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When empty, you won’t go wrong thinking of Jesus as a filling
station. John 6:9 We have exactly five loaves of bread and two fish. I. Jesus sympathizes. This is his first gift, sympathy-not preaching, teaching, healing-but sympathizing. And seeing the crowds, Jesus took pity. Sympathy starts with seeing, seeing with the soul. From there it passes to the masses. You think a cold is contagious, try compassion! The virus of Jesus’ love touches a young lad in the crowd, one who will come to see that we don’t lose what we give away; we don’t gain immortality by getting, but by giving. He gives away not part of his lunch, not much of his lunch, but all of his lunch. His mother has prepared his lunch that morning. The loaves are barley, poor folk’s bread, the food of the contemptible. The fish are the size of sardines, pickled from the Sea of Galilee, a delicacy. Here we have an anomaly-poor folk’s bread, rich folk’s meat. The shell of poverty with the inner core of plenty. This is the picture that sustains us in a world where one-third of the population have an annual income of $100, where 70 million die each year of starvation, where 400 million suffer chronic malnutrition. This is a world that hungers for the living bread, the inner resolution that drives the outer revolution. This schoolboy, this young ambassador of tomorrow, then goes off, making his way to school. On the way, perhaps he joins the crowd going to see Jesus. When you come to Jesus, always bring your lunch, always anticipate a hunger to be generated. Thousands of people walk the nine miles around the Sea of Galilee to hear Jesus, yet bringing nothing but hungry hearts. They are like people who pray for rain, but fail to bring umbrellas. They are prepared to pray for what they are not prepared to receive. They come prepared to say what they want from the Lord, but not to consider what the Lord wants from them. I asked God to give me a blessing, and God asked me to become a blessing. God says, if I give you health, it is for you to lift the fallen, to rescue the perishing. If I give you wealth, it is for you to enable the poor, to comfort the homeless. If I give you education, it is not to make for better living, but for better life. If I give you power, it is for you to help the powerless. God does not equip freight trains to pull little red wagons. God does not do for us what we can do for ourselves. We ask God for bread. God gives us seed, soil, and sunshine. We ask God for peace. God gives us the pieces of peace and challenges us to make peace. We ask God for the Holy Spirit to fill all our wants. God gives us the Holy Spirit to tell us what we want. And what we want we already have-God. We cry from thirst, blinded to the drift that has taken us into fresh waters. Let down your bucket and drink! Then pass the bucket, please! II. Jesus Systematizes. God is a systems designer. God knows we accomplish nothing without a format, a design for success. Whether it’s a scheme for creation (Adam in Eden), or re-creation (Jesus on Calvary), God structures. Tell the people to sit down. Order. Segments. Aisles. Structure. Then the engineer takes inventory: "What do we have to begin with?" Jesus takes stock of what we have. The disciples say, "Nothing but . . ." Jesus says, "We have everything we need." Remember the tiny grain of mustard seed. Remember "where two or three are gathered in my name." Remember the bread in the wilderness. Remember your hard-time diet of oatmeal, no meal, and missed meal? Inventory. Then comes prayer. And He took the loaf and gave thanks. There is no order in your life, there is no inventory in your life unless your life is a life of prayer. Then the trio combine, resulting in the abundance, the leftovers. It is a sin to waste food. America’s garbage cans could feed the world. New York and California have an 18 percent hunger rate, yet 22 percent of California’s waste is food. The leftover pieces. It is not that our eyes are too big, or our hearts too small, but that our systems are too narrow-we neglect the broken pieces because we do not structure for the broken hearts. The ancient Jewish custom was to collect the broken pieces to keep from taking God’s grace for granted. The belief: if you do not gather the pieces, the demons will gather you. Perhaps like the people of old, we do well to carry little baskets, so we learn how to use what we have; so we learn that if we know how to use what we have, the Lord will give us more. God can fill you when you are empty, but not when you are full-full of yourself. To empty ourselves we must examine ourselves. Then we must find ways to correct the imbalances when we fail the examination. Claude Anderson, former Secretary of Commerce, reminds the fair-minded that every morning White Americans wake up to owning 98% of America’s wealth. Blacks have a combined net worth of less than 1%. Blacks rank high in the consumer economy, perhaps some $562 billion, making Black America the ninth richest economy in the world; but this is rich in spending, not producing. There’s room enough, there’s bread enough, there’s fish enough for everyone, if we not only devise ways to teach how to fish and how to farm, but how to own the farm, how to own the pond. III. Jesus Saves. Jesus satisfies our deepest needs, the needs of body, the needs of soul, the needs of mind. Each needs food. Each needs the bread of life. Ho! Everyone who is hungry, come and eat. Jesus will fill you up and turn you around. Hallelujah, Jesus saves! Our poverty is caused by our feeding off of each other, rather than our feeding each other. Our speaking about each other, rather than speaking to each other. Since World War II, we have had 300 small wars in which 10 million people were killed. At this moment, a fourth of the world’s nations are involved in local wars. Our worst wars, of course, are within ourselves. It is well said, some people give and forgive, some people get and forget. The young lad at Jesus’ revival has no conflict about giving his lunch to the Master. He senses the truth of the axiom: the best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your arm. Only he’s a giver, not a taker. He’s not looking for a helping hand for himself, but for others. He doesn’t look around to see who else might be giving their all. He doesn’t question the hand that reaches out in supplication, seeking a way out of no way. He doesn’t assume an attitude and remind everyone of the obvious-this is my personal property! He must have come from a glorious home environment, one, which teaches that we have no one except each other; either we all eat together, or we all starve together. Jesus takes the schoolboy’s lunch and blesses it. Then it is multiplied . . . by example. That is, when the young lad pulls out his lunch, others begin to do the same. In shame do some of them bring their packets out of hiding. Then they all begin to share with one another, so that some 12 baskets of food are left over. The abundance of open hearts. It only takes one to start the process. Will you be that one? Dear Lord, not only do I give my bread, my fish away, but dear Lord, I give myself away. Tis all that I have to give. And thank you, Jesus, for giving yourself to me, and for me. You are living bread. Never have I seen the hungry go begging for bread as long as you are around. And never shall the hungry go begging for bread as long as I am around. Rich or poor, we have everything we need. Ours is not a question of resources, but a question of will. We recall the ship off of the Canadian coast sending out a distressful SOS "We’re out of fresh water. Save our souls!" Back comes the immediate response: "Let down your buckets." Without their knowing it, they have drifted into the fresh waters of the St. Lawrence River. So do we have what we need: the Kingdom of God is here in the midst of us. Use what you have! Let down your buckets where you are! Share what you have. Pass the blessing, please! |
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