July 26 Sermon: Faith in Abundance
Faith in Abundance
John 6:1-14
July 26, 2009
Kate Floyd, Holy Covenant UMC
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Today, Jesus is hosting a picnic. A crowd has gathered, by the thousands. Finding their places in the soft, cool grass, they sit with their legs crossed, ready to listen. Some stand, because of their bad backs, and lean against trees, providing shade and support. Others crowd as close as possible to this healer, teacher, prophet, man of miracles……hoping to catch a glimpse of his face, to touch the hem of his garment.
The only problem with this picnic is there isn’t enough food….the disciples don’t have anymore, Jesus hasn’t been to the market in ages, and the crowd has empty hands.
This crowd is eager, watchful, and they are hungry.
Over to the right is a stoic man, with hardened lines in his shoulders, but an undeniable softness in his eyes. He’s wistfully watching the young couples, holding hands, swapping secrets, stealing kisses. They have no idea what a life lived together is really like, he thinks…the children they will have, the child they might lose, the fights about money, career, and things they won’t remember the next morning. And he also knows there is no way they can fathom the joy that comes from living a life of love with someone you love. He’s just lost his wife of 52 years, 3 short months ago. The illness was fast but acute, and he can still picture her body in pain. He is lost.
Lost and alone.
A young woman is sitting on the other side of the hill, on the fringes of the crowd, afraid to get too close to anybody. Afraid they don’t want to be close to her. Her mind wanders over the events of the last night, the last few days…what she’s stolen, who she’s lied to, how she’s used and abused and misused her body. She’s ashamed, not just of her addiction to alcohol, but how it makes her treat those around her. She desperately wants to go to rehab, to get clean, but has a hard time finding the strength.
She’s guilty and sick and sad. She is lost.
At the bottom of the hill is a teenager who has been kicked out of his home by his parents. He doesn’t quite know why all these people have gathered, who this man is everyone is talking about. He does know, though, that he’d rather slip into the anonymity, the busy-ness, the closeness of a crowd. Rather be among so many others than spend one more day wandering empty streets all by himself. He is hungry, he’s searching for his place, and he is lost
A young mother, a single mother now, resides on the patch of grass nearby. Her four kids are noisy, alternately laughing and screaming, constantly climbing on one another. She tries to keep them from climbing on the teenage boy, with a sad look in his eye, sitting next to them. As she watches them, she second guesses herself—wondering if she really should have left her husband. He hit her and was close to hitting them, so she walked out. Moved far away.
She’s scared…scared that she won’t be able to support them, to provide their basic needs, scared to be their sole provider. She’s lost.
And there’s a young boy, wandering near the disciples, and he is literally lost. His big sister sent him out in the morning, with the last pennies she had, to buy a paltry portion of food for their sick parents. He did the best he could with what he had, able to find some pickled fish and a few small loaves of crusty bread, poor people’s food. He took a wrong turn on the way home, and suddenly finds himself swept up in the midst of a crowd, a crowd that keeps growing, all attentive to this young man with a beard.
The boy is lost, and he’s worried about how and when he’ll get home, and especially about how mad his sister will be when he shows up late.
And among this crowd, at the very front, are the disciples. That tough and faithful group gathered around Jesus. They have confused looks on their faces, as they do much of the time these days.
Today, Jesus is hosting a picnic, and he asks the Disciples about the food.
There’s Philip, standing closest to Jesus, wanting desperately to support him. Wanting desperately to do and say the right thing, always aware that he never quite gets what’s going on. He lives with that knot in his stomach that clinches up when you’re on the outside of a conversation, desperately wanting to be on the inside. He hopes that this time he’ll get it right. That this time he’ll understand. Jesus asks him: Where are we to buy bread for all these people to eat?
He answers, before he even has a chance to think: We can’t buy bread for these people! 6 months wages wouldn’t buy enough for the thousands who are gathered here he tells him. This is crazy, he thinks, and realizes he is lost. Lost to the ways of Jesus and why he’s always asking them to do the impossible.
And Andrew, sweet Andrew, standing next to Philip and in front of his brother, Simon Peter: Andrew just wants to be helpful. Wants to help Jesus do whatever it is he’s doing and bringing and being. He knows he feels better, more at peace, more inspired, when he’s near Jesus. So he tries to help. Knowing they can’t afford to buy food, he begins to wander the crowd, passing through the Old man and the teenager and the mother, stepping over toddlers and dodging kids playing tag. He looks for food in their baskets, any food at all, anything they can possibly feed the crowd. He feels helpless and lost, when all he wants to do is be the most helpful disciple.
You know, as they say, the rest of the story. Andrew walks up to that lost little boy, who timidly hands over the food he bought with his sister’s money. The boy was afraid before, but now he knows he’s in for it. He doesn’t have any food, he’s still lost on a hillside somewhere, and it doesn’t look like he’ll get out of there before dark.
Andrew hands the small amount of food to Jesus, bewildered, knowing he hasn’t found enough. Knowing he isn’t being helpful. Jesus takes the boy’s food. He gives thanks to God for the loaves and fish before him. He blesses the bread, breaks it, and gives it to all he meets. He wanders through that crowd, passing it down the rows. The teenager breaks off a large chunk, because he hasn’t eaten in days, and then passes it off to the four kids playing loudly beside him. He can’t help but smile when they hold hands and circle around him, skipping and singing and coaxing him to play along. The Mother makes sure each of her kids has enough to satisfy them until bedtime, and then is assured that she can take another loaf for tomorrow’s breakfast. She’s passed the fish too, the luxury of protein, protein that gives her a little more strength to make it through this day.
