Have you noticed how so many of us give up before we even
try? An opportunity comes along and we shoot it down before it’s even off the ground.
Some of us think we are too old to learn new tricks. Or, too young and lacking experience or
wisdom. Or, not educated enough or not
rich enough or not beautiful enough or not articulate enough. We defeat
ourselves before we’ve even tried, and sometimes we trip up others before they
are out of the gate.
I suppose much of it has to do with being realistic. It’s
like there’s a calculator in our head, adding, subtracting, dividing, and
coming up short so that even before we started, we give up. God brings along
opportunities of a lifetime, something extraordinary, something special, and
guess what? We compute, calculate, estimate, come up short, and pass the
opportunity even before we try. Or, when
it comes to someone else’s dream, we poo-poo it with all the reasons it can’t,
or won’t, work.
Truth is, we have closets packed with thousands of
excuses why our boats are too small to sail in the big, deep side of the ocean
called life. So often we opt for the safer floating along in the shallow end,
dreams that are small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. We are called to a great, life-giving
adventure with Jesus, but we settle for the predictable, taking no risks, never
going outside our comfort zone, safe bet shallow-end of life.
Isn’t that an interesting juxtaposition for those of us
who call ourselves, “people of faith?”
This reminds me of the Gospel of John, chapter six. Let’s hear the story.
Jesus went across the Galilee Sea
(that is, the Tiberias Sea). 2 A large crowd followed him,
because they had seen the miraculous signs he had done among the sick. 3 Jesus
went up a mountain and sat there with his disciples. 4 It was
nearly time for Passover, the Jewish festival.
5 Jesus looked up and saw the large
crowd coming toward him. He asked Philip, “Where will we buy food to feed these
people?” 6 Jesus said this to test him, for he already knew
what he was going to do.
7 Philip replied, “More than a half
year’s salary worth of food wouldn’t be enough for each person to have even a
little bit.”
Following hard after Jesus and here they come scrambling
up the mountain - men, women, children, young, old, middle-aged, healthy, the
sick, the lonely, the confused, the ones struggling with addictions of various
kinds – they all just wanted to get to Jesus.
When Jesus saw them, all 5,000 of them, he turned to his
disciples and said, "Looks like we’re having guests and it's lunch time.
How about a picnic? Nothing beats a picnic on the mountainside overlooking the
Sea of Galilee. Let's have lunch together! Let's eat together, break bread
together." For Jesus this was an opportunity. An opportunity to glimpse
the heavenly banquet perhaps. For Jesus, this was a wonderful opportunity to
turn an ordinary day into something absolutely different.
But for the disciples, it was a problem - a big problem.
Phillip was the first one to speak up. Phillip did some quick calculations in
his head to see how much it all will cost.
“Let’s see, half a sandwich, multiplied by 5000 people, carry the two,
and . . . wow.”
How much is “Wow?”
In the movie, White Christmas,
Bing Crosby says it’s somewhere between “Ouch” and “Boing.”
To get a picnic for the 5,000 would take six months of
paychecks. Truth of the matter, a picnic on the mountainside was WAY out of the
budget.
John 6 records the minutes of the church’s first finance
committee meeting. “Interesting idea
you’ve got, Jesus, but we just don’t have that kind of money around here!”
The disciples of Jesus are invited to be part of one of
his greatest and most famous miracles, and their knee-jerk response is to list
all the reasons it can’t happen. Sound
familiar? We’ve had 2000 years to work
on this, and there are still times when Jesus presents us with an opportunity,
and we immediately turn it into a problem.
Let’s read on. Verse 8:
8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon
Peter’s brother, said, 9 “A youth here has five barley loaves
and two fish. But what good is that for a crowd like this?”
Andrew starts to look for a solution outside the
budget. Andrew was likely a Methodist –
his first instincts were to have a fundraiser or a potluck. I can see him working through the crowd. “Hey everyone, Jesus needs your help. We’re going to have a picnic, but we don’t
have any food. Does anyone have anything
to contribute?”
Andrew should probably not be put in charge of the
stewardship campaign, because among all those 5000, he comes back with . . . a
child . . . a peasant child whose mother had the foresight to pack along a
meager lunch of five barley loaves and two pickled herring. Well, it’s something, but it’s just not
enough.
It’s just bread and fish.
No cheese or grapes. No dates or
figs. No pomegranates, no olives, no
wine. No tables, no chairs, no plates,
no napkins, no knives and forks. “We just don’t have everything we need.”
Again, here’s an opportunity, but it’s viewed as another
problem. Not enough. Too little to go around. Limited resources. “We just don’t have, We just don’t have, We
just don’t have.”
It is perhaps human nature to focus on what we don’t
have, even when what we do have is a gift.
Hand a HOT NOW Krispy Kreme donut to some folks, and they’ll complain
that it has a hole in the middle. Or,
“It doesn’t have sprinkles! No chocolate
frosting! No custard filling!”
