The Good News is… together, the impossible is possible
- highlandspcwy
- 6 minutes ago
- 9 min read
A couple years ago, the Black Mountain Presbyterian Church in Black Mountain, North Carolina, began searching for a new mission statement.
They wanted something that would truly ground the life of their community. But as the committee worked, they struggled to find language that felt authentic and relevant.
Then, one day, a committee member pointed to the words carved into their Communion Table—“Has everyone been fed?”
“What if,” they wondered, “that was our mission statement?”
The committee considered the proposal. A question as a mission? That’s a little unorthodox.
But as they discussed and unpacked its many meanings, they began to list all the ways the church fed people in body, mind, and spirit.
They also decided that a question was a powerful reminder. Their work is ongoing, that they couldn’t become complacent, comfortable, or cliquish.
Has everyone been fed? Within that question was also a charge.
And so, like good Presbyterians, they submitted the new mission statement to the session for approval.
On the Sunday of September 22, 2024, they were finally ready to announce their new mission statement to the congregation. Their pastor preached on the new mission statement with a sermon titled, “The Time is Now!”
The sermon—and the mission statement—would soon prove more relevant than anyone could have imagined.
Just a few days later, On September 27th, Hurricane Helene tore through North Carolina, devastating the Black Mountain community. Catastrophic flooding wiped out homes and businesses, killed hundreds of people, and decimated the local infrastructure.
Once the storm had passed, nearly everyone was without water, power, or cell service. Black Mountain’s pastor recalls how she and her family walked to the church while the roads were still impassable—hoping to check on neighbors and maybe locate some ice for their quickly spoiling food.
To her surprise, they found several church members already there, emptying the pantry and cooking whatever they could find in the freezer on gas-powered stoves. A line of hungry people was already forming in the parking lot.
In the storm’s aftermath, the entire region had been thrown into crisis.
But the church didn’t hesitate; without any plan or pre-thought, they opened the doors wide and began feeding anyone who showed up.
Within a few days, the church was feeding nearly a thousand people a day. Volunteers arrived both to serve and to receive hot meals.
As word spread and supplies finally began arriving—nearly a week later, after impassable roads reopened—the church quickly filled with donated food and essentials. Nearly every square inch of the building was transformed into an organized food pantry.
Soon, the church partnered with a local restaurant to continue preparing and serving free meals at their larger venue. Donated supplies were rerouted to a local business that had offered its 3,000 square foot warehouse for storage and distribution.
Over the months that followed, financial donations poured into the church’s hurricane relief fund. A task force was formed to distribute $2 million in donations to local organizations and nonprofits supporting both immediate rebuilding and long-term recovery needs, including affordable housing.
The crowds in today’s Gospel story were gathered for different reasons, but they too experienced a miracle.
Jesus and his disciples are trying to getting out of town.
Just before this story, the disciples have been sent out in pairs to cast out demons and heal the sick, all while carrying nothing with them and possibly facing frequent rejection (Mark 6:7-13). Then we learn that John the Baptist has been brutally beheaded (Mark 6:14-29).
I imagine that both events have left the disciples physically and emotionally exhausted and in need of rest. Perhaps this is why Jesus invites the disciples to “come away to a deserted place.” Perhaps Jesus too, needed time to clear his head.
But when they arrive a huge crowd is there to greet them. They had followed after Jesus and the disciples, beating them there. Now, this deserted place is not so deserted.
Now, Jesus response here, illustrates to me, why Jesus, is Jesus, and I am not.
Instead of yelling at the people to leave him alone, like I might have, Jesus’s feels compassion for them. They are like sheep without a shepherd’s protection. Children without a parent’s provision.
And they are hungry… for teachings… for healing… and as dinner time approaches… hungry for a meal.
And so, thought he, and the disciples, long for reprieve, they instead choose to respond to crowd’s needs.
Eventually everyone has to eat, and so the disciples propose a plan. “Why not send the crowds away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.”
But Jesus rejects this very well reasoned, practical plan, telling the disciples—“You give them something to eat.”
We might empathize with the disciples here. Uhh how are we supposed to do that Jesus? Are we to go and buy bread and give it to them to eat?
The disciples are falling into familiar patterns. In their economy, just as in ours, you need to pay for bread. But Jesus has already been teaching them about a new economy.
When he sent them out two by two, with not much but the shirts on their backs, he was teaching them about interdependence.
Going in pairs meant they never served in isolation. Going without food or money meant they would be forced to rely on the generosity and hospitality of others.
Perhaps, Jesus was training them not just to give, but also receive. To learn how to in an economy of interdependence, rather than relying on themselves along.
And perhaps, now the disciples are struggling to choose interdependence and communal care? They have practical concerns, and Jesus is just being… impossible.
The theologian Walter Brueggemann has written about the effects of our deeply individualistic culture on Christianity.
He writes that “Christians have a long history of trying to squeeze Jesus out of public life and reduce him to a private little Savior.”
At first, this might sound wrong, given the current strength of Christian nationalism—which seeks to force everyone who does not follow their same small, judgmental Jesus out of public life.
But Brueggemann has a point, especially for those of us who represent very different theological perspectives.
To make our faith purely private, a matter between you and God and no one else, is, as Brueggemann says, “to ignore what the Bible really says.” In his teaching and ministry, Jesus, shares with us a great deal about the kingdom of God. By this, he means, as Brueggemann continues, "is a public life reorganized toward neighborliness.”
