“All I Have Is

“All I Have Is...”

Matthew 14:13-21

July 31, 2005

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I would like to invite you to come and be a character in our story for this morning. There is a lot of room and there is plenty to learn from these seven or so verses. This is an important story. It is the only one, besides the resurrection story, that appears in all four of the gospels.

So I would like for you to join me in being a character in it. You can almost be anyone that you want to be in it. If you’ve ever wanted to be like Jesus or to be Jesus, here’s your chance. Or, you could be a disciple. If you have ever wanted to be an eyewitness to what Jesus did and what he said. If you have ever wanted to sit at his feat and witness a miracle first hand, then here is your chance. But if you would like to fall back in the crowd. If you would like to stand on your tip-toes just hoping to catch a glimpse of Jesus. Or if you would rather turn your ears towards Jesus to hear what he has to say, then that is all right, too.

Before we make our way out there to the wilderness and to the deserted place, I would like to ask you to do this. I would like for you to cast your mind back to the last time that you were really, really sad. Now, I don’t know what made you feel that way, but it could have been just about anything. It could have been the death of one of your parents or the one of a good friend. Your sadness could have happened when you didn’t get that job that you had set your heart and your hopes on. Your sadness could have happened right after you moved out of that house that you loved. Or it could have been when what you had hoped for did not happen. And in that moment of sadness, if you are like me, and as it turns out, if you are like Jesus, what you needed the most was just to get away, to be alone, to be by yourself, to hide out. In your hiding out, you would have the chance to think about things and to pray. Above everything you didn’t want anyone to bother you. And so you try to get away, to leave for a while. You think that you’ll make your way to that little church, the beautiful one, the one that’s not far from your house. But as you slip in, suddenly a bride and a groom and a wedding party arrive to begin the celebration of their lives. Or you go to that mountain, that grassy hill where you have found peace so many times. It’s always quiet there. But today, instead of peace and quiet, there are cheerful hikers there and a host of those deciding to take a picnic.

That is the situation that Jesus finds himself in, in our scripture lesson for this morning. Just before we arrive at this great scene, Jesus has heard of the death of his cousin and colleague and fellow worker in the faith, John the Baptist. He had lost John in a way and in a manner that must have warned Jesus that there would be trouble up ahead. Matthew tells us that Jesus got into a boat and went to a deserted place. He also tells us that the crowd was quick on his heels and when they heard where he was going, they speedily caught up with him. Look how Jesus acts. He doesn’t throw a fit. He isn’t frustrated. He isn’t angry. He looks at the crowd and has compassion on them. Then he heals them.

Maybe I ought to drop some of you off there because that is exactly where you connect with this story. You are need of healing and here is Jesus, sitting on the banks of a river, doing just that, touching the hurt places of people’s lives and offering them healing.

Or how about this? Could you imagine yourself as one of the disciples, or maybe a friend or cousin of one of the disciples? Or even this, could you imagine yourself as someone hanging out on the fringe of the crowd? You are there just because you are a curious soul. You see how Jesus cares for people, the love He has for people and you want to help somehow and in some way, too. It is getting late and so you come with a great idea. At first it does not sound like a caring idea, but in the end it is. You can see the hunger in these ten thousand or so eyes. The trip back to town is going to take some time and so you suggest to Jesus: “Jesus, wouldn’t it be a good idea to send the crowd home. There is always tomorrow. Give them time to get home before it’s dark so that they can eat. You don’t want them to be out here in the middle of nowhere, hungry.” I would have liked to have seen the look in Jesus’ eyes. I would have liked to have seem them sparkle to life when he said loud enough for the disciples to hear, “They need not go away. You give them something to eat.” The disciples, of course, protested. I would have, too if I were there, if I was one of them. No one had the kind of food that was necessary to feed everyone. Maybe one of the disciples cried out, “We can’t do it!” Maybe another said, “We haven’t got the time. We don’t have the energy. We haven’t got the money! We don’t have the ability to feed all these people!” Now if you’re a disciple, maybe you look Jesus square in the eye and say, “Jesus all I have is....” And in the case of the disciples, all they had was a couple of fish and five loaves of bread. And you know this story. Jesus said, “Bring them here to me.” He took the bread, he looked to heaven and asked God to bless it, he broke the bread, he gave it to his disciples with the instructions of giving it to the crowd. Does any of this sound familiar? And he sat back and watched with a smile on his face. He saw the look of amazement on everyone’s faces, and he prepared the disciples by saying that they might have to eat leftover fish sandwiches for a while.

