More than Enough

Proper 13A: Matthew 14:13-21

The request was perfectly reasonable. Jesus and his disciples were in the wrong place (a deserted wilderness) at the wrong time (the day was fast slipping into night) with a great crowd of people who hadn’t eaten anything all day. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people, or at least people not at their best. And to top it all off, Jesus himself was spent. He had just learned that his cousin John the Baptist had been killed by King Herod. That’s why he’d come there to a deserted place to begin with—he was trying to get away from the crowds, to be alone, to grieve. But the crowds wouldn’t leave him alone.

For anyone else, that would be enough to call it a day, pack it in and try again tomorrow. That’s what the disciples think is the reasonable thing to do: put a lid on the event and send everyone home. Only Jesus has another idea. He sees here “a teachable moment.” Instead of sending them away, he tells his disciples, “You feed them.” The disciples look confused. “Us? We don’t have anything to give them. We’re all out. Nothing left.” Looking at the hungry mass of people, they see what looks more and more like a hungry mob. The disciples get together and come up with five small loaves and two fishes, sardines, really. It’s nothing much. Jesus says, “Bring your nothing to me.” He then blesses the food, breaks the loaves, and hands the bread pieces and fish to the disciples to distribute, to all 5,000 men and their families. At the end of the day, Matthew tells us, “They all ate and were filled.” There were even baskets full of food left over.

What Jesus did that day was a miracle, one of his most famous miracles, the only miracle that is included in all four Gospels. Some modern scholars like to minimize what Jesus did, though. They insist that Jesus didn’t multiply the loaves and fish. What really happened was that someone, a young boy according to one account, offered up his lunch and that inspired everyone else there to break out the food they’d brought along and shared it with others. And indeed, that would have been impressive, had that been what happened. But that is not what Matthew and the other Gospel-writers say took place that day. It wasn’t an ancient version of the Stone Soup story, where everyone pitches in an ingredient to make something the whole town can enjoy. This was Jesus, God’s Anointed, acting, taking our nothing and blessing it, thereby making it something, indeed, more than something.

This miracle is more than a morally inspiring story, Chicken Soup for the Soul, more even than a miracle, really. It is a revelation. That is to say, it shows us something about who God is and how God acts. It shows us that God provides for our needs, and not just what we need but more than we need, God doesn’t just give us what we need, he gives more than we need, as is evident in the fact that, after feeding the five thousand plus, there were still twelve baskets of leftovers. In other words, Jesus shows us here that in God’s Kingdom, there is more than enough. What he is presenting is an “economy of abundance.”

If you’ve ever studied economics, you’ll appreciate how strange that is, how it’s in direct contrast to how we normally understand economics. Regardless of what school of economic thought one might subscribe to, they’re all based on an assumption of scarcity. Behind all the talk of market ups and downs, financial projections, earnings ratios, and the like, is the belief—the fundamental, unquestioned assumption—that there is only so much to go around. You see this most obviously stated in basic economic “laws”: because there is a finite amount of a good—land or washing machines or olive oil—the value of that good is a function of the difference between the supply and the demand. When there is a lot of something people want, it costs less, while if there is less supply, it tends to cost more. For example, droughts in the West in recent years have meant smaller cow herds, which lead to beef costing more today.

But this assumption of scarcity is more widespread than just economics. Think of the headlines you’ve read in recent years—the federal government is running a deficit; one party refuses to compromise, to share power, with the other; there’s a global fuel shortage; there’s famine in Sudan, workers complain that there are not enough jobs, employers complain that there are not enough skilled workers, and the list goes on. All of it stems from the belief that there is not enough—not enough land or money or power or whatever—to go around. And when there’s not enough to go around, the typical human response is then to hoard: to hold on to what we have and acquire more so that we will be “safe,” “secure.” The problem is, in a world of scarcity, we can never be truly secure. It’s like how the millionaire John D. Rockefeller responded, when he was asked, "How much money is enough money?" He said, "Just a little bit more."

And I have to admit that I’m guilty of this attitude, too. I live out this belief of scarcity when I carefully ration my money, my schedule and my attention. I’m always wishing there were more time in the day to get chores done, in a hurry to get to the next thing, lest I miss out on an opportunity. Wishing too that I could give more to charity and at the same time save more and also travel to Europe. Does that sound familiar to any of you? Not necessarily the Europe part, but feeling like you are limited, confined by your lack of resources, by not having enough?

The story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 challenges that outlook. It challenges us to re-imagine our lives in terms of God’s “economy of abundance.” In the kingdom of God we don’t have to hoard—there is always enough supply to meet demand. We can throw seeds all over the place because there are always more seeds where those came from.

