More than Enough

Ephesians 3:14-21

John 6:1-21

Wow!  What a day that was!  I can’t help but wonder what it was like for Jesus’ 12 disciples…  I’ll bet they were pretty dazed by the time they got home.  I can just imagine Philip lying in bed that night… eyes wide open… adrenaline probably still coursing through his body… thinking about that remarkable day.

‘When we rowed away from shore this morning, I was looking forward to a wonderful day with Jesus.  The weather was great… warm sun, cool breeze…

“Got to the other side…  climbed a hill…  nobody around…  just Jesus and our little group of disciples… I love it when that happens… he started to talk to us… but then people began arriving… lots of people… first hundreds… then thousands… I don’t know where they all came from.  There   was a sea of people!

“I couldn’t believe it when Jesus leaned over to me and asked me where we could buy bread for all those people!  Was he kidding?!  My heart jumped into my throat at the prospect of having to find food for all those people!  Why did he say that to me when he knew there wasn’t anything I could do about that?!  Strange…

“Then Andrew came up with a boy’s lunch… as if we could do anything with that… but Jesus took it and blessed it and gave it out to all those people.  Not only did he feed all those people, there was a ton of leftovers!  How did he do that?  Only God could do that. 

“The people were sure excited!  They began milling around and talking to each other, and pretty soon you could see they were making a plan …  I think they wanted Jesus to make Jesus a king or something… I’ll bet they thought he could help them run off the Romans…  but when they moved toward Jesus, he was gone. 

“We all hung around for quite a while, but he never returned.  So, when it got dark, we headed back across the lake in our boat… wondering where he was and how he would find us.  Then that wind came up… rowing was really tough, and we couldn’t see any landmarks or stars, so we were just going on instinct and hope.  Then, all of a sudden, we saw him coming toward us… I couldn’t believe it!  Was he walking on the water?  I think he was!  All I know for sure is that after he got into the boat, I felt a lot better, and we touched shore, right where we were headed, in no time.  Strange…”

As he slipped off to sleep, I imagine Philip saying, “What a day that was!  I’ll never forget it… ever…” 

They must have all said that…  all 12 of them…  and they didn’t forget it either.  In fact, the feeding of the five thousand was one of the favorite miracle stories in the early Christian oral tradition.  We know that because it turns up in all four gospels – the only story to do so.  Each version is a little different, which is normal for oral tradition…  different strands of storytelling…  different goals for each writer…  different needs in their readers.

One reason that this story appealed to early Christians was the sacramental overtones it has…  There is Jesus, breaking bread and dividing it among his followers… just like at the Last Supper…  But… there probably was wine, but we don’t hear about that… only fish.  Aha!  In the first century, there were two sacramental traditions among Christians – sharing bread and wine, and sharing bread and fish. 

The latter would have been especially powerful in the community that John was writing for because their tradition included a particular post-resurrection appearance of Jesus by the Sea of Galilee…  Do you remember that one?  The disciples were fishing all night… no luck… Jesus on shore… cast net on other side… he has fish cooking for them over a charcoal fire… John 21:13: “Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.”

John doesn’t want his readers to get stuck on the fact that Jesus could do “gee whiz” miracles.  He wants this story to add to the theme that runs throughout his gospel = the limitless abundance of God’s power and grace.  That theme begins with Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana… water turned to wine… not just any wine… but the best wine… in abundant quantity. 

And then there’s the story of his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, where he tells her about living water gushing up to eternal life.  If you drink from this water, you will never be thirsty again.

In John’s recounting of the feeding of the five thousand, Philip and Andrew represent the myopic or nearsighted church… including John’s Christian community…  “Are you kidding?  We can’t feed all those people!  Where will we get the money to do that?!”  //  “Well, we’ve got a little bit here – but it’s not nearly enough to meet this huge need…”

Sound familiar?  Churches are still doing and saying the same things!  I’ll bet you’ve heard that here… maybe you’ve even said it yourself.  There are so few of us… our resources are so limited… how can we meet the overpowering needs all around us? 

We all get caught up in “being realistic” about numbers.  And we do want to be careful and accountable… BUT… not at the expense of being unfaithful! 

John says to his readers then and now, take your eyes off the magnitude of the problem, and look instead at the abundance of God’s grace.  Turn to Jesus and trust in his ability to meet your need.

Remember, I said this story appears in all four of the gospels?  In three of them, it is immediately followed by the story of Jesus walking on the water.  However, the lectionary usually separates the stories.  You can’t do that so easily with John’s version because he’s woven them together a bit differently.  Clearly, he wants us to see them as one piece.

So, now there we are in the boat with the disciples, straining against the wind and waves, not sure they’re going to make it to shore safely.  And where is Jesus when we need him?  Where, indeed.  Right here… providing calm and safety for those who are in danger. 

You may remember that water often represents the forces of chaos in biblical stories.  The creation story, for example, is all about God subduing the waters and bringing order out of chaos.  That connection would not be lost on John’s readers. 

