Limited Resources

Year B

Proper 12

John 6:1-21

         

There is so much need in this world—spiritual, emotional, and physical.  People all around us, perhaps even people here today are crying out for these needs to be met—it is overwhelming.  It becomes more overwhelming when we consider our resources—our limited resources of things such as money and even time and energy.  When we look out and see all the need, it is easy to feel discouraged, overwhelmed, and hopeless—perhaps we want to throw up our hands and say, “What’s the point?”  Today’s Gospel answers that question—

We enter the story as Jesus crosses over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee—let me tell you why—he had just been in Cana where he had preached and healed; he went to Jerusalem for a festival where he healed (on the Sabbath no less, so now he has to defend himself against the Jews who were outraged he had “worked” on the Sabbath—and we know how much energy defending ourselves can take), and then he preached.  So Jesus—Jesus the man—was tired and he needed to rest, to rejuvenate, and he crosses over and goes up a mountain with his disciples to be alone. 

But the crowds follow—the crowds are starving for Jesus—they are spiritually and emotionally starving—they saw the signs—and they followed.  Jesus looks up and sees them coming—maybe he even thought, “Not now; please just give me a moment”; that’s not what he said though—instead he looks past just their spiritual hunger and recognizes that they will also be physically hungry.  Jesus looks at the whole person; at all the needs and he asks his disciples—tests we’re told where they are to buy bread for these people to eat.  Philip possibly not realizing the question is somewhat rhetorical responds it would take 6 months wages and Andrew pipes up that there is a boy with five loaves and two fish.  Perhaps Andrew is highlighting the fact there is nothing—pointing out the obvious, punctuating the fact that the needs are many and the resources are few.  We know what happens; the people are fed.

What are we to take from this?  How can this Gospel speak to us today-we, like the disciples, are confronted with many, many needs, but we don’t have Jesus walking with us to bless, break, and multiply—we don’t have Jesus walking with us physically, but I argue God is with us as we face the needs of our congregation, the needs of this community, the needs of the world.

          A good friend and I (ya’ll’s good friend too—the Rev. Emily Schwartz Crouch) walk often together—as we walk, we talk about theology, we talk about life, and lately we’ve been talking a great deal about what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a mission based church.  What makes us different from a Rotary club, from the Junior League, or from any other number of organizations—good organizations, which also strive to meet the needs of the world?  In other words, why do we as Christians do what we do and does it matter that we do it as Christians?

          I believe that today’s Gospel is living proof that yes it does matter and it answers, or begins to answer, the very questions with which Emily and I have been struggling.  We first and foremost do what we do because as Christians we are called to follow Jesus—to do what he did.  Jesus fed the poor, ministered to the needy, loved everyone, and so we are to do the same.  Now, look very closely at verse 11—Jesus gave thanks—Jesus highlighted in these very words that he was doing what he did in order to reveal God’s glory—to express God’s love and grace--and he was giving thanks for God and to God.  His focus was not particularly on the act of meeting the needs but rather on the revelation of God, about the transformation that can come through the act.  Karen Yust, a theologian says, “This story suggests that the focus of ministry is not simply what good people decide is reasonable to undertake in order to meet basic needs.  Instead, ministry is about multiplying resources so that what might have been a social handout becomes a revelation of amazing grace.”[1] 

          Oh how easy it is to forget this—to look at the people lining up outside our food and clothing ministry and wonder if we will have enough.  You know the past two weeks we have been particularly requesting men’s clothing—we’re always short on men’s clothing—guess there is something to be said about women and shopping—obviously we need to clean out the closet to make room—but anyway we have been particularly low—just this past week, out of the blue, Margaret received a call, and this man practically begged her to take all these brand new casual men’s clothes that had been donated to his organization.  He could only use the business attire; so over the next 2 or 3 days mounds of clothes poured in—already even on hangars!  Resources multiplying.

          I believe that we must stay focused on why we do what we do and that begins with always remembering that we are not only meeting needs, but we are pointing to—giving signs—to the glory and grace of God.  Fr. Jon moved our morning prayer time to 9:10—20 minutes before we open the food and clothing doors—this was deliberate—we pray and offer ourselves as a sacrifice, offer our work as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving—knowing we cannot do this alone.  We intentionally bring God into the day—into the ministry.  That is what makes us different; we are not just meeting needs, we are agents of transformation, as people witnessing to the abundance of God’s love and grace.

          Do we get tired?  Absolutely.  Do we get overwhelmed?  Absolutely.  Do we sometimes feel like we just can’t do anymore?  Absolutely.  But we continue; we press on.  One of my favorite verses is in Ephesians 3:20-21 and it says, “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine:  Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.”  Let me not leave you here with the idea that you are to work yourselves to the bone, that you are to collapse in exhaustion.  Definitely not—we are to take time for rejuvenation and for quiet and strength—to refresh and refocus.  After Jesus fed the people, he withdrew; we see that often in the Gospels.   But with God, in God, and through God, we have far more than we have alone and when we offer ourselves and our ministry to Him, we can offer far more than we can alone—our own resources are full; there is abundance.

          Stay with me for one more moment while I share with you a true, modern day version of this story.  (She would kill me)  Beth Bojarski has been the director of All Saints for four years—if you’ve never met her, you’ve missed out, but I would venture to bet by degrees of separation you have been touched by her ministry.  I am the Diocesan Director of Christian Formation, and as such I am supposed to oversee budgets (my husband finds this particularly amusing).  Well, sadly, Beth is leaving for a new job, and so two weeks ago we sat down and she was walking me through her job and through her budget and how she allocated funds—how she ran the youth programs and particularly summer camp.  The budgets for the last four years varied drastically from year to year.  I was struggling to get my head around all this, to understand what the needs were, and Beth said to me, “Here’s the truth Katherine.  I take what I get, and I make it work, and somehow it always does.”  And it does, she is not in the red and yet, many, many lives including mine and those of my four children, have been transformed by Beth’s ministry—she takes what she is given, offers it and herself to God, and it works, and lives are changed.

          God is a God of abundance, of power, and of love.  As we pray together today let us remember that—as we pray together the prayers of the people verbalizing all the needs of the world let us remember that the answer is not that we don’t have enough but that “when placed in the hands of Jesus, human weakness and finitude become more than enough.”[2]  Thanks be to God.

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[1] Karen Yust, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 3 ed. By David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox, 2009) 286.

[2] Cheryl Bridges Johns, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 3 ed. by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox, 2009) 289.