Notes from the Wayside: Sermon: From Scarcity to Abundance (2021)

Delivered at Northside United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on July 25, 2021

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From Scarcity to Abundance

Audio Version

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After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.

John 6:1-13 (NRSV)

It doesn't matter what you've heard
Impossible is not a word
It's just a reason for someone not to try

From “What Faith Can Do” by Kutless

A few years ago, feeling that I had become somewhat stuck in life, I began to suspect that maybe I was avoiding things that might be potentially painful. One day, I decided to confront my pain head-on, so I sat down and compiled a list of all the things that caused me pain over the previous six years. The exercise was not nearly as painful as I expected it to be. I actually felt like I was writing more of a confession than a list of grievances. As I looked over my list, I realized that one thread tying much of it together was the feeling that I was not enough.

I have come to realize that one of the things that holds me back the most in life is the feeling that I am, in some way, not enough – not strong enough, not attractive enough, not talented enough, not accomplished enough, not caring enough, not generous enough, not loving enough, not Christian enough, not good enough. I tend to avoid things that make me feel inadequate, either because I fear failure or simply because I want to avoid the feeling entirely. As I worked to overcome the feeling that I am not enough, I learned that changing the way I tend to think and feel about myself will be an ongoing process. I also learned that, if I want to move forward in life, I will have to practice courage and trust that I have what it takes to do what I set out to do.

I suspect that I am not the only person in the world who feels inadequate at times. I suspect that most, if not all, of us, at some point in our lives, have felt that we are, in some way, not enough.

Jesus has once again found himself at the center of controversy. It all started one Sabbath day when He healed a man who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years, saying, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” The religious leaders caught wind that Jesus not only broke the Sabbath laws by healing someone on the Sabbath day, which is set aside solely for rest, but also encouraged someone else to break the Sabbath laws by telling him to carry his mat on the Sabbath. When they confronted Jesus about His actions, He said to them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” The religious leaders became even more incensed with Him, because, in their eyes, He committed blasphemy by identifying Himself with God.¹

Jesus knows that His time has not yet come, so He withdraws from Jerusalem, crosses the Sea of Galilee, and climbs a mountain so that He may spend some time alone with the Disciples. Because He has earned a reputation as a healer, people keep following Him, and naturally a crowd follows Him to where He and the Disciples have retreated.

When Jesus sees the crowd, He reasons that they will soon be hungry, if they are not already hungry. He asks the disciple Philip, who happens to be from the area,² where they can go to buy bread for everyone. Philip crunches some numbers and determines that they would need more than six month's wages to buy enough bread for everybody in the crowd to have just a few bites. John tells us in his account of the story that there are about five thousand people in the crowd that day. Matthew, in his account, makes it a point to note that there are “about five thousand men, besides women and children.”³ In that case, if every man in the crowd has a wife with him and if every couple has at least two children with them, then there would be an excess of twenty thousand people in the crowd that day. This is probably still a rather conservative estimate.

Andrew, another disciple, has found a boy in the crowd who is willing to share the food he brought with him, which consists of five barley loaves and two fish. It is evident that the boy comes from a family that is not especially well off. At that time, barley, which is commonly fed to animals, is used to make the cheapest bread. The two fish, which are likely the size of sardines, are undoubtedly pickled, since there are no ways of keeping fish fresh. They would serve as a flavorful accompaniment to the dry, bland barley loaves.⁴ Though Andrew has managed to acquire some food, he does not think it will go very far in feeding a crowd of thousands of people.

Jesus tells the Disciples to make the people in the crowd sit down on the grass. He then takes the boy's loaves and fishes and gives thanks for them, perhaps with a traditional Jewish mealtime prayer⁵ like the following: Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam, hamotzi lehem min ha'aretz (“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth”).⁶ Jesus then distributes the food to the people in the crowd. The boy had brought only five loaves of bread and two fish, but amazingly all the people in that massive crowd are able to eat as much as they want. Once the people have finished eating, Jesus tells the Disciples to gather up the leftovers, and, when they do so, they manage to fill up twelve baskets. Somehow, they have ended up with more food than they had when they started.

What happened that day was nothing short of a miracle, but what kind of miracle was it? The Gospels tell us what happened, but they do not tell us exactly how it happened.

