We live in a culture
that is obsessed with worrying. We love to worry, simple as that, we love to
worry. I may be the biggest culprit out there when it comes to worrying. I
worry about finances, about loans. I worry about my family and my friends;
anytime something happens in their life I worry if they are going to be ok,
especially when I know that there is nothing I can do about the situation. Every time I say something I worry if I
offended someone, or if I just said something stupid, or committed a heresy. I
worry about little things, like is my sermon too short, or is my sermon too
long. I worry whether or not I will be able to get between the churches in time
for worship. You should see me when I leave here (Lambs). It’s like I’m sitting
on the pole position at a NASCAR race and the green flag just waived. Sometimes
I think I can even hear Darryl Waltrip screaming in my ear, boogitty, boogitty,
boogitty, let’s go racing. I worry about everything. For this reason I try to
have everything completely planned. I time out my sermons so I know how long
they, I plan out what I’m going to eat for the day based upon calorie intake so
that I can watch my figure. And of course my greatest friend is my iphone which
has all of the events on my calendar at touch of fingertips and synched with
the computer so that if anything changes, my calendar changes with it. To stop
my worrying I try to plan out everything.
So I can imagine the horror of the disciples in our story
today. Think about this scene. Jesus after healing people at the pool, has now
traveled across the sea of Galilee, where he and the disciples are expecting to
spend a little time together. They retreat up on a mountainside, when all of
sudden they notice that a multitude of people have followed Jesus and are now
gathered around Jesus and the disciples. They were about to celebrate a
Passover meal together but now realized that they had to feed the crowd as
well. Now the story says that there were 5000 people there present, but when
counting people in those days, they generally only counted the men. That means
that in all likelihood counting women and children there were actually far more
than 5000 people present. Phillip, trying to be proactive and think about how
they were going to afford to buy food for everyone figures that in order to
just get everyone to have one bite, they would need more than half a year’s
wages. Andrew on the other hand finds a small boy with five loaves of barley
and two fish and simply says, this is what we have Jesus, do we have enough?
Can you imagine how stressful that would be as one of the
disciples? Let’s try to put it into a modern day scenario and see how you would
feel. Imagine that last week your church had a very active week. They worked
down at the DAWN and had been meeting a lot of people and giving them food.
Then last weekend there was a great gospel sing, and the preacher gave a
wonderful sermon. It was such a busy week that now you, the pastor and a few of
the other members of the church are gathering for a small Bible study. Ya’ll
had decided that you would have a little cookout before the study so you put
that in last week’s bulletin, the same bulletin that was handed out at the
gospel sing and service. As you all gather together, realize that word has
spread about this church, and there are 5000, ok maybe let’s just say 500
hundred people outside who want to join in on the Bible study. Think about the
logistics nightmare. First where are they all going to park? Where are they all
going to sit? Most of them didn’t bring their own Bibles, where are we going to
find enough Bibles. When it was just the 12 of us we’d sit around the table but
now the pastor might not even be able to be heard? Do we move into the
sanctuary, so that we can use the microphones? What about the food though, we
can’t bring that into the sanctuary. The
food!! We have 20 hamburgers and 50 hotdogs, how are we going to feed all of
them. It would cost us six month’s worth of the educational budget to feed all
of them? While you are running all of
these things through your head, the pastor simply turns to you and asks, “What
are we going to do about this?”
How are you going to respond? I don’t just mean how would
you respond to this hypothetical situation, but in the entire life of the church when a
goal, a vision, a chance for evangelism, a chance for mission, a change for
developing disciples of Christ is there before, how will you respond to this
daunting task? In our scripture today we see two different responses to the
situation. The first response was from Phillip. His response was what many of
our responses would have been, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to
buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” In other words Phillip’s
response was that the task before him was too daunting, That they did not have
enough.
