Someone wrote a few years back: “A basketball in my hands is worth about $19. A basketball in Michael Jordan’s hands is worth about $33 million. It depends whose hands it’s in. A baseball in my hands is worth about $6. A baseball in Mark McGuire’s hands is worth $19 million. It depends whose hands it’s in. A tennis racket is useless in my hands. A tennis racket in Pete Sampras’ hands is a Wimbledon Championship. It depends whose hands it’s in. A rod in my hands will keep away a wild animal. A rod in Moses’ hands will part the mighty sea. It depends whose hands it’s in. A sling shot in my hands is a kid’s toy. A sling shot in David’s hand is a mighty weapon. It depends whose hands it’s in. Two fish and 5 loaves of bread in my hands is a couple of fish sandwiches. Two fish and 5 loaves of bread in God’s hands will feed thousands. It depends whose hands it’s in.”
Jesus’ hands transformed everything he touched. A blind man once lived in a black vortex, but touched by Jesus’ hands color and movement flooded his life. A leper’s body was diseased and rotting, he was covered with shame and no one would come near him out of fear — that is until Jesus touched the untouchable and his body was made whole and his relationships were restored. A widow’s son died, and his death meant excruciating loss to her in every way. But as they carried the young man’s body on a stretcher, taking it to a dark tomb while his soul was taking its place in the realm of the dead, Jesus’ hands held him and he smiled at his mother as life pulsed through his body. The funeral procession stopped and a dance began. And in our Scripture reading for today, Jesus’ hands take common bread and a couple of fish, and as he touches it, it multiplies. He breaks the bread for all to see and eat. Before, the crowds could only stare at the few loaves and fish held, as they drooled with the thought of having a few bites. But there was not enough for 5,000 or even 50. (Actually, the number of those present was more like 15,000 or 20,000, because there were 5,000 men, not counting women and children. Women and children weren’t important to most people, but Jesus wasn’t most people.) Here was a God who was not looking down on the world trying to see what he could get from his subjects and control them, but a God who was genuinely touched by human need.
I was struck as I read this passage several times this week at how it begins. Jesus withdraws to a deserted place to be by himself. He has been pressed on every side for days, weeks and months. And it is worse than being pursued by paparazzi who only want to take a picture, because people are not only following him everywhere he goes, but everywhere there are outstretched hands, often grabbing hands, and pleading voices rising out of a sea of sorrow, sickness, pain and need. (There were no doctors or medicine, of course.) Everyone wanted something from him, and he had been giving to everyone who came. So now he has an opportunity to be by himself, to rest, to take a deep breath, to think and pray. These are the kind of moments that busy people who are always around others fantasize about. No noise, no voices, no people, just to be alone for awhile. But as I began to read the next sentence again in the NRSV, I was struck by two words: “But when...” “But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. And it is followed by the words, “When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick” (Matthew 14:13-14). There is an interruption. The plan of getting away for some alone time has been sabotaged. The people are running along the shore as they keep an eye on the sail of Jesus boat on Galilee. They followed him on land. He is off in his boat so he can be alone, but they are not going to let that happen. Their needs are too great. As he lands, the people are already there waiting for him.
You might expect that he would be exasperated, but instead the Bible says, “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” If it were most of us, we would have had irritation, but he had compassion. He put his needs aside and ministered to the needs of those around him. What he wanted did not come before what everyone else wanted. He was not self-centered, but centered on the needs of those he loved — people he did not even know personally.
And so, once again, he ministered to the people all day. He listened to them and healed them. He must have been exhausted. It was now evening. He is hungry and he knows the entire crowd is hungry. These are people who live near the edge of starvation. It is just how life was at that time. The disciples understand this and say to him: “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” This would have been a great way to get rid of the crowds and have a little down time. No one would have questioned it. But again he has compassion on the people.
Jesus turns to his disciples and says to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” Can you imagine how startled the disciples were? They said, “We have nothing here but five loaves of bread and two fish.” They lived in a small world of limited possibilities, but Jesus lived in a world of unlimited possibilities. They realized they had very limited resources, and the crowd had unlimited need. They knew they had nothing to offer. But then Jesus, referring to the five loaves and two fish, said, “Bring them here to me.” Now if we were reading this story for the first time, our hearts would begin to beat a little faster and our curiosity would peak as we would wonder what Jesus was going to do. What could he possibly be thinking? Who would have dreamed what he was about to do. Certainly not the disciples. Even in the very next chapter where Jesus feeds another 4,000 people, the disciples seem perplexed about what to do, for they say, “Where could we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?” Where indeed!
