2 Kings 4.42-44                                                                                                                     Carol A. Solovitz

Psalm 145:10-19                                                                                                                    Pentecost 8B

Ephesians 3.14-21                                                                                                                July 30, 2006

John 6.1-21

It Is Enough

 

 

          Fasten your seatbelts, folks… or should I say, loosen your waistbands!  Today is the first of five Sundays that use the 6^th chapter of John for the Gospel reading, and all five of the readings have something to do with bread.  I sincerely hope you like bread!  Jesus seems to love bread, because he loves to talk about it.  He even claims to BE bread, the Bread of Life.  Many scholars believe that this is the Communion story that is not a part of John’s Holy Week account.  Could be… Jesus here calls himself the Bread of Life, doesn’t he?

          This morning, we hear John’s version of the only story to be related in all four of the Gospels – the feeding of the 5,000.  This is probably Jesus’ greatest and most famous miracle, and we still delight in telling and hearing it today.  I remember reading the Arch book to my sons; they loved hearing about “The Boy Who Gave His Lunch Away.”  I also remember wondering and praying that someday they would be inspired to share their food and other riches with their neighbors.  You see, the feeding of the 5,000 is a story of sharing abundantly from what looks like scarce provisions.

          Jesus was not the first person in the Bible to feed many on just a little bit of food.  The prophet Elijah helped a woman feed him, herself and her son for days on a little bit of oil and meal.  We just heard from 2 Kings 4, as the prophet Elisha fed 100 people on twenty loaves of barley and some fresh grain.  Those events are true miracles, but they do not come close to the miracle of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with a little boy’s lunch - five barley loaves and two fish.  And it was enough.  That day by the Sea of Galilee, the people had not come for lunch.  Rather, they had come to see Jesus do other signs of power – healing the sick and casting out demons.  They wanted signs; he would give them signs!  He fed them.  Maybe they weren’t all hungry for lunch, but he fed them anyway.

          Pastor Gretchen Bingea tells of an article she read in the New York Times Magazine. It was written by Deborah Snoonian, who described how her grieving father turned to food to fill the emptiness he felt inside following his son's death. "Right after the funeral," she said, "he took me to the Armenian grocer, where he bought $200 worth of hummus, dried fruit, cheeses, bread - much more than he could eat before it spoiled. As he piled the food on the counter, his eyes scanned the shelves, searching for something, anything, to sate his hunger."  Pastor Bingea ponders, “Food can satisfy physical hunger, but our hearts also hunger for the sustenance that will feed our needs for love, acceptance, forgiveness and peace. As Christ comes to us in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, our deepest needs are fed. Our hungry hearts are satisfied, and ‘with joyful lips we sing ... our praise and gratitude.’"  Would this grieving father ever receive enough to be satisfied?

Another story:  One day a man on his lunch break in Minneapolis saw another man by the safety railing of a high atrium in a tall office building.  The man at the railing was sobbing.  The man on his lunch break, Wes, approached him and heard his story. He was from Sri Lanka and was in the United States on a student visa.  Because he and his family were Hindu and were not ready to become Christians and be baptized, they had been asked to leave the home where they had lived for the past year.  Now they were homeless and penniless, and he would lose his student visa if he took a job to care for his family.  His unskilled wife could not work.  They were on the verge of being deported, which meant death for his family if they returned to Sri Lanka.  That day, he stood by the railing trying to work up the courage to jump off and commit suicide.  Wes asked him to consider other alternatives.  What a blessing that Wes just happened to be a social worker and a faithful church member!  He shared his lunch and asked the Sri Lankan man to give him 3 days.  The next morning, he went to the his church’s men’s breakfast and came away with a commitment of $2,000.  Twenty more people gave their lunches away for the next month, and Jeeva and his family were adopted by the church.  Eventually, he finished school, found a good job and bought a house.  His wife went to school and got a good job, too.  Even though they still fear they will be deported, they do not feel alone.  In fact, two years after the man shared his lunch with him, Jeeva came to the pastors and asked to have their newborn son baptized.  He then asked for baptism for himself, his wife, and their daughter.  He explained, “Before, when the other church asked us to be baptized, we did not know what it meant to be Christian.  This church has shown us what it means to be Christian, and we want to be like you.”  People gave away their lunches, fed a family of strangers, and they came to believe.  I often wonder what would have happened if the people of that church had held back from fear of scarcity instead of giving out of an attitude of abundance.  They had enough, and they shared.  This is a true story, and I am proud that I was one of the pastors of that church.

