and shared the wonderful dance of our very own Chicago Lights CLASS Summer Dance Intensive students. Then at 12:10 p.m. the Sanctuary soared with the sound of the H.H.W. Vocal Arts Ensemble of the After School Matters Program, a choral group made up of seventy-two talented kids from various Chicago high schools. It was just a small slice of what a God fully out of the pocket can do.

I came here to rest, and I heard “Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on let me stand . . .” I didn’t know the music would be sacred text. I came here to rest, and I heard a song about Daniel, servant of the Lord: “among the Hebrew nations, one Hebrew Daniel was found; they put him in a-the lion’s den” (one of the first solos that I ever sang, at age fifteen). I heard the first versus of the Gospel of John—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God!”—and I was fed full up to the top. “Feed ’em all!” the music cried. “Feed ’em all!”

I’m going to keep at it. I am going to keep reaching as best I can. And I’m going to send you with a little homework assignment, a question that we can’t answer right this moment: What does a life with God out of the pocket look like? What can this life look like with God fully and wholeheartedly out of the pocket? Who gets fed in that life? Amen.