A lot of people have trouble with this story, this miracle of Jesus. A lot of people have trouble with any miracle. Critics of this particular story say that it could have never happened the way that it did. Five loaves, two fish, and at least ten thousand people being fed? There is no way that it happened like that, say the critics. Barbara Brown Taylor, a preacher whose sermons I read from time to time, suggests that the real miracle happened when the meager baskets of bread were being passed up and down the rows, among the people. And because no one would dare take a trip to a deserted place, a wilderness without a little something to eat, the people dug into their pockets and pulled out the little bread that they had ate a bite, and put some in the basket for the others. She sees the real miracle in the sharing of gifts. It’s a miracle when that happens. I’m just not sure that that is what happened out there in the wilderness. The great Albert Einstein once said this about miracles, “The way that I see it, you have two ways to live your life: the one as if no miracles exist and the other as if everything is a miracle.” So what do you believe?

This story is supposed to remind you of communion. The lesson is on the wrong Sunday. It should be next week’s lesson, when we celebrate communion in all of our worship services. I had the chance to give out bread at a communion worship service not long ago for a retreat. There were four of us doling out bread and juice and there were a ton of people coming to receive it. I was in charge of half a loaf of bread and half an auditorium. At first I was giving huge chunks of bread. Enough to cover a multitude of sins. As I was giving out the bread, I remembered my first memorial service at Annual Conference. I was standing in line at the First United Methodist Church in Hot Springs to receive bread and juice. Just in front of me was a man I knew, Herb Woodson, from Fordyce. When we both received communion and had prayed, Herb turned to me and said, “They gave me a huge piece of bread.” I said, “Herb, they give you bread in proportion to your sin.” We laughed. I don’t believe that the amount of bread corresponds to the number of sins. I do believe a good share of bread is important and so I was giving out bread, big pieces. Then I got nervous. The bread was dwindling fast. There wasn’t a spare loaf and the people kept coming. I thanked God when the last person came and I gave the last morsel of bread.

I guess one of the lessons here is that we must trust that God will provide things like bread and juice for us. But I think that there is another lesson here. This is it. We take what we have to God, whatever it is, and offer it up, hoping that God will use it and that there will be enough for everyone.

You know I think that the church has always been in the wilderness, in a deserted place, a place where she cannot rely on her own resources, which are usually few anyway. We are hungry ourselves. We come here on Sundays to be filled up, to get what we need to make it another seven days. To be fed. In fact, when church folks complain and leave the church (not that this has ever been said to me) often this is what they say, “Well, I’m just not being fed.” We are hungry ourselves and we are surrounded by a world that has deep cravings, people who are lonely, people who are disoriented, people who are poor in so many ways. Against all of that, we see that we don’t have enough. We don’t have enough people, we don’t have enough volunteers, we don’t have enough money to make a difference. Our numbers are down, we say. And so we cry out with all of the other disciples who find themselves in this same predicament, “This is a deserted place. It is late. Send the crowds away so that they can go and buy food for themselves.” To which Jesus always says to us, “They need not go away. You give them something to eat.”

Now this is where the rubber meets the road, as us preachers like to say. We don’t think that we have anything to give, at least nothing that anyone else would want. What we have surely won’t feed or help anyone. Being close to Jesus, catching a glimpse of what he is doing, makes us want to help others. We blunder with our ideas. We offer what we have, not really understanding what it is. And Jesus takes ideas, loaves and fish. He takes money. He takes a sense of humor. He takes time. He takes energy. He takes talents. He takes love. He takes artistic abilities. He takes dreams. He takes those who are good with words. He takes those who are quick with their hands and their feet. He takes whatever it is that we have. He holds them up to God. He asks God to bless these things and then he gives these things back to us and we give them to those who need them. These things both belong to us and don’t belong to us. They are both what we had in mind and what we did not have in mind. They are something greater and more powerful and more mysterious than we thought, but still our own.

You see we are supposed to do something with what God has given you. We dig into our pockets, in our lives, and think that there is nothing much there. But it ends up being something great. Friends, when the hungry come looking for food. When the sorrowful come looking for comfort. When the confused come looking for direction. When the bitter come looking for reconciliation. When the powerless come looking for strength. When the addicted come looking for deliverance. When the fearful come looking for courage. When the hopeless come looking for hope, let us not forget Jesus words, “They need not go.” Maybe it is time for us to set the table. Let us pray.