I suspect that, when we read about Jesus' feeding the multitude, we typically assume that Jesus supernaturally manipulated matter. In other words, He changed a very small amount of food into a very large amount of food. In effect, a sack lunch was transformed into a feast for thousands of people.

That said, there is an alternate interpretation of how this miracle might have happened. How likely is it that, among the thousands of people who sought Jesus that day, nobody in the crowd thought to bring any provisions whatsoever? In such a massive crowd, those who had the forethought to bring food with them would probably have felt the need to hide their provisions. Otherwise, the people around them who were less prudent would want them to share, and they would have less for themselves and their families. Perhaps, when people saw that Jesus and the Disciples were sharing what little was brought to them, those who were hiding their provisions overcame their selfishness and decided to do likewise, starting a chain reaction throughout the crowd. In the end, those who feared that there was not enough food to go around see that there was actually more than enough.⁷

Perhaps Jesus performed a miracle that transformed matter, or perhaps Jesus performed a miracle that transformed hearts.

How one interprets this miracle might be affected by one's Christology – in other words, what one believes about Christ. A person who has a “high” Christology would tend to focus on the divinity of Jesus, while a person who has a “low” Christology would tend to focus on the humanity of Jesus. The Church teaches us that Jesus Christ is both fully divine and fully human, so both perspectives can be beneficial. Reading the Gospel with a high Christology is helpful because it teaches us what God is like, but reading the Gospel with a low Christology is also helpful because it teaches us what humanity is capable of becoming. In Christ, we can see both a God worth trusting and a human being worth imitating.

When I first learned about the less “supernatural” interpretation of Jesus' feeding the multitudes, I wasn't very fond of it: I didn't want to jettison everything heavenly about Jesus, as it seems a lot of people are doing. Now, I find this alternative reading a bit more compelling. Nowadays, we typically dismiss stories about transforming matter, but who among us is not inspired by stories of people who work together in difficult times or stories of people who put aside their own safety and well being for the sake of others? We need such stories of self-sacrifice to remind us that, as humans, we are meant for more than self-preservation.

The 2003 comedy Bruce Almighty tells the story of a man named Bruce who, after a somewhat humorous encounter with God, has the opportunity to do God's job for a while. At one point in the story, God, who is portrayed by actor Morgan Freeman, says,
A single mom who's working two jobs and still finds time to take her kid to soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager who says “no” to drugs and “yes” to an education, that's a miracle. People want me to do everything for them. But what they don't realize is they have the power. You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle.⁸
It's nice to consider what Jesus was capable of doing as the only begotten Son of God, but we also need to consider what we are capable of doing when we follow His example of self-sacrificial love. We might not be able transmute matter, but we can affect the hearts and minds of others through the examples we set.

Perhaps we should consider what a miracle is in the first place. Biblical scholar William Barclay writes,
We must never be content to regard [the miracles of Jesus] as something which happened; we must always regard them as something which happens. They are not isolated incidents in history; they are demonstrations of the always and forever operative power of Jesus Christ.⁹
Philosopher Peter Rollins suggests that maybe a miracle not some change in the physical world, but rather a change in a person's inner world. For the one who has experienced a miracle, nothing has changed, yet nothing remains as it was.¹⁰ Perhaps the significance of Jesus' feeding the multitude, however it happened, is that people began to see abundance where they previously saw only scarcity.

This story appears in each of the four Gospels, and each writer offers us different details about the story.¹¹ Only John tells us, in his version, that it is a little boy who brought the loaves and fishes to the Disciples. If you think about it, only a child would do something so unwise. Any responsible adult would understand that, in a time of scarcity, one must provide for one's family and for oneself before trying to help strangers. I've wondered if maybe, somewhere between Bible verses, the boy overhears the Disciples talking with Jesus about how they are going to provide food for everybody and then yells out, to his parents' chagrin, “We have some food!”

Were it not for this child and his foolish innocence, the crowd might not have been fed that day. Perhaps only people with such naiveté can truly understand the ways of the Kingdom of God. After all, Jesus once said to the Disciples, “Let the little children come to me... for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”¹²

The story of Jesus' feeding the multitude, like so many stories about Jesus, is a call to repentance – a call to change the way we think and, ultimately, the way we live. This story is an invitation to look at the world around us and even at ourselves with new eyes, adopting a mindset of abundance as opposed to a mindset of scarcity. It challenges us, when we are tempted to think there is not enough, to consider that there might actually be more than enough. When we look at the world through the eyes of scarcity, we withhold what we have out of fear that there might not be enough; however, when we look at the world through the eyes of abundance, trusting that there is more than enough, we are free to be generous with what we have.

