The Lord provides and we give. Let me say that again, the Lord provides and we give. That is at the root of our Christian value: “Giving of Yourself” or “Active Generosity.” The Lord provides and we give.
After a long day of person after person coming up to Jesus to be healed, the stomachs of the disciples and stomachs of the thousands of people began to get the best of them. “This is a deserted place,” the disciples reminded Jesus, as if he needed reminding. “The hour is now late;” they continued, “send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
Out of concern for the people who had come to see Jesus, the disciples wanted the people, and their hungry stomachs, to get into town before it became too late for them to find some food.
Believe me, I know what it looks like when four children do not get fed on time. As you probably already know, it is not pretty. Usually screams and fists and time-outs become involved. I do not even want to imagine what 5,000 men, plus women and children all hangry at the same time would possibly look like.
Now, Jesus had the same concern for the people as the disciples, but what he said next is quite shocking. Jesus said to the disciples, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” You heard Jesus right, he said “You give them something to eat.”
Now, I know that the men and women of this church have historically been able to feed a great many people, but 5,000 men plus women and children? Where would you get that much food? How much money would it cost just to provide that sort of meal? Well, I will tell you. Let have taken the time to calculate. So, 5,000 men, plus 5,000 women, plus an average of four children per family (they had bigger families back then), would add up to 30,000 people, if my calculations are correct. Now let us take that 30,000 people times $13.50 a plate in today’s money, and we come to the small sum of $405,000 total to feed all these people for one meal.
A disciple in the back has the nerve to pipe up enthusiastically, “We have five loaves of bread and two fish.”
Actually, that is not true. The real reaction is not enthusiastic at all. The Bible says that the disciples replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” Did you hear that? The first thing out of their mouths is, “We have nothing here…” “We have nothing.”
I cannot tell you the number of times that I have heard, “We have nothing.” We should do something about the homeless in our community. “We have nothing.” We should serve a meal to the poor, hungry, and lonely. “We have nothing.”
And, maybe it is true! If I were asked, “Can you provide some lobster for a meal tonight in say…thirty minutes?” living near the almost nonexistent town of New Albany, Pennsylvania, I could honestly answer, “We got nothing.”
Or, maybe you have had a completely emotionally draining week, and when you get home and crash on the couch and when you get a call that a neighbor is in crisis, and that their marriage just fell apart, you think to yourself, “I have nothing.”
“We have nothing,” it is a mindset of scarcity. It is a mindset that assumes defeat from the start. But, I would like to point out that “we have nothing” never got anybody to the moon. “We have nothing,” never helped a nation rebuild after a devastating disaster.
Remember, in the beginning of creation, there was nothing, and God created something. God created light and dark. Then, God created the sun and moon and stars to rule the light and dark, to take over the job from God. And, it was good.
God created dry ground and plants and animals. God blessed the animals, allowing them to multiply. Then God created humans out of the dirt in order to rule over the ground and the animals so that they can multiply. Humans were created to be a helper with God in the job of blessing creation and making it thrive. And, it was good.
And,
the humans were themselves blessed so that they could multiply and then there
would be more people with the task of making sure that all creation was blessed
and thrived and multiplied. And, it was
all very good.
From the very start we have been in the business of multiplying all that we touch. We were created to be in the business of multiplication. And, that is saying a lot from the lips of someone who is terrible at math. But, what I am trying to say is that from the very start we have been people who were created to trust that there will always be enough. We are not a people who were created to believe that “we have nothing.” God is able to create enough. God is able to multiply. God always provides enough. The Lord provides and we give.
Looking at the five loaves of bread and the two fish Jesus says, “Bring them here to me.” Jesus blesses the loaves and the fish, the Bible tells us. This seems like such a minor detail. I think that when I was a kid, when I heard that Jesus blessed the meal, I just thought that the story was reminding me to never forget to pray before we eat. But, blessing in the Bible means something specific. Coming right out of the creation story, God’s blessing means multiplying. It means abundance. If you are asked to bless the meal, you are actually being asked to pray that it be abundant. If you are asked to bless the animals, you are actually being asked to make sure that they thrive and have an abundance of offspring. So, when Jesus blesses the loaves and the fish, the baskets actually overflow in blessing. $450,000 worth of food flows out of the baskets of food that the disciples, then, give to the people. God provides and we give.
Do you want to know what the real problem with the “we have nothing” attitude is? It assumes that the Lord forgets about us. It assumes that the Lord does not care and does not provide. It assumes that the Lord was mistaken at the beginning of creation when God made us partners in making sure that the world is thriving and blessed. The “we have nothing” attitude assumes something to be true that is not. It assumes that we are not enough.
That attitude reinforces our deepest fears that we are not enough. We are not good enough. We are not smart enough. We are not lovable enough. We are not worth enough. It tells the lie that we tell ourselves over and over again when we look at our faces in the mirror and nitpick over every single flaw. “You are not enough.”
Do you want to know what Jesus actually says to the disciples when they are confronted with the thousands of people who need food? Our English translations tell us that Jesus says, “You give them something to eat,” or another reads, “You give them food to eat.” But, do you want to know what it actually says? This is really amazing. It literally says, “Give to them you to eat.” Our translations throw in the word “something” or “food” to make it sound pleasing to the ear, but it actually says, “Give to them you to eat.” “You” are the gift the people need, Jesus is saying. “You” are the one who has been given to be a blessing to the people. “You” are enough. “You” can provide. “You” are the real gift. The real gift Jesus Christ gives to the people is “you.”
At the top of the sermon I repeated the phrase, “The Lord provides, you give.” That is actually just another way of saying, “The Lord provides you.”
When retiring from the food service department of the school, the “lunch lady” as she was affectionately called, was given a party. The party was unexpectedly big as former students came to honor the woman who had scooped up mashed potatoes and plopped them on their trays as children. To the woman, it was a repetitive job of cooking and serving, cooking and serving day in and day out. But, to the students who were touched by her smile, kindness, and listening ear in the lunch room, she provided so much more than an abundance of mashed potatoes.
One student said it best, “On my worst days, when I felt the most picked on, the most alone, the most like a ‘nobody,’ I would come in here and you would smile at me, love me from across the table, and show me that I am still somebody. On those days, God gave me you.”
“Giving of yourself” or “Active Generosity” is not simply writing out your check to help (though it could include that). It is so much more. It is living the life of generous love that God gave. It is living the life of partnership with God in blessing the world. It is living the life that Christ lived as he gave of himself to heal, to feed, and on the cross to save, so that all might live a life of abundance. “Giving of yourself” or “Active Generosity” is living as the person that God created you to be when God took some dirt and then molded and shaped your every piece and part. The Lord provides, and because God does, we give. It is who we are as children of God and siblings of Jesus Christ.
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