“More Than Bread”
John 6:1-21
July 30, 2006
St. Paul United
Rev. John A.
Fleming
When it comes to miracles in the Bible, do you prefer the spectacular ones or the ones that as far as miracles go are a little more tame? Given the choice to be physically present ats miracle, would you prefer one with all of the special effects or one that seems to be a little more low budget?
Would you rather be with Moses with Pharaoh and his army in hot pursuit as they come to what seems like it’s a dead end? Would you like to see Moses raise his hands and push them apart and watch as the waters of the sea mirror his hands? Would you like to see him push his hands back together while Pharaoh and his army get caught in the flood waters? Or would you like to see Jesus take something ordinary, like water and when the wine at the wedding runs out save the day?
Given half the chance, would you
like to join Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace? Would you like to be Daniel’s guest of honor
in the lion’s den? Would you enjoy the
company of Jonah in the belly of a whale?
or would you rather be with Jesus as he muses
his own salvia and some holy land dirt to create a paste that gave a man the
chance to see? Given the chance, would
you rather be with Moses as he tries to escape from the same Pharaoh and the
army. Would you like to see some of the
plagues as God uses things like locusts and boils and
gnats to make his point? Or would you
rather be with Jesus when he asks those who have gathered at the cemetery if
they would help roll away the stone so that Lazarus could come out?
There is a big difference in the miracles of the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus seems to use ordinary things to make something wonderful happen.
A case in point in our scripture lesson for this morning, taken from the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand. This story is a special one. It is the only story, outside the events of holy week, that can be found in all four gospels. All of the gospel writers include it. A couple of them tell it more than once. This story must be an important one.
Now if you are like me, when you think about the feeding miracle, you tend to mix and merge the four stories together. That is easy to do. If you’re not careful, you will place the boy who shared his lunch in all four versions of the story. The truth is that only John has him as one of the characters. John tells us that Jesus and his disciples went up on a mountain side and watched as the crowd followed them there. In other versions, the disciples bring up the subject of food. But in John, it is Jesus who turns to Phillip. He asks, “Phillip, how much money do you think that it would cost to cater a meal to these five thousand folks?” Phillip says, “Six months wages wouldn’t be enough to provide even a snack for them!”
From Phillip’s perspective, Jesus’ question is a crazy one. After all, they are up on a mountain. There are no food vendors there. McDonald’s and Wendy’s is miles away. My guess is that Dominoes Pizza will not deliver, even there. So for Phillip, the question is a crazy one. It is also a disturbing one. My guess is that more than anything else he wanted to please Jesus. Philip must have wondered, “Jesus, what do you mean we?” As in where are we to buy bread? Who made us in charge of providing the crowd lunch?” You can almost hear the dismay in his voice, “Why six months wages wouldn’t even buy these people snacks!”
And so it seems that the case is
closed. Jesus could go about healing and
teaching, but as for the evening meal, well, these folks would have to fend for
themselves. Well, with Jesus, cases are
rarely closed. Andrew happened to be
standing there. He had gotten to know
some of those in the crowd. One of them
was a young boy, who went he saw the emergency at hand, offered all that he had
to Jesus. Andrew speaks for him when he
says, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what
are they among so many people?” Andrew
is right! The way I figure it, that is
one loaf per thousand people. I didn’t
try to figure out how to divide the two fish.
I cannot help but to wonder why Andrew would mention the boy’s lunch in
the first place. It was so small, so piddly, so insignificant. It didn’t amount to much. What difference could it make?
Jesus didn’t see it that way. The boy gave Jesus the chance to do what he had intended to do all along. Jesus asked the crowd to take their seats. He took the loaves, he gave thanks for them, he gave them to the crowd, along with the fish, and as you know there was enough. In fact, there was more than enough. There were baskets and baskets left over. The crowd ate fish sandwiches for days!
Look again at this miracle. Jesus could have made peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches rain down from the sky. He
could have used his water into wine technique to help wash them down. He could have turned rocks into giant chicken
nuggets. He could have used a number of
things to feed the crowd. But instead he
used what was at hand, what was close by.
He used the lunch of a boy, who just happened to be standing there.
Now there are all kinds of sermons in these fifteen or so verses. How many of them would you like to hear this morning? To be fair to John, the main purpose of this story seems to confirm that Jesus has great power. In the other gospels, miracles are called miracles. In John they are called signs. There are fewer of them and they all try to answer the question, “Who is this Jesus?” So Jesus has great power. He can even feed the biggest crowd. There is a sermon in there somewhere.
