Sermon for July 28, 2024
Pentecost 10 B
John 6:1-21
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
When I was a little boy, the Feeding of the 5,000 (which we heard in today’s gospel) was one of the first Bible stories to really make an impression on me. My parents would read to me from a story book about it, but with a twist: it wasn’t told from the point of view of Jesus, or the disciples, or even the crowd who had gathered around Jesus. No, this time the story was told from the point of view of the little boy, the one who offered his loaves and fishes.
It started early in the morning, with the boy’s dad telling him that someone special was visiting a nearby town, and he wanted to take him to see. Then the boy’s mom tells him that he’ll be there all day and he’ll probably get hungry, so she’ll pack him a lunch—5 little loaves of bread and 2 fish. The boy and his dad walk over to the grassy mountainside, full of excitement, and when they arrive they find a large crowd of people, all of whom are bigger and taller than this little boy.
The crowd has been there for a long time, and is getting hungry. The boy hears someone asking, “Where will we find enough bread for all of these people?” So the boy pulls the bread and fish out of his knapsack, lifts them, and hands them over up to a man standing nearby. He learned well from his mom and dad what to do when someone is hungry: share your food with them. As it turns out, even though the boy gave away his lunch, he still didn’t go home hungry. He received enough food to satisfy his hunger, and so did everyone else. After the boy and his dad walked home, he told his mom about all the exciting things that had happened that day.
I haven’t seen, much less read, this particular book in decades. It may be hidden in a box somewhere in my mom’s basement, but it is definitely hidden in the recesses of my mind. This story has stuck with me all these years—not only because it’s one of the most famous stories about Jesus in the gospels; not only because it was the story of a little boy that I related to when I was that age. It sticks with me because we are all that little boy—and like him, we each in our own small way can become part of Jesus’ big story.
The first point about how we are each like that little boy comes from the grown-up disciple Philip, who shows us what not to do. When Jesus asks, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”, Philip answers: “I’d have to work for 6 months to have enough money for each of these 5,000 people to get just a little bit of bread!” It’s an understandable response, and I would have probably said the same thing if I had been in Philip’s sandals. But it’s still the wrong question to ask. Jesus doesn’t want me to ask in desperation, “What can I do?” and then put the success or failure of God’s mission all on my own shoulders. Jesus wants me to ask: “What might God be trying to accomplish through all of us together?”
It’s a similar point to when Jesus says elsewhere in the gospels, “where even 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Christian faith is personal, but it’s never private. Or as others have put it, “one saint ain’t”—you can’t be a Christian all by yourself, because when you were baptized, God joined you into the Body of Christ. We are part of one Body, with many members. The kingdom of God is not built through solitary accomplishment, but through God’s Spirit working in all of us together. Our individual gifts and talents, when put together, become greater than the sum of their parts.
The second point we learn from the un-named little boy who offered his loaves and fishes to Jesus is “generosity instead of selfishness.” Now, the boy could have kept his food under wraps, and then at lunchtime found a tree to hide behind and quickly eat his fill. But instead he was generous with what little he had. Jesus blessed what he gave, and by giving it to Jesus, there was more than enough for all. The boy himself could not have done anything so big—but he didn’t have to. Because he came with an attitude of wanting to serve others, even his small way of serving added up to something bigger—because of what God was wanting to accomplish with the crowd. It goes to show that our spiritual gifts only increase after we’ve given them away.
The third point is that God doesn’t call you to be great, or even to accomplish great things. Instead, God calls you to be faithful. Through your humble faith, God might accomplish great things, or he might not. The point is, it’s not for you to decide, it’s for God to decide, because only God can see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It’s like we are each that little boy looking up into the crowd, where everyone else is bigger and taller, and we can’t see very far—only God can see the big picture in its entirety, and God will use what you offer according to his purposes.
So we are limited in these ways, yet in our limitations is a great gift of God’s grace: each moment of each day is a new chance to be faithful in some small way. Even the smallest little thing that you didn’t think was important, but that you offered up in faith anyway, might be the key for God to use in whatever great work God is doing.
This is what Jesus was getting at when he told the disciples, after the crowd had eaten their fill and were satisfied, to “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” When Jesus is involved, nothing goes to waste, nothing is lost. God puts everything to use—when we surrender it to God in faith and trust.
As the Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr points out, “surrendering our lives to God is the very essence of a spiritual life: Surrender will always feel like dying, and yet it’s the necessary path to liberation”, to salvation. But surrender does not mean “giving up, as we often think; it’s a giving to the moment, the event, the person, the situation.” [ https://cac.org/daily-meditations/surrender-and-acceptance/ ]
Surrendering to God, so that nothing may be lost, is what Jesus did when he went to the cross. When he surrendered, he didn’t give up and say “OK, Satan, you’ve won.” Jesus surrendered himself to God in the moment by giving his life on the cross, and saying, “OK, God, I’ve completed my job. Now I trust you to take if from here. I know you’ll move things toward fulfilling your plans in the way you see fit.” And the fulfillment of God’s plans, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is what we call resurrection.
And the Jesus who worked this miracle within in the crowd, through the 5 loaves and 2 fishes offered up by a little boy who surrendered to God in the moment—that’s the same risen Jesus who still promises to be working among all of us as we offer up to God our small acts of faithfulness, each moment and each day. Amen.