Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
- Jul 26, 2015
- 4 min read
This story we just heard, the story of the feeding of the 5,000,
must have been an important one,
because there are different accounts of it in all four Gospels.
There must be an important message about Jesus,
and perhaps also a message about ourselves,
that the writers of the Gospels wanted to get across loud and clear.
In the story,
Jesus looks up and sees a large crowd coming toward him,
a crowd full of people with overwhelming needs,
a crowd he can never seem to get away from.
And Jesus says to Philip, “Where are we going to get bread to feed all of these people?”
He’s not asking Philip whether they should feed the people,
but rather how they’re going to do it.
Philip is pragmatic, and does a little math in his head,
and says that six month’s wages wouldn’t buy enough bread
for each person even to get a little.
Meanwhile, Andrew sees a boy who has five barley loaves, and two fish.
“But what are they among so many,” he asks.
We know how the rest of the story unfolds:
Jesus invites the people to sit down.
He takes the loaves, gives thanks and distributes them,
along with the fish,
“as much as they wanted.”
Not only is there enough, but more than enough.
So much, that there are leftovers, which Jesus tells his disciples to gather up,
“so that nothing may be lost.”
And from the fragments alone, they fill twelve baskets.
Not so unlike the disciples,
we too live in a world where there seem to be overwhelming needs,
and limited resources for dealing with them.
Poverty. Growing inequality between rich and poor.
Homelessness. Racism. Violence.
Then there are the needs I see every day here St. Peter’s.
A congregation that is not as young as it once was.
Pews that aren’t as full as they once were.
Buildings that continually need attention.
There is a long list of needs, great and small,
and like the disciples, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by it.
Speaking personally, sometimes I look around, and see these needs in front of me,
and then I look at my own abilities and resources,
which seem small and inadequate, and I think:
the needs are simply too big, and I don’t have what it takes to deal with them.
What are my gifts among so many?
Six months wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little!
How easy it is for our response to the needs in our midst to echo Philip and Andrew’s.
How easy it is for us to think, in the face of these needs,
Whatever we could offer would be just a drop in the bucket.
What difference could we possibly make?
How easy it is in the face of such needs to see the world through eyes of scarcity.
That is, to only see how BIG the needs are,
and how SMALL our capacities are.
I believe this is why we need God.
A God who doesn’t see the world and its needs and its resources the way we do.
A God who doesn’t just look at outward appearances,
but who looks deeper.
A God who looks at need and scarcity and sees in them the possibility of abundance.
The Christian writer and Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber says,
God delights in creating abundance out of nothing.
How often we forget, she says,
“That we have a God who can actually feed so many on so little.
A God who created the universe out of nothing,
who can put flesh on dry bones of nothing,
who can put life in a dry womb of nothing.
NOTHING is God’s favorite material to work with.
Perhaps God looks upon that which we dismiss as ‘nothing,’
‘insignificant,’ ‘worthless,’ and says,
‘Now that I can do something with.’”
In reading the story of the feeding of the 5,000 this week,
I was reminded of an experience when I witnessed God do just this.
When God gave me eyes and heart to see,
in the face of overwhelming need and my own feelings of inadequacy,
unexpected abundance.
Some of you know, before I came to St. Peter’s,
some people of faith and I started at street church in Providence, RI.
A church without a physical building
that would gather with people on the streets of the city.
This seemed like a crazy idea at first.
To begin with, we had no money to start a church.
Many people, including some at the Diocese,
initially thought we were crazy, and kept their distance.
When we starting hanging out with people on the streets,
the needs we encountered there where overwhelming.
We made some sandwiches and distributed them,
but literally, what were these in the face of
homelessness, addiction, mental illness that we encountered in people?
Who were we to try and minister among such vulnerable people?
What could we offer amidst so much hunger?
What difference could we possibly make with a few loaves and couple fish?
Well, some people showed up just for the sandwiches.
But as time went on, people started showing up for something else: community.
People were hungry for food, yes.
But they were also hungry for relationship.
For companionship.
For prayer.
For love.
In fact, all of us,
those of us who knew privilege and whose who did not,
were hungry for these things.
Although when we got started,
all many of us could see was how big the needs were, and how few our resources,
these were things that we could offer to one another in abundance.
It turned out that we were the biggest resource we could offer one another.
We were one another’s food.
We were the loaves that Jesus was blessing and breaking and handing out to each other.
Thank God this God is God!
Thank God this God is real
and desires to be in relationship with us in Jesus Christ.
Thank God this God still looks at what seems small in number and insignificant,
and sees miraculous potential:
some loaves of bread, a couple fish, a few people.
Thank God this God still invites us to give him our hearts and our lives,
that he might bless us, and break us, and give us out as food in a hungry world.
Amen.
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