Last Wednesday at the men’s breakfast we were talking about the election and concluded that the real motive people have for which candidate they choose is, “What’s in it for me?”
Now that may sound pretty
selfish. It can be. It may be most often how people choose. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be overly
greedy. You’re going to vote according
to what is best for you. It’s hard to
vote in a way that hurts you, no matter how good or moral it may be.
Consider this. Let’s say you live in an average three
bedroom house in Victor. You have the
standard two-bathrooms, a yard, and some landscaping. It’s on a nice street with nice
neighbors. You’ve lived in the house for
years and just got done paying off the mortgage. It’s been a big investment and it has taken a
lot of work to own it. Then a proposal
comes along to build a large complex of low-income housing nearby. You conclude, probably with good reason, that
crime will go up. Less friendly
neighbors will be moving in. And you know
full well it’s going to lower your house’s value; probably by a lot. Now the good Christian thing to do is to
welcome the new development. It will
allow people to come into a great neighborhood.
More people can come into the excellent school system in Victor. They’ll be able to do so affordably. But when you consider that you’ve just worked
hard for years and years, and that hard earned value is going to just
evaporate, you’re at best going to swallow hard before you’d vote for such a
project.
Similarly, let’s say you have a
million dollars in retirement savings.
Legislation that would serious curb climate change comes along. But it’s going to make any number of investments
tank, and your retirement savings is projected to drop by $600,000. Are you going to vote for the candidate who
backs such legislation? It’s going to be
tough!
Even kind hearted people with all
the right motives feel serious pressure to vote in their best interest!
So now let’s turn to our gospel
reading. It’s actually a perfect text to
read right before election day. Jesus
feeds thousands and thousands of people.
They all get their bellies full.
It’s a free lunch! Everyone is
excited. Remember, food takes serious
effort in those days. Without mechanized
agriculture it takes almost as many calories to plant, sow, harvest, thresh,
and mill a bushel of wheat as you get from that bushel of wheat. Free food is an incredible event! Imagine being a person in those days when
most of your time and energy is spent in acquiring food. Then someone comes along and you can just get
food… no cost, no expenditure of energy!
Look at the last verse of our gospel
reading. The crowd wants to come and
take Jesus and make him king by force. Here’s
a leader you could vote for who would truly be good! He delivers on what he promises. None of this: he says whatever he has to say
in order to get you to vote for him and then he fails to do it. If you look at both our presidential
candidates you realize that both of them have made big promises there is no way
they can make good on. In an election
you have to fool the majority of voters, or convince them that your opponent is
truly bad.
The feeding of the 5000 is truly a
miracle. It’s the only miracle of Jesus
that is in all four of the gospels. Each
gospel tells it a slightly different way.
John’s gospel has one unique thing.
In the other three gospels Jesus give the bread and fish to the
disciples and they distribute it them to the crowds. Let’s call it having a support staff. But in John’s gospel Jesus distributes all
the food directly from himself. Now the
timing gets impossible. John tells us
the crowd numbered about 5000 in all.
Now if Jesus spent just three seconds giving each person food, which is
an impossibly short time, it would take almost five hours to feed them all. I can’t see people being too happy having to
wait 5 hours for food! Most likely it
would take a whole day and then some.
The first people would be hungry again before the last people were
served.
I can’t scientifically account for
John’s time frame. But John isn’t
worried about counting time. He’s making
a theological point. The point is that
each and every person got direct and personal contact and feeding from Jesus.
A very important part of John’s
gospel is Jesus’ presence. Jesus
abides. The hymn Abide with Me comes
from John’s gospel. John wants every
person to feel Jesus’ abiding presence within them.
Jesus hosts two meals in John’s
gospel. The first one is here – the
Feeding of the 5000. The second one you
won’t be able to guess correctly unless you’re an uncommonly good scholar of
John. We might be tempted to say that
the next meal Jesus hosts is the Last Supper with his disciples. But, interestingly enough, as John tells the
story of the Last Supper Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, but they never
actually get around to eating. There’s
no, “This is my body,” “This is my blood” stuff in John’s account of the Last
Supper. The next meal Jesus hosts
involves another miracle of abundance.
It happens after the resurrection.
It’s the scene where the disciples have decided to go fishing
again. Now we’ll remember that the
disciples were told to go out and proclaim the good news to the world after the
resurrection, but they weren’t exactly doing that. They decided to go back to their old way of
life, at least the old way of life for some of them – fishing.
You know the story. They fish all night. They catch nothing. Dawn breaks.
They’ve caught nothing. Jesus is
along the shore but they don’t recognize him.
He says to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” Nope.
They don’t. Then he says, “Cast
the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” As if the fish have all been avoiding the
left side of the boat all night. We know
well that this is ridiculous fishing advice!
But, these expert professional fishermen do what this guy walking along
the shore suggests. They through the net
out on the other side of the boat. And
immediately the net is so full of fish they can’t haul it in. The story goes that they’re only about 300
feet from shore so they just drag it up onto the shore. John tells us they caught 153 fish. That number is probably significant. 153 is roughly the number of known nations at
the time. So this is symbolically
catching all the nations.
After the great catch the disciples
come up on shore and we read that Jesus took bread and gave it to them, and he
did the same with the fish. Again, this
is the second meal Jesus provides. Once
again it is bread and fish.
The point of this story of abundance
is Jesus’ presence. Jesus is abiding
with them. With Jesus’ presence they can
do all things. They can do miraculous
things. Without Jesus they can do
nothing.
We’re talking about generosity this
month as part of our stewardship drive.
The abiding nature of Jesus says a lot about generosity. If you feel Jesus’ presence in your life then
it probably isn’t too hard to be generous.
You know that Jesus is with you.
Jesus promises to abide with us always; now and into eternity.
But if you don’t
feel Jesus’ presence then it is hard to be generous. We do live in a world of limited
resources. Our politicians know that
well. Getting elected is really all
about promising people more of the limited resources that are available; or
getting people the resources they think they deserve. Pretty much all wars are fought over
resources: getting energy, land, valuable metals, luxuries. You name it.
Yes, when resources are scarce it is hard to feel generous. Giving anything, anything at all, is
hard. You do it grudgingly, sparingly,
or with calculation. You have a generous
spirit only when having a generous spirit is calculated to get you a return. Jesus talks about that several time – about
giving only to get in return is not truly giving.
It is indeed hard
to be authentically generous if you don’t feel Jesus’ abiding presence. If you do feel it, being generous is pretty
natural. The good news is that there are
ways to feel Jesus’ presence. They
aren’t exactly easy though. The world is
always offering tempting alternatives for you to spend your limited resources
on. But commitments to prayer, worship,
Bible study, and Christian community have always been solid ways to feel Jesus’
abiding presence.
Though the world
has limits, tells lies, and is exploitative; goodness, generosity,
faithfulness, and integrity are all yours through our Lord Jesus Christ. He is with us always and promises to provide.
