Pentecost 10A 2023

10th Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I sometimes find it a little challenging to preach on the more well-known passages in Scripture. If you’re a Christian and you attend worship more than once a year, you’re very likely to have heard the Feeding of the 5,000 at least a few times, and have probably heard multiple sermons on it. What could I possibly offer you that you haven’t heard before?

So I tried to look at it with fresh eyes myself. What is God telling me that *I* haven’t heard before? “Ask and ye shall receive”, right?

As I studied this passage, I learned that this “story of the desert feeding of the multitude is the only story of a miracle of Jesus that is included in all four Gospels.” [Thomas G. Long, Matthew, ed. Patrick D. Miller and David L. Bartlett, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 163.] Right away, we have a clue that something of supreme importance is going on. Scholars tell us that this event reminds us of several stories in the Old Testament, two in particular. The first is of course, in Exodus just after the children of Israel escaped the Egyptian army only to find themselves hungry and unable to find food…and complaining to Moses and Aaron that they thought they would die from hunger. In response, God takes action: “In order that the people may know ‘that I am the LORD your God,’ God feeds the people with bread in the desert, with ‘manna’”. [Long, 164.] Jesus - God’s Son - feeding the crowds with bread - in the desert - reminds us of that.

The second Old Testament story that today’s Gospel reading is to remind us of is not quite as well known as the manna story. 2 Kings 4:42-44 tells about a man who brought a few loaves and some ears of grain to the prophet Elisha during a time of famine. Elisha ordered the man to give this food offering to the people. The man is stunned because has only one bag of food, and there are at least a hundred people crowded around him. “How can I set this before a hundred men?” he asks the prophet. Elisha, speaking for God, replies: “They shall eat and have some left.” And when the man spread out the food, that is exactly what happened. In the same way, Jesus took a few loaves and a couple of fish and fed more than 5,000 people with it, and they were all satisfied, *and* there was food left over.

God provides for His people. God magnifies and multiplies resources and gifts. The lessons aren’t hard to see.

Now look a little more closely at the actions of Jesus in the lesson from Matthew. Once the disciples bring him the loaves and fish, you should see four verbs: taking bread, blessing bread, breaking bread, and giving bread to the worshipers. You probably recognize these as liturgical actions. Very shortly, you’re going to hear them again in the Words of Institution during the celebration of Holy Communion; listen for those words before you come to the Lord’s Supper. This is the meal in which we come as close to Christ as we can possibly come this side of Judgment Day. His broken body and precious blood tell us what He has done for us and for our salvation. In this meal, we are tasting God’s love for us. But even more than that: every time we celebrate this meal, we are reminded of how God *always* provides for His people, and especially in their time of need. And bread has always been a staple in the feeding of God’s people, so it’s fitting that this meal also begins with bread. What a wonderful reminder of God’s love for us.

Now here’s the new part that I learned in my study of this passage this week: Jesus feeding the crowds in the desert also has meaning; the environment itself is important here. “…[T]he church is always in the desert, the place where it cannot rely upon its own resources, which are few. The church is hungry itself and is surrounded by a world of deep cravings, people who are lonely, disoriented, and poor in many different ways. Against the savage realities of human need, the church sees only small numbers on the membership roles and even smaller ones in the mission budget. It is no wonder, then, that the church joins the disciples in crying, ‘This is a desert. Send the crowds away to fend for themselves.’” [Long, 165]

But Jesus does more than provide for his people; he also teaches them (and us): “there is a lesson for the disciples—and the church—to learn: God is compassionate and abundantly able to provide. With desperate and hungry people camped all over the church lawn, Jesus turns, then and now, to his followers and speaks what is either a cruel joke or lavish divine humor: ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ The disciples, fully aware that their own resources are not up to the magnitude of the need [having only five loaves and two fish to feed thousands], nonetheless trust that [his joke] is a divine one and [so they] obey Jesus.” [Long, 165]

This is the crux of the lesson for me. Life is often like the desert. One of my favorite seminary professors uses the word “wilderness” here instead of “desert”. It brings to mind the reality of wilderness living: resources may be either scarce or hard to find. You may have no sense of direction, no sense of where you’re going, perhaps even no sense of where you’ve come from. “How did I get here?” With no resources and that lost feeling, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and defeated. And if you’re in such a wilderness, you hardly feel like you’re in a place to help anyone else… after all, if you’re the one in the wilderness, YOU are the one who needs help.

