Matthew 14: 13-21

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 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.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Sermon Text

The needs of the world are always just outside our doors. When we enjoy the relative security of our homes – heated and cooled, full of all the comforts we’ve gathered over the years, we do so with the sight of people who do not have as many comforts always nearby. Outside our doors, there are people who need food, housing, security, and more than any physical good – they need to know that they are part of a community that cares about them. Life is often a pursuit of peace, something that is hard to make for oneself when nothing else is available. Peace can be given, but unless it is cultivated with a community that understands one another, then it will fade over time.

Although far from complete in its explanation of how people find comfort, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs gives a general understanding of the world we live in. A pyramid of needs builds toward “self-actualization,” the point at which a person is able to be fully realized. Though imperfect, the flow of this chart shows us how some people are able to flourish and others struggle again, and again, and again, in life. It is often not an internal failing of a person, but a failure of resources and of community. To be all that we can be, we need food and water, a cool place when it is hot and a warm one when it is cold. We need a house we can sleep in without worrying about if we’ll be harmed. We need people to love us, people to encourage us, and only once we have all this, can we really become all that we are capable of being.

There are always confounding factors, but it should be obvious to us that the people who really succeed in life, have support from other people to get them where they are. Many of us grew up with families that lifted us up, whether families of blood, adoption, or that we found along the way. Sometimes that help was in the form of money, food, or opportunities, but often it was just in a willingness to listen, to help, to push us forward into something new.

The crowds that followed Jesus did so were people looking for support. When we hear the accusations laid at Jesus’s feet, we get an idea for what kinds of people joined his movement. Jesus describes the accusations of his opponents in Matthew 11, where he says that they call him a drunk, a glutton, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners.[1] Interestingly, Jesus seldom calls the people who he associates with “sinners,” unless he is quoting his critics, but that is a topic for another time. The general theme is clear though, Jesus is associating with social rejects of various stripes. Tax collectors were on the payroll of Rome, and so were often seen as traitors and thieves. “Sinners,” is non-descript, but we can insert our own definitions to that category. Just think of the people we’re likely to complain about as we drive through town or as we scroll through Facebook. “Sinner,” is just an insult here, so whoever you choose to insult will be a good stand-in for who Jesus’s critics meant.

Jesus attracted these people because he had something no one else had. As his disciples describe in John, Jesus has “The Words of Life.”[2] The teachings he give are life-giving to those who hear them, not just because they offer Spiritual Rebirth, but because they tangibly effect life in the here and now. Jesus taught that Rome had no power of the Kingdom of God, a very political message, but one rooted in non-violence and passive resistance. He taught that the family made by people coming together as the Church was more important than whether you were born into a good family or a bad one. Jesus advocated for a world that is different than the one we live in, and the apostles and his followers made that world come to pass wherever they settled.

Jesus was dedicated to this goal, because he knew that God would supply anything that was needed when he created these communities. The crowds that gathered around him were a noisy bunch, a rabble that others would turn their nose up to.[3] Jesus refused to do what the world did, and instead offered the poor, the broken, the rejects, a place of honor among his people. Even when he had withdrawn to an empty field, and this group followed him, he would not turn them away without food. They came to hear him speak, and the words of life are powerful, but as we have already seen it is hard to focus on them when you can hear your stomach grumbling. Jesus reaches down into the depths of God’s mercy and makes a provocative claim – God will provide, no matter what we start with.

Oftentimes a ministry dies before it has even begun. When the people gather together and start counting up the costs, something Jesus recommends as good thinking, we see that the number of zeroes at the end of our estimate are a little more than we might be willing to jump into. The possibility of failure locks us into place and we begin to think of everyway that this money might go to waste if our plan does not work. So the money sits, is spent on something else more safe than that ambitious idea, and before we know it the money is shrinking despite the fact we did not use it to chase our dream ministry. That is the wonder of resources, they will be spent, the question is whether we spend them on something Godly or mundane. Do we just keep fussing with whether we will keep the lights on, or do we go out on a limb?

In my own life, I will admit that a pastor’s salary keeps things pretty tight for me. Grace and I both are taken care of by our Churches, but still with the price of things, with her medical bills, our student loan payments, and the debt we have to pay off because we needed credit to make up for what other bills took from what we needed to live for the month. With life in general, it is a struggle to make it to the end of the month sometimes. With rare exception I would say that most of us in this room know that feeling, prices go up but income does not. Prices go up and down, but they never go down quite as far as they once were. Life is expensive, and we are prone to worry about what is in our pockets.

With that being said, I have adopted an ethic in life. If a cause comes up for me to fund, and I have the means to fund it in that moment. I give to it. I have friends who have medical bills, surgeries to pay, and all other manner of costs that come up. When those GoFundMe pages come up on my page, or I have an opportunity to alleviate those costs – I do. I do that because we are all struggling these days, and so any help we can give is a blessed thing. I live that way with people I meet on the street, if I have cash and someone asks for some, I give it to them. When I was in DC, this was a very expensive practice – I carried a few fives, a few tens, and a twenty or two for this purpose. If I walked in Georgetown, that would empty out quickly.

One person might say that is irresponsible, that panhandlers are better off going to a soup kitchen or something than begging. Oftentimes that is true, you’re better off going to First Church in Clarksburg than to the GoMart because they might have other resources for you, and a food pantry can feed you for more than a day at a time if you can make it there. Yet, Jesus never turned away someone calling for help on the street. Jesus, who had nothing but God’s grace and whatever was in the common purse for that day. Jesus gave money to the poor when they asked, because he knew God would fill in the gaps.

Abusive ministers would here demand that everyone take out a check and write it out to the Church this instant! I am not that, though. I always trust my congregations that they will give as they are able. Instead, I invite us all to adopt a broader willingness to plan and serve our community as individuals and as a Church. When we gather for meetings, we should not be thinking “How will ever pay for this?” But instead, “We can do this, and we will fund this, how do we do that as best we can?” A slight shift, but an important one. When we see an opportunity to help people in our community, we should not come up with excuses why that would not be possible or why they might abuse that kindness, but instead say, “God will do what God will with my action, how do I give in a way that helps the most?”

God will not make you rich if you are generous. Jesus was homeless, that is the model we all follow. God will not make all your troubles melt away if you devote yourself to helping others. Oftentimes that sort of work will make things harder than just living our life for ourselves would be. No, instead Jesus offers something completely different for us. The life we pursue is not one based in worldly riches or superficial peace. It is the pursuit of genuine goodness, genuine kindness, genuine community. If we want to really help people, we have to give them what they need, and trust God will fill in the places we are not sure of yet. If we give from abundance, we will see God is always prepared to equip us for more and more goodness. Let us resolve to serve the world, and only count the cost with the generosity of God as the balance we rate our expenses against. – Amen.

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[1] Matthew 11: 18-19

[2] John 6:68

[3] The Greek term Οχλους (ochlous,) is used to describe the crowds that follow Jesus. In other contemporary texts, this word is almost always used with a negative connotation.