From the small offering of a little boy, Jesus feeds a massive crowd. God turns scarcity into abundance. Imagine what God can do with what we have to offer! Here’s my sermon for August 1, 2021.
Today’s Scripture readings are 2 Kings 4:42-44 and John 6:1-21 (appointed for last week, but we skipped it in favor of Christmas in July) and I found helpful James Howell’s Preaching Notions column here.
When I read this story of Jesus feeding the 5,000, I think of the word abundance.
Two weeks ago, I gave everyone who was at worship a foot massager as a reminder that it’s important sometimes to take a break and recharge. If you weren’t here or didn’t get one then, I have another box of them here today.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised only a couple people asked me why I had so many foot massagers. I’m determined to get as much preaching mileage out of them as I can, so today, I submit to you that sometimes abundance looks like a buy one, get two hundred free sale.
It’s something so generous you can only assume it was a mistake. And to be honest, I still think it was a mistake. Or maybe the person selling it really wanted to bless someone with an overwhelming number of their product. I have no idea.
But isn’t it true that abundance often seems like a mistake to us?
In today’s story, wouldn’t it have been just as great of a miracle if Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes and it just said all ate and were satisfied? Why make enough for leftovers?
Pastor James Howell points out that sometimes when we have leftovers, we pass them on to the poor, to nursing homes or soup kitchens. I remember when we lived in Dubuque and used the seminary’s food pantry, we often got leftover bread and baked goods from Panera, because each day when they close, they donate their leftovers, everything that didn’t sell.
But Jesus has just fed a crowd of poor people, with more than enough. Jesus isn’t just providing the leftovers, the cast-offs, like we so often do, giving away the clothes we’ve outgrown, or the can of lima beans that’s been in the back of the pantry for years.
Jesus gives out everything made available to him, and he gives it out in abundance. This reading is a story, not a parable, but it still paints a picture of God’s kingdom. It’s a picture of heaven, a living illustration, and of course, it makes a real, tangible difference in the lives of the people who are fed.
This is the miracle that convinces many people to follow Jesus. As we’ll hear in a few weeks, many in the crowd will leave again when they realize Jesus is more than a vending machine, but still, Jesus provides here for their immediate, practical needs, and that means something.
It’s the same pattern of miracle as Elisha performs in 2 Kings. In that story, there’s a crisis with a famine and a crowd of people begging for food, and a farmer from a place called Baal Shalishah who seems to have been the first one in the area ready to harvest, comes and gives Elijah 20 loaves of bread baked from the first ripe grain.
Elisha tells him to give it to the hungry crowd, and he says, “Hold on, this isn’t nearly enough.” But Elisha assures him that in God’s hands, it will be enough, and it is. God provides.
Both of these are pictures of God’s kingdom. In God’s kingdom there is abundance, and it’s not a mistake. There’s more than enough for everyone.
When we pray for God’s kingdom to come, for it to be on earth as it is in heaven, that’s part of what we’re praying for.
These stories call us to look at this world, with all its problems and shortages and disparities, and see the possibility of abundance rather than scarcity.
When Jesus draws the disciples’ attention to the large crowd approaching and points out they’re going to need some food, the disciples do not see abundance. Standing on the mountain looking at the crowd, the disciples saw scarcity. They saw the problem.
They saw the same thing I would see. They saw an overwhelming need. They saw something way beyond what the budget can handle.
It’s easy to do that, right? It’s easy to see the shortages, the prices that are too high or too low, the volunteers who are too busy, the empty spaces where people used to be, the competition we can’t beat, the things we can’t do. Scarcity is easy to see.
Only Andrew comes up with a proposal, but even as he says it, he knows it’s not nearly enough. But Jesus didn’t see it as a weak, inadequate offering; he saw it as generosity. Jesus turns scarcity into abundance.
This is the way God’s love works. Jesus gives himself for us, and there is always more than enough to go around. It’s not a pie where if I take a piece there’s one fewer piece for you. It’s not a zero-sum game. In Jesus’ hands, there’s enough, and more than enough.
This story appears in all four gospels—in fact, it’s the only one of Jesus’ miracles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all include—but John’s is my favorite version, because John is the only one to mention my favorite character, the boy who provides the food.
I’ve always thought of it as him giving up his lunch, which is obviously a great sacrifice. Sometimes I’ve joked about how he must be a Boy Scout, because he’s the only one who’s prepared, the only one who thought to bring lunch with him.
But I’ve also wondered why he had so much with him.
We don’t know how old he was—the word John uses just means little boy or child—but even if he was a growing teenager, five loaves of bread and two fish seems like a lot.
I came across a suggestion this week that perhaps it wasn’t all for him—perhaps he was there as a vendor, planning to make a little extra money for his family by selling food to the crowd.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s plausible, and if that’s the case, I think it makes his gift even more generous. Not only is he giving up his own food, but instead of making money, he’s giving away all his inventory. He’s going to have to go home and explain to his family what happened, why he didn’t make anything today. He’s going to have to explain that he didn’t make a mistake; he chose to be generous.
And Jesus multiplied his generosity far beyond anything he could have possibly imagined, because that’s what Jesus does.
Jesus takes our generosity, even our hesitant generosity, even the times when we give more than we meant to, or the times when we step up, but only after being asked over and over again, or the times when we want to help but don’t have enough to give as we want to. Jesus takes our generosity and multiplies it.
I’m not talking only about church giving. Obviously I think that’s important; supporting the work we do together is essential to being a member of a church congregation.
In fact, it’s right in our constitutional definition of being a member: Active members of St. Peter receive communion and give a contribution of record at least once per year. The amount’s not important, but the act of giving, the intention of generosity is important.
But I don’t think this story is only here as an excuse for pastors to preach about filling the offering plate. I think this boy gives us an example of how when we live a generous life, God accepts whatever we offer and multiplies it.
Regardless of how much you give to the church congregation, I hope you have some things you are passionate about, some things you give of yourself to support.
Maybe it’s with money, or maybe it’s by volunteering, or raising awareness, or whatever, but following Jesus involves giving. Sometimes we get to see the impact of our giving.
Some of you have heard Christin and I talk about getting to visit Naomi, the girl in Tanzania whom she’s sponsored since high school. It was amazing to finally get to meet her, to see the impact our giving had had on her, far more impact than that relatively small amount of money would have had on us if we’d kept it.
The boy in this story gets to see the whole crowd eat with the impossibly small amount of food he provided. I hope he got a basket or two of the leftovers to take home to help explain what happened.
But of course, more often, we don’t get to see the impact of our generosity. We don’t get to meet the people who receive the quilts we send out to Lutheran World Relief to distribute. In Kansas City on our youth trip, we gave away part of the money we’d fundraised to a rescue mission that provides housing to people we’ll never see again.
We don’t usually get to hear what Bible stories kids will remember twenty or thirty years from now because they learned them in VBS or Sunday School. But we are called to trust God can use whatever we can offer, whatever we’re willing to offer. We are called to give in faith.
I want to share with you a song about this story from the perspective of the little boy. Imagine what this miracle is like for him. We used this song in Bible School last year. It’s called One Basket.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ5PuELGCew”]
I hope that song will get stuck in your head as a reminder of what Jesus can do when you trust him with just one basket, two fish, and five loaves of barley bread, whatever you have to offer.
God provides, and God allows us to contribute, to be involved in the abundance of God’s kingdom.
Let’s pray…
Lord, open our eyes to see beyond scarcity. Help us to see the abundance of your coming kingdom, and inspire us by your Holy Spirit to live generous lives, to trust than in your hands, there is enough and there is an abundance. Thank you for the abundance of your love and provision for us and for the world.
Amen