Another true story:  For 10 days this month, I traveled with 25 youth and 11 adults to share the abundance of this congregation with the people of Letcher County in eastern Kentucky.  As always, we had a lot of fun on the Appalachia Service Project trip, especially on our pontoon boat excursion on Lake Cumberland on the way there.  But we also had fun as we worked hard in a very hot, humid climate for 5 days (just like the days we are having in Minnesota this month).  I was nervous about the work crew assigned to me and Lisa Robbins because all of them were confirmed just this year.  They were rookies!  No sane team manager would have only rookies, but there we were.  Most of them, including my co-chaperone, had been to Youth Works! but never to ASP.  When we got our work assignment, I cringed: Our job was to replace rotted and termite-infested joists underneath a mobile home.  ACK!  I had never done this kind of work before, and now I had the responsibility of learning how to do it, teaching it to 5 tenth-graders (3 girls and 2 boys), and doing it with smiles on our faces.  As I got the first look under the mobile home, I could only see dirt, spider webs and wood that was falling apart.  Still, it was cleaner than any crawlspace I’d ever encountered.  Lois, the owner of the home was meticulous about cleanliness, and she begged our forgiveness for the few things her sons had left under there years ago.  I needn’t have worried about the youth and their reaction, though.  They willingly and joyfully crawled under, lay on their backs and sawed and drilled and hammered and sweated and got really dirty.  And they sang!  Yes, they sang while they worked – church songs and camp songs and even a musical they made up about their work as they labored!  Lois was thrilled.  It was hard, dirty, hot work, and we didn’t get a lot accomplished – we built bracing and replaced only 3 of the dozen bad joists replaced in one week.  Still, we did good work for Lois, and she was grateful.  We prayed with her and for her, we shared lunch with her, and we sang for her.  When we arrived, she was troubled and angry about a gas line that was being installed dangerously near her home, and when we left, she was quoting the Psalms and thanking us for giving her peace of mind.  One of the youth commented that he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to work under a house, and he knew we hadn’t done as much work as we’d wanted, but he felt the most important things we accomplished were to love Lois and pray for her.

We did not have a whole lot of skill and talent to offer, but it was enough.  This group of 15- and 16-year-olds gave it all.  So did the rest of Zumbro’s 5 work crews.  They gave their all on floors and roofs and home additions, and they discovered that they had more to give then they’d realized.  They shared their lunches and their gifts, and the blessings multiplied exponentially.  It was a miracle to see them doing the work of Jesus and feeding new friends in so many ways. Alone, we may not feel we have the resources to be the hands of Christ.  But truly, it is enough.  And together, we realize that we have more than enough.  Just as Jesus’ disciples collected 12 basketsful of leftover food, your youth and their adult chaperones have more than enough to share again.  You, the people of God, made their ministry possible but giving out of your abundance and combining it all to serve God by making 5 homes in Kentucky warmer, safer and drier.  It is a miracle!  When the body of Christ works together properly, people get fed.  People get filled and fulfilled.  People learn who Jesus is and learn to seek the Bread of Life that satisfies us all.

Let us pray:  Sustaining God, as we come to your table of grace, you give to us the bread of life - your very self - so we might never be hungry. Enable us to share your bread with everyone, in Jesus’ name,Amen.