August 1, 1999
Nehemiah 9:16-20 Psalm 78:14-25 Romans 8:35-39 Matthew 14:13-21
The feeding of the multitude is the single most popular story in the Gospels. All four gospel writers tell this story; the only story of Jesus that all four tell, and both Matthew and Mark tell the story twice. The symbol is beloved of us down through the ages because it is the story of the mass of humanity in search of hope. The story represents for us, humanity in all of our needs. It tells us of the human search for meaning and direction and fulfillment. It gives us hope in hopelessness. It tells us God is in charge and that whatever we need, if we trust him with what we have, he will make it more than enough to fill the need. Any of us who take our spiritual journey seriously will discover over time a great hunger — a hunger for God's presence more than we can even imagine, a hunger for the presence of the Lord in our lives that is incapable of being filled by any normal means, any of the predictable ways of taking care of things.
When the people gather and it grows late in the evening, the disciples come to Jesus and say to him, "Send the people away to buy food for themselves." That is a cry of our own century. Send the people away. Send the beggars away to provide for themselves. But Jesus looks at his disciples and says, "No. You feed them. You take care of them." The disciples, like us, respond with, "But we don't even have enough. We don't have enough for ourselves — how could we possibly have enough for thousands?" It's the same cry that we make day after day in our own society, not just in our country, but around the world. Jesus, in that exasperated way he has, says, "Give me what you have, it'll be enough" — five loaves and two fishes for five thousand men, not to mention women and children.
The situation in first century Palestine is exactly the same situation we face today. Both situations are totally unreasonable. The crowd had no right to be fed. Jesus was trying to get away by himself, to take some time out, to get away from the crowd. But they have seen him pulling those oars off to a distant shore and before he could get there they had run around the shore of the lake to get there ahead of him. They were imposing upon him. They were dragging their sick and their halt, their lame and their lazy — in order for him to heal them. They were hungry for his words and they came when he wanted to be quiet and silent and in solitude, and broke all of that.
Humanity did not then, and has not now, any right at all to God's love and mercy, but thanks be to God, we are not talking about rights here. We are talking about God's response to us. And so, just like they, we barge ahead, moving into Christ's presence without question, without provision. We don't ask, "Is this a convenient time?" We just do what we do. The results are that the people are fed, and not just a scrap here and a morsel there, but they are fed with abundance, with all that they want, and there are still leftovers.
The story of the feeding the multitude is the story of how the Kingdom of God actually works. When something goes wrong, we want to fix the blame. If you read the paper and think about your associates in life, most people try to fix the blame saying, "They didn't bring anything, it's their fault. If they don't have a job, it's their fault they are hungry. They should have left us alone, it's their fault that it is late in the day and there is not enough time to get back to find a room at the inn or to get back home." That's how a lot of people I know are — wanting to fix the blame for why something went wrong. We don't very much care about fixing problems. We don't look at what our resources are and say, "Now that this has occurred, what are we going to do about it?" Instead we want to say, "It's your fault, or their fault, or somebody's fault."
In today's story, Jesus turns all that aside and says instead, "Give me what you have," and a small act of human generosity — five loaves and two fish — just a little bit of food given over the Lord to be shared with everyone, makes all the difference. In giving over to Jesus and receiving back from his hands, as followers of Christ, we are called to give as the Body of Christ: we are called to receive it, bless it, and distribute it. We are called to live a life of both giving and receiving, of blessing and distribution. Jesus tells us in this Gospel story that if any need exists and we have any resources, however meager those resources may be (and probably the more meager the better), when we give it to him for his blessing and distribute it again, it will be more than enough, not only for ourselves, but for all of his people.
Just wait until we try to recruit Sunday School teachers and you will see what I mean. The most common response we get is, "I don't have enough faith to teach; I don't know enough to teach." If you know that you don't know enough, it will make you a pretty good student, and if you share being a student with a child, you will discover it is more than enough.
As John tells the story, if we know someone else, like a little boy with a sack lunch, no matter how ridiculously small their resources may be, we are to solicit that offering. If we don't have it ourselves, but we do know someone who does have a little bit, we are to go to them and bring them in to make their offering. There are lots and lots of examples from our everyday life. There are lots and lots of examples from our life together in the church. An offering of plenty from plenty inspires us all to believe that we could have done more. An offering of a little from a little inspires us to be an instrument of the Lord, to feed the many.
My hope and my prayer in the church is that all of our offerings, however huge they may be, however small they may be, will always be received with grace. That all of our offerings, however large or small they may seem, will always be blessed with gratitude. And, all of our offerings will always be distributed with the hope and the expectation that God will make them more than enough. If we do that, whatever those offerings may be — of our time and our talents and our treasures — the people of God will be nourished. If we offer in faith, bless in confidence, and distribute in hope, then all the people of God will grow strong. As we grow strong together, our work for the salvation of the world will flourish in the name of Christ.AMEN
The Rev. Dr. Robert Certain
rgcertain@stmargarets.org
01 August 1999