Two weeks ago, several of our youth,
and about 75 others from the dioceses of West Missouri and Kansas, gathered in
Kansas City for five days of urban mission work – the annual
Missionpalooza. The week included a
cookout at Harmon Park in Prairie Village, which a number of you helped provide
– thank you very much for that. The kids
also had time on Saturday to go to a movie or to an arcade for bowling,
mini-golf, or laser tag. But they spent
most of their week hard at work in places like the Don Bosco Center, the Kansas
City Community Kitchen, Operation Breakthrough, and Habitat for Humanity.
So I want to tell you a story about
one young person’s experience that week.
This high-school junior was sent to work at the Kansas City Community
Kitchen, where he chopped vegetables, served hungry clients, swept the floor,
and cleaned out the walk-in fridge. But
he also got to know the situation of the clients beyond an intellectual understanding
that poverty and hunger exist. By the
time you serve lunch three days in a row, you begin to recognize faces.
Well, on Thursday, the young man
gathered up dirty towels and aprons to take upstairs to reStart, which is in
the same building as the Kitchen, one floor up. Among its other services, reStart offers
washers and dryers for homeless people to use, and the agency also does laundry
for the Kitchen. But talking with the
people at reStart, the young man learned they were out of laundry soap. The reStart staff told him it would be at
least a couple of days, maybe next week, before they got another shipment.
Well, coming to the Kitchen each
day, the young man had noticed there was an Aldi across the street. And he knew he had $25 in his pocket, money he’d
brought for extra games of laser tag at the end of the week. So the young man looked at this situation and
thought, “I’ve got $25; I can do something about this. I could play just one game of laser tag and still give people here the chance to wash
their clothes.” So he and a couple of
adults went across the street to Aldi, and he bought five bottles of laundry
soap.
Of course, that left the young man
with just a few dollars for laser tag on Saturday. But after serving poor people all week, he’d
decided he was grateful to have even a little money in his pocket. In fact, strangely enough, in that moment, a
small amount of money became more
than a large amount of money – less really was
more. Homeless people got to wash their
clothes when they wouldn’t have otherwise, and the youth was able to enjoy that far more than he would have enjoyed
the extra games of laser tag. Now, my
guess is that if this young man had been told up front, “You only have $5 to
spend on fun at Missionpalooza,” he wouldn’t have been very pleased. But he had decided to be grateful – grateful
for what he’d been given, grateful for the chance to make a difference for the
people around him, grateful for the one game he did get to play. And because
he chose to be grateful, everything changed.
This story may not seem to have much
to do with the familiar Gospel reading we just heard, the miracle of the
multiplication of the loaves and the fishes. You’ve probably heard it before. In fact, you may have heard it so many times that
you already had it in your head as Deacon Jim began to read. That’s where I was earlier this week, when I
began reading it: Jesus draws a big
crowd; the crowd gets hungry; he decides it’s time for a miracle; he turns a
few loaves and fish into a feast; end of story. But then, I stumbled across a small phrase in
the middle of this long reading: It
says, “Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks...” (John 6:11). Wait a minute. What’s Jesus giving thanks for?
Let’s rewind the story a little
bit. This crowd of 5,000 was following
him, hoping for miraculous healings, and Jesus sees an obvious problem: They’re in an isolated place, the day is
getting long, and the crowd is getting hungry.
Jesus asks the disciples what they should do about it; and our spiritual
ancestor, St. Andrew, swings into action. Like many of us, Andrew is a problem-solver,
so he goes to see what food he can find. He comes back to Jesus reporting, “There’s a
boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” (John
6:9). And it’s here that the story gets
strange. Jesus takes this completely
inadequate supply of food, five loaves and two fish, and he does what never would have occurred to most of us:
He prays. Now, in our anxiety, if we had thought to pray, here’s what we
would have said: “Dear God, give me
more!” But what Jesus says is, “Thank
you.”
Really? Thank you for what? Thank you for nowhere near enough food to
solve the problem? Thank you for putting
me in an impossible position? Thank you
for giving me just enough to help a few people while having to say “no” to thousands
of others? Yeah, thanks for nothing.
