You have perhaps experienced as I have, that life can be humbling sometime. A five-year-old was sitting with her grandfather in her room one day, and she asked him, “Grandpa, did God make you?”
“Yes, child,” came the reply. “God made me.” The child paused for a moment, and then asked, “And Grandpa, did God make me too?” Again the reply came back in the affirmative.
The 5-yr.-old looked in the mirror on her dresser for a while, and then looked her Grandpa in the face: “You know, Grandpa, God is doing a whole lot better work lately.” INDEED, LIFE CAN HUMBLING SOMETIME.
We’ve all done things or said things that make us look pretty silly, and the moment those words came out of our mouths we realized what we had just said and wish we could reach out and grab those words and stuff ‘em back in and start all over again.
Perhaps some of you have experienced what I have on occasion in leaving a voice mail message. In today’s world of course, this is a common task and most of us have gotten at least somewhat used to it, but even at that, there are those few times when you’re in a hurry or your mind is distracted and you really think the person you’re calling is going to be there, and so when their voice mail kicks in you’re not quite ready.
The result is that you leave a message which doesn’t flow well, has several moments of dead silence as you’re trying to think of what to say next, and you may even finish the message by saying something like, “Please don’t judge my intelligence by this message I’m leaving you, I wish I could start all over again,” and you hang up feeling like an absolute fool.
Now if you are fortunate enough not to be prone to making yourself look silly, you may have experienced still those feelings of insignificance, of not measuring up, which tend to be laid on us by other people.
Think of the way advertising campaigns bombard us with our shortcomings. You’re taught by these commercials that you need to drive a certain kind of car, wear a certain style of clothing, use a particular fragrance, even drink the “right” kind of soft drink in order to truly be cool. Therefore the message is that if we don’t do, own, or wear these things, then we don’t measure up.
A good example of this is I use to feel every time I would watch one of those Soloflex commercials. You may remember them, they were the ones where they would show a closeup of a beautifully sculpted muscular and of course well-tanned man’s bicep, and then of his back, and the narrator would say, “This could be your arm, this could be your back.”
And so while I’ve tried to practice a little healthier nutritional lifestyle over the past couple years (though I must confess I still have a terrible weakness for Cheese Krystals and chocolate chip cookie batter); but I have cut down considerably on how much fat I eat, and I lift weights and walk on a regular basis; but I’m still never going to look like the Soloflex guy, I’m just not built that way. Therefore, if the Soloflex guy is my standard, I’ll never measure up. I’ll never make it.
I could share many other examples of the experiences in life which help us feel insignificant or unimportant. Those of you who waited until the last possible moment to get your annual emissions test may have experienced the joy of waiting in line behind 40 or 50 cars until your turn came.
Or think of the times you’ve been stuck going across the Fuller Warren Bridge at 7:30 in the morning or 5:30 in the afternoon, or the crowds you may have encountered at Disney World, or the way you feel any time you hang up the phone after dealing with some part of the Federal government, I bet you felt special then! Life can indeed be humbling sometimes.
Why do I want to remind us of this today? Because it’s in this context that we can best understand one of the most important stories in all the New Testament. John, Chapter 6, verses 1-13.
“After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his disciples.
Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, "How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii 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 lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down."
Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then 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.
And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.”
It may surprise you to know something about this story. This is the only miracle of Jesus that is recorded in all 4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There are other miracles that are repeated in 2 or 3 of the gospels, but this is the only one that we find in all 4.
I think it’s because we can all identify with that little boy. In the midst of a huge crowd of thousands of people - rich people, important people, grown-up people; Pharisees, Saducees, big, burly fishermen; that little boy would feel completely insignificant, almost as if he didn’t exist, and we can all identify, at least to some small degree, with that feeling.
Joan Rivers once said “I knew I was unwanted when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”
I think the first miracle in this miraculous story is that Andrew noticed that little boy and his lunch. The little boy had heard the news about some man in the region who was reportedly performing all kinds of miracles and healing people of their diseases and even making some of the religious leaders pretty uncomfortable, which the little boy had the impression made his mother kind of happy.
Well one day he heard that this man Jesus was going to be teaching in an area that was close enough that his mother would let him travel to alone.
When he heard this, he ran home excitedly and burst into the house and asked his mother to fix him a lunch so he could go see Jesus. A very common staple of any kitchen in that region of the Middle East would have been some small loaves of barley bread and an assortment of small fish that had probably been caught in the Sea of Galilee and salted for preservation.
The closest way I know to describe these fish is that they were like sardines. Now I know the text says that the boy had 5 barley loaves and 2 fish, but to help the significance of this miracle stick in your mind, I want to ask you to simply imagine that the barley loaves and the fish have been put together, so that what in essence the boy has in his lunch box, is a sardine sandwich.
