Sermon 9th Sunday after Pentecost
Sermon 9th Sunday after Pentecost
Text: John 67:1-21
Grace and Peace to you from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who feeds us and makes us whole.
So, by now Jesus
has amassed a large following. He crosses over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee
and when he gets there 5,000 show up and Jesus decides, well, we better figure
out how to feed them. So, he asks Philip, “Where can we buy some bread for
these people?” To which Philip quite rightly responds, “I could work for months
and months and we would still only be able to buy them each a small snack,
nothing to really feed them.” Then Andrew pipes up, “Not only that, where would
we buy anything, all I can see is a little boy with 5 loaves and 2 fish. That’s
not going to go very far.”
I
sort of resonate with Philip and Andrew, 5000 people is a whole lot. And once
it gets more than 10 or so, my scale for food gets way off. I went on a spring
break trip to southern Ohio to help repair houses and do other service work
while there. My friend Chip and I were placed in charge of the food for all 15
or so of us on the trip. It wasn’t the first night, so we get a few meals done
correctly, but one night we decided to do spaghetti. Now Chip and I were
college aged guys, and well, college aged guys are known for two things, eating
a lot, and not always thinking everything through. So, we were in the grocery
store trying to decide how much to buy. We thought, well, the small boxes of
spaghetti, I can eat about half of one of those on my own. So, we have 15,
let’s get two of the really big boxes, that could be enough. Then we thought,
hey let’s be a little fun and also get two smaller boxes of Angel Hair. So, we
have enough pasta now for a small army, more than enough for 15 people. We get
back to the church where we were staying and proceed to look through the
kitchen for a pot big enough to cook it all at once. This was a problem on four
accounts. One, you should not cook that much pasta at once, do it bits at a
time, because that much pasta will simply soak up all of the water you have and
you will be left to adding more and more. Two, you should not cook two kinds at
once, because they take different amounts of time, so the angel hair will cook
much faster than the normal spaghetti. Three, when you cook so much pasta at
once the pot you choose will be too heavy and hot to pick up off the stove and
you will not have any idea how to get the pasta out of the pot. Four. And this
is the big one. Do not, I repeat, Do not use a pot designed for canning.
Canning pots are nice and big, but they are really thin so that the water heats
really fast. Which is what you want for canning and sterilizing. But, for
cooking, especially way too much pasta, which has now sucked up all the water,
meaning the pasta is sitting directly on the bottom of the pot, and it’s now
too heavy to lift off the burner means you have burnt Pasta. So, Chip and I are
standing there looking at this pot of pasta, desperately trying to stir it, and
simply chunking off bits and pieces of burnt pasta from the bottom of the pan.
We ended up eating it, most of it was salvageable, it just tasted a little
burnt, we referred to it as Cajun style Pasta. But Chip and I were regulated to
assistant chefs, and told what to do and how to do it.
So it’s easy for me
to relate to Philip and Andrew, and think, there’s no way I’m going to be able
to feed these people, if I try I’m going to screw it all up, so don’t try.
Let’s just send them away. It’s one of the things that we always tend to do.
When things become too daunting we usually turn away from them instead of
seeing them through. It’s a lot safer to not try to do something than it is to
try and fail. And in many ways that right, it’s realistic to say, we cannot
feed these people. Let’s send them home where they can get food, versus trying
and potentially causing a worse problem.
But, that’s not
what Jesus does. Before even asking the question Jesus knows the answer,
because for Philip and Andrew it’s the correct answer. They cannot feed all
those people. But, they are not Jesus. It’s why we don’t see Jesus reprimanding
them for having no faith, or saying the wrong thing, he simply says, “Make the
people sit down.” And he takes bread, gives thanks and distributes it, then
does the same with the fish. And somehow everyone is fed, and not just a snack,
but fully, as much as they wanted.
I read a great quote this week from
Charles Hoffman, a Pastor in California. He says,
Much of the time our faith mirrors
that of Philip and Andrew, who could not see past the six months" wages or
the meager five loaves and two fish. We tend to base our living on our own
scarcity or even on our own fears of insufficiency. So we hoard and save and
worry and end up living life in small and safe measures. We pull back when we should
push forward. We give in to our fear of a shortfall rather than exercising
faith in God's abundance. But Christians are constantly on call to go places
where we have never been, to do things that we have never attempted and to be
things we have never envisioned.
Jesus does not see
the insufficiency that we cannot overlook, Jesus only sees abundance, and gives
in abundance. Jesus can see past our fear of failure, and create wonders.
After moving past
Andrew and Philip’s concerns of insufficiency Jesus has them collect the
leftover food. It fills 12 baskets. As we learned a few weeks ago, when 12
comes up, it’s for a reason. It represents the wholeness, all peoples. In our
story, it’s twelve baskets of bread, and it can be said that oh, Jesus feeds
not just the 5,000, but also the whole people of God.
But, the twelve
baskets are made up of fragments. Fragments, bits and pieces, fill 12 baskets
that represent wholeness. This story goes beyond physical hunger to emotional,
spiritual hunger. Jesus overcomes not just our hunger, but our grief, our pain.
Jesus takes the fragments and makes them whole. Through Jesus the incomplete is
made complete, the unclean, clean, the hungry, full, The sick are made well.
Jesus takes the unwanted, and welcomes it.
That is why the
people come to him. That is why the 5000 come. That’s why we come. That’s why
despite being realistic like Andrew and Philip we can still work miracles in
this world. Because, through Jesus Christ, we are more. Jesus helps us to get
past the feelings of failure, helps to see not insufficiency, but abundance. We
are no longer fragments, but we are whole. Jesus takes Cajun-style spaghetti,
fixes it, and feeds the world.
Let us pray,
God of feeding. Nourish
us. Feed us. Heal us. Make us whole. Help us when we feel inadequate, comfort
us when we feel like failures, gives us hope when all seems hopeless. All this
we pray in your name. Amen.
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