Sermon by Felicity Thompson, Seminarian, 7/28/2024
Spread your desired sauce in the bun. Place a piece of fried fish in the bun then add a slice of cheese on top of the bun. Throw a bit of shredded lettuce in the mix. The heat from the fish will help melt the cheese, sound familiar, like a McDonald’s fish sandwich. Is this a cooking lesson?
You remember?
Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”
This morning, Jesus is asking us the same question, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test Philip, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get even a little.”
The feeding of the five thousand; this is one of the few miracles that you will find in all four gospels. Every gospel has a story about Jesus feeding five thousand - this is the Bible’s way of letting us know that we cannot study, read without knowing that the ministry of Jesus was not just to save souls, but to feed hungry bellies.
And as you read this miracle of five thousand being fed with five loaves and two fish, this is not just a miracle but it is also a mandate on every generation that we are to feed those who are hungry.
We have heard this miracle, this story about feeding the five thousand in Sunday School, we have heard about it in sermons. In each of the four gospels, we read a different point of view, telling us how Jesus got in the predicament He got in with such a large crowd gathering and the need to feed them.
If you read about it in John, Jesus had been performing many miracles and needed a break, but this crowd was following Him and He could not ignore them.
In the gospel of Luke, Jesus gave His disciples the authority to minister. The disciples return exhausted and Jesus says, “Let’s take a break.”
In Matthew, John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin has been executed and Jesus wants to get away to have private time to mourn.
Mark brings the story together. According to Mark, the disciples are exhausted after ministering, what we would describe as preaching, making pastoral visits and performing miracles. John the Baptist has been executed and Jesus, also exhausted, encourages the disciples to take a break.
Jesus gathers the disciples and suggests they take a sunset cruise across the Sea of Galilee and get away from these church folk. Because every now and then, church folk can get on your last … (Friends, please don’t look at anyone, you know that’s not being a Christian.) Jesus says to His disciples, “let’s get away”. The Bible says, the people run along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, following the boat.
They won’t leave Jesus alone. When Jesus sees them, He’s not angry. He recognizes they are sheep without a shepherd. So He begins to teach them about the Kingdom of God.
As He is teaching the crowd, the disciples quietly tell Him, “we have a couple of problems.” One, it’s getting late. Second, the people are hungry. To be more accurate, the people are hangry, they are so hungry, they are getting angry. Imagine a crowd of church folk who are hangry - that could be a problem! The third problem is this. The Bible says, they are in the wilderness.
What is the wilderness? The wilderness, according to the online Oxford dictionary, is “a dangerous and uncultivated region”, similar to a forest or desert. No one lives there except wild animals. It could be land or territory protected by the government. In the context of our story, I believe it is a semi-arid area, a desolate area where nobody lives.
The people who kept following Jesus and His disciples find themselves in a place where there is no food. There are no supermarkets, no Meijer, no Kroger, no Plum Market, no Whole Foods; and there are no convenience stores nearby. None of this feels like the baker’s dozen.
Where do we see church folk on Sundays after church? There is no Cracker Barrel, no Red Lobster, nowhere to get something to eat. They are in the wilderness! The wilderness is where food security is a horrible reality!!!
Wilderness is where public schools are not funded because they are in ethnic and urban communities. Wilderness is where sex trafficking is not policed because the prostitutes are a different color from the officers. Wilderness is where the playing field is not level. The wilderness is where civil rights are not protected. The wilderness is where statistics and stereotypes kill dreams before they are even dreamt. The wilderness is where fentanyl is laced in recreation drugs. The wilderness is where justice is not blind but color conscious.
We see a wilderness for several people in our first reading for today. David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down”.
Where is God in all of this? David abuses his position and power to take possession of another man’s wife. Bathsheba was in a wilderness!
Uriah was in a wilderness!
The wilderness is something we all know about. You know you are in the wilderness when you go to sleep to one mass shooting and wake up to another. You know you are in a wilderness when you have a congress that is efficient enough to change your voting district and they can’t get together to enact gun reform.
The wilderness is finding yourself in the middle of a COVID19 pandemic. The wilderness is where Historical Black Colleges shut down from lack of funding but prisons are making money, filled with black and brown bodies. We are in a wilderness! We Wilderness is when you try to convince me that the greatest threat to our freedom is an immigrant, knowing immigrants built this country, when the FBI has said the greatest threat, right now, is the Christian Nationalist movement.
We are in the wilderness when you hear lawmakers make laws restricting women’s’ reproductive rights. Yes, we are in the wilderness! We are in a wilderness when some of us support laws with language about who we can love and who can legally get married. We are in the midst of a wilderness. The wilderness is like places that have been left behind. A politician’s words went viral on social media recently with, “look out for your neighbor- don’t be weird”.
