Five Loaves and Two Fish

Five Loaves and Two Fish

Luke 9:10-17

Last week, we watched as Simon Peter and the other fishermen went from being spectators to being followers—disciples of Christ.  Jesus looks Simon in the eye and says, “Follow me!”  Simon leaves a whole life behind:  his nets, his boats, his livelihood, his family, his friends, his village.  To us, this is an astonishing act of faith.  To the village and the family and friends left behind, at the least, this must have seemed to be a moment of madness.  At its worst, this must have felt like a total betrayal.  The village relied on Simon for food.  His family and his friends loved him.  How could he just leave?

I would imagine that the men were very excited— for at least the first few miles.  After all, what an adventure!  I wonder, though, how long it was before someone spoke up, “Uh…Jesus.  One question…where are we going?”  Then, one of the others might have chimed in, “And how long will it take until we get there?”  “Jesus…one more thing…we were out fishing all night and I haven’t had a thing to eat.  To tell you the truth, I’m a little tired, too.  Normally, I fish all night, come home, eat a huge meal and then fall into bed.  Could we give this a go tomorrow?”  How long did it take Jesus to begin to regret bringing these whining, tough guys along with him?

Those questions aren’t in the book, mind you.  I just know human beings.  We don’t like not knowing where we are going. Also, to tell you the truth, these are men, so I’m sure they all had their own ideas about the best route to take to get to wherever their destination might be.  Human beings like to be in charge.  We like to have control.  We want to have a plan that makes sense.  In the absence of those things, we can “hold our breath” for a while and work to keep our mouths closed, but those needs are going to come flying out, sooner or later.  

I remember as a little kid being on long car trips (which would have included just about any car trip at all when I was a kid!)  I would stop myself from asking the question until I couldn’t stand it any more:  “When are we going to get there?”  My mother’s reply was usually the same:  “We’re getting closer every time the wheels go around!”  Which was true…unless we were going the wrong way, in which case we would be getting farther and farther away every time those wheels turned.

I’m really just making the case here that we ought to feel real empathy for the disciples.  We love how they drop everything and follow Jesus faithfully:  “Way to go boys!”  However, if we think about it at all, we have to recognize that things only got harder from there.  The fact that they were probably being scorned by those who loved them would have been haunting.  However, what would have really compounded the tough feelings inside of them would have been the question that they were each surely asking themselves:  “What if I just made a horrible mistake?”

Of course, there is not a lot of time to think such thoughts, not when you’re following Jesus.  He heals a leper and a paralyzed man.  He fights with the Pharisees.  He calls more disciples.  He teaches about forgiveness and loving your enemies and not just hearing what to do but actually doing what they’re called to do.  Huge crowds of people who were horribly broken in body and in spirit, desperately chased Jesus, willing to do anything to be healed.  Those crowds had to make the disciples so uncomfortable!  When you spend your life fishing on the sea at night and sleeping during the day, it would have been rare to ever see a sick person.  Who knew there could be so many and that their illnesses could be so terrible?

Then, things begin to really intensify.  Jesus is kind to a Centurion and the Centurion’s slave:  “Really?  We’re helping Romans now?”  He raises a man from the dead: “Say what?”  When John the Baptist’s followers come to him, Jesus basically acknowledges that he is, in fact, “the one.”  And just to top things off, when Jesus and the disciples are trapped on the sea in a storm and the disciples wake Jesus up, he takes one look at the sky, rebukes the wind, and the storm stops.  (At which point, seemingly, if Jesus had owned a microphone, he would have held it out and just dropped it.)

Just when everything is going great, when the disciples are getting the hang of being Jesus’ entourage, when they suspect they might just be riding “the gravy train,” Jesus—out of the blue—tells them that the Son of Man is going to suffer.  He’s going to be rejected by the authorities.  He’s going to be killed.  And then he will rise again.  And…oh…by the way… If anyone really wants to be his follower, they should get ready to take up their cross and follow him, too:  “Hold it, Jesus.  What’s with all this suffering and death and resurrection stuff?  Whatever happened to “fishing for people?”  You never told us this before…”

This changed everything…for a few minutes or hours.   We know this, again, because we’re human, too.  We can’t hold onto things that feel difficult or dissonant for very long.  We have to resolve that internal conflict pretty quickly.  And, there isn’t another creature on God’s green earth better at denial than human beings.  So, the disciples kind of forget about the whole suffering and death and resurrection thing.  In fact, not long after Jesus speaks those words, Jesus catches the disciples arguing about who is the greatest disciple.  (I’m pretty sure that this had to be one of the real low points for Jesus, no matter how much he loved those guys.)  Still, though, as fellow human beings, who hasn’t welcomed a petty argument as an escape from some almost unspeakable truth?