The Kingdom of God is about a public life shaped by neighborliness.
This kind of neighborliness does not condemn or degrade people of other faiths—or no faith at all. It doesn’t shove Jesus down anyone’s throat.
It is a neighborliness that feeds the hungry, no matter what. A neighborliness that sees people’s needs not as their individual burden, but as a shared one.
It is a neighborliness that trusts we can share—because there is enough to go around.
I think we need the courage to proclaim this good news in our public squares. This is not the “good news” that has so often been weaponized, but the truth about God and the world we share.
That creation is imbued with God’s abundance, if only we have eyes to see it.
That the impossible is possible, if only we act together.
At this point I feel like I need to address the miracle in the room.
Christians have long wrestled with how to understand the miracle stories.
Some read them as they are, trusting that the bread and fish themselves truly multiplied in Jesus’ hands. Many scholars are often skeptical of these readings—seeking instead a materialists explanation that can account for miracles in a way that make rational sense.
Those who seek this sort of explanation might appreciate the interpretation that such scholars propose—that when the disciples looked at what little they had, the crowd did the same. People reached into their cloaks and baskets, pulled out what they had been holding back, and began to share. In that telling, the miracle is not a suspension of nature but a transformation of the human heart—the miracle of generosity rather than of matter.
Personally, I remain open to the possibility of events which cannot be explained by human reason alone. But, whatever interpretation you find most compelling, I think Jesus point us towards the same truth.
The truth that within the Kingdom of God, scarcity loosens its grip. That there is enough bread… enough mercy… enough love for all of us.
When Jesus performs what the Bible calls “wonders and signs,” he is enacting the Kingdom of God—that upside-down kingdom where the first become last, the dead are raised, the poor are set free from debt. A kingdom where the impossible is possible. A kingdom not of domination or profit seeking, but a kingdom of neighborly love.
As Bruggerman describes, “the feeding of the multitudes, is an example of the new world coming into being through God.”
When the disciples, charged with feeding the hungry crowd, come back with just five loaves and two fish, Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, then gives the bread.
It is a summary of our sacramental life. When bread is broken and shared, there is enough for all.
This is the alternative economy Jesus reveals.
Our economy, by contrast, often runs on the logic of scarcity—competition, buying and selling, weighing and measuring, trading and accumulating, until finally everything sinks toward death and nothingness.
Jesus demonstrates that the world is filled with abundance. In that abundance, we find fear gives way to trust.
The kingdom of God is not solely about spiritual matters, but in the transformation of the world. The more seriously we take Jesus teachings, the the more we begin to participate in this economy of abundance.
But just like the disciples, we, often misunderstand Jesus. We try to squeeze him into familiar patterns—patterns of scarcity, competition, and control. But when we reduce Jesus to those old frameworks, we make him small. We make him irrelevant. Or worse, we make him harmful.
But the good news Jesus proclaims is anything but small, it is not irrelevant, it is certainly not an weapon to be wielded against your enemies.
And our world needs to hear this good news anew.
Walter Bruggerman challenges us to recognize that this good news has nothing to do with our familiar binaries. It is not a party platform for Republicans or Democrats, not a stamp of approval for liberal or conservative values, and not a defense of socialism or capitalism.
It is far more elemental than that. It is the conviction that creation itself is infused with the generosity of its Creator—and that human communities can cultivate practices, institutions, and habits of life that allow that generosity to flow. We must live into God’s economy.
Every now and then, we see glimpses of this alternative economy breaking into the world.
The story of Black Mountain Presbyterian Church, and their response to the crisis in their community, offers one such glimpse.
There is something about a crisis that often brings out our better angels.
In moments of disaster, we suddenly see what human communities are capable of. Many of us grow in courage, generosity, and moral clarity. Generosity appears. We lean on one another, care for one another, and serve one another in ways that might have seemed impossible just days before.
In those moments, the logic of scarcity loosens its grip. The quiet miracle of generosity begins to unfold. Food and drink multiples.
But in our ordinary, day-to-day lives, we are far less likely to take those kinds of risks. We drift back into habits of fear and calculation. We convince ourselves there is not enough. We protect what is ours. We forget what we are capable of together.
As the community of Black Mountain recovered, the church’s mission statement became well known throughout the town. People remembered the church that opened its doors.
But the congregation found that they had becoming grounded in that deeper meaning of their mission statement—the work was not over.
To this day, each time they celebrate Communion, after the bread and cup have been shared, the pastors asks the congregation a simple question: “Has everyone been fed?”
And the congregation shouts back: “Not yet!”
Not yet—because the table of Jesus is bigger than any sanctuary.
Not yet—because there are still hungry neighbors in every community.
Not yet—because around the world there are places, like Gaza, Cuba, and Syria, where people cut off being cut off from food and medicine by embargoes, blockades, and war.
Not yet—because the work of God’s kingdom is not finished.
And so the question remains before us.
Has everyone been fed?
If the answer is not yet—then the good news of Jesus Christ is not only something we believe.
It is something we practice.
Breaking bread. Sharing what we have. Trusting that God’s abundance is greater than our fear.
Until one day—by God’s grace —we can finally answer that question together with a different word.
Yes!
May it be so.
This sermon was preached by Rev. Delaney Piper on 3.8.26.