“Dream Big”
Mark 6:30-44
I want to ask all of us a question this morning: “How does God view the world?”
And there is actually another question attached to this first question: “How does God ask us to view the world?”
This really is a basic ethical question for all of us who call ourselves Christians.
And within our Gospel Lesson for this morning: the answer is given.
We are told that Jesus saw a great big crowd of people and He had “compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
The term “compassion” is used throughout the Gospels, over and over again, to describe Jesus’ attitude toward human beings.
“Compassion” literally means to “suffer with”—to be in “unconditional solidarity with others.”
Compassion is truly the essence of the God.
It’s Who God is.
And because our attitude toward the world invariably mirrors our understanding of God—our ethics follow our theology, in other words—compassion is what Christians are called to have toward the world as well.
This might seem obvious, but, as history shows us, compassion is not the most common or popular concept that human beings have used to describe God’s attitude toward people.
God has often been thought of as angry, vengeful, violent, unapproachable.
But, suffering [agape] love of which compassion is a synonym is what the Gospels teach us about What and Who God is.
Contemporary theologian Douglas Hall writes: “Christians must ask not only whether we have grasped the full radicality of belief in a compassionate God, but whether as the Church we are ready to live that compassion in our profoundly threatened world.”
In Ashville, North Carolina there is a United Methodist Church called The Haywood Street Congregation.
They were founded in 2009.
They call themselves “a mission congregation.”
Their core programs include weekly worship, a clothing closet, a community garden, and the Haywood Street Respite, which offers a safe place for homeless adults to stay on a short-term basis after being discharged from the hospital.
Twice a week they offer a free community meal known as the “Downtown Welcome Table.”
On Wednesdays, this meal is lunch; on Sundays this meal is dinner.
Hundreds of people come to these meals each week.
And it’s not your run-of-the-mill soup kitchen type of situation.
They use real cloth table cloths and cloth napkins.
Meals are served on china plates.
The food is abundant.
Each table is decorated with flowers.
They do this to make sure people living on the streets and people serving those who are living on the streets know that “left-overs and hand-me-downs” are not all they deserve.
They do this to provide folks with dignity and to remember that when they are serving others, they are quite literally serving Jesus Himself.
The food is prepared by 16 area “restaurant partners” who have been impressed by the ministry and have gotten a taste of what it means to love and serve—to have “compassion.”
Church members volunteer and other members of the community serve as the wait staff.
They also sit at the tables with those who come to eat.
They socialize and get to know one another.
People are encouraged to linger, as they would in a fine restaurant or a dinner in someone’s home.
Their website makes the following statement: “This is not a ministry where ‘the haves’ help ‘the have nots.’
We are a ministry that acknowledges each of us as privileged and each of us as being in need.
While some come with hunger from the body others come with a hunger in their souls.”
In Mark Chapter 6 Jesus is teaching this huge crowd of people “many things.”
And it’s starting to get late.
So, Jesus’ disciples, who know that Jesus cares about people—think what might be best for the crowd is to send them away so that they can go and buy food for themselves, rather than getting all hungry out in the middle of nowhere.
And so, they suggest this to Jesus.
I think Jesus is always delighted when people around Him come up with ideas that show they are thinking about the needs of others.
But often, what Jesus does is takes those ideas and then calls us to do something much bigger than what we were originally thinking—much deeper, much more radical, compassionate and life-giving.
It’s kind of like our small idea of how to care for other people gets bounced right back at us with what seems like an impossibly huge proposition.
“If you really care for them,” He says, “why don’t you give them something to eat?”
Wow.
This is pretty typical of God, I think.
And if I know myself well enough, my typical answer to this kind of proposal is: “I can’t do it.
I don’t have time.
I haven’t got the energy.
I haven’t got the ability.
I don’t have the resources.”
But another thing that is typical of how Jesus works is that He proposes something like this: “You say it’s impossible, but if you are prepared to give Me what little you think you have, it will be more than enough—it will work!”
Most Bibles give a heading to this story that reads something like “Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand.”
Actually, Jesus gives food only to the twelve disciples, they are the ones who do the feeding.
That doesn’t mean this isn’t a miracle of Jesus, but it is a miracle of Jesus that includes the followers of Christ putting their faith into action and doing what Jesus calls all of us to do.
I have been so impressed by the positive reaction of this church and this community about working together to ensure there is a Food Pantry in Red Bank.
Two years ago, I was involved in getting a Food Pantry going at East Ridge United Methodist Church.
It seemed like a daunting task.
We only had $2,500 to start the Pantry, and we had no idea what we were doing.
From a human point of view it looked as if we had no-where near the resources to operate a big Food Pantry.
But it was what we felt God calling us to do.
We went ahead with it on faith.
One year later, the East Ridge Community Food Pantry was feeding more than 1,000 persons a month, and we had $20,000 in our bank account.
I remember that it felt like we were living within this story that we are looking at this morning.
It didn’t make sense.
It shouldn’t have worked.
But, we never turned a soul away hungry, and we always needed more room and more freezers to store the food.
I remember walking through the food pantry on that one-year anniversary with another person who was helping to get it going from the beginning.
There were hundreds of people lined up for food.
40 or 50 volunteers from about 8 different churches and other organizations were busy getting things ready.
My friend and I just looked at each other and laughed.
There was no other explanation for the Success of that Food Pantry, other than God.
Our faith grows when we serve Christ.
And the Bible makes it clear that that is what we are doing when we are helping our fellow human beings who are in need.
“While some come with hunger from the body others come with a hunger in their souls,” those who are filled most in their souls are those who, like the disciples, do the feeding.
A wealthy Western Woman visited Mother Teresa in Calcutta and offered to write a check to support the work of the Sisters of Charity.
Mother declined: “I won’t take you r money.”
The woman insisted, reminding her that she had lots of money to donate.
But Mother still said, “No money.”
Exasperated, the woman stammered, “Well, what can I do?”
Mother said, “Come and see.”
She led the woman by the hand down into a horrible section of town, found a desperately dirty, hungry child, and asked the woman to take care of him.
The woman took a cloth and a water basin and bathed the child.
Then she spooned cereal into the child’s mouth.
Later, the woman said that this experience changed her life.
She became part of something money could not buy, fix or replace.
Compassion, that is the lens through which our God views the world.
Compassion is how we are to see our fellow human beings.
Love God; love neighbor.
“Whenever you have done it for the least of these you have done it for me.”
Feeding folks in the name of love is the will of God.
And when we move forward working within the will of God—miracles happen.
It was getting late in the day, so Jesus’ disciples came to Him, “Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.’
But [Jesus] answered, ‘You give them something to eat.’”
And they did, all were fed, and there were even leftovers.
Jesus’ compassion for the world is radical.
It is what prompted Him to heal the sick, touch the lepers, hang out with prostitutes, tax collectors and all the other outcasts of society.
And, it is ultimately what took Him to the Cross.
Have you, have I really got a handle on just how radical it is to live Jesus’ kind of compassion in a world that is so lost, desperate, harassed, helpless and broken?
As followers of Christ, we are responsible for feeding the world, even if the size of the task is daunting.
God has entrusted us to be the Body of Christ—the hands and feet through which God’s work is done in this world.
God works through people—people like you and me.
And in doing so, God changes our perspectives and allows us the great privilege of, if even for a moment, seeing humanity the way God sees humanity.
Praise God.
Amen.