Bob Sawyer says these are the kind of people who wouldn’t
be happy in a pie factory. He says you could serve them ice cream, and they’d
complain to you that it’s the wrong flavor.
Do you want to be the kind of person who is grateful for
the donut, or upset because it has a hole in it? Shall we be grateful for every gift we have
received, or resentful that we didn’t get more?
While it is perhaps human nature to focus on what we
don’t have, as people of faith, we must do better. In fact, if there is a phrase or a mindset that
needs to be expunged from the people of faith, it’s the notion that “we just
don’t have.” Maybe money or people or talent or resources. We just don’t have this, we just don’t have
that. But the more we focus on what we
don’t have, the less we are able to appreciate and build on what we do have. Further, what does it say about our faith,
what does it say about the one in whom we have faith, when the first words out
of our mouths are, “We just don’t have.
It just won’t work. “We just can’t
do it.”
Friends, this matters deeply, because whatever we choose to focus on gets
multiplied within us. When we
focus on what we don’t have, we fall into discontent and dissatisfaction. We learn to look for problems rather than
possibilities, we get hung up on obstacles rather than opportunities. And then, we begin to focus on what others
don’t have in a fault-finding sort of way, and we are sucked into a black hole
of criticism and judgment toward others.
But, when we learn to take notice of the things we do have, well, that also gets
multiplied within us. We become grateful
and content. We begin to notice and
appreciate what others have – celebrating the gifts God has uniquely given
them, extending grace toward them, opening ourselves up to receive from them,
be blessed by them, and bless them in return – the kind of relationships that
Jesus would describe as the kingdom of God unfolding among us.
That’s spiritual maturity – God working on us so that we
become more the kind of people who are grateful for the donut, and less the
sort who are upset because it has a hole in it.
Becoming a mature disciple of Jesus is a lifetime process
of transformation. Anybody here
finished, spiritually? Anybody here
still a work in progress? Discipleship
is a lifetime of growth so that we come to the place where we see things as
Jesus sees them. We move from our
scarcity mindset to his abundance mindset.
We stop fretting over what we lack, and to develop appreciation for what
we DO have, and to have the
faith that whatever it is, when placed in the hands of Jesus, he can and will
do something extraordinary with it.
Verses 10-13:
10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit
down.” There was plenty of grass there. They sat down, about five thousand of
them. 11 Then Jesus took the bread. When he had given thanks,
he distributed it to those who were sitting there. He did the same with the
fish, each getting as much as they wanted. 12 When they had
plenty to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather up the leftover pieces, so
that nothing will be wasted.” 13 So they gathered them and
filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves that had been
left over by those who had eaten.
Didn’t look like much – five loaves and two fish. What is that among so many people? In our hands, not much. But in the hands of Jesus, it’s enough. More than enough, in fact. Plenty to go around and then 12 baskets of
leftovers.
The disciples saw problems. Jesus was trying to get them to see
possibilities. They saw obstacles while
he was pointing to opportunities. They
were fretting and saying, “It’s not enough!” but Jesus says, “Have faith,
there’s actually an abundance.”
I call that “Jesus math.”
“Jesus math” can’t be done on a standard calculator. It won’t balance in QuickBooks, and there’s
not a formula in an Excel spreadsheet that will get you there.
Jesus math will drive your CPA nuts, because it won’t add
up to them. My grandfather was an
accountant his entire adult life, and I guarantee you, his books always
balanced. He volunteered as the
treasurer in their church, and even as the treasurer for what was, at the time,
the entire Maryland-Virginia Annual Conference.
I learned a lot from Papa about financial responsibility
– the value of a dollar, and that they don’t grow on trees. When it came to spending money, Papa could be
a little tight. You might even say cheap. The man knew how to squeeze a dime until it
squeaked, and then squeeze a little more, just for good measure.
There’s one place, however, where he was incredibly generous,
and that was toward God and others, particularly those in need. You see, he was not only a man of math, he was
also a man of faith. He’d tell you that
he didn’t exactly know how, but he knew that whatever he gave to God through
his church was multiplied and went further than he ever thought possible. And when everybody was bringing what they had
and giving it to Jesus, when you put it all together, it far exceeded the total
of what they had all brought, and much good was done through their collective efforts.
The accountant in him would always say, “I’m not sure how
it works, I just know that it does. And
the more we give, the more our own needs are taken care of and then some. If you don’t practice it, I can’t explain it
so you’ll understand how it works. I
don’t know how it works, I
just know that it does.”
That’s how Jesus math works. It starts with a focus on and gratitude for
what we have. And when, with cheerful
and grateful hearts, we place it in Jesus’ hands, he multiplies it in order to
transform lives, starting with the life of every grateful giver. It reminds me that God’s been in the
transformation business, using the ordinary to accomplish the extraordinary,
for some time.
Friends, everything we are and have is a gift from God –
not only to us, but to the world through
us. We are blessed in order to
be a blessing. Knowing that God will
multiply what we have, let’s be people of gratitude and grace.
Let’s be ready to be part of the next miracle.
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