Twelve Lunch Pails

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Mark 6:30-44; Philippians 4:10-20

November 17, 2013 • Portage First UMC

His mother handed him his lunch pail on his way out. Today was a day he had been looking forward to. He was going to work alongside his father, something every young boy anticipated doing one day. His father was a craftsman, and the boy was expected to learn the trade and one day carry on the family business. That’s pretty much the way it worked here in Galilee. There wasn’t much business, nor was there as much chance for getting wealthy as there was down in Jerusalem, but there were plenty of good, honest, hard-working people here. Galilee was home; always had been, always would be. So he grabbed the lunch pail, gave his mother a quick kiss, and ran out the door. “See you tonight,” he called back, as he hurried to catch up with his dad.

Mid-morning, they heard a call echo through the village. “There he goes! There goes Jesus!” His dad looked in the direction of the sound. There was quite a crowd gathering. Now, Jesus he had heard of. Everyone knew about Jesus. Jesus was a local celebrity, not native to the area right around the Sea of Galilee, but close enough. He was from Nazareth, and though most people thought nothing good could come from Nazareth (cf. John 1:46), Jesus was the apparent exception. He did a lot of good and he told interesting stories. People enjoyed listening to him. His father turned to him, “What do you think, son? Want to go hear Jesus?” As they headed in the direction of the crowd, the boy ran back to get his lunch pail. He might need a snack later!

The crowd watched as Jesus and his disciples crossed the little lake in a boat. The boat was struggling against the headwind on the lake, so the crowd on land was actually able to make better time than those in the boat, even with having to cross the Jordan River at the top of the lake (cf. Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 673). When Jesus’ boat made landfall, in a remote and deserted area, the crowd was already there to meet them. The boy couldn’t wait to see Jesus, and, if he was lucky, maybe he’d even get to talk to one of the disciples. He watched as Jesus got out of the boat, and that’s when he saw it. He saw Jesus’ eyes. They were weary. Jesus was tired. He must have come to this place on purpose, trying to get away from the crowd, to find some rest, and yet here they were. They had chased him down. Suddenly, the boy felt just a little guilty for being part of the crowd, but not enough to go back home. He watched as Jesus’ eyes quickly lost their weariness and took on another emotion: compassion. Jesus, it seemed, loved the people as much as the people loved him.

It was a wonderful day. Jesus told stories and talked to people. He answered questions, and taught them many things (6:34). The boy even got to meet Andrew, who was a brother to Simon Peter, one of the top disciples! The day went by so fast that the sun was starting to go down before he realized he hadn’t eaten his lunch! That’s when he overheard the disciples talking to Jesus. “Hey, Jesus, it’s late. What are we going to do about this crowd? Why don’t you wrap things up and send them away so they can find some food in the towns and villages around here? There’s nothing here. It’s desolate. Send them away, Jesus, so they can get food to eat.” Did he imagine it or did Jesus catch his eye as he told the disciples, “You give them something to eat”? The boy chuckled as the disciples stammered and stuttered, “But, Jesus, we don’t have that much money! It would cost about two hundred denarii—that’s an eight-month salary—just to give each person a small bite! Where are we going to get that kind of money?” (6:37; Wessel 673). Obviously, the disciples had spent the afternoon doing the math; they knew before Jesus asked how much it would cost to feed all the people gathered there!

“What do you have?” Jesus asked. “What’s in your hand? What’s available to you?” The disciples looked around and Andrew caught the boy’s eye this time. “Hey, you have a lunch pail,” Andrew said. “What’s in it?” Now it was the boy’s turn to stutter and stammer. “Uh, well, just five small barley loaves and two small fish,” he said (cf. John 6:9). Andrew was obviously disappointed, but what did he expect a boy from a poor family to have for lunch? Barley loaves—food of the poor. They were small and flat, and you could eat several of them at a single meal (Wessel 673). He usually did, in fact! And the small dried fish—they were cheap but not very filling. Andrew may have been flustered, but Jesus wasn’t. He told the people to sit down, in groups of fifty or a hundred, and he asked the boy if he could use his lunch. “Sure,” the boy said, handing over his lunch pail. And then he listened as Jesus prayed: “Blessed art Thou, Eternal God our Father, King of the Universe, who causes bread to come forth from the earth” (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 89). Then Jesus gave the bread and fish—his bread and fish—to the disciples and asked them to feed everyone. And they did. They did! How his small meal went so far, he had no idea. But it did. No one else seemed to notice what really happened except the little boy who gave away his lunch.

All four Gospels record this story (Card 88)—usually called the “feeding of the 5,000” because they all tell us there were 5,000 men present, though who knows how many were actually there when you include women and children. But the fact that all four Gospels tell the story—even John, who doesn’t include much from the earlier books—lets us know this is a significant event in the life of Jesus. It’s a story of provision, and so on this Generosity Sunday, when we consider what we have to give to God, we need to hear this story about perfect provision. The message is simply this: when we open our hand and give to God what we have, he will take care of us. That’s the story here. God will provide perfectly.