Or how about this one. It is not hard to put yourself on that mountainside. We all come before Jesus hoping and hungry. It is Jesus who feeds us and who gives us what we need. And when Jesus does that, we go away full in more ways than one. There is a sermon in there somewhere.
But the sermon I want to preach this morning has to do with the boy and his gift of bread and fish. Look at the reaction of Philip and Andrew. Did you notice it? They focused on what was lacking. Philip says there is not enough money to feed the crowd. Andrew says, “There is a boy here who has a little something, but what are they among so many people?” Jesus looked at things different. He saw the situation and he saw the possibility of abundance.
A preacher friend of mine helped me see this. She said that there are two mentalities, two ways of looking at things. There are those who believe that there is not enough to go around. So you had better get your’s before someone else does. That mentality is called a scarcity mentality and it is everywhere! If you think that way, then you believe that there isn’t enough. You think about things that you need to fulfill your life. You always need something else to make you happy. From this way of looking at things, you are always in a win-lose situation. The problem with this is that if you think this way, it’s hard to be happy for someone else. When they get the promotion you think, “That should have been me. I needed that!” Us preachers even think this way. If someone else’s church is doing well, then we might think, “I guess our church missed out on a blessing. Why couldn’t that happen to my church?” If you are a United Methodist minister and hope to move, then appointment season can be hard on you. You might think, “They should have called me. I deserved that appointment! Why couldn’t I have gone there?” You cannot celebrate with a church or with a fellow pastor because there is not enough to go around. Someone has gotten what you deserved!
There’s another way of looking at things. And to be honest with you, it’s the one I prefer. It is called an abundance point of view. It is the bone deep belief that there is more than enough to go around. There are enough blessings and enough resources for every one. It is the belief that God is big enough to give all of us our hopes and dreams.
It is the way that Jesus looked at things. On the mountain, Jesus looked and saw what was there. He used it and it was more than enough. Are we that way? I am wondering. Have any of you looked around near dinner time. Have you opened the refrigerator and noticed that there are good things inside it. Have you looked in the pantry or in the kitchen cabinets and seen them chock full, but still said, “There’s nothing to eat in this house!” Now I am not one of those meddling preachers, but have any of you gone to your closet doors, opened them up, looked at the number of suits and dresses and shirts and sweaters in there, but still proclaimed, “I need to go shopping. I don’t have anything to wear!”
Use what you have, Jesus might say. Use what is in front of you. Don’t look at your life in terms of what you don’t have. Look at your life in terms of the things you do have. You have things like prayers and energies and talents. You have money and things. One of my favorite stewardship stories is about the girl who responded to her preacher’s call. One Sunday morning he stood in the pulpit and talked about our need to give. It was a great point. When the offering plate was passed a five year old girl put her favorite stuffed animal in the offering plate. The preacher noticed that and when the worship service was over, he went to her house to return the stuffed animal. He sat down next to her, he thanked her for her gift, but he said that giving her stuffed animal to the church wasn’t necessary. She looked at him and exclaimed, “With all due respect, pastor, I didn’t give the animal to you. I gave it to God!” How could you argue with that. We all have inside of us a need to give and to make a difference.
Use what you have. Use your strength. Use your talents. Use your passions. Who knows what difference it will make. Listen again to Andrew’s question. “What are they among so many people?” I guess you never know the difference that your gift can make.
Our Back to School worship service
is planned for three weeks. This year it
is Westover Hills turn to host. Last
year, one by one, we gave 192 folders, 186 boxes of crayons, 116 erasers, 400
pens, 31 backpacks 29 boxes of Kleenex, 54 pairs of scissors, 118 packs of
paper, 175 spiral notebooks just to name a few
things.
Jesus there is a boy here who has.... At Vacation Bible School last summer we donated more than fifteen hundred diapers (as one who regularly changes diapers, I can tell you what a gift they are!), forty-two hundred baby wipes, one hundred and fifty-three wash cloths, one hundred and fifty-three bibs, and a hundred and seventeen pairs of socks. All of these gifts were brought by our children.
I am so proud of the giving
tradition of this church. Last year when
we heard of the devastation in
Let me close with this. There is a great scene near the end of the
movie Bruce Almighty. In it, God says to
Bruce, “If you want to see a miracle, then be a
miracle.” Make a difference in someone’s
life. Use what you have. Somewhere in your life there are five loaves
and two fish ready to be shared. Writing
to the church at
(Special thanks to my friend, Jeanie Burton, for an idea or two in this sermon).