Those of you who have ever enjoyed sardines in mustard sauce on saltine crackers while salt-water fishing will know just how wonderful that lunch really is. If you haven’t ever had that pleasure, then I hope some day you will.
So the boy takes his lunch and heads out to see Jesus. As he’s coming closer to the place where he was told Jesus would be, he notices that there are an awful lot of people making their way in the same direction, and by the time he gets there, he finds himself in an enormous crowd of grownups.
But he wants to see Jesus, and so he squirms and wiggles his way through the tangle of legs and kneecaps and dusty sandals, until he finds a place where’s he sort of on the front row.
He can’t quite follow all the activity that’s going on around him, but after a while he does notice that Jesus is holding a sort of conference with a small group of about a dozen men, and then he sees that one of these men is headed his way.
He didn’t find out until later that the man’s name was Andrew. All he knew at the time was that Andrew was asking for his lunch. Well, he was gettin’ kind of hungry and wasn’t sure he wanted to give up his lunch. But then Andrew said something that really caught his attention. He said, “Young man, I’ve learned that Jesus can do amazing things, and I don’t know exactly what he has in mind, but he said to tell you, He needs your lunch.”
Well, the little boy was at first scared, and then sort of proud, but then as he began to feel around in his lunch box, he was a touch embarrassed, because it was a hot day, and the only lunch he had to give Jesus, was what was by now, a soggy sardine sandwich.
But it didn’t seem to matter to Jesus. Jesus received the sandwich from Andrew, gave thanks for it, and then distributed to the disciples, who in turn distributed it to all those were present that day, until all 5,000 were fed, and 12 baskets of leftovers were collected.
One thing this story reminds us of is that God is pretty cool. But I want you to hear something else that’s really important - I firmly believe that this story is included in the Bible not principally as another illustration of the fact that Jesus had miracle-working power.
Jesus does have miracle-working power, and that is an important truth to realize. But I believe the central reason this story is in Scripture is because that little boy has an important lesson to teach us about how people like you and me are most often the instruments God uses to appropriate Jesus’ miracle-working power in everyday life.
That little boy had very little to offer, but out of what he had, Jesus found the building materials for a miracle. The way this story reads seems to indicate that if that little boy had not come that day or if he had withheld his lunch when Andrew asked for it, Jesus would not have fed the 5,000, because no one else had thought to bring lunch.
A critical truth in the Christian life, is that Jesus needs what we can bring. We may not have much to bring Him according to the world’s standards or even according to our own, but He needs what we have. It may be that the world is denied miracle after miracle because we will not bring to Christ what we have and who we are.
‘Hell’s Kitchen’ is the name they use to refer to the part of New York City that has been rated the "most likely place to get killed." There is a Sunday School ministry there that involves the largest bus ministry in America.
One Puerto Rican lady, after getting saved in church, came to the pastor with an urgent request. She didn’t speak a word of English, so she told him through an interpreter, "I want to do something for God, please."
"I don’t know what you can do," he answered. "Please, let me do something," she said in Spanish. "Okay. I’ll put you on a bus. Ride a different bus every week and just love the kids."
So every week she rode a different bus -- they have 50 of them -- and loved the children. She would find the worst- looking kid on the bus, put him on her lap and whisper over and over the only words she had learned in English: "I love you. Jesus loves you."
After several months, she became attached to one little boy in particular. "I don’t want to change buses anymore. I want to stay on this one bus," she said.
The boy didn’t speak. He came to Sunday school every week with his sister and sat on the woman’s lap, but he never made a sound. And each week she would tell him all the way to Sunday school and all the way home, "I love you and Jesus loves you."
One day, to her amazement, the little boy turned around and stammered, "I-I love you, too." Then he put his arms around her and gave her a big hug.
That was 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon. At 6:30 that night, the boy was found dead in a garbage bag under a fire escape. His mother had beaten him to death and thrown his body in the trash.
"I love you and Jesus loves you." Those were some of the last words he heard in his short life -- from the lips of a Puerto Rican woman who could barely speak English. Dear friends – little is much when God is in it.
Jesus wants to use every person in Christian ministry, including you. Are you qualified? Of course not, but neither am I, and neither was that woman who could barely speak English. But she gave God what little English she knew, and made an eternal difference in the tragic life of that little boy.
You may have heard the story of Teddy Stallard and his teacher, Miss Thompson. Teddy’s mother died while he was still young, and his father just didn’t quite know how to take an interest in Teddy and in Teddy and in his schoolwork.
Teddy’s grades suffered terribly, he was never quite able to understand his homework, and Miss Thompson began to look on him as simply one of those children who won’t make it.
