"How Much Is Enough?"
Matthew 14:13-21
March 1, 2009
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John Andrew Fleming
How much is enough? That's the question I want us to spend some time with this morning. If you think about it, it is a question that we ask ourselves time and time again.
Every summer my family heads to Gulf Shores for a week's vacation. We pack our van the night before our departure so that we can leave as soon as we can. I do not know what we would do without our van whose back seats fold down. If it were not for them, we would never get all of our things to Alabama. Susie's parents usually join us and pay half the condo's rental, which is a pretty good deal. They come in a car and one suitcase. How do they do that? I think I know, they don't have young children and all their toys! It seems like we have so much stuff and when we come home, there is always more than we took with us. How much is enough?
When Susie and I bought our first home, it was just the two of us and our dog, Winnie. After the movers left, we unpacked everything, hung the pictures and were ready for company. It was a different story when we moved to the parsonage. By then we had added Annie Grace and Macy, another dog. It took us weeks to unpack. I dread our next move, since we have been here, we have added Julie and all her things. We have a lot of stuff. It makes me wonder, "How much is enough?"
How much is enough? It's a question the economy has us asking these days. We thought things were settled with our retirement accounts, but then they took such a hit. Can I retire now? Is there enough? How much, really, is enough?
It is a question parents planning for their kids to go to college and one day getting married are asking. Two Fleming girls means a bigger share of wedding costs. How much will it cost to send Annie Grace to college in ten years and then Julie five years after that? How much is enough?
How much is enough is a question that church asks us all to consider every year when we fill out a pledge card. The church asks us all to look at what financial gift we will give.
The church asks all of us to consider our gift in relation to a percentage of our income. I know a preacher who once said this to his church, "The real question is not how much of my money will I give to the church, but how much of God's money will I keep for myself." That's bolder that I am. Experts tell us that what is really at stake is that those who give to the church do so because they genuinely want to make a difference for the purposes of Christ and because they want to line up their lives with higher purposes. When it comes to our giving, how much is enough?
How much do we really need? When it was time for Jesus to send out his disciples, he told them to take the bare essentials. They were to take a walking stick, sandals, and two tunics. That is it. Jesus told them not to take bread or bags or money, but to trust the hospitality of others. For Him, that was enough and if the disciples complained about that, none of the gospel writers let us know about it.
The question, how much is enough, is at the heart of our gospel lesson for today, the story of Jesus feeding a crowd with only five loaves of bread and two fish. This is an important story. It is one of the few that is in all four gospels. Two of the gospel writers record two miraculous feedings, so all total, we get the story six times. It makes me think that this is more than a story about loaves and fish.
Matthew is quick to tell us that this story comes on the heels of Jesus hearing about the death of his cousin, John the Baptizer. Jesus tries his best to get away, to think about things, but the crowd won't let him. Matthew says that the crowd followed him to what he calls a deserted place. When Jesus saw them there, he had compassion on them and he healed their sick. When it grew late, when evening had come, and after Jesus and the twelve had had a full day of it, the disciples said to Jesus, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so they can get something to eat."
The disciples assumed, safely I think, that those who had been following Jesus on foot and listening to his words were as tired as they were. What the disciples said had a let's call it a day feel to it.
You know how Jesus is. His plan for supper was different than the disciples' plan. The disciples' plan was to take the five loaves and the two fish that they had, sit down by a warm fire, talk about the day, and get some much needed rest. Jesus' plan was different, "You give them something to eat."
Consider how crazy that sounds. Matthew tells us that there were five thousand men, plus women and children. If they all were married and had one kid, that would mean that they'd have to feed some fifteen thousand people. The disciples must have had a have you lost your every loving mind? look on their faces. Wasn't this the same Jesus who cautioned them to count the cost? "For which of you, he asked, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it." How much is enough?
The disciples must have done the calculation in their minds. I'm not good at math and even I know that it just doesn't add up. To me it barely looks like they'll be able to feed themselves, much less the huge crowd.
Look at what Jesus does. Pay attention to the symbolism. You will see it a little later in our worship service today. Jesus asks for the bread. He tells the crowd to sit down. Next comes four verbs. Listen. Jesus blessed the bread. Jesus broke the bread. Jesus gave the bread to the disciples who it turn gave it to the people. We will rehearse this in a few minutes. When all was said and done, there was more than enough. Matthew says that there were basketfuls left over. I like the picture of the disciples moving among the now nourished multitude, tugging twelve hefty baskets of leftovers back to their compassionate Lord. Don't you know that they were all smiling and all of heaven with them?
Now, let me bring this a little closer to home. By now I hope you know that today and for the next five weeks Mike Smith and I will be preaching a sermon series based on Mary Jane Gorman's book Watching the Disciples: Learning from Their Mistakes. We will notice six mistakes they make, ones hopefully, we won't make. We will use her book on Tuesday evenings with anyone who would like to sign up for a study. Our staff will also use the book during the next six weeks in our staff meetings.
What are the mistakes the twelve made in this lesson? Well, I think there are at least two. Here is the first one. The disciples looked around, saw a great need, and threw up their hands and said, "It can't be done! Nothing can be done!"
We make that mistake, too. The church, our church, is hungry and we're surrounded by a world of hungry people. People are lonely, disoriented, and poor in so many ways. I think the church looks around at her membership roles and her budget. I think she looks around at folks camped out on the lawn of the church, and says with those disciples, "This is a deserted place. Send them away to fend for themselves. As for us, we'll feed ourselves." Hmm. Something about that just doesn't seem right to me.
Last spring when the tornado blew through my neighborhood, our neighborhood and Cammack Village, I was called and asked if we could open up the church for a while because of a gas leak. We did that, but we were open until folks were told its safe to go home. I couldn't help but to think in the coming days that we should have done more.
The economy is terrible. People are losing their jobs and their retirements. Shouldn't we be doing something to help?
Grief is real for a lot of people. Many of us know what it feels like to lose someone we love. When Emily died I sought out a support group. I'm not sure I wanted it to happen here because I was so vulnerable, but shouldn't we be offering that for our membership? Shouldn't we be doing something more than we are?
I once preached a sermon in which I said that if you want to pray for something, then go right ahead, but that we all ought to be prepared to be a part of that which we are praying for. So be careful when you pray for the church. You might be a part of the answer to your prayer. Are you prepared to do that?
What can we do? We can do our part. Imagine the unimaginable. Someone's house burns to the ground. All is lost. Imagine that at the church that next Sunday someone stands up with a basket in his hands, tells the church the story, puts a hundred dollar bill in the basket and asks others to join him. By the time the basket comes back around, it is full. One gift doesn't mean much, but together, wow! I want to say that its also more than the money, its also the message! How much is enough? What we have is enough because God takes that and blesses that and disciples of Jesus haul in the basketfuls.
Let me quickly give you the second mistake. I hadn't thought of this before, but there is real value in Jesus having the crowds sit down. The disciples assumed the crowds had been with Jesus long enough. Do you know what they did when they sat down? They talked with each other about what they had seen and what they had heard. It was, you might say, the first small group experience.
There is great value in that, in talking with each other about the lessons and the miracles, sharing what they saw and what they heard and answering the questions that are significant.
Beloved, let me say it again, there is more going on here than bread and fish. It's a feeding of our souls, it's sharing together. It's powerful and it's what I want one of my marks on this church to be. Let us pray.
(I have relied heavily on the first lesson in Mary Jane Gorman's book Watching the Disciples Learning from Their Mistakes for this sermon).