Amateurs, Jesus & Loaves & Fishes
Speaker: Rev. Christina Fridel
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: July 26, 2009
I’ve always loved this story of Jesus teaching and then feeding a crowd with simple gifts, a story of abundance, a story of miracles, a story of God doing crazy things when you don’t think things can happen. The story you’ll remember of the kids Sunday school is one of those great stories because it’s easy to illustrate, and that story of learning it in seminary and then teaching it many times as we go along. This is a story that is so wonderful that it is one of the few stories that is recorded in all four Gospels. In some Gospels it’s even recorded twice. It’s not just the feeding of the 5,000 but again the feeding of the 4,000. It is recorded because it is a story of abundance. It a story of God at work when people think things cannot happen, the story of God’s abundance, of God using our gifts, and the story of God using God’s people in amazing ways, the story of a group of people who came to hear Jesus, Jesus who had been teaching and had gathered with all of those who still needed to hear what he had to say, a story of 5,000 people who wanted to hear him so much that they forgot their lunch, a story of people who came to hear what Jesus had to say to them, and are gathered there listening intently.
Jesus taught them. Jesus taught them about God, about love, about being with each other. But then it becomes lunch time and tummies start to growl and the Disciples realize they don’t have food to feed them all and so they say, “Well, how are we gonna do this? They have no clue, and in their little human minds this is impossible. But Jesus said, “You feed them” and they say, “Uh, we don’t have enough money. It would take six months of wages to feed this many people.” But one of the Disciples sees this boy over here. His mom remembered to send him lunch. He has five loaves….not very big loaves I don’t suspect, but five….and a little fish. And Jesus says, “Well, that will be enough.” You know, can’t you imagine those Disciples going, “Are you crazy? Have you not seen how many people are out here? There’s five, and, too, I learned to count in school. There’s not enough.” In that human mind it’s a fact of scarcity. There’s not enough.
But then Jesus, he says there is abundance. There is enough. He takes this little gift from this child and he blesses it and he starts to pass it out. So imagine he’s handing you a loaf of bread, not very big. You take off as much as you need to eat and you pass it and somehow it’s still got bread in there and that person gets enough to eat and these loaves multiply. Soon, in that abundance, there is enough, and not only is there enough there is more than enough. Out of that scarcity and “Aw, we can’t do this” there is more than enough through the grace and blessing of God.
It’s that message of abundance that I hope we hear this morning, that message of abundance that’s here on this altar, and the abundance of food and blessing, it’s the abundance of the food that was offered this morning as part of that food bank ministry, the food and vegetables that came to my house yesterday from a garden that had more than enough to share. Remember this morning God’s abundance. We are living in an economic time where we hear the word scarcity every day. There’s not enough. Everything has changed. There’s the scent of fear. Jesus comes to us and says there is enough and that there is more than enough.
But there’s another part of this story and it’s about God using human beings, ‘cause notice in this story God uses his Disciples, God uses this little boy. In fact throughout the Gospel God didn’t use the people who knew everything. God didn’t come to the world to find those people who have the PhDs and who have all the answers. God came to God’s children and said, “I need your help to spread this message of love,” and in this story that’s what they do. God uses those human beings, those amateurs in some sense, to say, “You have gifts; let us use them.” And God uses this little boy who had a little lunch that he was able to share. And in that sense of abundance God has given everyone of us gifts that God has called us to use in the church, in our everyday life in this world, to share this abundance with others. And every one of us has a gift, or two, or three, but those gifts are important. And often we think they’re no more than this little boy’s lunch. They’re not very big….I’m not the pastor, I can’t preach every Sunday, or….I’m not the one who had a whole lot of money….or I don’t have….we think we can’t share. But God says in this story this boy only had five loaves and yet what they were among so many the blessing of God.
We each have a gift that has been given to us by God. And God says, “What is that gift and how are you going to use it?” What are our five loaves that each of us have? That little boy had a lunch. What is it that you have that God has called you to use in the church? It can be the gift of listening and being able to sit with somebody who needs somebody to listen. It can be the gift of bringing food to the food bank, of being the person who makes the meal on Friday to share with those who come here. It can be the gift of writing letters to your Congresspeople to say, “This isn’t right.” It can be the gift of sharing with children, baking cookies for your neighbor, of being a sense of healing in this place. We all have a gift. We all have our five loaves. What is yours?
At our Council meeting on Thursday Tom Old asked us that question. Not quite the same, but in essence he said, “What’s the five loaves that you have to share?” and each of us wrote down what those were. And as we shared them, those gifts multiplied and when we were done, it wasn’t my little gift but it was all of our gifts that, indeed, are bringing healing in this place, that are bringing a sense of love and grace to the people around us and into our world. Every one of us has that gift, and I gave you an index card this morning, and I want you to think about for a minute what is your five loaves. What is that gift that God has to offer to the church, to your neighborhood, to Boise, to our world? Now think about that and write it down, and if you don’t know, which is sometimes legitimate, you can write on there, “May God tell me.” So I’d invite us to write on those cards and bring them up to our table of abundance because they are part of that abundance.
So, what is that gift? And when you have figured it out, bring it up here, or if you would rather someone come get it just raise your hand and I’ll come and gather it for you. But we have abundance. And what is our five loaves? May we write them down this morning. When you are done you may bring them to the altar as we offer them as our abundance this morning.
Let us pray. Oh God, indeed these are our five loaves and our two fish. The gifts you have given us we offer to you. Oh God, may you multiply them just as on that day when all of those people where there was enough and more than enough. God, indeed may these gifts be multiplied and used. Amen