July 29, 2015

“You give them something to eat.”
Jesus, Mark 6:37a

The Daily Office gospel reading for Tuesday of Proper 12 in Year Two comes from Mark and recounts the feeding of the 5000.  Other than the Resurrection, this is the only miracle story that appears in all four gospels.  The above words of Jesus appear in the synoptics, and they are implied in John.

A lot of the time we read a version of this story, or we hear it read on Sunday when it comes around in the lectionary cycle, and we immediately tend to gravitate to the miracle itself.  Were there really only five loaves and two fish?  Were there really 5000 people (more if you count women and children)?  Maybe it was the miracle of sharing rather than Jesus actually multiplying the loaves and fishes.  Why were there only twelve baskets-full picked up?  Why and how seem to dominate our thought about this story.

But as I read this story at Morning Prayer yesterday (Tuesday), I was struck by these words of Jesus:  You give them something to eat.

The disciples immediately protested.  We can't feed all these people with only this!  They need to go into the towns and buy food for themselves.  It would take two-hundred days wages to buy food.  The disciples only had two words running through their heads when Jesus spoke that sentence:  We can't.  Those two words come from a belief that we don't have enough resources, that we don't have enough money and that we need to worry about ourselves first.

We have the same concerns today.  We don't have enough resources.  We don't have enough money.  We need to worry about ourselves first.

As we read this story, though, Jesus tells us something different.  Not only do we have enough, but it is also apparently our job to care for those who come to us.  We do have enough.  Nobody is turned away.

But to move from scarcity to abundance, to move from inward thinking to outward thinking, to move from, 'We can't,' to, 'We will,' requires that proverbial leap of faith.  It is hard to consistently look at what we don't have, or what we think we are missing, and begin to see that as enough.

We do have enough.  We have enough resources.  We have enough people.  We have enough faith.  We have enough with what we have on hand to take it up, offer it to God, and distribute it to those around us.

We need to focus more on what we have than on what we don't.  And when we come to understand that we do have an abundance of resources, then it won't be so frightening when Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”

Amen.