Abundance
Cultivating Kingdom Values - Part 4
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Matthew 14:13-21
When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”
Matthew 14:15-16
“Preacher, people are saying… people are hungry… people want this or that… People don’t like…
… Do something. Fix it. Make everybody happy.”
When I imagine the disciples coming to Jesus, this is how I imagine they might sound. Jesus, the crowds are hungry. They’re getting restless. Do something.
We always want someone else to solve the problem. There’s an old song from the classic Christmas musical, “White Christmas” talking about the perks of army life, one of which was the fact that “there’s always someone higher up where you can pass the buck.”
I can understand that. As a pastor, I’m often the one to whom “the buck gets passed.” I also confess that I appreciate being in a system where I serve under the direction of a District Superintendent and a Bishop who are able to carry the weight of some difficult decisions that are beyond my control. In other words, I’ve done my share of “passing the buck” up the ladder too.
If only it were that simple.
We often look at this miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and celebrate how he saved the day. So long as Jesus is around, we have nothing to worry about. He’ll fix it. He’ll take care of it. If he won’t send them away, he can feed all the people.
The only trouble is that’s not exactly what happens in the text. Jesus doesn’t send them away and Jesus doesn’t technically feed all those people.
Instead, we read in verse 16, “Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’”
“Whoa. Hold up now preacher. What do you mean telling us to do it. That’s what we pay you for?”
“We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish,” they reply. “What do you expect us to do?”
Jesus really only does one thing in this miracle. He takes what the people already have, lifts it up to heaven and give thanks to the Father, and then hands it back to the people to distribute among the crowds. That’s it.
What if the lesson is not that Jesus, or the preacher, is always going to solve our problems or pull some magical rabbit out of the hat to get us out of a bind, but rather to remind us that we already have everything we need. Instead of crying out to God saying, “we don’t have enough!”, Jesus simply offered thanks and praise for what they already had. Turns out what they already had was enough to fill twelve baskets with leftovers.
Now I’ll admit that life usually doesn’t work that way. $5.00 in the offering plate rarely, if ever, turns into $5,000 and a few people scattered in the pews of a half empty sanctuary rarely end up filling the church beyond capacity. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t.
What if while we are busy praying and asking God to grow our church and provide for our financial needs and bless the people in our community, Jesus is answering our prayer the same way he answered the disciples. “You, go and feed them. Take whatever you have, no matter how small, and give thanks to God. Then take that gift and give it away. See what God can do.”
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a Kingdom of scarcity, but of abundance. We already have all we need. There are only two questions we must ask:
Am I thankful for what I already have?
Am I willing to give it away?
Who is God calling you to feed this week?
Listen to this week’s sermon here: