Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, July 26, 2009

It is nice to read this familiar Loaves and Fishes alongside its precursor in the Old Testament from 2 Kings. It is a reminder that even with Jesus, very little is new. Most of what he did and said was building upon a rich and lengthy tradition. Knowing that he inherited a rich tapestry of stories and events reminds us that we too go through life with such resources. It is a reminder that our questions and situations are indeed ours, but they are also part of an ancient human experience.

In this first story from 2 Kings we see an act of generosity in the midst of a famine. In the preceding passage before today’s, we read that there was a great famine in the land. In the face of this, a person known only as “a man from Baal-Shalishah” seems a) to be doing well in spite of the famine, and b) shares from his good fortune. This first act of generosity is followed up by a second in which Elisha says “give it to the people and let them eat.” Rather than hoarding this gift or suggesting that as a spiritual gift it was untouchable, Elisha says – “share this generosity with all.” After his servant balks, suggesting that there is not enough for a hundred people, Elisha repeats his request, this time adding the weight of faith, saying ‘give it to the people,’ for thus says the Lord. In his faith, Elisha equates generosity with abundance with sharing with holiness.

This is a pattern that we too know well.

One of the commentators on this text I used was writing from Fargo, North Dakota, the scene of floods again this spring. In the midst of that crisis, generosity begetting abundance begetting holiness was evident all over town in the form of teams working together to build temporary dykes. On the one hand, she wrote, it was a crisis; on the other it was a holy time. Furthermore, she said, this should not be a surprise as it is repeated time and time again.

Our family had a somewhat unfortunate mishap while driving a rural road in North Dakota just a couple of weeks ago. Stranded on a Sunday night, out of cellphone service and 2 ½ miles from any home, farm or town – we were completely dependent on the sacred and “no strings generosity” of the few farmfolks that lived in the area. While the area included some of Tammy’s relatives, we nonetheless never doubted that these folks lived by this same formula modeled by Elisha. Give not because you get something back, but give because in the life of a community (however large or small it is defined), sharing is the evidence of holiness.

As we baptize young Ben today, we build into the baptismal liturgy the expectation that parents do not have to raise their child in the faith alone. We commit to the principal of sharing life and faith with all children, indeed, all in our community. We do not do this so Ben will love us, we do it because to share in the faith is a holy experience. To witness the growth and development of young people, to share in the aging of the older among us, to walk with one another through life’s crises is indeed holy. And it begins with our willingness to give and share.

This is not always easy, of course. This is often quite counter cultural.  In his book of collected sermons, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote a prayer titled, “On Generosity.”

On Generosity (Brueggemann)
On our own, we conclude:
That there is not enough to go around
We are going to run short
Of money
Of love
Of grades
Of publications
Of sex
Of beer
Of members
Of years
Of life
We should seize the day
Seize the goods
Seize our neighbor’s good
Because there is not enough to go around.

And in the midst of our perceived deficit:
You Come
You come giving bread in the wilderness
You come giving children at the 11th hour
You come giving home to exiles
You come giving futures to the shut-down
You come giving Easter joy to the dead
You come – fleshed in Jesus.
And we watch while
The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
The lepers are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor dance and sing.
We watch
And we take food we did not grow and
Life we did not invite and
Future that is gift and gift and gift and
Families and neighbors who sustain us
When we do not deserve it.
It dawns on us – late rather than soon
That ‘you give food in due season
You open your hand
And satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

As we read John’s gospel version of the loaves and fishes – and it appears in every gospel – we see that the story has been shaped and told in a way that suggests it is less about bread for people and more about Jesus as the bread of life. The emphasis for John is less about bread and more about the way Jesus embodies the ongoing, life-giving, transforming generosity of God. It underscores that as children of God we give because we have first received, that we know God wants us to share from a sense of abundance, not hoard from a feeling of scarcity.

But the story is also a reminder that there will always be those among us, or parts within us, that will rebel against such generosity. There will always be an overly practical side like what we find in the disciples of Jesus or the servant of Elisha, saying, “we can’t give this away?” or we “don’t have enough” “let them take care of themselves,” or “what if the recipients of our generosity are not grateful?”

I am glad that these texts have these protest sections, because I think they highlight how easy it is to let the practicalities of giving obscure the call of God to live with a spirituality of giving.

It is good for us to participate in things like Interfaith Hospitality Network, which we hosted this week. Giving to others who are different from us in so many ways, and sometimes giving to those who are less grateful than we would like, reminds us that the “no strings generosity” of Jesus means we give not because we get something back, but because it is essential to our spirituality, essential to our well being, and essential to creating a community of abundance.

Over the last decade or so, there has been a surge in volunteerism on the part of young people. This is a great thing, as long as the service work is done not just to pad a resume, to fill one’s own need. If service and sharing of time loses its intrinsic spiritual and emotional value, it becomes another commodity we try to control.

Every time I have taken a group of volunteers to another culture or country to do “work,” we have inevitably had to deal with different expectations of time and work. As a group of North Americans we come ready to roll up our sleeves. We want to be efficient and to maximize our time – after all we are only there a short time and we want to help. It is easy to get irritated when things are a bit disorganized, when supplies are late, when the technology of the work is out dated. It is easy to feel that we are “wasting our precious time,” and lose sight of the purpose of the experience – offering ourselves to others in service and love without regard for what we get back. While it is good to build a home or build a garden or some other project, the primary purpose of such experiences is to deepen our awareness of this connection between abundance and generosity and sharing and sacredness. If we learn that, we will make a difference for a lifetime, which in the end is much more important than one house.

In the 2 Kings text, the man from Baal-shalishah brought his first fruits as an act of devotion, a spirituality that recognizes all that he had was a gift from God. He did not give them because there was a need in the crowd – he gave them because of his own faith/devotional practice.

How do we build a faith around no strings generosity? How do we organize our money, time, resources and spirit around giving because the very act of giving is good for our soul, is good for the soul of our community? How do we orient our lives to give not because others need it, but because our faith and our community depends on it.

How might open our prayer life to our sadness, grief and anger at giving that has gone unnoticed? How do we let go of expectations we have of others and their level of gratefulness – be they our children, our parents, our co-workers, people at the places we volunteer?

For Brueggeman, the answer is to return to the source of all love, wonder and mercy – the extravagant, the unnecessary, the no strings generosity of God…

Brueggeman’s prayer concludes
By your giving,
break our cycles of imagined scarcity
Override our presumed deficits
Quiet our anxieties of lack
Transform our perceptual field to see
The abundance…mercy upon mercy
Blessing upon blessing.
Sink your generosity deep into our lives
That your muchness may expose our false lack
That endlessly receiving, we may endlessly give
So that the world may be made Easter new,
Without greedy lack, but only wonder
Without coercive need, but only love
Without destructive greed but only praise
Without aggression or invasiveness…
All things Easter new…
All around us, toward us and
By us
All things Easter new.
Finish your creation…in wonder, love, and praise. Amen

May the Spirit of God transform our lives and may our giving transform us.

Today’s texts

2 Kings 4:42-44
Elisha Feeds One Hundred Men

A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, ‘Give it to the people and let them eat.’ But his servant said, ‘How can I set this before a hundred people?’ So he repeated, ‘Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, “They shall eat and have some left.” ’ He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.

John 6:1-21-

Feeding the Five Thousand

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ He said this to test him, 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 a little.’ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.