This is a challenging thought, to be sure. The God Jesus shows us knows no limitation. In the Kingdom of Heaven we cannot exhaust the resources of God. God always provides enough, more than enough. So, my fridge doesn’t always have to be full for Jesus to take what I have and feed others. We don’t have to work for the church or volunteer forty hours a week to be involved in ministry. We don’t have to give millions of dollars to the Church and to charities in order to have an impact. (Though, you are welcome to try to prove me wrong about that one!) Whatever we give to God and God’s purposes, no matter how little or how much, God can use them to advance His Kingdom.

One of my colleagues tells of an elderly widow who lived in a small Southern town. She didn’t have much—certainly not much education or influence—but she had a spare bedroom. One day, she heard about a refugee family that had come to town, and she quietly volunteered to take in a young single mother and her child. People asked her why she did it, and she simply replied, ‘Well, I’ve got a room. And the Lord says we ought to make room for each other.’” That is the gospel—not in words but in flesh. She didn’t solve the housing crisis, but she obeyed Jesus in the one square foot of the world she could touch.

I know another retiree who teaches woodshop to a bunch of at-risk teenage boys, and a couple who does Meals-on-Wheels once a week, and another who volunteers once a month at the local Rescue Mission. If you ask them about it, they’ll say “it’s nothing.” Well, it’s a “nothing” that God makes into a “something.”

That’s true not just for individuals but for churches too. A church I know was in a declining neighborhood. The average age of the congregation was somewhere between 72 and eternity. Building falling apart. Finances tight. So they met to discuss whether to shut the doors or try something new. After much hand-wringing, and some prayer, one elderly member spoke up and said, “Babysitting.” What? She explained, “Most of us are retired. We’ve raised children. Some of us are watching grandkids every week. Maybe the only thing we have left to offer this neighborhood is childcare.” So they offered free babysitting—Friday and Saturday nights at the church. Word spread. Young couples from the community showed up, grateful for a break and a safe place to leave their kids. Soon, those parents were invited to Sunday night dinners. A small group formed. Bible studies began. That church isn’t on life support anymore. Because the discussion moved from what they lacked, to what God had given them that they might offer to others.

Fact is, we all have something, no matter how inadequate it might seem, that we can give and that God can take and multiply. God has given us everything we need, you see, everything we need to know God, to experience God’s love and be His companions. At a literal level, being his ‘companion’ means breaking bread with Him. (A “companion” is literally someone with whom one shares bread—cum panis, with bread) In feeding the 5,000, Jesus broke bread with the multitude and literally made everyone his “companions.” Yet on another, deeper level Jesus made the disciples his companions by making them his friends, spending months, years with them, breaking bread together each day, and now calling them to share in what he was doing—feeding the multitude. Not only companions, but co-workers then, partners in sharing bread, sharing God’s abundance.

There is still another, even deeper level of being God’s companions, one which isn’t immediately apparent in today’s lesson, but which we see later in the gospel. On the night before he was handed over to be killed, Jesus breaks bread with his disciples one last time during the Passover meal. At the end of the meal, he picks up the bread and says to them, “Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you and for many.” So, not only did Jesus give bread to the multitude who came to him, but he became bread, the Bread of Life, for those whom he called to be his friends. The connection is intended, as the same words Matthew uses for what Jesus does with the loaves and fish are used at the Last Supper: Jesus “took, blessed, broke, and gave.”

At the Last Supper but in fact throughout the New Testament, we see how Jesus gave the disciples everything they needed, everything they needed to be his friends, to be his companions, to eat with him and break bread together. And He gives us everything we need to be his companions too. Churches often think that if they only had more money, more people, more energy, more influence, then they’d really be able to do God’s work. But Jesus has given us everything we need to be his friends, his companions, giving us our daily bread and inviting us to share in his work of feeding the hungry, hungry bellies and hungry hearts, feeding them with the Good News, God’s kingdom breaking into our world. In this way the miracle that was the feeding of the 5,000 has not ended. God continues to take our “nothings” and make them into “somethings,” somethings that show us God and bring us closer to Him.

We see this—we experience this—every time we take part in communion. What we receive is little more than a morsel of bread and a sip of wine—nothing much—but God takes that, transforms it, makes it something, makes it Christ’s Body and Blood, and he uses it to bring us closer to Him, to make us his companions in a deep, intimate and spiritually profound way.

I invite you, therefore, as you come forward to receive communion today, and you hold that little piece of bread in your hand, to pause a moment and marvel at how God uses such little things to accomplish his larger purposes. And then let the miracle of communion lead us to see how God takes our nothings, our meager offerings and multiplies them, makes them miracles, too. Thanks be to God!