Good morning. It’s nice to be back. My family and I had a nice vacation, but it’s good to be back with you.

Last week Charlotte and I were browsing in Virginia-Highlands, where the shops have a wide range of sort-of off-beat merchandise. In one place, I saw a “Jesus Action Figure.” The box said he had “Posable arms” (which meant, I figured out, that he had working elbows) and “a gliding action” (which meant that his stand was on wheels). He cost nine dollars.

I said, “Charlotte, I’m tempted to get this.” She said, “Don’t you remember?” (Of course I didn’t remember; I never remember anything.) “Remember what?” I asked. She said, “You bought one of these last year and gave it to the Sunday school class.”

So while you may have some very legitimate concerns about my memory, and perhaps my taste, you can take comfort in the fact that our children are being taught the faith with the benefit of a Jesus Action Figure featuring posable arms and a gliding action.

And here he is. [Showing the Jesus Action Figure. Moving the arms. Rolling him around.]

But as I was chuckling at that Jesus Action Figure, I also felt a twinge of regret, and longing. This morning we see Jesus feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes. Now, that’s an action figure! Then we see him walking on the water during a storm. Now, that’s a “gliding action!” hero.

I find myself reading stories like that and I think, “Why can’t we have that now? Plenty of people need feeding still. Plenty of people are in storms still. Why doesn’t Jesus still use those posable arms to distribute the bread and fish, still use that gliding action to come to people in storms? I want him to act like that still!”

Sometimes I wish Jesus were more like an action figure. Jesus sometimes seems so passive, waiting around for us to act in his name, and working through the community, which is a messy endeavor at best, and watching horrible things happen without stopping them. And we can debate about miracles, but clearly Jesus mostly acts within the bounds of the laws of physics. Who has not been in the midst of tragedy and asked or heard the question, “How could God let this happen?”

I often wish we still had the Jesus of the gospels, the Jesus who intervened, who, sometimes at least, didn’t let it happen, the Jesus who didn’t feel constrained by the laws of nature. He had the power to pull off miracles, and, by God, he did it.

I want him now. In fact, I want a little more action than posable arms and a gliding action. Maybe Jesus wearing tights and a cape with a big “S” for “Savior” on his chest.

I can think of lots of jobs for SuperJesus — stopping planes from hitting buildings, bending the barrels of rifles aimed at American troops, keeping our weapons from blowing the legs off Iraqi children, stepping between a man and the woman he’s about to hit, changing the path of the car, curing the disease — on and on. There would be plenty to do.

Don’t you ever long for Jesus to act like that, to step in and just start pulling off miracles left and right and straighten this mess up? Well, if you’ve never longed for that Jesus or fantasized about him, then what I’m talking about won’t mean much to you. But if you have wished for that Jesus, stories like the ones we have this morning, a miraculous feeding and walking on water, probably fire your fantasy.

Well, why don’t we get that Jesus? I want to start by telling you that I’ve been mulling that question over for many, many years, and what I’m sure of is that I’m not through mulling it over. I’m not sure I ever will be. I’m not sure I ever should be. So what I share with you this morning is where I am now. My hope is that my ruminations will inspire you to reflect on where you are now, and that in this mutual reflection, maybe we’ll both get a little further along on our spiritual journey.

I think one reason we don’t get this Jesus in tights and a cape has something to do with growing up. When we got back from vacation, my oldest daughter had a dead battery in her car. She said to me, “Will you help me get this fixed.” I said, “Yes.” She asked, “What should I do?” I could see in her eyes that she hoped the answer would be, “I’ll take care of it.” That would have been the easiest thing for me to say. I’ve done this before. I knew how to jump her car off; I knew to take it to the AutoZone; I knew they’d take care of it. And I knew that it would be easier for me to handle it than to help her do it. And, it would have felt good to intervene, be the Good Samaritan, be the hero who took care of her problem for her.

But when she asked, “What should I do?” I asked back, “What is your plan, and how are you going to implement it?” As a testimony to her developing maturity, she barely registered any disappointment (it would have been different when she was a teenager!), and she learned how to jump off a car, select and pay for a battery, and get it installed. Now she knows how to do that, and, more importantly, she’ll be better prepared to handle other problems.

Maybe it’s a silly example, but I think our need to grow up, to learn to cope and to use the gifts God has given us, is one reason God isn’t constantly stepping in and changing our batteries for us.

I think another reason God isn’t constantly stepping in has to do with the nature of love. Here’s another (perhaps silly) example from my life. We have a cat named Patches. We’ve had her for sixteen years. I’m not totally sure, but I believe that Patches loves me. (It’s hard to tell with cats, you know.) But what’s important is that I can’t tell whether she loves me when I’m petting her and she purrs. Then, all I can tell is that she loves being petted (and I’ve heard her purr when a number of you, strangers to her, have petted her. Okay, she’s easy.) The reason I think she loves me is that sometimes, when I’m busy and am not petting her, she’ll just sit near me (on top of what I’m reading, if possible) and purr. She’ll purr just because she’s near me.

Love based on what you can get from the other person (“I’ll love you if you’ll scratch behind my ear”) is not how God loves. God loves our being, not our doing, and God wants us to love God’s being. Now think about if God were constantly intervening to be sure we didn’t get sick or have bad things happen or that it didn’t rain on our picnic, or whatever. Oh, we’d purr. But, if we were always being petted, would we even have the opportunity to love God’s being? I don’t think so. We’d never have the chance to purr while we were just sitting on God’s newspaper.

There are two more reasons that occur to me as to why it is a good thing that Christ is not wearing blue tights. First, it would deny us the opportunity to be the Body of Christ. Think about it; Jesus would be showing up all over the place doing all of it. And if he didn’t do it all, we’d be upset about what he didn’t do. Now, I believe that being part of the Body of Christ is a hugely significant part of our being (at least it should be). Knowing that I am connected within the Body of Christ, that it is my job to be Christ’s “posable arms,” that God is counting on me to act as Christ’s hands and feet and eyes and voice in the world, that gives my life purpose and meaning. I hope that gives your life purpose and meaning. God will not relegate us to the sidelines. We are not to be spectators watching SuperJesus do it all. Thank God!

Finally, I think that if Christ were taking care of all our illnesses, disasters, problems, etc., we would forget what our task in life is, and we would forget who our enemy is. If Jesus were running around making sure that nothing bad happened to us, we’d surely start thinking that the goal of life is to live a worry-free, conflict-free, pain-free existence. Our savior, who doesn’t wear tights but instead died naked and tortured on a cross, just isn’t going to give us that message. In our collect today, we prayed that “we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.” What is eternal is living for God, with all the fullness of being and relating that comes with that. Our enemy is losing what is eternal in the midst of what is temporal. What is temporal is disaster, disease, pain, death. Death is temporal. If God took care of everything temporal for us, is it possible that we could avoid believing that the purpose of life is to avoid unpleasantness? I don’t think so. Could we possibly have the peace of God, that calmness of being in the midst of temporal anxiety, which passes all understanding? Could we say with St. Paul, “Death, where is thy sting?” I think not.

So, when I read of miraculous feedings and miraculous walking on water during a storm, I sometimes long for Jesus to wear tights and a cape. But ultimately, I trust God’s wisdom that Christ does not. And I also know this: Jesus still feeds. At this altar, he feeds, if our hearts are open to spiritual nourishment. And Jesus comes across the water to us when we are tossed by the storms of this world. If our hearts are open to his presence, he will always be there.

Not in tights and a cape, but in love.