Community Church Sermons
Year B
July 29, 2012
Ninth Sunday after
Pentecost
A Basket Full of Not Enough
John 6:1-21
Rev. Rhonda
A. Blevins
Associate
Pastor
Let me set the scene, and as I do so, I want you to think about
whether this describes you. It’s first thing in the morning. You wake up,
delighted that it’s morning. You spring out of bed, glide over to the bathroom,
look in the mirror, and sing, “You’re just too good to be true.” Raise your
hand if that describes your typical morning.
For those of you who raised your hand, this is a very important
day for you. Take out a pen and a piece of paper and write down these words:
“Axis Two Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” I have just diagnosed you. Now
take that piece of paper to the closest therapist you can find and tell that therapist,
“My pastor has finally diagnosed me.” Really. Do it
now. This sermon really doesn’t apply to you.
This sermon is for the rest of us. This sermon is for those of us
who drag out of bed, look through bleary eyes in the mirror, and sing “Gloom,
despair, and agony on me.” This sermon is for those of us who often feel like
the disciple Andrew must have felt that day on the mountain. Andrew, the one
who said “Here is a boy with five
small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so
many?” Andrew, wanting to have faith, but yielding to doubt.
Most of us are a lot like Andrew.
·
He looked around and saw thousands of people
who were hungry;
We look around and see thousands of people who are
hungry.
·
Jesus expected him to feed the masses;
Jesus expects us to feed the masses.
·
He took inventory and all he had to work with
was five loaves and a couple of fish;
We take inventory and all each of us has to work with is five fingers on a
couple of hands.
·
He looked in his basket, and it was a basket
full of not enough;
We look in our baskets—I look in my basket—and far too often, it is a basket
full of not enough.
Five
fingers—two hands. “How far will they go among so many?”
“If only I had more charisma or more
compassion. If only I had more time or more talent. If only my waistline few
inches thinner and my wallet were a few inches thicker. Maybe if I could
finally get it together, maybe then I
could feed the masses.
At other times
I feel like Andrew must have felt on the boat that night—armed with nothing
more than a paddle against the churning sea. So I row and I row and I row and I row. “What in the world? Jesus is out there running around on the
water? He’s playing aquatic hopscotch
when we’ve got a storm brewing? Ok, I
don’t really have room in my cerebral cortex for that right now. All I know is that we’ve got a long way to go,
and all I’ve got is my paddle. Just keep
rowing, just keep rowing, just keep rowing, rowing, rowing.”
Like
Andrew, I’m with Jesus a lot. It’s sort
of the nature of the profession I suppose. From my private, devotional life, to
my public, pastoral life, Jesus is there. We read the pages of Holy Scripture
together. We go visit people in the hospital together. We go to church potlucks together. We sit on the finance team together. We make plans for the church together. We even raise a family together. I once had a dream that I was in an airplane
with Jesus, and he was the pilot. Seriously. I’m with Jesus a lot.
But so
much of the time—too much of the time—I feel like I’ve got all of Jesus’
presence and none of Jesus’ power. This
is where I live most of the time. This
is my faith set-point. Every now and then I’ll be amazed, but most of the time
I hold a basket that seems less than adequate for the task I’ve been called to
do.
Back in
2005 I accepted the call to direct a poverty initiative by a group of churches
in Eastern Kentucky. The goal was to eradicate poverty. Simple enough,
right? After I’d been on the job for a
couple of months, I began to joke that now that I had single handedly
eradicated poverty, I was going to tackle world peace. I had to make jokes about the job, because,
quite frankly, it overwhelmed me. Cynicism
helped me face the inadequacies I felt at taking on such a task. Facing down such a huge problem, I grasped
for some handles, some practical, proven pathway lest I throw my hands up
paralyzed and despairing. The only
handle I could find was simply to do what I knew I could do—I knew I could mobilize people to build houses. Now, I barely knew the difference between a
hammer and a skill saw, but I knew that I could find people who knew the
difference. I knew that with building
affordable, decent housing—one family at a time—we could break the cycle of
poverty. So with a little bit of dumb
faith, that’s what I set out to do. I
poured my energy into forming partnerships with other non-profits in the
area. I pounded the pavements looking
for people who could catch the vision for coming together to build a house—just
one house. And we did it. I didn’t do it—I still don’t know the
difference between a hammer and a skill saw. We called it “Extreme Build”
because we did it in basically a week. I
used my five fingers on two hands that week. Boy, did I use my hands that week.
And when eighty-year-old Charlie, our
volunteer construction supervisor, handed over the keys for that
far-more-than-decent house, my tears and the tears of the entire crew—let’s
just say they were more than enough to fill twelve baskets.
Andrew and
I, we’re pretty ordinary people. Our
baskets—well, let’s just say we both have pretty ordinary baskets with just a
few loaves and a couple of fish. So we
do what we know how to do. We know how
to get the people to sit down, so we seat them. We know how to pass the plate, so we pass the
plate. And after we pass it, it’s out of our hands. It’s out of my hands.
And that’s
the place. . .that place out of my hands. . . where
the power of God takes over and multiplies the loaves and the fishes. “Out of my hands” is the place where my two
little hands are more than enough. I am
enough, not through any special giftedness. Not through theological training. Not through experience or wisdom or my
stunning good looks. I am enough because
the Holy Spirit becomes the fire in
my faithfulness. All I have to offer—the
only thing in my basket, really—is my faithfulness. So I offer it up. It’s up to Jesus to bless it.
So Andrew
and I have the people sit down. And we pass the plate that Jesus has blessed.
And we trust that the people will be fed.
Andrew and I invite Jesus to get in the boat, we offer him our paddles,
and we trust that we will get to the other side.
Up there
in Kentucky, the people wanted to build another house the next year. I helped with the planning, but when it came
time to build, I was great with child and couldn’t be there. They built that house in a week. By the third summer, I had accepted a call to
this amazing church in Tellico Village.
I was out of the picture entirely.
They have now completed their seventh Extreme Build house. The first house was pretty cool. It was an incredibly exciting thing to be a
part of. The second house—they did a
great job. The next five houses were
totally out of my two hands. Seven
houses—the result of my inadequacy. That
makes no sense. It must be God—the fire
in what little faithfulness I could muster.
When we
trust God to be the fire in our faithfulness, a basket full of not enough
becomes more than enough to feed the hungry throngs. When we trust God to be the fire in our
faithfulness, the weight of the world no longer rests on our shoulders. When we trust God to be the fire in our
faithfulness, we get over ourselves and find healing for that messiah complex
many of us carry around. When we trust
God to be the fire in our faithfulness, we begin to sing a new song.
We wake up, wipe the sleep from our
eyes, plant our feet firmly on the floor, walk over to the mirror and take a
long, hard look, and we offer ourselves a little dose of reality. So maybe I’m not
“too good to be true.” Nor is the song “gloom, despair and agony on me.” Maybe
the song we sing to ourselves is an easy, gentle reminder: “Trust and obey, for
there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”