There was enough food for everyone who came to Jesus that day, but is there really enough food for everyone in the world today?

Consider these words of David from the Sixty-fifth Psalm:

You visit the earth and water it,
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.
You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.¹³

The Psalmist seems to have a theology of abundance: he envisions a God who travels throughout the earth, leaving an abundance of blessings in God's path. Abundant rain waters abundant grain, and abundant pastures feed abundant livestock. The Psalmist believes not in a God who provides us the bare minimum required for survival but in a God who provides richly for us.

If we live in a world of abundance, as the Psalmist suggests, then why are there so many hungry people in the world? The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that, in 2016, around eight hundred fifteen million people – nearly eleven percent of the global population – suffered from chronic undernourishment. At that time, the prevalence of undernourishment was rising.¹⁴ If there are so many hungry people in the world, then can we really say that there is enough food to go around? It is estimated that, from 2016 to 2018, there was enough food produced around the world to provide every person on the planet over 2900 calories every day.¹⁵ If you look at the nutrition information labels on the food products you buy, you will see that the calculations are based on a diet of only 2000 calories per day. We do indeed live in a world of abundance, yet not all people receive the food they need. The FAO estimates that one third of the food produced in the world is discarded by either suppliers or consumers.¹⁶

There are many factors that contribute to the problem of world hunger, but what I am trying to say is that, though there is enough food to go around, some people do not get the food they need while other people buy more food than they are able to eat. Think about that the next time you have to clean out your refrigerator or your pantry. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that the early Christians shared what they had, and, as a result, nobody in the Christian community went hungry.¹⁷ You who have been richly blessed by God, consider that maybe you have been blessed so that you may be a blessing to others. Consider what you can do to combat hunger at home and abroad. Jesus says that, “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.”¹⁸

If God created a world in which there is enough to go around, then maybe each of us is enough as well. Christ challenged the Disciples to meet a need among the crowd. At first they did not think they had enough, but, when Christ took what they had and blessed it, it proved to be more than enough. So often we think that we do not have enough time, talent, or resources to do what we think God is calling us to do, but, if we offer what little we have to God, it just might be more than enough. In the words of N.T. Wright, “It is part of genuine Christian service, at whatever level, that we look on in amazement to see what God has done with the bits and pieces we dug out of our meagre resources to offer him.”¹⁹

Consider what might not have happened if the boy who gave his food to Jesus and the Disciples just assumed that his five cheap barley loaves and two small fish were not enough to do any good. Thousands of hungry people might not have eaten that day. Consider what kinds of great things might not happen in our midst if we simply assume that we are not enough for God to work through us. Barclay writes,
It may well be that the world is denied miracle after miracle and triumph after triumph because we will not bring to Jesus what we have and what we are. If we would lay ourselves on the altar of his service, there is no saying what he could do with us and through us. We may be sorry and embarrassed that we have not more to bring... but that is no reason for failing to bring what we have. Little is always much in the hands of Christ.²⁰

Jonathan Holston, the bishop of the United Methodist Church in my state, likes to encourage people to dream God-sized dreams. Dreaming big is pointless and even painful if we do not have any faith that those dreams could become realities. Why should we even dream at all if we do not think we can achieve our dreams? Jesus says that, with faith the size of a mustard seed, a person can move a mountain.²¹ A person who wants to move a mountain needs a little bit of faith to grab a shovel and start digging, but she will need to exert a lot of sweat to keep going. She will not accomplish much on her own, but others might be so inspired by her fervor that they bring their own shovels and pickaxes and join her in her efforts. Perhaps people of means, who have access to demolition machines or dynamite, will take notice and offer their help. Great things can happen when a person takes a step in faith.

We live in a world of abundance, so there is no reason that we should approach life with a mindset of scarcity. We can give generously of our resources because there is more than enough to go around. We can give generously of ourselves because we have more to offer than we often realize. We might not think that we have much to offer, but God has a way of multiplying our resources and our efforts so that we accomplish more than what we thought was possible. God can do great things through us when we offer ourselves to God.

Thanks be to God.

Notes: