Fourth Lent, March 26, 2006

     The minister and his wife had been invited for Sunday dinner out in the country.  Johnny had been a big help with setting the table, had been on his best behavior during the meal, and was asked by his mother to help serve the dessert.  He proudly went to the kitchen and carried out the first piece of apple pie, giving it to his father, who passed it on to the preacher’s wife.  Johnny came in with a second piece of pie and gave it to his father, who again passed it on to the preacher.

     That was too much for Johnny to resist.  He said, “Dad, it’s no use.  Mom cut all the pieces about the same size.”

     Organically grown vegetables are hard to find in Bedford.  I did hear about the lady who asked at a local grocery store about the availability of organic vegetables?  The produce man didn’t really know what she was asking, so she said, “Look, these vegetables are for my husband.  Do you have any that have been sprayed with harmful chemicals?”

     The man replied, “No, ma’am, we don’t.  You’ll have to do that yourself.”

      At the beginning of the sixth chapter of John we are told that it was close to the Passover when Jesus and his disciples arrived in Jerusalem.  Thousands of people had been streaming into the Holy City to reenact the deliverance from death in Egypt.  Some had heard about a Galilean carpenter who had done many signs and wonders in the region of Galilee and beyond.  They wanted to hear this man.  So, a few thousand gathered just outside the city to hear what he had to say.

     What they experienced was that just as God had delivered Israel from bandage and death in Egypt, Jesus would deliver those who came to him from sin and death.  Just as God had provided manna in the wilderness to keep a nation from starving, Jesus would feed those who came to him.

     The Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle recorded in all four of the Gospels.  That is called in New Testament scholarship “multiple attestations.”  It just means that feeding people must have been something Jesus believed in and did a lot of.  John reports this event as a sign that Jesus provides the sustenance that is required to sustain life for the children of God.  They are born from above and are given living water.  They are fed by the bread that Jesus alone gives.

      In typical fashion for the Gospel of John, the question Jesus asks Philip probes for a response of faith.  The bread about which Jesus is speaking cannot be bought and sold.  It can only be given and received.  Six months’ wages, the wages from half a year’s work, could not buy enough bread for the crowd to have even a bite.  Andrew, unlike the more practical Philip, looks around and finds a boy who offers his meager lunch.  “There’s a lad here who has five barley loaves and two sardines.”  Then he adds the same qualifier that we would add, “But what are they among so many people?”  The response Jesus gave to this need and the one he hoped his disciples, both then and now, would learn was to respond out of abundance and not out of scarcity.  He responds with his most consistent pattern.  He takes what is offered, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it back.  And they ended up with more bread and fish than the crowd could eat.

     The boy who showed up on the hillside that day really didn’t have much to offer.  He probably didn’t worry much if the barley loaves were the same size, he just offered it and from that offering Jesus found the material out of which to fashion a miracle.

     One great shining deed in history would be missing had the boy not decided to be present that day or if he had decided to withhold his lunch which his mother probably prepared for him.  It is a basic fact of the Christian life that Jesus needs what we can bring to him.  When we withhold our hearts, our time, our energy, our treasure, and our talent the world is denied miracle after miracle and triumph after triumph.  When well-intentioned Christian people fail to offer what they have or hoard it because they think there is not enough or their gift will not be missed the body of Christ suffers and the work God has given us to do is stunted.

     If, just as we are and with whatever small offering we might bring, we would lay that on the altar of service in the name of Jesus the Christ, there is no telling what miracle might occur in us and through us.  The problem of hunger in this community, this nation, this world would be just one of the miracles he could perform.

     Many, many years ago some theological students were out celebrating as they came to the end of the years’ study.  They stumbled upon an old drunk in a ditch.  One of the students when over and lifted the man up, put his arm around him, and said, “Tell me where you live and I will take you home.”  The old man muttered, “Surely, if Jesus ever lived you must be him.”

      The friends of the student asked why he bothered to do that for an old sot.  The theological student said, “If someone ever knocks at the door of my heart and asks, ‘who lives here?’ I must never answer ‘Martin Luther,’ but I must say, ‘Jesus Christ.’” 

     Yes, we each have just a little heart but the feeding of the five thousand is intended to remind us that in the hands of Jesus little is always much and it will always be enough.  Amen.