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September 10, 2006
Jesus’ Idea of Enough
I Kings 17: 8-16
John 6: 1-15
September 10th, 2006
This account of Jesus’ feeding the five thousand is one of the most thought-provoking stories in the Gospels. All four Gospels tell it. But only John’s Gospel points out the details that make the human element in the story really vivid. And John points us toward the great truth that Jesus is the bread of life who really satisfies our hungry souls if we will feast on Him.
What grabs our attention in the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with a shepherd boy’s lunch may be the miracle, the outward sign of Jesus power. Or perhaps we notice the shepherd boy himself, offering his little lunch that is more than enough in Jesus’ hands to do all He needs to do. I want to focus on this second obvious lesson of this story.
But first we need to see that this feeding story is just an introduction to a greater truth. The most important point of the story is that Jesus Himself is the bread of life. Jesus fed the five thousand around the time of Passover when bread is an important part of the meal. But now there was no bread in this wilderness place where they all were when they should have been getting ready for Passover. Jesus reminded them afterwards that God provided manna when their ancestors were in the wilderness. This manna had to serve them as the Passover bread because there was no other kind of bread available in the wilderness.
Passover and God’s feeding Israel with manna in the wilderness were only illustrations--just like His feeding the five thousand—of a greater truth—that Jesus is the one who satisfies the hungry heart.
After this Passover there would be other Passovers. After God fed the Israelites manna in the wilderness they were hungry for a greater variety of food, and after they entered Canaan, the manna ceased. After Jesus fed the five thousand with the little boy’s lunch, they were hungry by the end of the day. They needed something more—the Bread of Life Himself—Jesus. This is the great point of this story.
This section of John’s Gospel ends by letting us know we need to feed on Jesus. Then as now there were those who thought it scandalous that all they really needed was to feed on Jesus. Religion demands of us much more than this. How many matters we crowd into our idea of what we need to do to be truly Christian. “Come to me all who are weak and heavy laden,” Jesus says. We need to be weak, tired, hungry, and heavy laden to want to come to Jesus. Perhaps it is hard to eat of Jesus if we are not weak, tired, hungry and heavy laden. Some of His followers left Jesus when they heard they had to eat of Him. We too are easily distracted from feeding on Jesus. Maybe we’re not tired enough, not heavy laden enough to need Him this way.
Let’s get back to the story. It is good to remember to begin again where Jesus began with a little boy and with His disciples and with many others among the five thousand who quietly watched Him that day. Because in this beginning Jesus guides us in how we are to think of ourselves as well as of Him.
This story is dear to me because it reminds me of a poignant moment in my early ministry. Not long after I began my first Presbyterian pastorate in Brookston, the children’s choir director position was open and there was no one to fill it. So I offered to give it a try. Years before I had started a little band when I taught at an orphanage in North Carolina. Now I would try my hand as children’s choir director. I had around fifty kids
I was fortunate to have an excellent accompanist in the mother of one of the little girls in the choir. We decided to do a musical as our big project. We found a musical based on this story called “The Boy Who Had a Fish.” The musical needed a few soloists and a good chorus, so my first task was to pick out the soloists. Since I was new to the church I was given advice by those who knew the kids well. I was told that there would be a very eager little boy who would want to sing, but he shouldn’t bowl me over with his eagerness because he couldn’t carry a tune.
Well, I discovered who this little boy was soon enough. True enough, the little fellow wandered all over Robin Hood’s forest when he sang. What a joyful noise he made unto the Lord! On pursuing this a bit farther I discovered it was because nobody had wanted to squelch his cheerful little personality by making him stick to the notes. But his loud wandering voice was a hazard in the chorus; he distracted others from the tune. So I sat down with the little guy and said he had to stick to the tune. He looked at me with bewilderment. The tune? What’s that? So we helped him know what the tune was. Lo and behold, it soon became evident that this little fellow was the obvious male lead.
So the little boy with apparently small musical gifts but a willing heart became the star of the show in a musical about a boy who brought his small lunch to Jesus to feed five thousand people.
The little that we have if we offer it for Jesus to use is plenty. It is more than enough in God’s hands.
We wish we knew a lot more about this unnamed little boy. How did he happen to have a lunch while nobody else did? Was he inadvertently in that place as he tended his sheep? Or was he in the crowd, the only one who brought a lunch? Did he become a follower of Jesus after this? Was he important in the early days of Christianity?
We can hardy imagine Jesus’ disciples compelling him to give up his lunch. We imagine him giving it willingly. We wish we knew his name.
The only two names we learn are the two disciples who doubt that his little lunch was enough to do any good. He had only five barley pita-type breads and two small fish. Barley was poor people’s grain. Philip told Jesus helpfully, “Two hundred days wages worth of bread would not be enough to give everyone a little bit to eat. So what is this among so many?” It’s good to have practical questions asked when we make our plans, isn’t it? A good dampening bit of common sense wisdom is so valuable is it not when we attempt great things?!
Then Andrew chimes in that he’d found this lad with the little lunch, “But what are these among so many?” And this is the last Andrew and Philip are quoted in the Gospels. I think you and I might like to have remembered that what we said last was a bit more profound than what Philip and Andrew said at this pivot moment in Jesus’ ministry. It wasn’t that they didn’t have faith in Jesus. After all, they left all to follow Him. But in this moment that squeezed their credibility they thought the obvious thoughts.
We must have lots of food to feed lots of people. Didn’t Jesus once teach that we should count the cost before setting out to build a building? Before setting out to feed five thousand people make sure you have enough food!
