Laying it All on the Table

Sermon preached at University Church (Chicago) November 3, 2019

Our scripture today comes from the Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 14, verses 13 – 21.  

When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”

 They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”

 He said, “Bring them here to me.”  He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds.  Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers.  About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten.

If I were to ask anyone who grew up in the church to name a Jesus miracle story, this is probably one of the top 5 answers I’d get.  It’s a Sunday School favorite: Jesus performs a magic trick, there’s a very obvious opportunity for a Goldfish snack, and the lesson is super simple: Jesus wants us to share.  Boom. Done. And it’s so easy to leave the Loaves and the Fishes in Sunday School, to think of it as just a children’s story about Jesus having a picnic.  Simple. Neat. Safe.  But we should always be wary of a toothless Gospel message.  Jesus’ ministry was anything but neat, simple, and safe.  This story is the only miracle story to appear in all four Gospels, that should tell us that it’s kind of important and maybe more than a simple lesson used to teach children to share.

In order to better understand this miracle and its message, we have to take a step back, zooming out a bit from the loaves and the fish.  Stepping back, we see a crowd of 10,000 – 5,000 men and we’re going to count the women and children – 10,000 people sharing a meal together.  In Mark’s version, the evangelist describes this scene as a banquet.  In Luke, the disciples break up the crowd into groups of fifty, like a dinner party.  This isn’t a picnic, it’s a feast. But let’s take a step back even further and look at where this feast is taking place.  The dinner guests are not in some picturesque field surrounded by a harvest bounty, they’re not in a large banquet hall or town square where the food is being rushed from the kitchens.  They’re in an isolated place far from all of these resources – they’re in the desert. The desert setting of this story is key because it’s a place defined by what it lacks – security, sustenance, and resources.  This story is a study in contrasts: a feast of abundance amidst the epitome of scarcity. 

Scarcity is more than just a descriptor. It’s a mindset, a psychology, and a reality. In that reality, we can understand the disciples’ response to a restless crowd. The disciples are a bumbling bunch, but their hearts are in the right place. They see the need before them – 10,000 hungry people – and they have compassion for them.  They want to see these folks fed and housed, but the disciples can only see the lack of resources that they themselves have to meet this need.  They weren’t expecting this multitude and so didn’t bring much food.  There’s no place to buy food.  And that wouldn’t matter anyways because Jesus has been repeatedly telling them not to carry money.  So they come to the only logical solution in their reality – send the crowds away so they can buy food for themselves.  It’s the only thing to do.

We can empathize with the disciples because scarcity is a reality that we are intimately familiar with.  We are constantly being told that there’s not enough time, not enough money, not enough people to meet the need that confronts us.  Our entire economic system relies on the notion that there is a finite number of resources and that we have to compete with each other for them.  Even our compassion is defined by scarcity -- we are convinced that there will always be need that can’t be met and so we ration our charity. In this reality, the city of Chicago – with an estimated GDP of $737 billion, 22 colleges and universities, and a reputation for being a center for arts and culture – somehow this city can’t pay teachers a living wage, can’t ensure emotional and physical care for its students, and can’t nurture every child’s creativity. What’s worse, that scarcity reality has convinced us, Chicago’s citizens, that public money is the only way to solve an education crisis, which means only the city can solve this problem, which means that the battleground can only be employment contracts, which means that teachers have to walk picket lines that should never have had to be drawn. And the real kicker is that all of our hearts are in the right place – the teachers, the school board, the mayor, parents and neighbors – we’re all making the most logical decisions within the limits of this scarcity reality. And because of that, despite all of our good intentions, in this reality there will still be children who don’t get the education or the future that they deserve.

Inequity, injustice, hunger, and unmet need are all inevitable in that reality of scarcity.  And that’s what would have been the result if the disciples had been allowed to make that logical decision and send the crowd away – some people would have been just fine, some would have gone hungry, and none would have experienced God’s abundant grace. But Jesus says, “there is no need to send them away.” Jesus is living into a different reality, one in which a desert feast is not only possible, but inevitable.  I do not interpret this story as one of magical multiplication – Jesus didn’t wave his hands and, “presto change-o” suddenly five loaves became five thousand. No, the real trick that Jesus does here, the real miracle, is moving everyone from one reality to the other, from one of scarcity to one of abundance.  The disciples and the crowd couldn’t see the makings of the feast before them.  Jesus shifts their view of what they have in terms of what’s “mine” and what’s “yours” to what is “ours” and “God’s”.  And when that reality changed, everyone was fed because there had always been enough.

I want to point out a few plot points we often skip over in the retelling of this story because they’re key to recognizing what the reality of abundance is and how we can bring it to bear.  First, notice how many sentences come out of Jesus’ mouth: three.  And they are uncharacteristically explicit for Jesus.  There is no sermon, no parable. Jesus doesn’t say “the Kingdom of God is like….” he shows everyone what the Kingdom of God actually is. Second, notice who actually feeds the multitude – it’s the disciples and the crowds themselves.  They are not only receiving God’s grace, they are practicing it; they are not just vessels, they are vehicles.  This tells us that God’s abundance is not an illusion, nor is it dependent on some supernatural event.   It’s not an abstract idea or an eschatological hope.  No, it is a reality that can be lived into here and now and we are the ones who can bring it forth with what we already have.