One day the class was having a Christmas party, all the students had brought their beautiful store-bought gifts for Miss Thompson, and she had oohed and aahed over them, and then it was Teddy’s turn.
Teddy couldn’t afford to buy anything, and as he walked up to Miss Thompson’s desk, he clutched a wrinkled, dirty paper bag. He pulled out of this paper bag 2 items, on old rhinestone bracelet with most of the rhinestones missing, and a bottle of used perfume.
Miss Thompson heard the other children beginning to snicker and laugh at Teddy’s pitiful gifts, and she wisely placed the bracelet on her wrist and dabbed a little perfume behind her ear, and then said loudly enough for all them to hear, “Thank you, Teddy, the bracelet is absolutely gorgeous, and this is my favorite perfume.”
Teddy said “You’re welcome, Miss Thompson, those were my mother’s favorites, and whenever you wear them, you’ll remind me of her.” Something happened to Teddy Stallard and to Miss Thompson that day.
She started treating Teddy like a human being, like a child with true potential, like someone with dignity and worth. And Teddy responded quickly. His grades improved dramatically, his classmates began to like him, and he began to respect himself.
As naturally happens in a teacher’s life, Miss Thompson lost track of Teddy after he left her class, but years later she received a note from him upon his graduation from high school. The note read, “Dear Miss Thompson, I wanted you to be the first to know. I will be graduating second in my class. Love, Teddy Stallard.”
Four years later, another note came: “Dear Miss Thompson: they just told me I will be graduating first in my class. I wanted you to be the first to know. The university has not been easy, but I liked it. Love, Teddy Stallard.
And four years after that, “Dear Miss Thompson, as of today, I am Theodore Stallard, M.D. How about that? I wanted you to be the first to know. I am getting married next month, the 27th to be exact. I want you to come and sit where my mother would sit if she were alive. You are the only family I have now; Dad died last year. Love, Teddy Stallard.
Two lives were literally transformed, because one day a teacher named Miss Thompson said Thank You, Teddy, This bracelet is gorgeous, and the perfume is my favorite. Just as God used that simple occasion to transform two lives, so too can God use you.
Little is much when God is in it.
Our temptation of course, is to think that we really can’t make a difference, that we’ll never be one of the heroes of this world who impact other lives. But history teaches us that a true hero could be living next door to you and you wouldn’t even know it.
The fellow who changes the oil in your car could be one. A hero in greasy coveralls? Maybe. Maybe as he works he prays, asking God to do with the heart of the driver what he does with the engine.
The day-care worker where you drop off the kids? Perhaps. Perhaps her morning prayers include the name of each child and the dream that one of them will change the world. Who’s to say God isn’t listening.
I know, I know. These folks don’t fit our image of a hero. They look too, too, ...well, normal. Give us four stars, titles, and headlines. But something tells me that for every hero in the spotlight, there are dozens in the shadows. They don’t get press. They don’t draw crowds. But little is much when God is in it.
Do heroes know when they are heroic? Rarely. Are historic moments acknowledged when they happen? You know the answer to that one (if not, a visit to the manger will remind you). We seldom see history in the making, and we seldom recognize heroes. But we’d do well to keep our eyes and hearts more open. Tomorrow’s great person might be mowing your lawn. And the hero who inspires him might be nearer than you think. Maybe right in your mirror.
You may have heard the story about the young man who was vacationing at the ocean and noticed an elderly gentleman walking along the seashore, continually bending over, picking something up from the sand, and then tossing it into the water.
Curious about this, the young man went over to see what he was doing. When he got there he noticed that there were thousands of starfish which had been washed up on the shore by the high tide and then been left stranded as the tide receded. The old man was bending down to retrieve these starfish and toss back into the water before they died.
The young man understood the sentiment behind this compassionate act, but he also understood that there were simply too many starfish for the old man to be able to save them all, and so he said to him, “Why even bother, there are thousands of starfish here, you can’t possibly get them all back into the water before they die, it won’t make any difference anyway.”
At this, the old man leaned over, picked up another starfish, tossed it back into the ocean, and said with a wry smile and a twinkle in his eye, “It made a difference to that one.”
Dear friends, it’s as simple as this - Jesus wants what you have, and who you are. He wants to use you to heal the pain, share the good news, offer His love.
I don’t know what God is calling you to do. I don’t know in which areas of ministry the Holy Spirit wants to lead you. But I do know that God is calling you to do something, because all members of the Body of Christ have a place in God’s plan. And when you don’t take the place that God has designed for you, that place remains empty.
Be open, Be expectant, Be available, be willing. Give God your soggy sardine sandwich, and do it today.
