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July 23, 2006- Year B, Proper 11
The Rev. Mark Byers
Redeemer, Aldie, VA

Potluck or Providence?

If you bump around in bible study groups or biblical commentaries for very long, you’ll find something kind of funny about the Feeding of the Multitude. People look at the story and they try to figure out how it happened. One theory is what my Oxford Bible Commentary calls the “lunchbox theory.” That is, Jesus just asked everybody to share.

Everybody had gone out that day and packed snacks, maybe a little extra, so they wouldn’t run out and get peckish. So there was a lot of food there: it was just a question of distribution.

There’s a children’s story called “Stone Soup,” where a wanderer comes into a village and slowly entices reluctant people to bring out their hidden stores of food to add to his “Stone Soup,” made with water and a big rock. He keeps sipping out of the big kettle on his fire as the people watch, saying stuff like, “Mmm… this is good stone soup, but it sure could use some carrots… potatoes… onions… marrow bones…” And in the end, he talks everybody by this subterfuge into bringing out their supplies and popping them into the kettle. And everybody has a feast.

It’s the modern way, the way of rationalism. Obviously, Jesus didn’t take five loaves and two fishes and miraculously turn them into dinner for five thousand. There’s got to be an explanation, and maybe it was something like what happened in “Stone Soup.” He just got everybody to be neighborly and share. Good old Jesus, essentially just anticipating the same wholesome lessons that a child gets every week on Sesame Street.

There’s a lot to be said for sharing, and being the father of a two year old, I would say there is much to be said for the lovely world of Sesame Street. But Mark isn’t talking about sharing, at least not how we talk about it. He’s talking about a miracle and about the power of God to bring abundance and feasting into the midst of our scarcity. How did it happen, some of us may still ask?

There’s an old joke about a football player given a writing assignment by a teacher. The teacher asks the player to write about any wonder of modern technology and why he finds it so interesting. He chooses the thermos: “It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. What I can’t figure out is, how does it know?”

It’s easy to lose the miracle by looking for the mirror, or the hidden strings, and even when we don’t find them, just assuming that there’s a trick there or something that we can’t quite figure out. Many people who have no trouble believing that God created the entire cosmos can’t believe that Jesus Christ was able to feed those people.

He doesn’t say, after all, “Figure out what everybody has stuffed in their pockets or fanny packs and get them to pool it and pass it out.” He’s not simply being a great organizer. He says, to the apostles, “You give them something to eat.” And what do the apostles say? “What? Go and spend two hundred days’ wages on bread for these people? You can’t be serious.”

Jesus says, “How many loaves do YOU have? Go and see.”

“Five, and two fishes,” they say, having looked through their own pockets and fanny packs.

Then he orders them to gather up everybody into groups on the grass, and he takes their paltry five loaves and two fishes, blesses them, breaks the bread, divides the fishes, and feeds everyone. All five thousand of them, with leftovers.

Have you ever gotten the feeling that most of us can’t get past that first part?

“You give them something to eat,” says He.

“What? Us? We haven’t got that much, and there are a LOT of hungry people out there.”

Do you get the feeling that if Jesus had walked off right then and left them with that problem of feeding five thousand people they’d have found something to argue about, and then Peter would have blamed Matthew, or Andrew would have blamed James, or they all would have said, “Well, we were just getting to think about it, and then John and that other bunch said that you wanted to give them just bread, and the rest of us said, ‘No! He said he wanted them to have fish, too!’ So we tried to feed them, Lord, but nobody could agree on how to do it, and half of us thought the others were doing it wrong. And nobody could figure out how to divide five loaves and two fishes into five thousand portions.”

Meanwhile, milling about on the grass, there would be five thousand people wondering why they’d bothered to make the trip out to see this Jesus character.

Jesus saw the crowd, sees this world, and he has compassion, because they’re like sheep without a shepherd, and he teaches them and feeds them and gives himself for them. Meanwhile, too often, we who are supposed to be the Body of Christ start acting like we’re sheep, too, but that he just likes us better and we get the best food because of that. Not the shepherds we ought to be, but just favorite sheep.

Well, let’s not be hard on ourselves. Feeding the multitude, all those sheep without a shepherd, is tough work. Especially when we don’t much like sheep, and being a shepherd is hard work when you don’t care for half the other shepherds.

It turns out that Jesus Christ has different things in mind than for us to nitpick about how miracles happened, or didn’t happen, or arguing about how to share our food with those who are hungry. It turns out, too, that we aren’t the source of the food: God’s word, God’s blessing, God’s mercy, God’s justice, create peace and plenty.

Funny to think about it that way: even the people that Jesus hand picked couldn’t always get what was going on. As Jesus continued his ministry, he even started talking about the rest of the world, not just the Jews. And he preached the fulfillment of the law, the culmination of God’s work in Israel, a new beginning in his own death and resurrection for the sake of the whole earth. Blessed, broken, and shared not just for the chosen few, but for everyone. The Kingdom of God does not regard possessions, or prejudices, or presidents, or any person, place, or thing except as a creature of the Lord, the ruler of the Universe.

How are we to be about Christ’s work when we are at war? Or at odds with one another? Or when we’re not even sure how it is that God is going to change things when evil and sin and death look so powerful?

Jesus Christ proclaims the Good News that through Him all things are going to be made new, that the Kingdom is coming into this world. This isn’t a message about heaven: this is a message about this world, about redemption, about eternal life. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Faith may seem too weak. People may say to you that there are no deeds of power, even from God. Evil may appear to have the upper hand, and the only way to respond is through the sword and the principalities and powers. It may look like there isn’t enough to go around, of food, or hope, or peace, but that’s only the first part of the story.

Dig into your pockets and packs. What do you find? A few paltry loaves and a couple of dried-up fish? Maybe not even that, maybe just pocket lint, right? Does it seem like it’s not enough? Are you tempted to put it away and give up, or just find something else to worry about? Let’s be honest: does it look like there are too many people in need and too many things wrong for us to make a difference? Does even your own life feel beyond your power to control? Give it to the Lord, then, even the merest scraps. Never doubt that what little we have and what little we do can testify to the Kingdom and bring hope through the power of the Spirit. Give it all to Jesus Christ, even the crumbs. Watch what He can do with it. And share it. There’s much more than you think.

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