Seaside Lessons With Jesus: It’s A Miracle Any Way You Look At It John 6:1-13
Covered Dish…Pot Lucks…Community Meals…. They go by many names, depending on what church community you find yourself a part of. At times, they can be a cause for uneasiness. I can’t tell you the number of times in the last 21 years that I would peek into the fellowship hall after Sunday School before my final preparation for worship and find myself a little uneasy because there didn’t look to be near enough food for the crowd we were expecting at church. Only to find once the blessing and benediction had been offered and we walked back into the fellowship hall, that the tables were filled with enough food for everyone, plus some.
As a matter of fact, there has only been once in the last twenty-one years where the abundance of food appeared like it was not going to work out. I was just getting ready to go into the sanctuary and members of the fellowship team called me aside and asked me to take a look in the fellowship hall. The tables were practically bare…and it was a Sunday where we had more than a dozen college students and their families present to share their gift of music and testimony. That day we quickly sent a member out for two buckets of chicken and three large pizzas (always a hit with college kids) to supplement what had been brought in.
Of course, then there was the greatest fellowship meal ever held…I’m sorry cooking crews…but this tops anything y’all have ever or will ever do (and I say that with a great deal of respect after the amazing meal this past Wednesday and the ones I know will be coming).
Jesus had been healing…stirring up a great deal of controversy having healed on the Sabbath and having identified himself with God the Father. He began teaching. Then Jesus decided he needed a little time to himself. He needed an opportunity to breathe, to be refreshed, so he took off to find a quiet place by the Sea of Galilee. The crowds followed Him, so he retreated up the mountainside. (I can’t believe that this is the first time I have noticed this in 21 years of preaching…Jesus’ first choice for peace and refueling is seaside…second choice was mountain top.). The crowds, having seen the healings that had come from Jesus, continued to follow Him, most likely bringing their own sick. Jesus turned to Philip, maybe Philip was Jesus’ meal coordinator, and asked, “where are we going to get enough bread for these people to eat?” Philip looked at Jesus, as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me, even if there was a Harris Teeter bakery nearby, there is no way we could buy enough bread to feed all of these folks—six months of paychecks wouldn’t even be able to cover the cost…there’s just too many folks.”
Just how many folks there were is a matter of debate…let’s just go ahead and get that out there.
Who here is quick at counting? Come join me here. Men, stand up. Count how many men we have here. Okay, y’all can sit down. Women, stand up. Count how many women we have here. All right, y’all can sit down. Children and youth stand up. Count these for me please. If you add the women and children together how many do we have? How many men? In every church I have pastored the women and children have always been more than double the number of men.
You see in Jesus’ time, when you did a head count, you only counted the men. You didn’t count the women, you didn’t count the children. They didn’t count in society, so they weren’t going to count in a crowd gathering. We have always called this the feeding of the 5,000…but it is so much more. Let’s say there were five thousand men. Let’s also say that things haven’t changed in about two thousand years.
Five thousand men…let’s be conservative and say that the number of women and children were twice that…ten thousand. We could very possibly say that this is the feeding of the fifteen thousand. Could I find twelve of y’all from the cooking crews willing to take on that task?
Jesus looks to his twelve and encouraged them to go and see what they could scrounge up for a covered dish potluck for this crowd of possibly fifteen thousand. After working their way through the crowd, all they could come up with is a young boy that Andrew had come across. This kid had five loaves of bread and two fish. Andrew asked Jesus, “what good is that going to do with all these folks?”
Jesus told his twelve to have the people sit down. Jesus took that bread, took those fish and fed those thousands gathered there on the mountainside. The question so many want to ask is how in the world did Jesus do that?
There is the traditional pure miracle theory that I grew up with. This understanding is what we’ve always expected that Jesus prayed over those five loaves of bread and two fish and had His Disciples start walking through the crowd with them, breaking off pieces and passing them out and that somehow the more they broke off, the more the food regenerated—kind of like never-ending regenerating plate of hush puppies and shrimp at an all you can eat seafood restaurant. That bread and fish reproducing itself enough that they were able to fill up twelve baskets of food when all was said and done. Perfectly acceptable miracle…it’s Jesus after all we’re talking about…the one through whom all fish and grain were brought into existence. In his hands, the hands that restored sight to the blind and salvation to the world, there are no limits set in place by the laws of nature, those laws were put in place by him to begin with and can bend at His will.
There are those, however, that would try to discount any bending or breaking of the laws of nature…those that try to discount the miracles of Jesus. They try to theorize away this miraculous feeding.
Some suggest that the people actually had their own food and shared it amongst one another. Others suggest that it was simple being in Jesus presence that made the folks not hungry. Still others want to suggest that it is an allegory and that Jesus fed them spiritually and not literally. What I want to ask is “which, of any of those scenarios make this less of a miracle?”
It is a miracle if Jesus took just those five loaves and two fish and fed people until they hungered no more.
Is not also a miracle if Jesus took people who would have normally been selfish and looked out only for themselves and brought them to the point that they were willing to share their food with one another, so much food shared that there was an over abundance present, with enough extra to fill twelve baskets. Is it not a miracle that Jesus would use a little child, one who would not have been counted to start with, and take his generosity to lead folks to be generous with what they had (rather than squirreling it away and taking nibbles when no one else was looking).
Would it also have not been a miracle if Jesus, by his very presence satisfied the people’s natural and biological hunger? For Jesus to just meet all of the spiritual needs of the fifteen thousand gathered on that hillside would have been a miracle.
The point I’m trying to make, my friends, is that it doesn’t matter what happened, a miracle occurred and Jesus met the needs of those people with such an overwhelming abundance that their cups, or rather their baskets, overflowed.
Let us just say, as the Scriptures offer us, that Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish and fed all of the people. So what if it does not make sense to our post-modern, technologically thinking minds…Paul tells us straight-up that God has said that He “will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning.” God’s foolishness is wiser that our wisdom and His weakness is stronger than any of our strength. Look at the birth of a Savior in a manger, look at Savior that was raised as the son of a carpenter, look at a Savior who ate with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners, look at a Savior who was killed upon a cross. None of those things make sense to us, but God’s grace is not supposed to make sense.
What kind of sense does it make that you and I, the sinners that we are, would be forgiven? What kind of sense does it make for God Himself would come to us to show us the way? What kind of sense does it make that God would offer His own life for our sins? None, none of it makes any kind of sense…but it is God’s wisdom, because he knew that there was no other way, that without it we would be loss. God’s only weakness, the one that is stronger than any human strength, is Love, his love for us. A love that feeds us with grace more abundant than anything imaginable. God’s grace is always more than sufficient.
My brothers and sisters, if Jesus was able to feed the fifteen thousand people on the side of that hill with just five loaves of bread and two fish, just think what he can do with us. We live in a world that is hungry. People are starving…not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually. They are looking for something to feed that hunger…and sadly, too often they turn to drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, financial greed, cults, false religions or other unhealthy “junk foods” to try and fill that void. What they need is the same thing that we need…the only thing that can fill that hunger…our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ…and that is exactly what God can give them through us. Sometimes we may feel small and inadequate, like Andrew did about those loaves and fish…sometimes we feel like we don’t have the resources because we are not a big city that has hundreds in attendance, but God can use us, just as much as he can use them. If we offer ourselves up and ask God to bless us and send us forth and we seek His will as we go forth, then God will use us to fill all the hungry within our church and all those around us, and with his amazing grace, he will fill all our baskets to overflowing!
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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