John 6:1-21
“What are the odds?”
On August 31, 2005, the FEMA Regional Director emailed the Director regarding the situation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
He wrote:
“Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical.
Here are some things you might not know.
Hotels are kicking people out, thousands are gathering in the streets with no food or water.
Hundreds are still being rescued from homes.
There are dying patients at the Disaster Medical Assistance Team Tent.
Estimates are that many will die within hours.
Evacuation is in process.
Plans are developing for dome evacuation, but the hotel situation is adding to the problem.
We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans are in the works to address the critical need.
Staff is working in deplorable conditions.
Phone connectivity is impossible.”
The director responded, “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”
It’s as if the director wasn’t even listening.
There can be no doubt that most of us have different levels of awareness as to the enormity of need in this world.
In their book Justice In The Burbs Will and Lisa Sampson write, “The suburbs seem particularly designed to avoid facing the bigger issues of life.
It almost feels as if these communities were designed to avoid interruption by anything unpleasant or uncomfortable.
Planned developments have ways of controlling who comes near.
And electronic garage door openers seal the deal…
…the burbs are safe, but they are safe at the price of keeping out questions of need, questions of poverty, questions of insufficiency.
In fact they are designed to maintain an illusion of a particular life, the American dream, where no one is needy, where there is a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage…
…Let’s face it,” they write, “we don’t want to be bothered by those in need.
It would be too disruptive.”
The feeding of the 5,000 in the Gospel of John speaks to our temptation to shrug our shoulders in the face of human need.
And let’s face it, there is so much human need that it can seem like a paralyzing situation!!!
In our Scripture passage for this morning we are told that “Jesus looked up and saw the large crowd coming toward him.
He asked Philip, ‘Where will we buy food to feed these people?’”
And Philip must have thought Jesus was out of His mind!!!
“More than a half year’s salary worth of food wouldn’t be enough for each person to have even a little bit,” he told Jesus.
Talk about overwhelming need, and very scarce resources to deal with it.
Andrew comes up and says, “A youth here has five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that for a crowd like this?”
And as we look out at the great need in our community and in our world, we may very well say something similar to what Andrew has to say, “Our resources are so scarce, the need is so great; what good is what we have for a crowd like this?”
It’s so easy to come to a place of despair where we just shrug our shoulders and do nothing.
Our church gets phone calls every day, probably half a dozen a day from people asking for help to pay their light bills, their rent, to pay for hotel bills, gasoline for their cars.
It’s crazy.
There is so much need.
Thankfully, we have a food pantry.
And you know, that food pantry is used all week long.
There isn’t a whole lot of selection in there…
…just some canned goods and peanut butter, but folks are desperate enough to come and get what they can.
Jesus asked, “Where will we buy food to feed these people?”
Jesus didn’t ask, “Where will we find the money to buy food to feed these people?”
That was Philip’s reply.
And Andrew’s reply was that “we don’t have enough.”
Yet, as Jesus points out, “not enough” is not the final answer.
Because, when placed in the hands of Jesus, human weakness and finitude become more than enough!!!
Do we believe this?
An African proverb says, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito.”
In 1946, when Mother Teresa came face to face with the masses of suffering and dying people in Calcutta, she didn’t shrug her shoulders and turn the other way.
Instead, she experienced what she called the “call within the call,” which she described as a call from God to serve those suffering the most.
And she answered that call.
Certainly her knowledge, her wealth nor her wisdom was going to be enough to fulfill God’s calling on her life to serve the poorest people on the earth.
Yet, through faith in Christ, she began the Missionaries of Charity, a small order with only 13 members.
In the decades that followed, the 13 grew to be thousands of people serving Christ through serving people.
When we heed the call of God on our lives, no matter the odds, Jesus multiplies meager resources and makes a way forward when human wisdom would beg to differ and say, “There is no way!”
It is truly miraculous, when we allow God to work through us.
Let us never get in the way of God’s work, by trying to take things into our own hands and saying, “There is not enough to go around!”
In 1976, when Millard and Linda Fuller started Habitat for Humanity International, they had very few resources, but there was a huge need for affordable and decent housing for the working poor.
So, with just a couple of tools and a small group of volunteers, it would have been easy and understandable for the Fullers to just shrug their shoulders and say, “What good is what we have for such a large need?”
Yet, their faith in Christ’s ability to multiply what they had compelled them forward.
Today, Habitat for Humanity is a clear witness, a modern day “feeding of the five thousand” if you will—a reminder and showing of what God can do with our meager resources, if only we are willing to give God what we have.
And in order to do this, we must be willing to trust God.
And trusting God is what it means to be in relationship with God; trusting God is what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
But sometimes money and resources can get in the way of us trusting God.
Money tends to make people anxious.
In both Matthew and Luke, concern about money is directly linked by Jesus to anxiety.
Jesus calls us to trust Him, but trust is usually the first casualty when it comes to money.
And if trust is the first casualty, love is the next.
Worry about money and things makes us forget about others.
A preoccupation with keeping what we have or getting what we don’t have causes the needs of others to fade from our thoughts.
It’s not so much that we wish harm upon those whom God is calling us to help, it’s more that we have no wishes for them at all.
Others become nonentities, abstractions.
As one person has put it, “the richer people become, the less they naturally stay in touch with realities of life in the bottom, and the more they naturally prefer to be excited about their own prospects rather than concerned about someone else’s.”
“I know it is very hard to be rich and still keep the milk of human kindness,” the late archbishop of Brazil once said.
And the poor aren’t the only ones who suffer.
The rich fool in Luke Chapter 12 who stored up things for himself withheld things from others, and also kept himself from being rich toward God.
There can be no doubt that when money becomes our preoccupation, people, rich as well as poor people—are dehumanized.
For to care for money more than people reduces people to a “commodity status.”
And a preoccupation with money and self also fails the test of eternity.
Stuff can pamper our bodies and stroke our egos for a while, but the “while” inevitably comes to an end!
Death takes our loved ones and our loved “things” away from us.
So what are we to do?
In our Gospel Lesson for this morning we are told that Jesus was testing Philip when He asked him, “Where will we buy food to feed these people?”
Jesus was testing Philip so Philip could see for himself whether or not Philip had faith in Jesus to do what seems impossible and is impossible for mere humans.
All around us are human needs.
We see so many folks walking up and down Ringgold Road, with everything they own slung over their backs.
We see children living in hotels.
We receive telephone calls from persons who don’t have enough money to pay their rent, their utility bills, to feed their children.
And we have so few resources.
And yet, in our Gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus makes it clear that if we are to trust what we have and who we are to Him…
…what little we have can become much, the few can become many, and the weak can become strong!!!
The feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus’ walking on the water closes with a couple of incidents that give warning to those of us who might want to try and control Jesus’ power.
Jesus’ refusal to be taken by force and made king and Jesus’ refusal to allow the disciples to take Him into the boat makes it clear that Jesus is not some concept that “works for humanity,” but is the Living God among us.
We are to follow God with faith and trust.
And when we do this, what we have is more than enough!!!