We have to remember that this story happens in Galilee, a place not known for its wealth. Many if not most of the people who lived in Galilee lived from hand to mouth, from day to day, never knowing if there would be enough for tomorrow. Savings accounts? 501K? Pension plans? Never heard of them. What they had today is what they had. Tomorrow would be a different story. And yet they tended to be people of deep faith. They believed God would take care of them, and more than that, they were people who were constantly looking for a savior, a messiah, one who would come to rescue God’s people. Deep faith. Maybe that’s why Jesus spent most of his ministry in this area.

So they were people of limited resources, and that’s where we step into this story. We don’t know how long Jesus taught, but it was long enough that people were starting to get hungry because apparently no one brought lunch with them when they chased after Jesus. And I don’t know about them, but when I get hungry, I get crabby. I sort of sense that in the disciples, and even more when Jesus tells them to feed the people rather than send them away. When they argue that they can’t afford it, Jesus asks them to open their eyes—and their hands. “How many loaves do you have?” In other words, “What’s in your hand? What’s available to you?” Now, Mark doesn’t tell us about the boy; that’s a detail John includes. But the boy is, maybe, the only one who has food, the only one who brought a lunch. And so he shares it. He gives what he has—his treasure, his resources—to Jesus to use. He has to know it won’t feed very many; it would barely be enough for him. But he gives it anyway.

Now, watch for the miracle here. Jesus prays, breaks the bread, gives the food to the disciples and asks them to distribute it. Did you see it? Did you miss it? There’s no waving of the hands or magical incantation. Jesus prays, and gives (cf. Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 79). He uses what the boy gave and he feeds the crowd. It’s what author Michael Card calls an “unmiraculous miracle.” Jesus simply does with the bread and the fish what any of us do at a dinner table. Pray and give. Does anyone even realize (aside from the boy and the disciples) that a miracle has taken place here? It doesn’t seem so. No one cries out, “It’s a miracle!” No, like good Methodists, they just take their food and eat it. Five thousand men, and not one of them recognize what has happened here. An unmiraculous miracle—Jesus takes what is given and uses it to feed others.

Each and every week, in this place, we have the chance to do what that boy did on the hillside in Galilee. We have the opportunity to give what we have—what’s in our hand—to Jesus and ask him to use it, to multiply it, to make a difference in the lives of others both here and around the world. For the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at what we have to give—our time and our talents—to God’s service. This morning, on this Generosity Sunday, we need to talk about our treasures. We don’t like to talk about money. We don’t want anyone knowing what we give or don’t give, yet we don’t mind posting what we spend our money on on Facebook or other places online. In over twenty years as a pastor, I have come to believe one primary thing about giving, and that is this: we will give to what is important to us. If we consider it vital to our lives, we will give or spend whatever it takes to make it happen. For instance, if we consider a luxury vacation important, we’ll spend whatever we need to in order for it to happen. If we consider a bigger house important, vital to our lives, we’ll find a way to make it happen. New cars, new clothes, new toys—you get the idea. What is important to us, what our priorities are, are most often shown in the way we allot our treasures.

That’s also true in the church. In a little over eight years as your pastor, I’ve been especially proud of the way, when there is a special project presented, or an opportunity to reach out in mission, you all are there. When we started doing “Feed My Lambs,” you all stepped up and, in the last few years, you have continued to do so in extravagant ways. We are, as far as I know, still the largest contributor to feeding children in Portage Township Schools. You’ve supported Red Bird Mission, Royal Family Kids Camp, the Portage Township Food Pantry—and so many others! And you’ve supported the purchase of the Crossroads property; we paid the land off in rapid time, thanks to your extravagant generosity. However, the other thing I know from talking to our financial folks is that we, as a congregation, are not always as faithful at supporting the regular ministries of the church—the Sunday School materials, the worship supplies, the heat and air conditioning, the maintenance, the staff—all of those things that aren’t necessarily exciting, but they are absolutely necessary for ministry to happen in this place, for all of those other, special things to happen here. We’re a little more likely to hold back and keep what we have in our hands when it comes to those things. Even our most recent Crossroads project has evidenced that. Only a few of you have pledged or given funds to help pay off the road.