But in matters of faith what is obvious is not always right. “God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,” William Cowper taught us to sing. “Deep in unfathomable mines of never ending skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will.” It’s a lesson Jesus wanted His disciples to learn as they watched Him face this impossible situation—thousands to feed and only a little lunch to do it with. And we have something to learn of this too. Expect the unexpected from Jesus.
He looked up as though it were an ordinary table meal with an ordinary family gathered round. He gave thanks, “Blessed are You, O Lord, King of the universe, who brings forth food from the earth.” And then He broke first the bread, and then the fish. And He kept on breaking it and it kept on multiplying. On and on He broke the bread and fish until His disciples fed perhaps as many as twelve thousand hungry people. There were five thousand men plus women and children.
I think it is simply disingenuous to think that Jesus did not actually do as the Gospels tell us. The “miracle” was not that everyone shared what they had, or some such evasion of this Divine deed of multiplication. There was no sign if there was not a “miracle.” But the point of the sign was not that Jesus could miraculously feed great numbers of people with physical bread and fish. Jesus was the point of the sign, for which the miracle was what people could see.
What did the sign point toward? It is possible to see it pointing in various ways. First, it was a sign that Jesus could do an act of God because He was God. Second, the bread was a sign of satisfying life’s most basic need. This need is not the bread itself that sustains physical life. The need is for Him who is the Bread of eternal life, of that life that enshrouds all life, that gives it the meaning which all of us need. Third, here was a sign that Jesus will take the little we have and multiply its usefulness.
What does Jesus expect of us? I wonder if Jesus would point us back to this story at the start of His ministry—about a boy with his noon meal that He gave for Jesus to use.
As He neared the end of His ministry he told a story about three servants to whom the master gave a “little,” though the little seems like an awful lot to us. It was “little” because by comparison with God’s wealth it was as insignificant as the little boy’s lunch in the face of the hunger of a vast throng. But to us the sums Jesus mentioned seem a ot of money. Perhaps a lot of money in human terms is mentioned because it takes a lot of money to catch our attention. Jesus expected these three servants to put to good use the “little” they had when he was away.
To one servant He gave five talents—which is roughly a lifetime’s worth of earned income. To the second he gave two talents—about what he would earn by age forty-five. And to the third he gave one talent---about ten-year’s income. Each of them had a lot more responsibility than the little boy did with his lunch.
The master returned to see how his servants had done. The first servant had doubled the sum equal to a lifetime of his work. “Well done, good and faithful servant,” the master said. “You have been faithful with a little; I will give you much responsibility. Enter into the joy of your master.” How interesting that the master should consider a lifetime of work just a little. A lifetime of faithfulness is still just a little in the big picture.
The second servant he found had taken his income earned till age forty-five and increased the value to ninety year’s worth of income. Again the master said, “You have been faithful with a little. I will give you much responsibility.” And the master welcomed into his inner circle of joy with the other servant.
The third servant who had been given the equivalent of ten year’s worth of income to use perhaps thought that his amount of money wasn’t very much by comparison with the other two servant’s responsibility. Being very conservative, he hid the money so he could give it back and not lose any of it. With confident look he approached the master with the full sum intact, unused. He heard a very different word from his master. “You wicked and slothful servant. You know I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I have not winnowed grain; why didn’t you at least invest it and get a bit of interest?” And the master condemned that fearful, lazy servant. “Cast him out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Why the weeping and gnashing of teeth? Because in the outer darkness the question will be asked with great sorrow, “Why didn’t I use what I was given? Why did I hoard it, stashing it away so that it was useless? If only I had!!!”
The little boy with his lunch used not for his own benefit ended up with twelve baskets full of bread and fish to take home to mom and dad. Maybe you and I think what God has given us is more like the little boy’s lunch than like even the ten year’s worth of money invested in the faithless servant. I think there are many Christians who feel insignificant with their gifts, and so they think more in terms of survival in life than in terms of usefulness.
Then we hear about some people like the tiny Albanian nun we know as Mother Theresa used her frail body, her poverty, and immense heart to bring hope and healing to thousands of the most wretched people in Calcutta, India. And her gift of herself was multiplied as thousands of young women joined her Sisters of Mercy, bringing hope and the Gospel to thousands of other wretched people in other parts of the world.
Millard Fillmore, now known worldwide as the founder of Habitat for Humanity, came from humble beginnings in Alabama. Full of ambition he became a millionaire by age twenty-nine. But as his business prospered, his health, integrity and marriage failed.
He gave his life to the Lord, reconciling with his wife. He sold all they had and poured the money into caring for the poor. He went to Koinonia Farm a Christian community near Americus, Georgia, where he learned from Clarence Jordan how to apply Jesus’ teaching to life. In 1974 he moved to Zaire to test his idea of building affordable housing for the poor. And thus began what we know as Habitat for Humanity that now provides housing for thousands of people who would not otherwise have a home—in Jesus’ name.
What comparable stories in miniature abound where people come to Jesus, feed on Him, and then use their little lunches or what seem to us their great resources in Jesus’ name. I wonder what awaits the world through the ministry of this congregation when we have felt weary enough, hungry and needy enough to come to feed deeply on Jesus to find rest—to take on us His light yoke—and thus find the peace our hearts long for. Taking on Jesus’ light yoke is something to carry. The “something” is what we have been given for a high purpose.
I began today reminding our children how God used some children in Bible times—Samuel, the only child of a childless old lady, and David, the shepherd boy, and then the unnamed boy who brought his five loaves and two small fish to Jesus. What has God placed in our hands to use that will not only do much good in a hurting world, but also bring Jesus to others who are starving for Him?
Let us pray: O Lord, thank you for what we have to use. Grant us to use what we have to bring people to Jesus and thus to bring healing to our troubled world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at September 10, 2006 09:30 AM