Pentecost 10A2023
Matthew 14:13-21
What is enough? What is enough food for a household? What is enough money for security? What is enough talent to be “talented”? What is enough responsibility or prestige to make a job a good job? How many outfits are enough clothing? What square footage is a large enough home? Even, how much health or strength indicates we are healthy enough?
There are no objective answers to these questions. In pre-marital counseling once, I remember a young couple describing their early conversations about money. One had grown up in poverty, the other in comfortable middle class security. The one who grew up in middle class security had abashedly alerted his girlfriend that he needed to save money because he had almost no money in his checking account, he said. His girlfriend responded with compassion having regularly faced a literal zero balance in her accounts. “Oh, I’m so sorry” she said. “That’s really stressful. What’s your balance?” “A thousand dollars,” he said. And she realized, she told me, they had very different definitions of enough.
Similarly, when my now ex-husband and I were in the process of moving to Phoenix, we went apartment-hunting. After living in a three bedroom parsonage with a basement and a garage in Iowa, we couldn’t fathom a one bedroom apartment. How do people live in that small of space, we asked the leasing agents, amazed. But of course, after a couple years living in a two bedroom, 950 square foot apartment, we downsized to a 800 square foot one bedroom. And when I got divorced, I moved to a 700 square foot studio and then later, a 600 square foot studio. When it came time to buy a house, 874 square feet were definitely enough. My house is huge! To me.
Today, in our gospel story, the disciples don’t believe they have enough. Jesus has been healing people all day, and when evening comes, the disciples tell Jesus to send the crowds away so that they can go buy food for themselves. “You give them something to eat,“ Jesus replies. And they tell him, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” They believe they have, quote, nothing. But five loaves and two fish. Still, those five loaves and two fish turn out to be enough, more than enough, twelve baskets full of crumbs left over. How five loaves and two fish feed 5,000 men plus women and children, we don’t exactly know. Perhaps a miracle of multiplication—food blessed and broken and multiplied by Jesus. Perhaps a miracle of generosity among the crowd—of bringing forth their personal food stores and sharing with their neighbors, like a 1st century potluck. Whatever happened, five loaves and two fish are enough. They are not “nothing.”
It’s really tempting to look in our closets and say we have nothing to wear. It’s really tempting to open the refrigerator and say there’s nothing to eat. It’s really tempting to consider a nation or a people and say, “They have nothing.” In fact, last week I was talking on the phone with a retired pastor who lives in northwest Wisconsin. The companion synod of the northwest Wisconsin synod is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malawi on the southeast coast of Africa. The retired pastor has visited Malawi, and his wife is there currently with other folks from their synod. He told me Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa (the 12th poorest, I found out later). “They have nothing,” he said. But then he told me the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malawi is the fastest growing Lutheran church in the world. And we agreed, while the people of Malawi may have few material resources and while their suffering is real, they are rich, truly rich in spirit.
I have heard countless reports from travelers of the happiness of people in the developing world. And each time someone has reported this happiness, they are amazed. It is notable story. That’s why they’re telling me. The implicit question is always: How can a person be so happy when they have nothing? And of course the answer is that they don’t actually have nothing. They may have fewer material resources and may be challenged by unjust systems in significant ways, but they see what they have and are grateful. And because they are grateful, their resources are not simply material.
Friends, we have enough. We have so much. Every single one of us in this room. Just stop for a moment and consider the abundance we each experience. Food and clothing, home and electricity and running water, transportation and medical care, education and employment opportunities, time and energy to volunteer, family and friends and a church family. And for many of us, so much more beyond that! Travel and hobbies and the capacity to give away resources for the sake of the common good. We are so like the disciples in today’s story. We look at what we have, and we say, “We have nothing here” when in reality, God has provided abundantly.
One last story. In between college and seminary, I joined Lutheran Volunteer Corps and worked for a year at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness and illness on the west side of Chicago. Among my other duties, I led a simple Morning Prayer service a couple times a week. Each time, those who attended the service would go around the circle and pray aloud for the people who were still out on the street and for the world. One day, I prefaced the prayer time by suggesting that people pray for themselves. I thought: It’s so curious that people never pray for themselves…because they are really in need of prayer. Every resident of the shelter was experiencing homelessness and healing from an illness or an acute episode of a chronic illness. A third to a half of the residents were HIV positive. Nearly every resident was in recovery from a really destructive drug addiction. Many struggled with mental illness and were swamped in thousands of dollars of medical debt. When I completed intake paperwork with new residents, fairly routinely, when I got to the emergency contact person designation, the new resident didn’t have a single person to list there. So, it would be natural that people would want to pray for themselves, I thought. But my suggestion that morning was followed by an uncomfortably long silence. And then a woman whose name I don’t remember, but I remember she was HIV positive, had breast cancer, and was in recovery from a crack addiction, she said: Miss Sarah, I feel like all my prayers have already been answered. Around the room, heads nodded in agreement.
Even though we might see nothing, the five loaves and two fish we have are more than enough. For God provides abundantly. I gotta tell ya: sometimes, I don’t quite believe it either. But over and over, I have seen twelve baskets full of crumbs left over, abundance enough to share. Thanks be to God! Amen.