I get it; roads aren’t exciting. Light and heat and salaries aren’t exciting. But, folks, this morning, I want to show you a glimpse of our future, and it’s a future we can only get to if we meet our obligations in the here and now. Your Building Committee has been hard at work on dreaming and designing and planning for the next building of Portage First United Methodist Church, and we’re going to show you an idea of what that looks like in just a few moments. But first I want to answer the question, “Why?” Some of you were not here eight and a half years ago when we bought the Crossroads land, but that land was purchased out of a desire in this church to be able to continue to grow. On the four acres we have here, between and around the ditches, we’re land locked. We’re stuck. There was no more room for more parking and no more building space. Those who pursued the land next door did so out of a conviction that God is not done with Portage First yet, that we still have a calling to reach, teach and make disciples of the next generations. We’re not done yet; Portage has not been completely reached. The world has not been completely reached. And so the reality was this: either we chose just to stay like we are, or we needed to find more room. God opened the door for the land next door to be purchased, and we walked through. We paid that land off in just about six years. At the same time, we realized early on we needed a safer and better way to get in and out of the property. I still remember the first Easter Egg Hunt we had over there, as we tried to get 120 cars out of the driveway at the same time—well, it was daunting at best. Jeff King took his life in his hands as he stood in the road to stop traffic coming over the tollroad. And we’ve had concerts and family events over there that faced the same issues. We needed a better solution, and out of those conversations came the road and the new parking lot, which we dedicated just a couple of months ago.

The next piece, then, is beginning to build a permanent church on that land, to make room for more people to come to know the good news of Jesus Christ. You see, that’s what it’s ultimately all about. It’s not about building for the sake of building. This is about our values, about the things we hold dear. It’s about radical hospitality: making room for people to come, providing ministries that warmly welcome the community. It’s about passionate worship: providing even better space for all sorts of worship to take place. It’s about intentional faith development: our Sunday School space is inadequate for today’s demands. We need larger rooms and better-equipped space. Most weeks, our classrooms are full during the 10:00 hour and there’s no room for more children to come and learn about Jesus. Beyond that, our small groups and team meetings often find themselves stuck in a corner somewhere during the week trying to meet or study because there isn’t enough room for them or there aren’t rooms that are appropriate for them. We need better rooms, better space, flexible space, useable space for intentional faith development. It’s about risk-taking mission and service: as we reach more people for Christ, we’re able to do more and impact the community more. How many more “lambs” can we feed as we grow? How many more mission teams can come out of a congregation that’s excited and on fire and alive? What sort of outreach will Congregational Care be able to do as they reach toward the broken and hurting places of our community? And all of that, my friends, relies on all of us embracing our fifth value: extravagant generosity. It relies on us being the one who brings our lunch to Jesus and says, “Take this, Jesus, multiply it so that everyone can be fed.”

That’s our goal and our desire in whatever we do here, including the way we approach buildings. Everything centers on our mission statement: we are “becoming a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ.” It’s never about the building; it’s about being able, the best way we can in today’s world, to reach out with the good news and to do it with excellence. So, what might that look like? Well, here’s a possibility, and at this point it’s only a possibility. We don’t have firm costs or finalized plans. But here’s a glimpse of what the Building Committee has been up to.

VIDEO: Portage First Future

Now, you may be excited by that, you may be frustrated by that, you may be undecided, somewhere in the middle. Whatever you are, we want you to come on Wednesday evening at 7 to a Town Hall meeting specifically to discuss that proposal. That’s when we’ll take questions and give a bit more information. But remember the goal: the future is all about reaching more people for Jesus Christ.

And to do that, we, as the current congregation, have to become passionate about that mission, so passionate that it becomes our priority. What that means in dollars and cents, though, is we have to support the current budget and be able to pay off the road before we can make significant strides toward that future. And even more to the point: we have to become people of extravagant generosity if we’re ever going to be able to fully do what God calls us to do. Our biggest voiced concern is often that we won’t have enough for us. “If I give, I won’t have enough for me.” And that, in many ways, is the real miracle in the story from Mark’s Gospel. Did you catch the “miracle after the miracle?” After the potluck is over, and everyone has had enough to eat, Jesus tells the disciples to go back into the crowd and pick up the pieces that are leftover. In John’s Gospel, he tells them, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted” (6:12). That’s a very Jewish command. To these Galilean Jews, food was sacred, a gift from God. It was considered an insult to God to waste food—which may have something to say to us, in a land where so much food is thrown away. So Jesus instructs his disciples to canvass the whole area—probably several acres—and pick up the pieces that have been dropped, that have been laid aside, that have been put down when someone was full. So they each take a lunch pail and go do that. Now, one question that occurs to me is where did they get the extra lunch pails? If only one boy shared his lunch, where did the others come from? Perhaps from people who brought their lunch but refused to share with others, to give what they had to Jesus. No matter, Jesus uses their empty pails and when the disciples are done, they have exactly twelve lunch pails full of leftovers. Just enough for them to each have lunch for the next day. Not abundance. Perfect provision (Card 90-91). Just enough that they could live out what we pray so often: “Give us this day our daily bread.” This day. Not another day. This day. Perfect provision. So the question that really comes down to us when we face the fear of having “enough” is this: do we trust God to provide perfectly for us? Is God big enough to be able to take care of you and me?