Too often this is our response as a church to our own
challenges and needs. We say that we would love to have a thriving children’s
ministry, but that we do not have enough kids, or that we do not have enough
money, or that we do not have enough volunteers to make it happen. We say that
we want to reach out to the community more, but we are not in the best location
to do that, or we don’t have the same resources as other churches like Thomas
Road Baptist Church, and that there is
some much need that there is nothing that we can really do. We say that
we don’t have the same talents in worship that other churches have. We don’t
have a large organ, or praise band, we don’t have a projector screen where we
can show inspirational videos, we don’t have a massive billboard on 29 to
advertise our Vacation Bible Schools, and Bible Studies and other activities in
the church. We look around at our church and see that we simply don’t have all
the things we may need to perform that daunting task of going forth and making
disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Personally, we often respond to God’s call on our lives
the same way. We say, “God, I would be a better disciple if I just had more
time in my day to do it. Lord I would read scripture more but I just don’t
understand it that well. Lord, I would
love to help out the church by visiting the sick and serving those in need in
our community, but the pastor and some of the other members of the church do
that, and they do it better than I could ever do it. Lord I want to pray more
every day, but I just don’t know how. Like Phillip, our response both in the
church as well as our personal response to God so often is, “God we want to,
but we just don’t have enough to do it.”
But our scripture for today show us a different response,
and it is not really that dramatic of a response. While Phillip is telling
Jesus that they don’t have enough to feed the crowd, Andrew simply asks the
Lord, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how
far will they go among so many people? Andrew didn’t act as if he had the
solution to the whole problem, Andrew
didn’t fix the situation, but all he said was, Jesus, this is what we
have do we have enough?
This is what we have, do we have enough? What a simple
yet powerful question. As many of you
know I was away part of this week in Blackstone for a Conference continuing
education seminar. The whole focus of the seminar was on our being, not on our
doing. We focused throughout the two days on who we are, why we are called to
ministry, what gifts we have, and how we can nurture these gifts. In one of the
workshops that I attended we were given a long list of skills that are
important for a pastor to have, from self-awareness, to conflict management, to
being inspirational, to being well organized. We were then asked to honestly
reflect upon each trait and whether it was one of our strengths or one of our
weaknesses. I have to admit as I was going through those skills, it was so much
easier to focus on my weaknesses rather than focus on the strengths in
ministry. It was difficult not to wonder, how much better of a minister could I
be if I were better at X,Y and Z. I could be such a better pastor if I had some
of the same skills as my colleagues here. Honestly, at times while comparing
myself to what I could have I forgot about the many gifts I do have. Then
sometime incredible happened. We went around the room and shared what our gifts
were and what our weakness were. As expected, many of weaknesses were strengths
that others had, but at the same time many of their weaknesses, areas at which
they wished they could improve, were my strengths. In fact as we went around
the room every skill needed for ministry was someone in that rooms strength.
Our church is no different. Sitting here in each of these
pews are people with different strengths and weakness. We have some who are
great at visitations or great at outreach. We have may not have a fancy organ
or praise band, but we have a wonderful choir, pianist (flute at Evington) that
does an excellent job of praising God through music. We have very dedicated
members of our UMW who do so much go work, and we have so many members who do
the grunt work around the church making the area that we gather such a
beautiful place, often without any recognition for their hard work. What if
instead of saying, Lord we don’t have enough to reach out to others, to
evangelize, to be in mission, to develop thriving youth and children ministries,
to enhance worship, we were to say, Lord this is what we have, do we have
enough?
If we left it there we would be missing the whole point
of this scripture. As I said, Andrew’s response to Jesus was not that dramatic
or that drastic of a response. He simply gave him 5 loaves and two fish and
said is this enough? As we read the story though we know that it was not Andrew
who fed the 5000 people gathered, but that is was a miracle performed by Jesus
Christ. We have heard this story since we were kids and we know about this
miraculous act by Jesus. We have wondered to ourselves how did he do that? Not
only did he feed them all but there were leftovers! It is a feat so great, that
we know that there is nothing else we can call it besides a miracle, and that
there is no one else who could do it besides Jesus.
Yet, in our churches how often do we forget this in our
everyday ministries. A) That miracles happen and multiply ministries by more
than we could have ever imagined, and B) that only Jesus can do it. We may be
wise enough to ask Andrew’s question, do we have enough, we may even be wise
enough to gather our resources together and try to set small manageable goals,
just big enough so that we can be proud of the results; ministry that allows
everyone to have a small bite. How foolish are we though when we forget that it
is Jesus, not us, who performs these miracles. That through Jesus, our
ministries may not only provide a bite of something to eat, but a full meal.
That it is Jesus that multiplies what we have and then allows us to collect the
extras. That our gifts that we bring to the table are just that, gifts, that
have been given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, and who better to get the most
out of these gifts, than the one who has the owner’s manual. Jesus shows us
that when we are presented with a daunting
goal, or vision, or simply a tough situation, that all that is required
of us is to say this is what we have, is it enough, and then watch how Jesus
uses us to feed the world.
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