July 25, 2021
Traveling Differently – With Abundance
- John 6:1-14
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
Traveling Differently – With Abundance
2 Kings 4: 42-44 and John 6: 1-14
July 25, 2021
Rev. Ruth Chadwick Moore
When I think about Northminster moving forward after the past 18 months of challenge and change, I wonder how we are dealing with that journey. We have been through a pandemic that rocked our world and continues to do so. Our senior pastor retired, we have an interim pastor, and we have just elected a Pastoral Nominating Committee to begin the process of calling a new senior pastor. We have explored the values of our Northminster community and will begin a visioning process for the future when the officers and team members meet for a 2 day retreat in August. Wow, the future of Northminster is a vision in progress. We don’t know what it looks like. Can we handle that uncertainty? It makes me a little anxious to be honest.
One of the hardest things about life together in the church is a tension between the leadership and the possibility of vision. Being a leader in the church often makes us protective of what is, but that attitude can make it harder to envision what might be. You can become such a good custodian of the past and the present that the future is unimaginable except in terms of what we already know and do. The future is by definition unknowable and there will always be things that happen you did not expect. There is no diagram of the future for Northminster, and any new visions for this congregation will rest on you trusting the leadership of this congregation. And trust is hard. Although all I can say is, you are in very good hands!
In the story of the feeding of the 5,000 – which by the way is the only miracle story found in all four gospels, so it must have been considered important – Jesus relies on this kind of trust. He doesn’t try to bring the people along or get them on the same page. Jesus simply tells the disciples to have the people sit down and distribute an amount of food that is clearly not enough. And if I might make a suggestion, please do not do this at your next dinner party!
But one of the themes of the Gospel of John is the theme of abundance. We see it here in the story of the feeding of the 5,000. A crowd of people have followed Jesus to the lakeshore. They are beginning to get hungry. Jesus asks Philip how they are going to feed all these people. It’s a test. And Philip who represents the church, replies the way the church often replies to a crisis. “We’re done for. Half a year’s wages wouldn’t be enough to feed all the people.” Then Andrew informs Jesus that a boy in the crowd has a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread. “But this is so little” says Andrew,” that it’s not even relevant under the circumstances.”
But then the meal is blessed, served, eaten and when all are satisfied there is enough left over to fill 12 baskets! That is abundance.
Abundance is a theme throughout the gospel of John. John tells us that Jesus is the Word from whom we have all received grace upon grace. We hear the story of water being turned not merely into wine, but into good wine. Then at a well Jesus tells a woman about living water gushing up to eternal life. And we are reminded that in “ In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” Whether it is wine at a wedding or rooms for eternity or picnic food there is always more than enough. God provides for us. Wherever we go in John’s gospel we are confronted with this overflowing flood of God’s grace, God’s provision, and God’s love for us mediated through Christ.
When modern people try to interpret this feeding story there are three scenarios. One is that the meal was symbolic, and everyone just took a tiny piece of bread and fish so there was enough to go around. But what about the 12 baskets of leftovers? So a second interpretation is that many of the people in the crowd had food to share and when they saw the disciples freely sharing what they had, they all contributed to the meal. And there is of course the third possibility – that it was a miracle, that Jesus took five loaves and 2 fish and by the grace of God used them to cater a meal on the lawn for 5000 people. There is no answer sheet to tell us what scenario we should believe, but as a rule, the answers we choose tell us something about our faith.
The gathered crowed knew very little about Jesus at this point but they did know the old stories about how God had fed the Israelites in the desert, and sent ravens to feed Elijah with bread and meat. Our scripture from 2nd Samuel is very much like our gospel story for today, as the prophet Elisha feeds 100 soldiers with twenty loaves of bread and a few ears of corn. In each case the situation looked hopeless, the people despaired, and God provided. So the crowd was hopeful because they had heard that Jesus, like Moses and Elijah before him, was a man of God. They were beginning to trust that Jesus would provide and help them.
Now if you have not already stepped into this story, now is the time to do so. Is there anyone here who does not know what it is like to face a hungry crowd, or a hungry world, with only 5 loaves and 2 fish? Hundreds of people live on our streets, our homeless shelters are full, children in Indianapolis go to bed hungry, and as we packed school supplies on Thursday for Washington Township school children, we know many students do not have what they need to begin school in a week. There is not enough to go around Lord. There is nothing we can do Lord. The problems are too big. We are too small. Our congregation is getting older, and we can’t do what we used to do Lord. Send them away to fend for themselves we might say. We can’t do it Lord; we don’t have enough people or money or supplies – or you name it. And Jesus says, “have them sit down and feed them.”
I have had the honor and privilege of being a part of mission trips and outreach events that Northminster has participated in. I went with a bunch of youth and a few adults to Mexico for many years. We went to help a new church development in Cancun recruit new participants, and we helped them build most of their sanctuary. We didn’t know how to speak Spanish, we had a bunch of construction paper and scissors to run a VBS, no one had ever built cinder block walls before, and the average age of our volunteers was 17 years old. In other words, we were 5 puny loaves and 2 dried up fish. Our Mission team repaired the playground at DaySpring Center a month or so ago. Andy and Tom and Bo didn’t know how to repair a slide and Don, Lisa, Nancy, Kaitlyn, Carrie and Beth didn’t know how to paint a 4-Square, or repair a playset. They were just 5 loaves and 2 fish. When a group of youth and their families went to New Orleans a few years ago they learned how to dry wall. Put the mud on, let it dry, then sand it down. Repeat until a smooth wall or ceiling appears. No one had done that kind of work before. Five loaves of bread and two tiny fish.
We went into those projects with a little bread and some fish, but we came out with 12 baskets to spare. Not because we did anything right, or because we had enough to give, but because God made good on God’s promise to match our gifts – such as they were – with God’s own. It is something to remember when the crowds look too big, the odds too poor, the work too hard, the visioning too limited, and the situation too hopeless. It is something to remember when our own resources seem too small, our volunteers too few, our efforts too puny and our spirits too low.
Much of the time our faith mirrors that of Philip and Andrew, who could not see past the six months’ wages or the few loaves and fish. We tend to base our living, our giving, and our visioning on our own scarcity or even our own fears of insufficiency. We pull back when we should push forward. We give into fear of a shortfall rather than having faith in God’s abundance and grace. If we think about it, Christians are constantly being called to go places where we have never been, to do things we have never done before, and to be things we have never envisioned. As we travel differently in the next few months, we are invited to live into a new way of going forward to a future where the abundance of God will enable us to dream new visions, and call a new pastor. As a Matthew 25 church we will have the gifts to be a church of action where God’s love, justice and mercy shine forth and are contagious. We will follow the example of Christ and God will provide what we need.
We don’t have to feed the whole crowd, to solve all the problems, or to fix the whole world. We only need to share what we have and to feed what big or little hunger that happens to be standing in front of us. The rest will come. Because God is God, the rest will come. That is the miracle of this story.
We have enough. And we are enough. We can walk differently because God is abundant in God’s provision for us. And God is counting on us to use that abundance to provide for the needs of others. May it be so, Amen.
References:
“Enough?” by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, The Christian Century, July 20, 2009
“Local Miracles” by Barbara Brown Taylor, Mixed Blessings, 1998
“More than enough” by Charles Hoffman, The Christian Century, July 25, 2006