Paul believed he was. You might remember Paul—he had a successful career ahead of him as a persecutor of the church, a destroyer of Christians, until a bright light from heaven literally knocked him off his horse and took away his eyesight. But then, he “saw” better than he ever had. His spiritual sight took over, and he realized Jesus was the savior, the messiah, the Son of God. When his physical sight was healed, Paul left behind a lucrative career to become a traveling preacher. And travel he did, all over Asia Minor and the Holy Land—by foot, by boat, and almost any other way you might imagine. He didn’t have a regular paycheck, and because of that he had to learn to rely on God and God’s people to take care of him. But he believed in the mission so much that when Jesus said, “What do you have, Paul? What’s in your hand?” he said, “Not much, just my life and my pen. I can preach and I can write letters.” And Jesus sent him out to do just that. In one of those letters, he writes to thank some dear friends for supporting him, for sending help when he needed it, even though they didn’t have to. He tells them, "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (4:10-12). And then he tells us that secret, in a verse that’s often taken out of context. The secret is simply this: “I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (4:13). Because Jesus is the most important thing in Paul’s world, he’s content no matter what he has because he wants to be spent, used up, everything exhausted for the sake of God’s kingdom.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, grew up in terrible poverty. His father, Samuel, was pastor of one of the lowest-paying parishes in England, and John even watched his father marched off to debtor’s prison once. He was determined to live better than that, until he met a chamber maid who came to clean his quarters at Oxford. She had nothing to protect herself from the cold winter except a thin gown, so Wesley gave her money to buy a coat. That changed him, and from that day on, he determined to give as much of his money away as he could. He found that, as a single man, he could live on 28 pounds a year; since he made 30 pounds that first year as a fellow at Oxford (about the equivalent of $6,000 in 2013 dollars), he gave away 2 pounds. And as his income increased, he continued to live on 28 pounds. At its highest, Wesley’s income from his books and other activities was a little over 1400 pounds (somewhere around $200,000 in modern currency), and he gave all but about 30 pounds away. It was so strange that the tax commissioners once wrote to him saying, “[We] cannot doubt but you have plate for which you have hitherto neglected to make an entry.” Surely, they thought, a man of his prominence must have some silver in his house that he should be paying taxes on. Wesley wrote back: “I have two silver spoons at London and two at Bristol. This is all the plate I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many round me want bread.” At his death, Wesley only had a few coins in his pocket and claimed to have never possessed more than 100 pounds at any one time. Wesley believed in the mission of Jesus Christ so much that he believed not just the first tenth belonged to God, but all of our income. Wesley believed a Christian should spend what they have only at God’s direction. When Jesus asked him, “What’s in your hand?” he gave it all.

Now, I’m not setting up Wesley as the example we must follow to the letter. He had no family to care for, and he did tell the early Methodists they must first take care of those obligations. But the question his example and Paul’s example put before us is this: how important to you is Jesus’ mission in the world and through this church? Is it important enough to give what’s in your hand to him for the sake of his kingdom? Do we believe what Paul wrote to the Philippians, that God will meet all our needs—not necessarily all our wants, but all our needs—in Christ Jesus (4:19)?

What’s in your hand? Now is the time to answer that question, and the rest of the question as well: what will you give? I’m going to ask the ushers to distribute the commitment cards at this time, and while they’re doing that, let me answer a question I often get asked. Why should I pledge? Why should I turn in a commitment card? Isn’t it enough that I give when I’m here? Let me give you two reasons why my family fills out a pledge card, and neither one of them have to do with me being the pastor. First of all, I want my church to know they can count on me. I wrote in the Friday e-note this week that not filling out a pledge card would be like your employer saying, “We’re going to pay you, but I’m not going to tell you how much.” It would be difficult-to-impossible for you to plan your household budget with that lack of certainty. The same is true in the church; from a practical standpoint, the church needs to know how much to budget for ministries in 2014, and we only know that by what you pledge. So that has to do with the church; the second reason has to do with me. Pledging is a way of holding myself accountable. When some purchase seems to be important to me, I am reminded that I made a commitment first to this place and to this mission. It causes me to stop and re-examine my priorities, and that causes me to remember that what we do here is not a passing thing. It’s a matter of reaching people for Jesus Christ and helping them, as Wesley said, “flee the wrath to come.” We're calling people to salvation, to being saved from eternal darkness, from separation from God. Isn’t that a mission worth giving all we can to? That’s why I pledge: to make a promise that helps the church and holds me accountable. My pledge says, “This is important, above all else.”

So, now, let me ask you to prayerfully consider what God is calling you give for the coming year—time, talents, treasure. What do you have that you can give for the sake of God’s kingdom?