The young woman takes a full loaf, directly from the hands of Jesus, and savors it slowly to soothe her aching stomach. Hoping it will also ease her aching head. An older woman walks over from the edge of the crowd, to make sure she has also had her share of fish. Take some with you for later, the older woman says….I couldn’t, she whispers, I don’t deserve all of this. The woman keeps the fish moving, but then sits down next to her. This woman knows the look of a hangover all too well, knows the signs of the morning after a rough night. So she says nothing, but she takes her hand, and they sit there in silence.
And the old man with the sad and gentle eyes finally lets his tears break forth. As his brother hands him a basket full of bread, he cries with delight as he remembers all the times his wife baked fresh bread. He remembers the smells, the warmth that filled their house, the meals with neighbors and friends and family, who gathered around their table for hours, eating bread that just kept coming from his wife’s bountiful stove. As he breaks off a piece of bread, he gives thanks.
And the little boy, who thought his basket was lost to him forever, is given it back, filled with bread. Warm, fluffy, filling bread. And beneath that bread is a basketful of fish, not the pickled kind, that smells up his whole house, but large, meaty fish, enough to feed his family for days.
And all ate, and were full. Every person in that crowd ate and had seconds, in some cases thirds.
Each person at that picnic wondered if she would have enough to get her through the day, wondered if he’d find nourishment. Woke up afraid they didn’t have enough.
But that day, each person got enough, more than enough, to keep going. Found more than they were looking for and more than they could imagine. They gathered on that mountain with scarcity, and they found abundance through Jesus Christ.
Philip still doesn’t understand, still doesn’t answer Jesus correctly. But after witnessing the feeding, of sharing bread and eating some himself, he starts to wonder if it’s really about questions and answers at all. After sharing a meal with thousands, he’s not so concerned with being right.
And Andrew, always afraid he’s never helping enough, doing enough, giving enough, who always thinks he comes up short when it comes to Jesus, saw his gift multiply. And for a brief moment he believed in himself, that he could be part of this kingdom thing that Jesus is always talking about. Maybe it is for him after all.
When everyone had eaten, Jesus looks out into that crowd and he blesses them and again gives thanks to God. But Jesus doesn’t go away, he doesn’t feed a group for a day and then move on, letting them fend for themselves for the days to come. He feeds them, feeds an abundant crowd with an abundance of food. But then he looks at them, at each person, exactly where he is, knowing exactly what she’s done, and he knows he’s not done. The miracle isn’t over yet.
He says to his disciples: “Gather up the fragments that are left over, so that nothing may be lost.”
He looks out at that crowd and knows the people are still fragmented. In spite of the feeding, in spite of the abundance before them, they are lost. They’ve had a sign of hope and strength, made new relationships, smiled for the first time in a long time, but they still don’t know quite what to do with all those broken pieces of themselves they feel inside.
They feel torn up, like that loaf of bread, fragmented into bits of unusable pieces.
So Jesus gathers up the fragments that are left over, so that nothing may be lost.
Nothing, and nobody, is lost to Jesus.
Jesus looks at the old man and he sees all of him: his grief and loneliness, his tears in the middle of the night, and those mornings when he doesn’t think he can get out of bed. And Jesus takes his broken pieces, blesses them, and makes him whole. Jesus knows what the young, addiction plagued woman, has done, knows where she has been, knows intimately the deep pain she’s felt in her life. She feels broken, and Jesus says, my daughter, you are whole: I accept all of you, I gather all of you up into my arms, not just the acceptable parts, but all the pieces who make you who you are. And she offers her brokenness, shares it with Jesus, and is made whole.
The teenager knows that with Jesus, he doesn’t have to hide anymore. Jesus knows why he was kicked out of his home, and Jesus doesn’t care. Jesus loves him to pieces, and collects all those pieces, and the boy is no longer lost. The young mother gives over her pieces and finds peace.
Jesus says to each one: Every piece of yourself matters to me. I see them all, and I love them all, and you are not lost.
Jesus meets us in our brokenness, shares food with us, and gathers us up so that we are no longer lost.
Today, Jesus is hosting a picnic, right here at Holy Covenant.
He’s feeding us with food we thought we’d never receive, giving us more than enough when we didn’t think we had anything at all.
Then he gathers up our fragments, and nothing and no one is lost.
And gather us up he does. Every piece of ourselves that we think is useless, someone else told us was unworthy, that brings us shame or pain or guilt, he gathers up. Every fragment we thought was wasted or someone else discarded, he gathers up. And he gathers up every single person, no matter who we are, what we’ve done, where we’ve been, how we feel. Nothing and nobody is lost to Jesus, not the smallest crumb.
He looks at our crumbs and sees a feast.
He looks at our losses and sees abundance:
Abundant possibilities for growth and new life and multiplication.
Abundant promise for change and transformation.
Out of our brokenness, he blesses us, and makes us whole.
Because Jesus is the one who took the pieces of death and humiliation on a cross and turned them into life eternal. And through this new life we are lost no more, we will never be fragmented again. For we are saved by the one who brings wholeness. Who gathers us up into those gentle and loving and empowering arms. May we live out of this wholeness, knowing in the depths of our lost souls, that we are truly found.
Thanks be to God.
