11th Sunday after Pentecost 7/31/05 Text: Matthew 14:13-21 Title: You Give Them Something to Eat!
7/31/2005
11th Sunday after Pentecost
Text: Matthew 14:13-21
Title: “You Give Them Something to Eat!”
Grace, mercy and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
There was once this little boy named Danny. One Sunday he came bursting out of his Sunday school room like a wild stallion. His eyes were darting in every direction as he tried to locate his dad. Finally, after a quick search, he grabbed his daddy by the leg and yelled, "Man, that story of Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was great!" His father looked down at his son as fathers do, smiled, and asked his son to tell him about it.
"Well, we learned that as the Israelites were leaving Egypt, Pharaoh and his army were chasing after them. So they ran as fast as they could until they got to the Red Sea. There was nowhere to go and the Egyptian Army was getting closer and closer, so Moses got on his walkie-talkie and called in the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Egyptians. While that was happening, the Israeli Engineer Corps took their bulldozers and built two huge dams, so the Israelites could walk across on dry land. Then they blew up the dams so that the Egyptian Army was drowned and they were safe! Wow dad, it was great!
By now dad was shocked. "Is that the way they taught you the story?" “Well, no, not exactly”, Danny admitted, "But if I told you the way they told it to us, you'd never believe it, Dad."
Without even realizing what he had done, Danny had made an observation that points out a major weakness of our so called sophisticated adult world, where we are taught to be skeptical about anything that cannot be proven. It is far more popular to operate in the black-and-white world of facts, which of course leaves no room for the miraculous.
And so, when we read the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we have a natural tendency to ask, "Did it really happen?" We might not outwardly voice our doubt, but it is there never the less. To doubt the authenticity of Jesus’ miracles is not new. Thomas Jefferson believed that the miracles of Jesus had been added later by the church, so in his Bible, appropriately called the “Jefferson Bible” he removed all mention of miracles.
There have been any number of attempts to explain this particular miracle of Jesus. The most popular one being that the people were so moved by Jesus' generosity and the generosity of the disciples that they were willing to share their 5 loafs and 2 fish, that all the people started sharing the food they had hidden under their clothes and in their traveling pouches.
Another theory says that the story is not really talking about physical hunger but spiritual hunger. When the small amount of food was passed around everyone tore off a minuscule symbolic fragment. By doing this Jesus is said to have satisfied the thirst of the soul not the stomach.
The point of the story of the feeding of the five thousand is not to prove that miracles happen. The point of the story is to teach us at least one or more timeless truth that we can use in our lives today.
Let’s see if we can ferret them out, for if we cannot, then this Gospel lesson is just another nice story, that took place long ago and has nothing to do with us today.
The first thing we can learn from this story is that Jesus saw a need and filled it. Standing there before him were a large group of people who had probably walked long distances so that they could have their loved ones healed. Since Saint Matthew only counts the men who were there, there were probably closer to 15, 000 or so, counting women and children.
The second thing we can learn is that Jesus did not perform this particular miracle alone. He used the disciples to bring him the 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, and then used them to distribute his bounty to the 15,000 or so people gathered there that day.
The third thing we can learn from this miracle is that Jesus can take insignificant things and do great miracles with them. 15,000 people being fed with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. You have to admit it is pretty impressive.
From this one miracle we have now learned that Jesus could see needs, both spiritual and physical. We learned that he uses people to meet the needs of others. And we learned that he can take what we would consider insignificant or worthless things and use them to do something beyond our wildest imagination.
But you might still be asking yourself, what does that have to do with me? That is a legitimate question that deserves an answer, so let’s see what this miracle has to do with our lives today.
Well first of all, can we all agree that if are joined with Jesus through our baptism that we are in fact his disciples? And since we are his disciples, can we all agree that we should look for needs that need to be met and then meet those needs? You might be saying to yourself, hold it, we cannot do everything and you are right. We cannot meet the needs of everyone, but with God’s help we will meet the needs of those he wants us to meet, those he puts into our lives.
As noted earlier Jesus did not perform this particular miracle in a vacuum. He used his disciples as a means to accomplish what he intended to do. Just like his disciples that day he asks us to bring to him whatever we have, no matter how insignificant or worthless we or anyone else might think it might be.
Take this penny for example. It is worth hardly anything and most people would not take the time to even bend over and pick one up if they saw it lying on the ground. It is just not worth bending over for. Let me show you what God can do with something that we don’t think is worth the effort to pick up.
Yesterday I read a story about a woman by the name of Edna Tomevi. She had run across an article in one of the church’s newsletter that talked about a particular mission project. That article really touched her heart, but since she was pretty poor she knew she could not do much. As she was trying to figure out how she could help the mission project, someone she knew told her that she had read somewhere that it took 85,000 pennies lined up side by side to make a mile long line of pennies. Wow, she thought 85,000 pennies is a lot of pennies and so she started a fund raising program in her congregation for the mission project called “Miles of Pennies”. To date, oh did I tell you she is 88 years old; she has collected and given to the mission project 4 miles of pennies. Nothing dramatic, just one women using a little penny to make a miracle happen in someone’s life. What should we learn from Edna is this, do not discount the power of God using what you have, no matter how worthless or insignificant you might think it is.
That brings me to our congregation and what this miracle has to do with us. As many of you know we are in the midst of finding out how we can fulfill the mission of our congregation. We have already come up with some great ideas on how to do mission in our congregation and the community.
In just a few weeks we will meet again to look at some of the different ways we can do mission beyond Hattiesburg and surrounding area. After we have gotten all of the ideas written down, we will have to decide on which ones we can do. There are going to be some tough decisions to make.
There are two ways we can go. One way is to respond to God’s call to do mission as the disciples did when Jesus told them to feed the people. I am sure their initial response was “Who, us. You have got to be kidding,” especially when all the food they could find was five loaves of bread and two fish."
Or we can say, “God, here is all we have right now, it might not be much, but we know what you can do with it, so please take all we have and multiply what we have given you, and then God show us how you want us to use all you have given to us for your glory.
Some of you might be thinking that if God can do miraculous things with just 5 loaves and 2 fishes, then he does not need our pitiful gifts, so why bother to take up the collection plate every Sunday? Well it is like this. It is just the way God has chosen to work. He works in partnership with those that call themselves disciples, that is us. Don’t get me wrong, for I am not talking about our salvation, for that is all God’s work. I am talking about our cooperating with him as we care for the sick, the elderly, orphans, those in need, especially those that do not know if the love and forgiveness of Jesus.
I firmly believe that God working in partnership with his followers is a spiritual principle. If we try and go it alone without God we well never see a miracle happen. The same is true if we do not give God something to work with, like our time, talents, and money. For without our giving him something to work with, if the miracle we looked at today is any indication of how he performs miracles, we won’t see a miracle happen.
What should we do? I firmly believe that we have three choices? One, we can try to work on our own without God’s help. Two, we can rely on him to do everything. Or third, we can work with him so that he can do the miracle he wants to do in our lives and those we are reaching out to. Which one shall we do? It is our choice, but there is only one that is God pleasing? Amen
11th Sunday after Pentecost
Text: Matthew 14:13-21
Title: “You Give Them Something to Eat!”
Grace, mercy and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
There was once this little boy named Danny. One Sunday he came bursting out of his Sunday school room like a wild stallion. His eyes were darting in every direction as he tried to locate his dad. Finally, after a quick search, he grabbed his daddy by the leg and yelled, "Man, that story of Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was great!" His father looked down at his son as fathers do, smiled, and asked his son to tell him about it.
"Well, we learned that as the Israelites were leaving Egypt, Pharaoh and his army were chasing after them. So they ran as fast as they could until they got to the Red Sea. There was nowhere to go and the Egyptian Army was getting closer and closer, so Moses got on his walkie-talkie and called in the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Egyptians. While that was happening, the Israeli Engineer Corps took their bulldozers and built two huge dams, so the Israelites could walk across on dry land. Then they blew up the dams so that the Egyptian Army was drowned and they were safe! Wow dad, it was great!
By now dad was shocked. "Is that the way they taught you the story?" “Well, no, not exactly”, Danny admitted, "But if I told you the way they told it to us, you'd never believe it, Dad."
Without even realizing what he had done, Danny had made an observation that points out a major weakness of our so called sophisticated adult world, where we are taught to be skeptical about anything that cannot be proven. It is far more popular to operate in the black-and-white world of facts, which of course leaves no room for the miraculous.
And so, when we read the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we have a natural tendency to ask, "Did it really happen?" We might not outwardly voice our doubt, but it is there never the less. To doubt the authenticity of Jesus’ miracles is not new. Thomas Jefferson believed that the miracles of Jesus had been added later by the church, so in his Bible, appropriately called the “Jefferson Bible” he removed all mention of miracles.
There have been any number of attempts to explain this particular miracle of Jesus. The most popular one being that the people were so moved by Jesus' generosity and the generosity of the disciples that they were willing to share their 5 loafs and 2 fish, that all the people started sharing the food they had hidden under their clothes and in their traveling pouches.
Another theory says that the story is not really talking about physical hunger but spiritual hunger. When the small amount of food was passed around everyone tore off a minuscule symbolic fragment. By doing this Jesus is said to have satisfied the thirst of the soul not the stomach.
