August 3, 2014

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Bovina, MS

Year A, Season after Pentecost, Proper 13, Matthew 14:13-21

            A couple of nights ago my four- and three-year-old nephews got into a bit of a struggle over some toy trains. Harris, the three-year-old, was not really interested in sharing any of his many, many trains with his older cousin, Brooks. My sister asked Harris, “Does sharing make you scared? It’s okay. There’s plenty for both y’all. You don’t have to be scared.”

            In some ways that’s a really good crystallization of our gospel lesson this morning. You don’t have to worry. There’s enough for everyone. The you there being the disciples, as well as all of us here. You don’t have to be scared. There is plenty to share, and we don’t have to fear doing so. There is more than enough. There is always more than enough.

            It’s a good message and one we need to be reminded of again and again. And maybe that’s why this weird story of the multiplication of five loaves of bread and two fish that fill everyone—that fill five thousand men, plus all the uncounted women and children—this strange math that fills five thousand plus and leaves twelve baskets full of leftovers—maybe that’s why this is the only miracle story included in all four gospels.

            This message of sharing and plenty is one we need to be reminded of over and over, but of course it’s not a message that’s easy to hear. It is, after all, a message that runs counter to everything the world teaches us, especially since it just doesn’t make sense, this story. How could anyone possible satisfy thousands with such meager resources? And really, if I’m honest with myself, it’s not a message I much want to hear. At my core, like my nephew, I just don’t want to share. It’s far easier not to. It’s far easier to follow the lead of the disciples, who, rather than offer what they have, urge Jesus to send the crowd home.

            Dismissing the crowd makes really good sense, after all. Jesus had to be tired and not only that but he was grieving and probably a little scared himself. He had just heard about the beheading of John the Baptist, his cousin, who had announced Jesus’ coming and baptized Jesus in the Jordan. John had been beheaded by Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, on a whim, and Jesus, hearing the news, had drifted off in a boat to pray alone at some deserted place. But having begun a ministry of healing across Galilee, Jesus was highly sought after by a hurting crowd, who yearned for the healing that only he could offer. And so, five thousand men and likely thousands more women and children, followed after him on foot. And Jesus, mourning for John and perhaps fearing for his own life, nevertheless hurt for the crowd, his heart broke for them, and he healed the sick among them.

            Hadn’t he done enough? Weren’t the disciples right? Doesn’t dismissing the crowd make really good sense? Night was falling and Jesus had been with the crowd for a while. Why not send them on their way, back to their villages to find food for themselves?

            But here is the thing. We need reminding of this story again and again, I think, because it is a reminder not only that there is plenty to share, but that all that we have is of God, and that we worship a God abounding in compassion for us. God cares for us deeply and Jesus shows us that here in his desire to physically feed those who follow him. And not only that, but God’s compassion transforms us to be able to share with a hurting and needy world—a world hungry for the good news of God’s love.

            There are no doubt a number of theories about the nature of the miracle of the “Feeding of the 5,000.” Perhaps Jesus literally did multiply the loaves and fish, or perhaps Jesus fed a few in the wilderness, and over the few centuries between Jesus’ life and the time the gospels were written the story grew, or maybe the story is simply meant to symbolize the spiritual way in which God feeds us. One popular modern interpretation, that you perhaps have heard, is that everyone in the crowd had a little to offer in his or her pocket and so when everyone shared freely, there was more than enough to go around. Maybe that was the case, but the logistics of the multiplication of food don’t seem to be nearly as important as the transformation of hearts. As one Lutheran pastor puts it, “It’s not that one should doubt Jeusus’ ability to multiply food supplies out of thin air, it’s that curing  thankless, stingy hearts might be the more significant miracle, in the first place.”[1]

            My sister’s words to my nephew about the trains stuck with me, I think, because sharing really is scary. My heart can be pretty thankless and stingy. I don’t, on my own, want to share—my time, my talents, my money. I’m afraid there perhaps won’t be enough left for me. Perhaps, for example, if I volunteer at the jail, I won’t have enough time to both read what I need to read for school and hang out with my friends, or if I give more to Episcopal Relief and Development, I won’t have enough to buy those snow boots I was hoping to get to make it through one more winter at Virginia Seminary.  My heart, left to its own devices, is thankless and stingy, and like the disciples, I can think of really good reasons to dismiss the hungry crowd.  

            Jesus tells them, when they urge them to send the crowd home so that the people can eat, Jesus tells the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” How utterly frightening. No wonder they questioned him. “We only have so much,
 they said. “Not enough,” they said.

            Jesus, however, shows them that there is plenty. In language foreshadowing the Eucharist, he takes what the disciples have, blesses it, breaks it open, and gives it back to them to share with the crowd gathered round them.   

            A few months ago, at our Virginia Seminary middler class retreat, Bishop Ted Gulick, who was a classmate of Bishop Gray’s at Virginia Seminary, told my class that as Christians, we are to be the Eucharist for the world, our hearts broken open and shared with a hurting world. We are enough, he said. We are the Eucharist, the bread of life, and broken open and given to a hurting world. Blessed by God to do so. As if the thought of sharing resources wasn’t scary enough, the thought of sharing myself with a hurting world is that much more so. It can be, of course, overwhelming. It can be paralyzing.

            But as Roman Catholic Bishop Ken Untener wrote in his “Prayer for Oscar Romero,” “We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.”[2]

            But I pray for the ability for all of us this morning to allow the Lord’s grace to enter in. I pray for the ability to give all that we have and all that we are over to God so that God may take it, bless, break it open and give it back through us to a hurting world. I pray for this since what our gospel lesson teaches us, what the entirety of Scripture teaches us, is that when we give all that we have and all that we are over to God, we are transformed by the overwhelming love of God. We are, like the disciples, made able to work miracles.

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[1] Gil Bailey, http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/proper13a.htm

[2] http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/prayers-and-devotions/prayers/archbishop_romero_prayer.cfm