Late in the day you get the word: friends have arrived in town, and they’ll be at your house at dinner time. Well, how do you react in that situation? Does your mind start spinning to figure out what might make a passable meal for these guests? Or do you perhaps hope they’ll offer to take you out to dinner? Do you wonder if you have the emotional energy to be a good host to them? Will you be able to offer them the friendship and hospitality you envision they hope to receive from you? These questions are very real in the moment, even though I think we generally manage to make the best of challenges like these.
Jesus and his disciples were in a similar kind of situation in todays reading from Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus had intended to go off to a deserted place at that point for a time of personal retreat. But the crowds got wind of where he was headed and followed him there. And when Jesus saw them, his compassion took over and he spent the day healing these hurting people. In fact we can well imagine that Jesus got so caught up in his work that he lost track of time and the fact that supper time was near. But the disciples knew what time it was and the fact that they were off in a remote place with no food resources nearby. So providing supper hospitality did not even cross their minds. “You need to send the crowds away,” they told Jesus, “so they can go to the villages and get food for themselves.” In their minds that was just a realistic assessment of the situation.
Imagine then the disciples hearing Jesus tell them, “They don’t have to go away. You can give them something to eat!” You’re partners with me in my ministry--so now let’s provide them the food they need--in this case, food for the body. “But we have only five loaves and two fish among the crowd,” they replied. “That will do,” Jesus said. And so he gave thanks for the loaves and fish and gave them to the disciples to distribute. And the crowd of 5,000 men plus who knows how many women and children ate their fill, and still there was food left over.
Now of course in a physical sense the feeding of so many with so little food can only be regarded as a miracle; and the Gospel writers are invested in showing that Jesus had the power to perform miracles like that. This story is not meant to be guidance for planning a church supper or feeding program! But there is a powerful message for us here. As followers of Jesus we too are in the feeding business; and we have more to give than we often think.
The paradox of our point in time and geography is that even amidst so many manifestations of affluence and comfort, there is still so much hunger all around us. To begin with, there’s physical hunger, even in our own communities. We’re told that food pantries even here are harder pressed than ever to meet the demands on them. People who were able to live a reasonably comfortable life in good times are suffering now that hard times are here. And this suffering is magnified many times as our circle of attention expands across our nation and world. Food riots are happening in places like Haiti and Africa as food worldwide becomes scarcer and more expensive. Feeding the physically hungry has always been a Christian mandate, and it is even more so now as the ranks of the hungry grow.
The hungers of the spirit may not seem as pressing, but they are just as pervasive and likely even more widespread. I’m thinking of the hunger for friendship and support, for example. “People who need people” includes most of us. Life throws enough challenges at us that we need others to walk with us on the journey--to listen to us, give us encouragement, and assure us that we are loved. I’m sure that’s one of the main reasons many of us are part of a church family. So it follows that just as we need this from others, so they need it from us as well. Jesus’ compassion for the crowd, even on what was supposed to be his day off, is a model of the kind of spiritual nourishment that we’re called to give to those whom our lives touch. An important part of what our youth work team will be doing in New Orleans next week is saying to people there, even without words, we’re here because we care about you and we support you as you work to rebuild your lives.
Another pervasive spiritual hunger of our time is the hunger for meaning in life. One of the benefits of affluence is that it pushes us to go deeper and ask more penetrating questions about why we’re here. When we’ve got the nice house and the good income and the gourmet meals and the rich array of cultural opportunities, that’s so often when we’re moved to wonder, what’s missing? Where’s the more that will satisfy my soul? One of today’s paradoxes is that even while organized religion has lost considerable support, the hunger for spiritual meaning seems stronger than ever. Many are rejecting traditional channels for finding it, but the hunger is real--witness the record sales of books on spiritual subjects. For us who believe we have found something of the “bread of life,” the challenge is to find ways of sharing that meaning with others in their hunger. The Indian Christian D.T. Niles once offered this definition of evangelism: it’s one beggar showing another beggar where to find food. That’s our calling as well.
I’m aware of another form of spiritual hunger that I feel acutely and I sense many of you share. It is a hunger for needed change in the way so much of our world operates. We’re hungry for change to rectify some of the inequalities and injustices in the economic realm, where some have so much while so many endure so much suffering. We urgently hope for change in how we humans are relating to our environment before we imperil our lives any further. We long for change in how our political system operates, so that the well-being of all might have priority over partisan ideologies and agendas and economic interests. You don’t have to look very far to see how this hunger for change is coloring the current presidential race. The hunger for change is all around us. We feel it whenever we read a newspaper or hear about current world events. What seems to be missing is enough spark to make it happen. Who will be the agents of change--those who together work to make that spark do its work? We may not think of Jesus as primarily a social activist; yet his teaching and ministry was always on the side of change toward a more just and caring human order. And as his followers that’s our business too--in the words of Bonaro Overstreet, to exercise “the steady ounces of [our] weight” on behalf of needed change in a world hungry for change.
In the face of all these hungers, then, what do you and I have to give? Matthew’s account suggests we have considerably more to give than we often think--and God may use what we have in surprising ways. I believe that one of our greatest impediments to being effective Christians is the “not enough” syndrome that often plagues us. You know how it goes: the food or money I have to give won’t make a meaningful dent in hunger. I don’t have the time or energy to be a real friend. The meaning I’ve found in my faith won’t be enough to matter to anyone else. And my little pushes for social change will only get lost in a sea of indifference. I know how easily I can get caught up in this “not enough” mindset if I don’t watch myself. It is of course a way of letting ourselves off the hook; but it also means we cheat ourselves of the potential rewards of exercising our gifts and contributing something meaningful to others. That may be where we’ll find some of the meaning in life that we are most hungry for.
You see, the only way we have a chance of making a difference to others is when, despite what we think about our own adequacy, we offer what we have, and so give God a chance to work through us. And sometimes we won’t know what difference our efforts made, though of course that doesn’t mean they had no effect. But more often I think we will be surprised at the outcome: what we offered really mattered, even in ways we could not have anticipated. Hungry people were given hope; a friend felt supported; a colleague found a new angle on making his life more satisfying; a particular effort toward social change gathered a little more steam. And we came away feeling better about ourselves because we had made the effort to be givers. Our lives seemed more worthwhile because of that.
There’s one other factor I want to note here. When we reach out to be givers, we encourage others to do the same. And our efforts may well attract the support of others. Perhaps you read in the newspaper this past week the story of the candidate for the Kansas legislature who had a lot of motivation but little money for his campaign. He came up with the idea of creating some quirky political cartoons to lay out his take on some issues, and then emailed them to people with a plea for financial help, even in small amounts. People who resonated with his position were so taken with his effort that they sent in their checks, and in just a day or so he had his campaign war chest. Today we’re about to commission our sixth work team to New Orleans. This record of service has happened not because so many of you were able to come on a work team but because so many of you have been inspired to support the teams’ efforts. In a real sense all of us have been going to New Orleans; and because of that we have surprised ourselves at what we have been able to accomplish. We’ll add to our record in October when another adult team will be going.
The story of Jesus feeding the multitude reminds us in a symbolic way of who Jesus is to us: he is the “bread of life,” broken and shared with us that we might have life. Today in the sacrament of Holy Communion we bless and break and distribute the bread, just as Jesus did in feeding the 5000; and we declare that the bread of Christ is sufficient for our hungers as well. I believe Jesus is calling us to take this analogy one step further and to believe that we who are fed by his bread are also able to give bread to others around us, by the power of God working in us. In coming to Christ’s table may we be strengthened in being those who give the hungry of our world something to eat. Amen!
© Larry Young, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
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"More Than Enough"