August 2, 2020 | Scripture, Sermon, & Prayers

“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” Did you pick up on that line from this morning’s Gospel reading? I know you heard it, but did you really pick up on it? I know I’ve read it before. I know I’ve listened to it and gone down some weird mental rabbit trails wondering who had the fish, were they freshly caught since this pericope started near water or were they like, someone’s pocket fish they had on hand for snacking on the road while on tour with Jesus? The mind reels. Sometimes when we know something as well as the loaves and fishes story, it’s easy to skim over it, to miss the nuance because we’ve heard this story enough times that we feel justified in taking it easy during the reading, it’s like putting on a favorite movie while cleaning. I can run the vacuum and still follow along with the plot of Clueless, so it’s the same for the loaves and fishes story, right? 

Except, that’s not the way to approach scripture. When we let our brains go into “Ah, that old story? I got this!” mode, we miss the opportunity for the words to have new meaning for us, for the old words to strike a new chord with what we’re experiencing right now. Today, in the midst of “What’s Next?” 2020 unrest and weirdness and grief. For me, reading that line this time, it caught me. It grabbed me. It convicted me. I’m curious if it did the same for you, or how you were stirred by these old words we know. “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” 

Let’s back up a bit. 

Our scene is set by Jesus hopping on a boat to get some alone time. All we’re given in the opening of this morning’s lectionary reading is “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” What Jesus had heard was devastating news. His cousin and mentor, John the Baptist, was dead. The disciples had collected the body and buried it, and immediately after they informed Jesus. John’s death had been gruesome, his head had been delivered on a platter to Herod’s niece and her mother, a gift he wasn’t thrilled about, but was obligated to give, as he had promised her anything she wanted. Things were complicated then, too. Herod was king, but Rome was bigger, and the constant pressure of keeping peace while occupied by an empire required delicate footing. John, with his prophetic reputation, was a dangerous person to have alive, but because so many regarded him as a prophet, he was also a dangerous person to kill. But, it had been done. And Jesus needed a moment. 

Grief is an unwieldy, wild thing. Even after years, it still can find ways of taking one’s breath away. In those first moments of hearing the news , Jesus recognized the need to be alone, to sit with the emotions away from people. To quit for the day, and retreat to a deserted place where he could pray, recuperate just enough from the devastating blow to continue his work. We cannot be at our best when we are depleted, even Jesus recognized this.

Anyone who has ever been interrupted in the middle of taking time out can empathize with this on a basic level. Jesus took a moment for self care, but word got out where his secluded spot was, and people flocked to that place, on foot, from great distances. An opportunity to see Jesus! We know, we know, he’s trying to take some time off, but we are sick! We have problems! Please, just help us! And so he did. He healed and cared for them all afternoon and into the evening. 

If you’re anything like me, you may have been filled with cringey indignation at this. The disciples certainly were! He just needed like, ONE afternoon, people, can’t your problems wait a few hours?! In a moment of trying to protect their teacher, they tried to pull Jesus away from the crowd, which he had been surrounded by, immersed in all day. The disciples wanted him to take care of himself first, they wanted to send people back to the villages to buy food, and squeeze in an exit for Jesus. But compassion for the sick and afflicted again overrode grief, and Jesus told his disciples, “No, they don’t need to go, YOU give them something to eat.”

Wait. 

What?

It’s no wonder they responded the way they did. “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” None of them had anticipated a crowd, let alone imagining THEY would be on the hook for catering the whole affair. Can you picture the scene, the huddle of apostles, just barely able to pull Jesus from doing the work he was moved by compassion to do, all circled up thinking, “Okay, so we give up everything to travel with him, we are essentially just as destitute as everyone else here, but he wants US to feed them? What do you have, Bart? Bread? Saaaaaaame. You Andrew? Fish. Of course, it’s alllways fish with you. Sooooo, I’m guessing I know what’s in your satchel too, Pete. Alright. 5 loaves, two fishes. Fish? No, one perch, the other’s trout, fishes. Look, we don’t have time for the language police, there’s a huge crowd out there. Who got the head count? “5,000, plus women and children.” You only counted men? That’s not very accurate, not that we’ll get very far as it is. Well, I guess we better tell Jesus the bad news, “Rabbi, uh…We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

We know the rest of the story. The crowds sat, and using words we will hear again when we celebrate the eucharist, the food was blessed, the bread broken, the pieces of loaves were distributed, a basket for each apostle was passed, person by person through the entire crowd, until all were fed. When the disciples, undoubtedly in the first ever recorded act of church ushers skillfully navigating the baskets through the assembled congregation, finally met with their baskets at the back of the crowd, the baskets were still filled, teeming with bread, filled to the brim. Leftovers, even! Out of Andrew’s musty pocket tilapia and my day-old baguette!

