Sermon
John 6:1-15 “Leftovers”……… ……Sunday October 20, 2024
I was standing in a very long line at Costco the other day and I overheard a few people discussing what they were planning on doing with their Thanksgiving left overs. There was talk about turkey potpie, turkey soup, some kind of turkey mashed potato stuffing casserole thing that sounded so delightful I questioned, for the briefest of moments, my commitment to never ever cooking a turkey other than when family was coming over for either Thanksgiving or Christmas.
As recipes and ideas were shared back and forth between waiting shoppers I not only found my mouth watering I also found myself thinking that there is truly something wonderful about left overs. Beyond the fact that some food just tastes better heated up the next day, I think what it really comes down to is the feeling of abundance. When there are leftovers it means there was more than enough goodness to go around. And unfortunately that’s not something we tend to focus on too much in this life of ours, the abundance of goodness.
Our story for today from John’s gospel will be familiar I suppose but just in case it’s easy enough to paint the picture. The Festival of the Passover is about to begin which means there are people everywhere. Travelers have packed the roads, families are getting ready for guests, preparations are underway for an exciting time of year, basically, it’s a just a whole lot of goings on.
The main destination for most Jews is of course Jerusalem. Jesus, however, has put about as much distance as he possibly can between himself and that great city. Attempting to dodge the chaos and claiming a moment of peace he and the disciples sit on mountain over looking the shores of the Sea of Galilee. John doesn’t say where exactly they are, Luke says it’s near a city called Bethsaida, Matthew and Mark, who also speak of this moment, simply say it is a deserted place. But regardless of geography the place isn’t deserted for long.
I imagine they hear the crowd before they see it. A rumbling, a vibration in the ground they are resting on. As he looks up Jesus he takes it in, this large crowd of people who have been following him, looking for him, desperate to be near him.
He looks at them and does not do what one might expect, or what I figure I would do when I need a rest but duty calls. He does not sigh or avoid eye contact, he does not hide behind the closest shrub, he does not ask the disciples to send them all away. He simply looks at them and asks flabbergasted Phillip “Where do you think we’ll get enough food to feed every one?” And what happens next is something so incredible we still talk about it 2000 years later.
The details aren’t clear about how exactly Jesus performs this miracle – maybe the gospel writers didn’t know, or maybe everyone knew and it was so obvious to them that they didn’t feel the need to write it down. Maybe it was truly a supernatural phenomenon, fives barley loaves and two fish spread among 5000. Or maybe the miracle was that everyone who had extra actually felt open to sharing what they had.
What we are told is that Jesus gets them all to sit down (an accomplishment in and of itself) receives a gift of food from a young boy who Andrew has pointed out (for the record I’m pretty sure Andrew had intended that to be a flippant “how can this kid and his measly offering be of any use?” illustration rather than a well intentioned suggestion that ended up saving the day), gives thanks to God for what they have, and starts passing it around. And by the time the meal is over I suspect the disciples are sharing recipes back and forth as they decide what to do with all the left overs.
It’s a great story, so great in fact, it’s told by all four gospel writers six different times with only slight variations. And whether it’s 4000 fed 5000 fed or 20,000 fed, the intention of the writers seems to be the same. First off they want us to know that Jesus really fed a whole ton of people a whole lot of the time, and secondly it was a really really important part of his ministry. Feeding people, literally putting food in their bellies, was important to him.
I often imagine Jesus gathering people together as he travelled around the countryside. Inviting them to take a break from their hard work or hard lives, he would sit with them in the shade of an olive tree, find a way to feed them, and then share story after story– one about a Sower spreading fistfuls of seed all over the place, one about the tiniest mustard seed that grew into the greatest of trees, one about a farmer pulling weeds, one about a landowner paying his workers more than expected.
And all of it, every moment, every illustration, was about extravagance. He was telling them that there was abundantly more than enough to go around. And he shared these stories with people totally unfamiliar with the concept. These were people who lived hand to mouth. If they were lucky enough to get wages it went to buying food and paying the tribute they owed to the empire. There was never anything left over. And yet here was this man, travelling from town to town with nothing but the clothes on his back and the sandals on his feet, telling them about a love from God that was so big, so powerful, so generous, so ridiculously over the top enormous that it couldn’t be contained.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the response to this particular miracle is that the people want to take Jesus by force and make him their King…what can I say, humans be human…and maybe it’s why he had to keep doing this one miracle over and over again. It was just so hard for them to wrap their minds around the idea that he wasn’t going to be a King like the ones they were used to or frankly wanted.
For him it wasn’t about power or kingship, it wasn’t about likes or trends. What he wanted them to see was that when we gather in community, when we soak in God’s love, mercy and grace, we’ll discover that there is enough. Enough time, and money, and food, and love, and room. The very creation that surrounds us should serve as an example of God’s abundance. There are enough resources on this planet to go around and God truly longs for us to be cared for in such a way that no one needs to go hungry.
But abundant thinking is not how most of us are hardwired. Our mindset is often based on the idea that maybe God can’t really be trusted all the time, or maybe there really isn’t enough to go around and we should take matters into our own hands? And once we’re afraid that there isn’t enough then we easily give into the impulse to take care of me and mine first and to hell with everyone else. Remember when the Pandemic started and everyone lost their God given minds and the world ran out of toilet paper? As soon as the idea crosses someone’s mind that there isn’t enough people panic. And when people panic, well, we’re not at our best let’s just say that.
As Rev. Jennifer Andrews-Weckerlyone describes, “Much of the time our faith mirrors that of Philip and Andrew, who could not see past the six months’ wages or the meager five loaves and two fish. We tend to base our living on our own scarcity or even on our own fears of insufficiency. So we hoard and save and worry and end up living life in small and safe measures. We pull back when we should push forward. We give in to our fear of a shortfall rather than exercising faith in God’s [promise of] abundance. But Christians are constantly on call to go places where we have never been, to do things that we have never attempted, and to be things we have never envisioned.” All of which says to me that to answer this call from an extravagantly generous God means we need to engage with the world around us from the same place of extravagant generosity.
Karoline Lewis wrote, “Abundance, as it turns out, is never just about you and Jesus alone, as much as we want it to be that way, hope it will be that way, [it is really] about bringing us into relationships…into a community”. So like last week when it really didn’t matter whether Joel was talking about Locusts or Armies, this week how the miracle happens doesn’t matter either. What matters is that we open ourselves to the abundance of God’s life giving grace and then allow that abundance to impact how we live and move in the world around us.
Karoline continues “The offer of abundant grace compels us to see when it is absent…and then to do something about it. [Abundance is] about lives touched. It is about making a material difference in a broken and shattered world”.
When we truly believe there is enough well, then we start to see opportunities for generosity everywhere. Like left overs that taste better the next day, God’s abundance is best seen when passed on to others. On this World Food Sunday, may we open ourselves to this abundance that God longs for us to know that we might not store it up for ourselves but share these glorious left overs with everyone we meet.
Amen.