But strangely enough, something
happens when Jesus makes the deliberate choice to be grateful. Suddenly, there’s more than enough for
everyone. Giving thanks is the key that
unlocks the miracle.
Now, you can see this miracle at
least a couple of ways. The traditional,
pious interpretation is what you’d imagine:
Jesus multiplies a small amount of food into a feast for thousands, a
sign of the abundance of the reign and rule of God. A less traditional, more historically focused,
interpretation goes something like this:
Jesus’ teaching and healing, and his willingness to share what little he
has, opens up the hearts of the crowd.
The individuals sitting on the grass reach into their own pockets and
open up their own bags, and they bring out what they’d been hoarding for
themselves. They bring out their own
bread and dried fish, or whatever else they’re carrying, and they share it with
their neighbors. From this perspective, the
miracle is that the people choose to join
the reign and rule of God by loving their neighbors as themselves. No matter which way you interpret the story,
the ending is the same: thousands of full bellies, and 12 baskets of leftovers,
all from five loaves and two fish.
The important thing here isn’t the
miracle’s mechanism of action. The
important thing is the miracle itself, and here it is: Giving thanks changes everything. The more we say “thank you,” the greater we
understand our own blessings to be. And
the more our gratitude spurs us to give ourselves away, the richer we become. Jesus takes a gift we would see as totally
inadequate; he says, “Thank you”; and in that moment, scarcity is transformed
into abundance. Even the leftovers are
overflowing.
It’s no accident that in this
reading the Greek word for “giving thanks” is the same word we use to describe our weekly transformation of scarcity
into abundance. That word is
“eucharist.” Eucharist means giving thanks. Every week, you bring a few loaves of bread
and a pitcher of wine up to this altar.
It’s not much of a meal for a couple of hundred people. Surely it won’t be enough. The folks in these pews are hungry, in all
kinds of ways – emotionally, spiritually, some even physically. How dare we respond to that level of need
with such a meager meal. But instead of
bemoaning how little we think we have to offer, we offer it anyway – outward
and visible signs of God’s provision and blessing. And when we pray our “thank you,” when we
offer Eucharist at this table, that’s when the miracle happens. The bread and wine become Jesus fully present
with us – allaying our fears, sustaining our souls, and empowering us to serve other
hungry people.
This isn’t just a once-a-week
thing. God calls us to live in Eucharist
every day because thankfulness is our key to the abundant life God longs for us
to have. In the stunning paradox of the
Gospel, the way we find abundance is by giving ourselves away. It’s why giving is such an essential part of
following Jesus and why we’re called to give of our whole selves – time and
talent and treasure. In the giving of
those gifts, miraculously, we receive far more in return. When God tells us in Scripture to give back
10 percent of what we receive, it’s not for God’s benefit. That money or talent or time was God’s in the
first place, and God doesn’t need to receive more of it. Instead, we
need to give it. For our own well-being, we need the miracle
of thanksgiving, the miracle of Eucharist, to transform our less into
more.
And that can be scary. Giving thanks can be scary. If I give away my loaves and fishes, I may
not have enough. But the miracle is that
we receive even more than we give away. This
is not some “Gospel of Prosperity,” where I stand here and promise that if you
give a bunch of money to the church, then God will buy you a new car. That’s bunk.
But it is true that God will
take care of us, in mysterious ways that God gets to choose. After the feeding of the 5,000, the disciples
try to make their way back home, across the Sea of Galilee; and a storm starts
blowing. They row through several miles
of rough water, and things aren’t looking good.
But Jesus continues his miracle by providing safe passage even when the
waters are rough. He comes to them when and
how they least expect it, and he brings them safely back to shore. Of
course he does. After all, not only
does he love them, but there’s always more for a disciple to do – more thank-yous
to say and more crowds to feed. Or,
depending on your situation, more laundry soap to buy and more homeless
people’s clothes to wash.
So, to all the Andrews here this
morning: The next time you feel like
what you have is never sufficient; the next time you look at your five loaves
and two fish and think, “What are these among so many”; the next time you know you don’t have enough – choose to
say “thank you” for it, and give some of it away. Then see how much more those loaves and
fishes become.
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