The wilderness is when some people take their desires too far, so far that it hurts others. So far, their actions take everything away from others. We are in the midst of wilderness when the playing field is not level, when the playing field looks like a hot mess! That is where we find ourselves and now our gospel reading for today says, Jesus looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward Him. Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” They are in the wilderness.
Our public schools are a wilderness when our children have to practice active shooter drills. Our healthcare that doesn’t deliver when we need it is a wilderness for patients, their families and the healthcare workers. Our jobs find us in a wilderness. Friends, it's tough out there.
When the disciples found themselves in a boat with rough seas, they were in a wilderness. They were terrified when they saw Jesus walking on the water towards them in the storm. Jesus walking on water, shows He is not bound by the laws of nature. He commands nature! He reassures the disciples with the words, “It is I, don’t be afraid.” In the moment, Jesus' presence brought peace. The storm ends, the waters are calm and the disciples immediately reach their destination. This demonstrates how Jesus’ presence, calling on Him in prayer, brings immediate relief and deliverance from fear, life’s storms, and trouble.
So, what do you do if you find yourself in a wilderness, what do you do? We have just read about what the disciples did when they found themselves in a wilderness. They told Jesus. What do we do, those of us who are under attack, from the womb to the tomb? If I ever find myself in a wilderness, if I ever find myself in what seems like an impossible situation, this is what I would do. Remember what our second reading says. I will bow my knees before the Lord and pray to Him who by the power at work within me is able to accomplish abundantly more than all I can ask or imagine. We have that power within us.
I will find a quiet place, lift my hands up and pray to God, starting with “Lord, it’s me, it’s me, here in this wilderness. I know that when I pray to the Lord, my faith assures me that the Lord will make a way. Because the idea of who we should be, the society we should live in and the world our children will live in, is in our hands
Our commandment through this gospel is not just to make more disciples. Our commandment is not to fill churches. Our commandment is not to shout “hallelujah” or “amen” at the right time. We are encouraged to find the answer within ourselves when we pray. Howard Thurman said it best, “the power of prayer is directly connected to you willing to be part of God’s answer.” The power of prayer comes at the end when we say, “now Lord, use me, here is my voice, here are my hands”.
We are commanded to take care of those in the wilderness. The disciples came to Jesus saying, we have a problem, we don’t have enough. Jesus’ response was, “what you got?” Jesus is saying through His response that the answer to our prayer is us! We are the answer to our prayer. “You, feed My people.”
You see, that response from Jesus was not just for the disciples, it is a response impressed on every generation of Christians that follow. In this gospel, whenever the Lord is calling on us to engage in social justice for those who need advocacy, there are two responses. On one hand, his disciples and on the other, the little boy. Allow me if you will for the next hour of this sermon, allow me to compare disciple and little boy. You may be shocked to know the disciples are not who we should follow. The hero of this story is the little boy.
And Jesus says, “give the people nourishment, give them something to eat.” The little boy had the solution. He had five loaves and two fish. Jesus is also telling us, give food to the people who need nourishment. This gospel reading is asking us to advocate for those who don’t have a voice. We are asked to find the way for those who are “lost". We are asked to provide for those who have less than. We are asked to make sure everyone who is eligible to vote, can vote freely and without fear. We are asked to give medicine to those who need healing. We are asked to create community for all mankind, to create heaven right here on Earth.
Not only did Jesus feed the people The miracle of having more loaves of bread and fish - enough for 5,000 people out of the meager provisions from a boy who had five loaves of bread and two fish. And the young boy who brought the food along with everyone else observed the miracle of abundance and generosity performed by Jesus. The food provided was enough for everyone to be full and there were baskets of leftovers. The people will tell the story and the little boy will tell others what he saw over and over again, to another generation.
Imagine:
8.3 million Michiganders offering a loaf of bread each
And
Another:
3.3 million Michiganders offering a fish each
In Jesus hands
That would feed all 8.3 billion people in the world
Just like the little boy’s meager offering of 5 loaves and 2 fishes fed 5000 people…
This modern-day parable reminds us that our individual contributions, no matter how small they may seem, can become part of something much greater to a higher purpose. May we be inspired to share our own "loaves and fishes" with the world, trusting in the miraculous power of multiplication and the abundance of God's provision!
As we experience this new week, trusting God as our protector, let us pray for an increase in His mercy upon us as He guides us so we may faithfully pass through things that are of this world and not lose sight of the things that are eternal…