The point of the story of the feeding of the five thousand is not to prove that miracles happen. The point of the story is to teach us at least one or more timeless truth that we can use in our lives today.
Let’s see if we can ferret them out, for if we cannot, then this Gospel lesson is just another nice story, that took place long ago and has nothing to do with us today.
The first thing we can learn from this story is that Jesus saw a need and filled it. Standing there before him were a large group of people who had probably walked long distances so that they could have their loved ones healed. Since Saint Matthew only counts the men who were there, there were probably closer to 15, 000 or so, counting women and children.
The second thing we can learn is that Jesus did not perform this particular miracle alone. He used the disciples to bring him the 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, and then used them to distribute his bounty to the 15,000 or so people gathered there that day.
The third thing we can learn from this miracle is that Jesus can take insignificant things and do great miracles with them. 15,000 people being fed with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. You have to admit it is pretty impressive.
From this one miracle we have now learned that Jesus could see needs, both spiritual and physical. We learned that he uses people to meet the needs of others. And we learned that he can take what we would consider insignificant or worthless things and use them to do something beyond our wildest imagination.
But you might still be asking yourself, what does that have to do with me? That is a legitimate question that deserves an answer, so let’s see what this miracle has to do with our lives today.
Well first of all, can we all agree that if are joined with Jesus through our baptism that we are in fact his disciples? And since we are his disciples, can we all agree that we should look for needs that need to be met and then meet those needs? You might be saying to yourself, hold it, we cannot do everything and you are right. We cannot meet the needs of everyone, but with God’s help we will meet the needs of those he wants us to meet, those he puts into our lives.
As noted earlier Jesus did not perform this particular miracle in a vacuum. He used his disciples as a means to accomplish what he intended to do. Just like his disciples that day he asks us to bring to him whatever we have, no matter how insignificant or worthless we or anyone else might think it might be.
Take this penny for example. It is worth hardly anything and most people would not take the time to even bend over and pick one up if they saw it lying on the ground. It is just not worth bending over for. Let me show you what God can do with something that we don’t think is worth the effort to pick up.
Yesterday I read a story about a woman by the name of Edna Tomevi. She had run across an article in one of the church’s newsletter that talked about a particular mission project. That article really touched her heart, but since she was pretty poor she knew she could not do much. As she was trying to figure out how she could help the mission project, someone she knew told her that she had read somewhere that it took 85,000 pennies lined up side by side to make a mile long line of pennies. Wow, she thought 85,000 pennies is a lot of pennies and so she started a fund raising program in her congregation for the mission project called “Miles of Pennies”. To date, oh did I tell you she is 88 years old; she has collected and given to the mission project 4 miles of pennies. Nothing dramatic, just one women using a little penny to make a miracle happen in someone’s life. What should we learn from Edna is this, do not discount the power of God using what you have, no matter how worthless or insignificant you might think it is.
That brings me to our congregation and what this miracle has to do with us. As many of you know we are in the midst of finding out how we can fulfill the mission of our congregation. We have already come up with some great ideas on how to do mission in our congregation and the community.
In just a few weeks we will meet again to look at some of the different ways we can do mission beyond Hattiesburg and surrounding area. After we have gotten all of the ideas written down, we will have to decide on which ones we can do. There are going to be some tough decisions to make.
There are two ways we can go. One way is to respond to God’s call to do mission as the disciples did when Jesus told them to feed the people. I am sure their initial response was “Who, us. You have got to be kidding,” especially when all the food they could find was five loaves of bread and two fish."
Or we can say, “God, here is all we have right now, it might not be much, but we know what you can do with it, so please take all we have and multiply what we have given you, and then God show us how you want us to use all you have given to us for your glory.
Some of you might be thinking that if God can do miraculous things with just 5 loaves and 2 fishes, then he does not need our pitiful gifts, so why bother to take up the collection plate every Sunday? Well it is like this. It is just the way God has chosen to work. He works in partnership with those that call themselves disciples, that is us. Don’t get me wrong, for I am not talking about our salvation, for that is all God’s work. I am talking about our cooperating with him as we care for the sick, the elderly, orphans, those in need, especially those that do not know if the love and forgiveness of Jesus.
I firmly believe that God working in partnership with his followers is a spiritual principle. If we try and go it alone without God we well never see a miracle happen. The same is true if we do not give God something to work with, like our time, talents, and money. For without our giving him something to work with, if the miracle we looked at today is any indication of how he performs miracles, we won’t see a miracle happen.
What should we do? I firmly believe that we have three choices? One, we can try to work on our own without God’s help. Two, we can rely on him to do everything. Or third, we can work with him so that he can do the miracle he wants to do in our lives and those we are reaching out to. Which one shall we do? It is our choice, but there is only one that is God pleasing? Amen
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 8:17 PM
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