We are also living in a time when chaos can break in at any moment.  When you’re reading or listening to the news about war in the Middle East, or terrorists’ plans to blow up something, or someone killing and maiming Jews right here in our own city, surely it feels like the world has gone crazy and is spinning out of control…  It feels like chaos is trying to make a come-back.  And we feel powerless… just like those disciples did out in that boat…  That’s a good time for us to take a deep breath and remember that remarkable day by the Sea of Galilee. 

Those miracles of calming the sea and feeding the five thousand may have happened a long time ago, but the person they point to is still here with us now.  Jesus still has the God-given power to feed us when it looks like there isn’t enough and to calm the situation when we’re scared to death.  The only thing that stands between us and that reality is our willingness to trust Jesus with our lives.

(Rev. Chas. Hoffman – Xn. Century, 7/25/06)  “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…  John invites us to live into a grace-filled inheritance… a timely calling because most of us tend to live on the edges of what God has to offer.” 

(My own situation… challenge of living on reduced income… challenge of living without anxiety… of living into the truth that there is more than enough.  Try making a game of it… what do I really need?  Are there other ways to get the extras?  Focus on the basics… not grudgingly, but with a thankful heart.)

Another article from Xn. Century:  Nancy Mairs tells of her foray into doing her family’s taxes for the first time.  It was a lot harder than she’d expected, but the good thing that came of it was that it confirmed for her what she and her husband had long believed that, “even though the combined incomes of a high school English teacher and a wheelchair user on Social Security would strike many as paltry, we have all we need.”  We have all we need.  Now there’s a powerful statement…. and it speaks of more than their financial condition.

She goes on to say, “this sense of sufficiency can be hard to come by in a society premised on scarcity.  Immigrants will come and confiscate our livelihoods, we fret; pollution will destroy the very air we breathe and the water we drink; small children will bleed away our scant fiscal resources with their demands for food, medicine, education.  The certainty that there is never enough of anything to go around condemns us to a state of chronic anxiety.”

She continues with an example out of her own life.  “I have a friend who worries that she has only $20,000 in her savings account.  (She confides this as though I knew what it is to have a $20,000 savings account.) 

“When her daughter and son-in-law come for a week’s visit, she decides she can’t afford to rent a lift-equipped van that would allow them, both severely disabled, to get around with ease.  In frail health, they are unlikely to live long, and if the money were mine, I would squander $500 of it on them right this minute, the one scarcity I readily acknowledge being time.  Clearly, I am the grasshopper to my friend’s ant, and it will serve me right to get carted off to the poorhouse… for my improvidence.

“But I am not in the poorhouse at this moment, and this moment is the one in which I live.  If the poorhouse comes later, then I’ll live in it.”

Here we are in our scarcity-focused little world… and right beside us is Jesus, leaning over to us and saying, what are you going to about all these needy people?  And like Andrew, we fret and distance ourselves from the problem.  And Jesus, with a twinkle in his eye, is all the while passing around abundance… and we miss it if we’re focused on our lack, instead of saying, “I’m not sure how to do this, Jesus, but I’m ready to help if you’ll lead the way.”

I have a friend who is quite remarkable… and she would die of embarrassment if she heard me saying that…  She is the office manager at Lake Burien Presbyterian… she doesn’t have a lot of worldly goods, but what she has she appreciates and shares easily.

I got an email from her this week that I have to share with you.  She was so overcome by what had just happened to her that she had to tell her friends.  Listen to this…

1.   I had to go home to get my keys so I could drive to the post office.

2.   A woman driving by stopped to tell me she had lost her dog and was driving around looking for it.

3.   She gave me her phone number so I could call her if I found Drifter, the dog.

4.   I continued on to the post office, with Phoenix (her dog) in the car.

5.   At the corner of 152nd and Ambaum, where I would turn right to go to the post office, there was a garbage truck stopped with the driver out of it talking to the woman in the car looking for her dog.

6.   Since I knew what they were talking about, I hollered "take your time" out the window so they didn't feel like they had to hurry.

7    I finished at the post office, and as soon as I got back to the office, I sent out a call to the universe asking the dog to find my office and come to where I could see him out the window.

8.   10 minutes ago, Drifter not only came to where I could see him out the window, he actually jumped up on window sill and poked his nose in the opening.

9.   I went outside, called him by name and brought him into the Pacific Room (across from my office) and ran home to get the scrap of paper I had written his mommy's number on.

10. There was a garbage truck driving by.  He hollered at me.  I went to see what he wanted.  He told me I had dropped my wallet as I was running home.

11. It was the SAME driver who was blocking the road earlier, talking to the lost mommy.

12. I told him I found the dog.... he gave me HIS scrap of paper with the phone number on it.

13. I stood right there and called the mommy.

14. Mommy just left with dog.

In The Message, Eugene Peterson has a wonderful paraphrase of the Ephesians passage Judy read to us.  Listen to this..

“And I ask [God] that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in … the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.  Reach out and experience the breadth!  Test its length!  Plumb the depths!  Rise to the heights!  Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

“God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!  [God] does it not by pushing us around, but by working within us, [God’s] Spirit deeply and gently within us.”

What is it you most want?  What is it you most need?  What are your deepest dreams for this church?  For your family?  For this community?  For our country?  For the world?  Take them to God… lift them up… let God’s light shine on them.  Let God show you what is possible through God’s abundant power and grace…