You’re certainly familiar with the phrase, “Jack of all trades. Master of none.” I think it’s a model we do well to remember; especially in our society today where it feels like we are supposed to specialize in something. We become an expert in that one thing and then rely on other experts to do other things.
Think of
cars. When was the last time you
yourself made a major repair to your car?
Our answers vary. Many of us will
answer, “never.” We have, or we’ve had,
a job that made money. Presumably (or
hopefully!) we were good at our job. We
made money. We then paid experts in cars
to keep our cars running. The same goes
for just about everything else. We pay
plumbers, electricians, and contractors -all of them experts in something- to
build and maintain the homes in which we live.
We pay specialists to fix our computers and phones. We may pay people to mow our lawns and clear
the snow. We do not make our clothes or
appliances or toys; we buy them.
The idea is that
we specialize in something in life, which we count upon to pay a living
wage. That is the specific value we
create for our society. Then we rely on
the expertise of others, and pay them, to take care of the rest of our wants
and needs.
From the
perspective of basic economics all of this is efficient. It allows us to create a great deal of goods
and comforts at an absolutely minimal cost.
How effective would it be if in order to have a car you had to start by
mining iron ore?
Specialization is
efficient and works very very well. But if
we build our whole lives around specialization, especially our faith, then
we’ve run into trouble. It is true as it
says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit
for the common good. To one is given
through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, …to another gifts of healing… to
another the working of miracles… to another prophesy…” and so on, but that is
not specialization in matters of faith.
You do not get to say, “Because I am not good at something I don’t have
to do it. That’s someone else’s
job.” That’s not how faith works. But I fear that thinking creeps into our
faith all too often.
If we turn to our
gospel reading we see something else going on.
Whenever I read this text my attention is drawn to the feeding of the
5000 with five loaves and two fish. How
can so little food feed so many, and there be more leftovers than there was
food originally. My attention is also
drawn to the disciples being sent out with the power to cure diseases and cast
out demons. I want to know how that was
possible, and what was this healing power actually like? I also imagine how scary it must have felt to
just go out to unknown places with nothing but the clothes on their backs. But when I focus on those things I miss
something else going on. That is, that
in these 17 verses these faithful disciples are in the Jack of all trades role.
We start out with
the disciples being given power and authority over all demons and to cure
diseases, and to proclaim the kingdom of God.
There are three distinctly different roles right there. They are being exorcists. And they’re being healers. And they’re being evangelists. They do not necessarily all go together. But I think we could say that casting out
demons and curing people of diseases must have been exciting work. Perhaps the evangelism was too.
Then the text
gives us a bit of an interlude about King Herod executing John the Baptist and
wanting to see Jesus.
The disciples work
must have been successful because on their return they (and Jesus) are soon
hounded by crowds wanting more. Jesus
has tried to get them to a place of solitude for some rest and relaxation but
the crowds find them anyway. Notice how
the situation is changing as the gospel goes on. Instead of Jesus having to go out and preach
about the kingdom of God now the crowds are coming to him. I hope you can sense the strains and problems
that are developing. Jesus sent his
disciples out to meet needs. The needs
turned out to be greater than they could meet.
The crowds need and want more.
But how much more is there to give?
And when can Jesus and the disciples get some rest? The scene is set for the Feeding of the 5000 Miracle.
I can sense the
exasperation from the disciples when their break, already interrupted by the
crowds, is further challenged when Jesus says, “You give them something to
eat.” The disciples are not being lazy
or selfish when they tell Jesus to send the crowds away. They are tired. They’re being practical. They are also aware of the available
resources. They have five loaves and two
fish; which anyone can tell you is not nearly enough to feed 5000 people.
If we’re talking
about the disciples having the role of being a Jack of all trades, then here
they’re being workers in the human resources department who are pointing out to
their boss that they simply need more rest.
They’re also being accountants.
Surely you cannot feed so many with so little.