“[T]he church is always in the desert, the place where it cannot rely upon its own resources, which are few. The church is hungry itself and is surrounded by a world of deep cravings, people who are lonely, disoriented, and poor in many different ways.” [Long, 165]

We are not meant to rely only on our own resources. Just like the apostles, our resources alone are not enough to meet the needs with which we are confronted. And that is not what God intends. This is the lesson. When we think it’s our own strength, abilities, resources that will get the job done, we’re making more of ourselves than we really are. (This also answers my very first question this morning: it’s not what I can bring to you in this message; it’s what God brings to you.) If the disciples had tried to feed the 5,000 (which was really much more than that when you add the women and children) with just those 5 loaves and 2 fish, they’d have barely fed 5 people. They didn’t have enough. But when they gave it to God’s Son, He was able to magnify the little they had, and turned it into more than they needed. What He provided was so abundant that they had more left over than what they started with.

I think it’s also important that we think about this in terms of how we live the life of faith as Christians. We hear frequently about how God loves each one of us individually. He loves us so much that He knows the number of the hairs on our head (Luke 12:7). He knew each one of us even before we were formed in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). His love for us is definitely personal and individual.

But we are not meant to live just as individuals. We are not meant to stay isolated and alone. He calls us to gather together in worship and in Kingdom work. He calls us to bring our tithes and offerings together for His purposes. But it isn’t just about money; He calls us to offer our TIME for Him.

The world around us is competing for all of that. The world wants us to spend our money on worldly things. You don’t have to watch ads on television or on your Facebook feed for very long before you see what the world wants you to spend your money on: newer toys, better cars, bigger house. More stuff. Better stuff.

The world is also competing for our time. I think the worldly powers are fighting this battle with even more fervor. If you’re my age or older, you remember how hard it was to do anything on Sundays. Nothing was open. You were lucky if you could get gas for your car or even groceries. Little by little, that changed. Now, stores and restaurants that close on Sundays are the weird ones. The world would have us believe that Sunday is not for God - it’s no more special than any other day… so go and do what you would do on any other day.

And we’ve let it become this way. Every time we shop, go out to eat, or whatever it is we do that patronizes a business on Sunday, we perpetuate that worldly value. Yes, I’m just as guilty of it as anyone else. But if we want to give God our time, we have to first recognize this problem. If we are really going to “offer with joy and thanksgiving what You have first given us: our selves, our time, and our possessions, signs of [God’s] gracious love” then we must recognize when we’re not doing that, and take steps to correct it. The corruption of the Lord’s Day did not happen overnight, so it won’t be fixed overnight, either. The problem crept in slowly, so we’ll have to push it back slowly.

As a church family, when we pool our resources together - our offerings and our time - and we give them to God, He can do a LOT with them. Everyone chips in a little, and God will turn it into more than we can imagine. When one person tries to do it all, it just doesn’t work out properly. That person gets burned out and frustrated, and things don’t get done. Ask me how I know this. Many of you know this, too. “Against the savage realities of human need, the church sees only small numbers on the membership roles and even smaller ones in the mission budget.” [Long, 165.] It’s easy to get discouraged, to see only our limitations and shortcomings.

At the same time, it’s also scary when someone asks for help at the church. In the business world, the joke is: “the danger of being reliable is that you will be constantly relied upon.” That’s the WORLD talking… and it’s the prince of lies behind it. When God’s children come together, work together and all chip in, no one person has to do it all. The few people don’t have to do a lot. A lot of people working together means that each one only has to do a little… and God will magnify that and turn it into far more than is needed.

That’s the lesson for me from the feeding of the crowds in the desert. If you are feeling called to contribute something, don’t expect that the entire burden of a task is supposed to fall on your shoulders alone. Know that God is simply asking you to do your part - what you’re capable of, and what you have that you can give joyfully, no matter how small. A little bit of time, a little bit of talent, a little bit of the riches that God has blessed you with; what does He want you to do with it?

In the months ahead, the Stewardship committee is going to be reaching out to everyone in our church family asking these very questions. This is how we are going to find answers to Vision Point #3. How do we grow in our stewardship to help us to be the church we want to be - a Great Commission church? I invite you to pray about these questions and how you will answer them when you are asked. And one more question I will add: how will you change your own personal stewardship in a way that will help you grow in faith? Put another way: how will you make such a change to help you grow closer to Christ? If you are struggling with these questions, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to help you figure out where God is leading you.

Brothers and sisters - something good and wonderful is happening in our church family, and each one of us has a part to play. I’m excited to see how God will bring us together and orchestrate our resources. Like the disciples in today’s Gospel, He will take our small gifts and turn them into something big for His purpose, and it will be a blessing. I hope you will join me in praying that He will show us how we can best answer that call.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.