Show us how to share our bread

The passage for this Sunday is the feeding of the 5000 and more in Matthew’s Gospel. Here’s my sermon for Sunday. 

Let me speak first to cat owners. Do your cats stare at you in the morning on the bed until you get up and feed them? Do they go to the food place and sit by the biscuit bowl until you fill it again? If you live in a multiple cat household like we do, do they all try to get the food you serve them out of the same bowl barging each other out of the way instead of waiting for all the bowls to be filled? Here Bella is eyeing up my sandwich. At this stage she didn’t know she didn’t know it wasn’t bacon in it or ham but vegan fake meat! 

Do we really know what it is like to be hungry? Perhaps not. We know the craving as we pass the chip shop or see the chocolate bar. We know when we need food but I suggest none of us really know food poverty. Hunger is now widespread in this country. Almost 10 million adults and 4 million children do not have enough to eat – nearly double what it was a year ago. More than 2 million adults cannot afford to eat every day. Someone has called it a “domestic humanitarian crisis.”

So in this area we see Ripon Community House and its food pantry and its waste not Wednesday, the food bank at the Salvation Army, Helen Mackenzies back to basics project feeding families and the community larders in the Circuit at Masham and at Boroughbridge being used more and more. In Boroughbridge we see around 100 people every Wednesday and afterwards excess food given is taken to the local schools, nursing homes and pubs to be shared.

Hungry crowds are nothing new. We remember those news reports we see from time to time in Africa of food being dropped from planes and desperate people fighting for it. Imagine being in the crowd Jesus faces. 5000 men plus women and children all hungry. We don’t know their story but I think like those we’ve thought about they knew about poverty. I want to focus on just one detail of the story. When the great multitude came to Jesus in the wilderness, he was moved with compassion because he saw they were tired and hungry. Late in the day his disciples suggested that he send the people home so they could find something to eat. You know the rest of the story :how Jesus blessed the we have only five loaves and two fish so that it fed 5000 and more with 12 baskets left over.

This is one of the great miracles of the Bible. Suppose you had to feed 5000 tonight. What would you do? It’s late, the people are tired and hungry, and there’s no 24 hour drive through Macdonalds. Dominos Pizza doesn’t deliver to the wilderness. The disciples make a very practical suggestion: “Send them away and let them find food.” That’s logical. The suggestion is not made from bad motives. In themselves the disciples had no resources to meet this enormous need. They had no food and no money. What else could they do? Answer: They could do nothing! They didn’t see 5000 people; they saw 5000 problems they couldn’t solve.

Most of us would have said the same thing. We’re quick to see what we can’t do and quick to talk about what we don’t have. The disciples saw the crowds and realised their inadequacy. Somehow they forgot that the Son of God was standing right there with them.

I love it when Jesus says, “You give them something to eat” (verse 37). It’s funny because the disciples have just explained why they can’t feed this massive crowd. One wonders if they were thinking something like this: “You want us to feed this crowd? You are joking! Didn’t you hear what we just said? We don’t have any money and we don’t have any food. What we have here is a failure to communicate.” But Jesus wouldn’t let his disciples off the hook. He wants them to get involved in the grand adventure of helping others.

This is how Jesus often works with his followers. Over and over again he puts us in positions where we are helpless, and then he says, “Do something!”In our desperation we cry out to heaven, “How?” and he replies, “I’m glad you asked.” It’s not that Jesus wants us to fail, but he does want us to know that without him we can do nothing.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this story: “Some of the crowd must have laughed out loud, while some of them were mystified and still others were embarrassed for Jesus, that he should have promised so much with so little to deliver.”

Let them feed themselves, say the disciples. “They need not go away,” says Jesus. “You give them something to eat.” Not me but you; not my bread but yours; not sometime or somewhere else but right here and now. Stop looking for someone else to solve the problem and solve it yourselves. Stop waiting for food to fall from the sky and share what you have. Stop waiting for a miracle and participate in one instead.

Bring what you have to me; that is where we start. Remember that there is no such thing as “your” bread or “my” bread; there is only “our “bread, as in “give us this day our daily bread.” However much you have, just bring it to me and believe that it is enough to start with, enough to get the ball rolling, enough to start a trend. Be the first in the crowd to turn your pockets inside out; be the first on your block to start a miracle.

No one knows how it really happened. Your guess is as good as mine, but what Jesus has been saying to his followers forever, he goes on saying to us today: “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” If it is a saying that strikes fear in our hearts, that makes the loaves we have seem like nothing at all, we have only to remember what he says next. “Bring them here to me.” We have enough here if we offer it to Jesus. With Jesus anything is possible. There will be enough and basketfuls of providence left over. And you know what? I think this story shows us what Jesus is all about. 

Earlier in chapter 14, John the Baptist had just died a gruesome death by order of Herod, and after John’s disciples buried his body, they went to tell Jesus what happened. The very next verse tells us, “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” It seems that upon hearing the news, Jesus needed some time to pray, to reflect, to grieve, to think about what would happen next, and he slipped away to find some quiet. When he returned, a crowd had gathered on the shore. When he saw them, he had compassion for them and began to move among them, curing the sick. He knew pain, he knew grief and remember in the wilderness he knew hunger. He had compassion for the people. Compassion – literally suffering with others. He identifies with the crowd and despite being wobbly and fragile and needing space he can do other than meet their needs – and more. In John Gospel the crowd come back the next day for another free feed. And next day Jesus follows practical help with theology – yesterday I gave you bread, today I want to tell you that I am the Bread of Life. 

Jesus spent time with people who were marginalised by the social structures of his community, including women, children, those stigmatised by their physical health and people who were impoverished. Jesus highlighted the needs of the marginalised in such a way, that it is reasonable to conclude, that to abandon people experiencing poverty is to abandon the gospel. Our tendency when we want to change is to look towards the wealthy and powerful, those with influence, Jesus often looked towards those who were oppressed, those who were marginalised. A crowd fed, leftover food, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all people, where no one will hunger and all will be satisfied. 

We all know this story. We heard it in Sunday School. People outside the church know it. It’s so important it’s told in all four Gospels albeit slightly differently, today we have no little boy who finds his packed lunch stolen! My college principal used to say in his criticism of our services where was your clincher young man? What do you want them to do? Well this is it. To truly follow Jesus we need to find a way to emulate that same compassion, love, and care for all those around us, even when it may feel most difficult. We need to be a church that feeds the starving, materially and spiritually. Seven days a week.  How generous are we? Not just in what we offer here, but will we work for a world where all are fed? And ask difficult questions of those who can make a difference? Will we hope for the day when food banks are no more and poverty is eradicated? That is the work of the compassionate church of Christ and of a God who has open hands and satisfies the needs of all living things. Our cats are happy when they are fed and then they go off to snooze on the window sill in the sun. 

 

God with us, in all our speaking, fill us with your word. In all our thoughts, grant us your generosity of spirit, in all our deeds, show us how to share our bread.