Jesus, knowing
what he will do but seemingly oblivious to these obvious problems, instructs
the disciples to have the crowd sit down in groups of 50. Now they’re being ushers doing crowd control. Then comes the miracle. Jesus turns five loaves and two fish into
enough to feed these 5000! It’s
abundance coming out of almost nothing.
And now the disciples take on yet another job. That of cafeteria workers.
I’ve noted this
before and it is always important to note, as Luke tells the story of the
feeding of the 5000 Jesus does not directly distribute all the food to the
people. Jesus takes the bread and fish
and then gives it to the disciples who then give it to the crowds. We’ve talked before that if Jesus does all
the distribution directly, even spending only a few seconds with each of the
5000 in the crowd, the food distribution would have taken hours. But instead Jesus gives the food to the
disciples who then, in the role of cafeteria workers, distribute the mass
quantities of food to the people.
Are the disciples
grumbling about all this work? Are they
saying, “We have the power to heal people and cast out demons. We’re charismatic enough evangelists that we
have helped to attract this huge crowd.
Why are we now being asked to do something as mundane as cafeteria
work?” They don’t say that their special
gifts lie in higher things and therefore they shouldn’t stoop to such tasks.
And their multiple
roles are not yet done. For after the
5000 have eaten there’s cleanup work to do.
What’s to be done with all the leftovers? Leave them on the ground to rot? Are the locals going to say, “This Jesus guy
brought in a huge crowd one afternoon and they left the place a mess!” No, the disciples now have janitor duty. Things have to be cleaned up.
To be fair, I’m
exaggerating here. The text makes no
mention of the disciples doing the cleanup, but I think it is likely and I hope
I make a point. In these 17 verses of
Luke’s gospel the disciples have been: evangelists, healers, and
exorcists. They’ve done human resources
work and accounting. They’ve worked as
ushers, cafeteria workers, and janitors.
My point is that there is work to be done and they do it. They may not be happy about it. We aren’t told. But there is no trace of arrogance from them.
It is easy in our
lives of faith to think that we are good at certain things, and as long as
those things are needed in God’s kingdom then we do them. But if our skills are not needed, or we think
we don’t know how to help, then we’re off the hook. It is almost as if we expect God to provide
someone else with that specialty skill to do it. If God does not provide then it does not get
done and we complain about it not getting done.
Nowhere in the Bible does it allow for that though. While it is indeed true that we all have
gifts and we should use them, the real work is doing what needs done; whether
it fits our skill set or not.
About 20 years ago
there was a church growth concept called Natural Church Development. Our congregation participated in it with
limited success. One of the things
Natural Church Development discovered in its research is that the strongest and
most effective churches are often fairly small.
You’d expect that a large church able to hire lots of expert staff would
be the best way to bring about spiritual development. But not so.
It turns out that the best faith growth came about when people just did
what needed doing regardless of their skill set. If a Sunday school teacher was needed and no
one had the skills, then someone still stepped in and did it.
This can be
frustrating. It is difficult to be
pressured to do things you aren’t good at.
It is fatiguing when you’re doing your best and the results are
endlessly mediocre. Yet God does not
have the expectations of quality that we do.
I’m currently rebuilding
an old farm wagon that my grandfather first built out of some old dump
trucks. The wooden parts had
deteriorated and the dump hoist he made for it never worked. Rebuilding it is taking a lot of metal work –
grinding, cutting, and welding. I’m not
good at any of that stuff. I can do
basic things, but I’m slow and the end result is usually mediocre at best. Nevertheless, I’m doing it. It’s frustrating. The end results will not be pretty, but I
think it will work. That’s the key. At the end it will work. So I keep at it.
Being an effective
follower of Jesus is not about being a specialist. It is often being a Jack of trades and master
of none. You may do you best at
something you’re not good at. It may be
frustrating and slow. The end results
may not be great. People may ignore your
work. Or people may even criticize you
for it, yet it is still work that has been done.
Jesus’ disciples
did what needed doing, whatever it was; charismatic or dull, seemingly
prestigious or lowly. But it was all
work in God’s kingdom and all work worth doing.
We have the same attitude.
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