"Abundance!" - August 2, 2009

Text: John 6:1-15

The feeding of the 5000 is one of the best known stories in the Bible. It is a beloved story – how could you not like the story of a little boy bring his bread and fish to share? And it is the only miracle story that appears in all four gospels.

In our reading from John, Jesus has just finished a long theological discourse as a way of defending himself against his critics. After this, he goes off across the Sea of Galilee to the other side. It is perhaps implicit here (and it is made explicit in the account in Mark) that Jesus and his disciples were getting away for some rest, for time away from the crowds. But it is not to be. The crowd can see where they are going and follow him around the lake (the Sea of Galilee isn’t really a sea), walking the 8 or 10 miles to find him on the other side. John tells us that the crowd followed because Jesus had been healing the sick. You start healing sick people, especially in a time when there was very little in the way of medical care, and people will start following you around too. John also reports that the festival of Passover was near, so we might expect that among those in the crowd were out-of-towners on their way to Jerusalem for Passover.

Jesus gets to the other side of the lake and he goes up on a high hill - a mountain, John calls it. You might recall that so often, mountains have a spiritual significance and that the mountain is frequently the place where God is heard.

Jesus gets away from the crowds, away from the controversy, away from the stress. He is resting on the mountain. And then he looks up, and what does he see? People. Coming in droves. Hundreds of people.

Jesus looks up, he sees this large and growing crowd, and what does he say?

Well, he doesn’t say what we might expect a person to say. Not:
“What does a guy have to do to get some rest around here?”
Not even, “Well, I guess I can do my ‘No Greater Love’ sermon.”

No, Jesus sees the crowd and he asks Philip, who happened to be from a nearby town, “Where are we going to buy bread for all these people to eat?”

Jesus is a prophet, not a caterer. Why would this be his first reaction on seeing the crowds?

But John clues us in that Jesus knew what he was going to do. This was just the setup. Philip said, “It would take 6 months wages to buy enough food for this crowd!”

Andrew reports that in the crowd there is a boy with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish - but what would that be among so many people?

Now, I had not realized before that this was not only a child, this was a poor child. Barley bread was the food of the very poor – one commentator said that it was held in contempt as a grain for animals. This is not just a boy, but a poor boy. And don’t think that he had a couple of nice salmon. Think something more along the lines of sardines. There were great quantities of small sardine–like fish in the Sea of Galilee that were often pickled. This boy had some bread eaten by the poorest of the poor and a couple of pickled sardines. It is not very promising.

But Jesus doesn’t wring his hands over what they don’t have. Instead, he blesses what they do have. He had his disciples tell everyone to be seated on the grass. He took the loaves and fish, he gave thanks, and he distributed them to the crowd. And it was more than enough. Everyone had all they wanted and there were enough leftovers to fill 12 baskets.

You know as well as I do that this is more than simply a story about food. It is about generosity and stewardship and about God meeting our needs. It is about the choice we have to live with an attitude of scarcity or to live with trust in God’s abundance. And it is not just about food for our bodies, it is about food for our spirit.

How do we look at the world? The predominant mindset is one of scarcity and fatalism. There isn’t enough to go around, and we can’t make much of a difference.

And it’s no wonder we think this way. People are asking, “When will I be able to retire?” if not, “Will I ever be able to retire?” Others are simply hoping and praying for a job. There is not enough money and there are not enough jobs. We would all like to be generous, we really would, but we can’t afford to be too generous or there will not be enough for us. It’s not just money. Time is scarce. Security is scarce. Patience is scarce. Imagination is scarce. Kindness is scarce.

The tension between scarcity and abundance is always with us. It was certainly felt in Jesus’ time, and no matter that we live lives of ease and comfort and opulence compared to first century folks, we still live with this tension between scarcity and abundance.

It is with this background that we read John, and what do we find in his gospel? Pure abundance.

In the first chapter of his gospel, John speaks about Jesus as the Word from whose fullness we have all received grace upon grace. The first miracle, or sign, reported in John is when Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana. Jesus instructs the servants to fill some jars with water, and they fill them to the brim. The result is a profusion, not merely of wine, but of excellent wine. Abundance.

At a community well in Samaria, Jesus tells a woman about living water gushing up to eternal life. No just a trickle, but water all over the place. Abundance. In Jesus’ address to his disciples before he is arrested, he says, “In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.” Not just room for a few, not an exclusive view of eternity, but an expansive and inclusive kingdom. Abundance. At the end of the Gospel, John brings his witness to a close by noting that in addition to the things he has told us, there is so much more that if it were all reduced to writing, there wouldn’t be enough space in the world to contain the number of books that would be required. Abundance.

Whether it is wine at a wedding or rooms for eternity or picnic food, there is always more than enough. God’s grace is poured out for us in Jesus – there is plenty, an abundant supply. In John chapter 10 Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

In a Christian Century article of a few years ago, Charles Hoffman wrote:
The church of my youth majored in a miserly view of God’s grace. Its message was grim. Life had no edge, no elegance and no joy, but was only a bitter temporal existence largely limited to preparations for the sweet hereafter. Our bleak church building reflected the theology: it was aptly situated in the Pacific Northwest with its endless days of dreary, overcast weather. The clouds and drizzle and fog seemed to cling to our clothes whenever we entered our church for worship. That early religion held no attraction for me, but I was bound to it by the guilt and fear it engendered in me.

All of that changed when a new minister walked into our church. He was winsome, engaging, honest and without guile. One Sunday morning he preached the most important sermon of my life. His text was John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” I still remember the message: Christ calls us to a life of fullness, affirmation and joy. In that moment the Word reached out and claimed me.

How would life be different if we really lived out Jesus’ way of joy and fullness and abundance?

Charles Hoffmans’s childhood impressions of Christian faith still hold for many in our culture. It’s one reason more people are not attracted to Christianity. As Nietzsche said, “Christians will have to look more redeemed if people are to believe in their Redeemer.”

Philip and Andrew represent us – the church. “It would take 6 months wages to buy enough food.” “We’ve got some bread and a couple of fish, but it couldn’t possibly be enough.” Their vision was too limited. They were too captured by the story of scarcity.

Philip and Andrew stand in for so many of who worry, who doubt, who bring “realism” to every dream and vision. Barbara Crafton talked about how this plays out in churches sometimes: “One of the hardest things about life together in an institution like the church is the tension between the responsibility of leadership and the possibility of vision. Being a leader forces a person to become very protective of what is, but that very protectiveness can make it hard to respond to what might be. One can become such a good custodian of the past and the present that the future is unimaginable except in the terms of what we already know.”

Philip and Andrew were realistic. But they were living with the soundtrack of scarcity playing in their minds. They could not imagine a different future.

What if we learned to give thanks for what we have and share, rather than bemoan what we don’t have and hoard? How would life be different if we were able to understand that God’s provision is enough, and we were willing to share what we have been given? What if we were truly open to God’s possibilities for us?

Like anywhere else, it is so easy in the church to focus on what we lack. We can sing a chorus of “if onlys.” If only we had more members, if only we were in a different location, if only we had more Sunday School teachers, if only we had a bigger choir, if only we had more young people. If only we had a decent preacher. If only…

But when we instead recognize our blessings and are willing to share what we have, it makes all the difference in the world. When we do that, we find that there is enough. When we share our gifts, they are multiplied. And when Christ is with us, there is enough in abundance.

We may see ourselves in Philip and Andrew, with limited vision. But we also may see ourselves in the little boy, thinking that our gifts don’t amount to much, feeling like we have little to contribute.

Many of you have watched the “Black in America” program on CNN. One of the stories was about Malaak Compton-Rock, the wife of comedian Chris Rock. She took a group of 26 twelve- to fifteen-year-old kids from New York City to South Africa to volunteer among the poorest of the poor. Those who participated in the “Journey for Change” program were kids involved in a Salvation Army in the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn – they either attend a program or church there. Bushwick is a working class area with a lot of problems. Less than 50% of the students graduate at Bushwick High. Drugs are rampant. These were thought of as at-risk kids – at risk for teenage pregnancies, at risk for dropping out of school, at risk for drugs.

These Bushwick kids were paired with college-aged mentors and worked in Soweto and other shanty towns in South Africa with AIDS orphans and granny families – families headed by grandmothers because the other adults had died of AIDS. One of the things Compton-Rock felt was important in organizing the program was to give the many of these kids, who were often on the receiving end of assistance, an opportunity to be on the giving side. And it has made a huge difference in their lives. Among other things, they learned that they had a lot to give and that their gifts really mattered.

In that sense, they were like the poor boy with his barley bread and fish. What he had to offer made a huge difference. It wouldn’t have happened without him.

Jesus asked, “How are we to provide bread so that these people may eat?” Mother Teresa answered that question (in a meditation adapted by John Maynard):

If Christ has no hands but ours,
let us dedicate our hands to continue God’s work in the world:
to grow or prepare food for the hungry
to carry burdens for the weary
to write a letter to someone far from home
to bandage a wound
to soothe the broken-hearted.

If Christ has no feet but ours,
let us dedicate our feet to continue God’s work in the world:
to visit someone who is sick
to seek out the lonely
to befriend the homeless
to walk alongside the weak
to spread the Good News of God’s Kingdom.

If Christ has no voice but ours,
let us dedicate our voices to continue God’s work in the world:
to share our joys with others
to comfort those who mourn
to encourage those who feel insecure
to strengthen those who are anxious
to speak of God’s love and compassion.

God can take these efforts, just as Jesus took the little boy’s loaves and fishes, and do wonderful things, far beyond our imagination. And we find that life is not about scarcity, but about God’s abundance. Amen.

(special thanks for online comments by Paige Besse-Rankin and John Maynard)