I think that’s when Jesus decided something had to change.  So, he sends the disciples out on a mission of their own.  He empowers them so that they, too, can teach and heal.  No more standing on the sidelines for them!  Here’s the truth, though, that we tend to skip right past.  Jesus sent them out with nothing.  He forbade them from taking anything extra with them and told them that they would have to rely on the kindness of the people they met along the way.   They weren’t going to be secure themselves but they, nevertheless, were supposed to care for other people’s needs.  Didn’t Jesus get the memo that we do really well caring for others if all of our needs are taken care of first?  Apparently not…

Yet, the disciples come back after this ministry and they are pumped!  They tell Jesus about all the amazing things that happened.  They have felt the power of God working through them.   At this point, I’ve always imagined that there was a little extra swagger in their step, that they just somehow carried themselves differently:  “Lesson learned, Jesus! Thanks!”

Then, after all that they had seen and heard, something happens that seems so innocuous at first.  They go to Bethsaida.  When the crowds discover that Jesus is there, Jesus leads them all outside of town.  Once there, Jesus spends the day teaching them about the Kingdom of God—how the world would work if it worked the way God intends it to work.  He also heals a lot of people.  At the same time, I suspect, the disciples must have welcomed the chance to settle back into being bystanders again.  If anything, they would only have a greater appreciation for what Jesus did, having now dabbled a bit in that work, themselves.

Eventually, the shadows grow long and the sun begins to set.  At that moment, realizing that their time on the road had made them sensitive to such things, they pointed out to Jesus that he should send the crowds home.  After all, the people were going to need a place to stay and surely they were hungry, too.  Actually,  they felt kind of good about themselves when they said this because this showed Jesus how sensitive they were, right?

I’m convinced that this is Jesus’ second lowest point with the disciples:  “Really guys?  When you were on the road and needed food and a place to stay, would it have felt like someone cared about you if they looked you in the eye and said, ‘You should go now.  You’ve got to find something to eat and a place to stay!’  I don’t think so.  That’s not enough.  You do something!  So, you recognize their needs.  Terrific!  Now, do something about those needs?”

At this point, we need to own our own tendency to be just like the disciples here.  We see needs—dire needs—in the world around us.  What do we think? Often, our tendency is to pray for God to do something rather than for God to help us see what we can do.  Often, if we’re not the praying type, we think, “The government should do something!” or “That agency should do something!” or “The church should do something!” If we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, we might dare to blame those in need and think, “Those people should really learn how to help themselves!” All of these responses are 100 percent human and understandable.  All of them are also huge steps away from how Jesus wanted his followers to respond to the world around them.

Jesus’ haunting question to the disciples is not a theological question or a public policy question.  Jesus’ haunting question has nothing to do with placing blame or shame.  No…Jesus recognizes that the disciples understand the needs of the crowd.  “That’s good!  Way to go, guys!  Now…you do something to help them!  What are you going to do?”

In the next instant, the disciples make the very same point that every one of us has made along the way, when we recognize the needs of others:  “We would but we don’t have enough!”  We have all done the math and come to the conclusion that we only have “five loaves and two fish.”  Anyone can see that the needs far outweigh our meager resources.  Why even try? If we try to help and we don’t have enough, we might just make things worse…

I can illustrate what happens next with an image.  Have you ever had to use a pump to get water?  Stay with me now.  In order to get water from an old fashioned pump, you have to prime the pump first.  You just need a little water to get the water pressure moving.  Then, the water comes flying out of that pump.  Jesus is teaching the disciples how to prime the pump.  Put what you have out there in order to help someone else—prime the pump—and just watch God’s goodness multiply.  Of course, when the people around you are willing to share their gifts, when enough people prime the pump, well just stand back and watch a miracle happen.

Five loaves and two fish become more than enough, so much, in fact, that there are leftovers, even after everyone has had their fill.  It sounds crazy, but you know it’s true.  We’ve all seen this miracle.  PADS lunches and some people willing to cook turn into a shelter full of satisfied, sleeping people. A whirlwind trip to Kentucky and a return a few months later with a group of willing people turns into restored homes and a deck designed to allow a man with dementia to still relax outside.  A good idea on Kenna McBean’s part turns into children with the school supplies they really need.

You do something.  Prime the pump.  Get ready for a miracle!