Nothing Lost

Sermon

Today is going to be fun, as we get to talk about the first law of thermodynamics and the nature of miracles. So thanks for being here today!

Before we get into all those good things, let’s have a few words about this story. The first miracle in today’s lesson, the feeding of the five thousand, is the only miracle of Jesus that is told in all four gospels. Now that may or may not seem like a big deal to you, and maybe, really, it’s not that big a deal. But I find it curious if not important that of all the stories of Jesus that all four of the gospel writers found important to share, it is this one about feeding people. It’s about the compassion deep in Jesus’ heart that compelled him to feed a huge crowd so that no one would be hungry. Not only that, but all four gospel writers include that final detail that after everyone ate, there was enough left over to fill twelve baskets.

As one commentator notes, “The text is explicit… that Jesus causes everyone’s hunger to be satisfied and twelve baskets of leftovers are collected, indicating the character of this new community where ‘leftovers’ – both food and people – are neither insignificant nor abandoned.” (Robert A. Bryant, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, p. 287)

For me, that is the big takeaway from this story: that in God’s beloved community, nothing and no one is lost or abandoned. Yes, the miracle is important, whether you think it was a true miracle where food appeared or whether you think the miracle was people digging deep into their rucksacks and sharing what they had. Yes, the other story, Jesus’ walking on water, is important as a teaching about Jesus’ power and the disciples’ understanding who Jesus is. But for me, what matters most is this little verse: “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

I think that’s how God works, gathering up the fragments so that nothing and no one is lost. In the Hebrew scriptures, the faithful people of Israel are called a remnant – a leftover – and they form the basis for the continuing covenant between God and the people. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus tells parables of lost coins that are found after a diligent search and about a shepherd who goes to find that one lost sheep while leaving the 99 to fend for themselves; he tells a parable about a son who is lost then found.

Now I am no physicist, but I had reason recently to review the first law of thermodynamics, which is related to the law of the conservation of energy. Basically, it says this: the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed. Or, to put it theologically, all the energy that was present at creation is still present today. It has not been lost; it has changed, yes, but it is all still there.

Nothing is lost.

I’d like to share with you three stories that might make my point.

The first has to do with feeding people. It’s not a miraculous thing of feeding 5,000 with two fish and five loaves of bread, but it is a story about making sure that no one gets lost or goes away hungry.

On Friday night, Gregg and I went to the Northeast Emergency Food Program as guests in their volunteer recognition event. Among those recognized were six Westminster members who received the President’s Award, given to those who have given dozens if not hundreds of hours of their time to volunteer. Hats off to Daniel, Matthew, Doug, Grant, Linda, and Jan.

The CEO of the Oregon Food Bank, Susannah Morgan, spoke. She talked about March of 2020, as the reality of the pandemic set in, and her fear that felt like panic that they would not be able to feed everyone who would experience food insecurity because of the pandemic. She thought they would not be able to do it, and her fears were real. From early 2020 to spring of 2021, the number of people in Oregon needing assistance with food doubled, from over 800,000 to 1.6 million.

But. But! No one went away hungry because of the hundreds of food pantries and programs throughout the state. And NEFP fed the most because people offered what they had – tens of thousands of volunteer hours; millions of pounds of food donated; businesses stepping up to offer trucks and refrigerators and shade tents and boxes.

Westminster is part of that story. Last spring, we responded to a challenge from the presbytery to use a gift of $1,000 to help people in the community. We partnered with Rose City Park Presbyterian Church and raised over $20,000 to allow NEFP to hire additional staff needed to meet the additional needs. Our monthly food drives, as well as Christmas in July, make us the second largest donor of food to NEFP, next to the Oregon Food Bank.

No one goes away hungry. No one is lost.

The second story is about leftovers. A little footnote first: in verse 12, Jesus talks about gathering up the fragments left over, so I looked up the Greek. The word for fragments is just that, but the word we translate as “leftover,” in Greek, means literally “having been over and above.” So this is a story about things being over and above.

It begins with a crisis and tragedy, when at 3 a.m. on the morning of July 4, a fire was started in a dumpster that was where it was not supposed to be. The wooden stairs caught fire. People living at the Heidi Manor apartments had to jump from their second and third floor apartments. Some people lost everything but the clothes on their backs – everything, including phones and computers and IDs. They lost their pets and their cars. Two men lost their lives. One woman lost her once unbroken body.

An extraordinary woman named Chris, who lives nearby, had a deep compassion for her neighbors. She volunteered to help, not really knowing what she would be getting herself into. Neighbors began to take donations of their leftover clothing and kitchen things and linens over to Spin Laundry at 24^th and Broadway. About that time, I contacted Chris to see if the church might help, not really knowing what I would be getting us into. “We have space and volunteers,” I said. “We’ll take it,” Chris said.

So several car trips later, and after over 80 volunteer hours, with donations coming from church members and neighbors from all over the city and lovely items from Holladay Park Plaza, we were able to offer the survivors of the fire clothes for their backs. Most of them do not yet have a new place to live, so the household items will come later.

Because of neighbors’ generosity, we have been able to give away gift cards, and Nike shoes, and Adidas shoes, and food. The fund which Westminster is managing continues to grow so that we will be able to help each apartment with a monetary gift to help with motel costs or a security deposit at a new place.

People’s response has been over and above. Nothing can erase the trauma that the Heidi Manor Apartments residents experienced. Nothing can replace the lives lost. But if the generosity and compassion of neighbors helps, even a little, then I would say we have done good work.

No one is lost. No one is forgotten.

The last story I want to tell is about our people, and particularly, the beloved members of our congregation who died during the pandemic, when our doors were closed and the only way we could see each other was on a computer screen.

Before we began having people in the sanctuary again, staff members placed our silk Easter lilies in the pews, approximating where those who died used to sit. Two lilies in the choir loft, helping us to remember Joe and Kris. Lilies for Dick and Turk and Jeannie, Leslie, Carolyn, Jack, Laura Jean – I’ve lost count of all of them.

People have asked when we will move the lilies and I don’t know. I just know not yet. Because these people were a part of us – they are what made our community whole. If Westminster is a quilt, then they were pieces of our fabric that were sewn together to make something beautiful and comforting. We keep the lilies so that we do not forget these beautiful souls.

Which takes me back to the first law of thermodynamics, and to something artist and performer Aaron Freeman said. “You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

“And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

“And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

“And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that …that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.”

Nothing and no one is lost. Or, as poet Laura Gilpin puts it, “…nothing is wasted in nature or in love.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.