But Church, it is often so F—difficult to live into that abundant reality. We marinate in scarcity every day; it’s how we’re taught to see ourselves and our place in this world. We’re told to ration our money, our time, our relationships by prioritizing our individual wants, and we’re taught that we can only afford to share what we can spare.  Remember, it’s not possible for everyone’s needs to be met – there’s not enough.  We’re forced to make false choices.  Do I have a successful career or a healthy social life? Do I spend my Sabbath day practicing self-care, or do I go to church? Do we have a vibrant youth ministry, or do we keep the lights on?

That reality of scarcity can be paralyzing, but it’s also familiar, and comfortable.  Scarcity tells me that, if there’s a need too great for me to solve all on my own, then I’m relieved of the responsibility to meet it.  Scarcity provides a convenient excuse for inaction and I can feel secure in that bondage of individualism; I don’t have to change anything. So I wonder if the disciples were just a little bit afraid of seeing what they had through a different lens.  If they actually saw the abundance before them, they’d have no choice but to live into it.  Scripture tells us that Jesus and the disciples had withdrawn to this place after learning of John the Baptist’s execution.  The disciples knew what happened to prophets who rejected the logic of Empire and fed people in the desert.  Choosing to live into God’s abundant reality is not a safe choice, it’s not an easy choice.  In claiming God’s abundance, we claim our own agency in history, our responsibility for our sisters and brothers. But it also promises that we will share in that abundance because there’s more than enough to go around. 

I want to take a closer look at the moment in this story when reality shifts, that moment when the abundant feast became not only possible, but inevitable.  Now every Gospel writer puts their own spin on this story, but they all agree on the simple action that Jesus performs with the bread.  He gives thanks. He blesses it. He breaks it.  It’s no coincidence that this evokes a ritual that has anchored our liturgy for thousands of years, an act that the early church replicated every time they met and that we still practice every Sunday.  What Jesus did in that moment was ask the disciples and the crowd to place what they had on the table, transforming my bread and your bread into our bread, into God’s bread.  Once it was all on the table, once the disciples and the crowd saw all that they had, the next step became clear. 

In its most distilled form, Christian discipleship comes down to this table, to looking what we have been given and recognize their potential for God’s abundant grace.  We know that what sits on this table is there not for our purpose but for God’s purpose. We know that on this table there is always enough for everyone who comes. When we lay our gifts on the table, our income, our skills, our passions, our experience and history, God’s call for those gifts, and for us, becomes clear.  We find that we have enough to experience and share in God’s abundance. So Church, we know how shift reality.  Not only do we rehearse it every Sunday, we have our own stories that serve as reminders of what is possible when we practice that abundance beyond this table.   We have our own experiences of the loaves and the fish.  

For me, that loaves and fish story is University Church’s experience of sanctuary in 2016.  Four years ago, there was a need to keep a family together against the wishes and the forces of the United States government.  We, University Church, could not have protected that family alone and we deliberated and debated over whether or not we could help at all.  It seemed impossible. But when we saw what we did have to offer, and what others were bringing to the table, we knew what we had to do.  University Church brought a sacred space, a history of sanctuary, and a passion for justice.  CRLN brought some dedicated organizers and a network of volunteers.  OCAD brought organizing savvy and legal expertise.  Seeing all of these gifts together, we saw that keeping this family together became possible.  Offering sanctuary wasn’t a safe choice, it wasn’t an easy choice, but it became the only choice because we had seen our way to God’s mercy and justice.

Now, following service today, we’re going to have an opportunity to name all that we have, to lay it all out on the table.  This will help us envision the abundant future that God has in store for us, and the opportunities to keep building God’s Kin-dom here in our little corner of Chicago. We each individually will have the opportunity this month to reflect on our time, talent, and treasure and pledge those gifts towards manifesting God’s abundance through the work of this church. Now we have what we have, and we lack what we lack.  That doesn’t instantaneously change when we shift into a different reality – we aren’t going to find ourselves millionaires.  We’re not going to find 30 extra hours in our day.  But we are going to find that we have what we need to experience and spread God’s grace.  The number of loaves and fish in the desert didn’t change, their potential did. 

The call for the church and for Christians today is the same as it ever was, to set a feast in the desert, to manifest God’s reality of abundance and reject the reality of scarcity.  The specifics of that call may look different for each faith community, it may look different for each individual.  It may look different at year 1, year 125, and year 126.  But this year and every year, we are asked to make the choice between succumbing to scarcity, or  embracing abundance – to feed the people or to send them away.  We choose whether or not to put what we have been given on the table for all to share. 

In the silence of the next few moments, I invite you to think about all the things that you, that we, might bring to the table.  What will we find when we see all that we have? Confronted with God’s abundant reality, what miracles might suddenly become possible?