But we are not any different from the disciples. We still see impossibilities when God is wanting us to see possibilities. We, like the disciples, need to see that the situation is not in our hands, but in his hands, and when they are in his hands everything changes. We look at our meager resources and say to God: “But what are these among so many?” And he says to us, “Bring them here to me.” He places his hands upon our pitiful resources and everything changes. This is the formula: We bring God our meager offering and he places his hands on our small gift and causes it to grow thousands of times over. We never have the resources to meet people’s needs. We have nothing, and all we can do is bring our nothing to Jesus and have him turn it into something.
Jesus has the people sit down and prepare to receive. They want to begin the walk to the nearest village so they can get something to eat, but he tells them to sit and wait on him. And then he looks to heaven and says a simple prayer of blessing. And as he does so, he takes two fish, and 5 little flat loaves, something like pita bread, and feeds thousands and thousands of people who are in the middle of a wilderness.
It brings back images from the Old Testament. We remember the story of Moses feeding the people in the wilderness, and we understand that Jesus is identifying himself with the lawgiver Moses. We also remember the story of the prophet Elisha feeding a hundred men with only twenty loaves of barley bread. The Bible says that Elisha’s servant did not believe it was possible, but Elisha said, “Give it to the people to eat. For this is what the Lord says: ‘They will eat and have some left over.’ Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord” (2 Kings 4:43-44). So Jesus is also identifying with the law and the prophets of the Old Testament, but he far surpasses them. You remember that the manna that Moses fed the people in the wilderness with was not to be stored or saved. If they attempted to keep it, it would rot. But Jesus tells them to save the leftovers. He provides an abundance. He not only gives them as much as they can eat, he gives them more than they can eat. What Jesus was trying to tell us was: The God we serve is a God of abundance. There is not just enough to meet our needs, there is more than enough. We worry about how enormous our need is, and God is trying to tell us to sit and wait on his abundance. As the Psalmist said, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:5-6). Now that’s abundance.
We have nothing to give people without Jesus. We have nothing to say, nothing to give, nothing to offer. What we do have is something to offer to Jesus. We take the little bit that we have, that we were saving for ourselves, and give it to him — all of it. He takes our pitiful little offering and turns it into something that can not only satisfy the needs of other people, but an abundance beyond that. A little in my hands becomes a lot in Jesus’ hands.
It also reminds us that Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Jesus can make bread because he is the Bread of Life. At the last supper, the Bible says, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take it; this is my body.’” (Mark 14:22). It is in this setting that Jesus not only breaks bread, but he transforms it. This is the real miracle. Jesus not only meets our felt needs, the needs of the body, but he meets our real needs, the need of our soul. He gives us living bread. He gives himself. Too bad that we are hungry for so much other than God.
During Jesus’ temptation, the devil suggested that he turn rocks into bread. He tempted him to only meet the felt needs of the human race and have the world flock to him. It would appease the crowds, and there would be no crucifixion for trying to do more. But Jesus had a higher mission to accomplish. He needed to offer something more. He needed to give himself — the Bread of Life. But the people only wanted a Messiah who would make life better for them. One who would make them free, happy and prosperous. But Jesus wanted to give them something to make them really alive — alive to God.
How often we want to just have life become a little bit better. We want a therapeutic gospel that will help us feel better. We want to feel safe and secure. We want a better government. We want our marriages to be better. We want our finances to improve so we will be more comfortable. We want God’s material blessings and think little of what God really wants to bless us with.
Recently Texas governor Rick Perry asked people to pray for rain. He said, “I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.” But there has been an outcry against any call to prayer. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is also being targeted for her Day of Prayer proclamations. A news agency reports, “The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has made elimination of the Day of Prayer a central cause of its existence, filed a lawsuit last month to prevent Brewer from declaring May 5 this year’s ‘Day of Prayer’ in Arizona.”
How little we understand our real needs. How little we want to understand our total dependence on God. He is our Creator. He is the source of all things. He is the One on whom we are dependent for all things in this life. We cannot find life anywhere else. But this is the very thing that people today do not want to acknowledge. We do not even want to acknowledge that we are dependent on him for rain or food. We can do all this ourselves — thank you very much. We do not even want to acknowledge that he exists. We make it illegal to pray.
So where does all this leave us? It leaves us with a need to acknowledge our dependence on God. It leaves us with a need to realize what our real need is: to know God and accept his gift of the Bread of Life. It means we stop looking in all the wrong places for the things that we think we need. We stop looking in all the wrong places for what we think will ultimately fulfill us. It means that we rest, truly rest, in the God who can meet all of our true needs. We turn from fear and turn to faith. Jesus said, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:25-34). That’s the story:
— We are in the wilderness
— We are hungry
— We sit and wait
— We trust
— We are miraculously fed by the hand of Jesus
— We discover that the food he offers is himself.
— We eat and find life.
Rodney J. Buchanan
July 31, 2011
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