That a miracle occurred, there is no question. Whether you’re of the “defies logic, physics, and breadcrumbs” camp or the “everyone banded together and filled the baskets with what they found in their own satchels to share” group, there is a miracle to behold here. Something my dad taught me is that, when reading the miracle stories, to look for the side-miracles as well, to get a fuller grasp of exactly what had been accomplished here. You know, the less flashy ones without the fantastic biblical pyrotechnics and tons of fan art made about them through the ages. When I look for the other miracles at work in this pericope, I see two. First, the miracle of Jesus’ attention during a time when he had fully intended for mourning and prayer. His compassion runs so deeply that turning away the immediate and pressing need of a crowd, hurting, scared, afflicted, and living under the thumb of empire looking for hope was not an option for him. He gave of himself, even when it hurt and he needed to be cared for just as all those in the crowd. But also, he didn’t give alone.

The other fireworks-free miracle was that he managed to flip the scarcity mindset of “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” within his own inner circle, to remind them that ours is a God of great abundance. I think this hidden and kind of, well, beige miracle might have the most wisdom for us, a people who are hurting, scared, afflicted and *ahem* living under the threat of empire, looking for hope in this Covid-coated, what-on-earth-did-I-just-hear-the-newscaster-say, is this even real life or did we slip into a bizarre parallel universe 2020 world. 

As we are experiencing all of these things, and sighing deep, communal sighs of grief, feeling tension well up as we witness atrocities, and swimming in the mixed feelings of never being able to do quite enough to fix everything, we might find ourselves fighting against a “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”mindset. How can we replicate church when we aren’t allowed into church? How do we shape a future that we never asked for using only the things we’ve known from the way we’ve done them in the past? How can we grow our membership, our ministries, our evangelism-yes, I know I chafe against that word too, but we need to say it, our evangelism to do God’s work here on earth, if we haven’t had to do it this way before? 

We aren’t alone in doing this. Just as Jesus didn’t do his work alone, remember the “No, YOU feed them” piece?- and we aren’t alone in the work we are called to do either. For the disciples, it took moving past the scarcity mindset and trusting that the five loaves and two fish would be enough. How is the scarcity mindset keeping us from trusting the miraculous abundance of a compassionate God and bringing that abundance to the world? In what ways are we as a church, or as a community, as a country, finding we are being caught up in looking at what we don’t have instead of being open to what we do have, already here with us, and how can we turn these things that don’t look like much or feel sufficient in the face of huge change and newness, how will we turn them into more than enough to not only carry us through this pandemic but to come out of it with even more than we had imagined? None of us knows how our world will be changed when we come through the other end of this, or what profound impact this will have on the way we live, relate to one another, or worship. We might be meeting this way for a long time, and not to be a downer, but we may have to sit with unresolved grief and climb many more hurdles before we find ourselves together again physically. So what do we have? The hidden miracle for us is that one of creative abundance using what is right in front of us. So often, we assume that the best solution to a big conundrum is going to be expensive and will be impossible to pull off with the limited resources at our disposal. In order for Jesus to do his work, he needs us to trust in what we already have with us, trust that what we bring to the huddle as we figure out how best to be the church now, at this moment, is not only adequate, but will be enough to sustain us well beyond distance-churching and into whatever our post-COVID world will ask of us. 

And finally, where the lectionary leaves off, the folks were full of good food and their spiritual and physical needs had been tended, but it leaves us wondering what happened to Jesus? Did he ever get his break? Well, without giving away too many spoilers for next week’s lectionary text, yes. He did. In order to be abundantly available and to get through all the unknowns to come, Jesus needed to rest and pray. 

May you find time this week to begin a practice of seeing abundance when resources initially look scarce. May your compassion swell and grow, even in this difficult time, and may you discern when it’s time to find some quiet and pray. May your readings of the same old texts give fresh insight, and may you trust that what you have to offer in service to co-creating a new vision with God is enough. Amen.