Things Worth Sharing...

Things Worth Sharing

Matthew 14:13-21

For years, before it was popular, I practiced social distancing in a canoe in the woods and lakes of Canada.  The only people you see are the folks whom you choose as travel companions.  On most trips, those are tried and true friends, not always veteran paddlers, but folks with whom you welcome the chance to spend a little time.  With those new to paddling, you work hard to pick a route that will be the right level of challenge, the kind of a trip that leaves them telling stories of the places that they have been without them declaring that they would never go again.

Of course, you can plan but you can’t control things.  I’ve had a few friends who turned out to be much better companions in civilization than the woods.  At the same time, I’ve had friends who I was sure would hate the woods who turned out to be naturals.  Beyond the people and their reactions, though, there are just things that happen.  You get bears in camp.  The black flies turn out to be relentless.  The fishing turns out to be slow and their expectations were based on the latest episode of Babe Winkelman’s show.  

In the end, though, the ultimate test is when it rains.  Up there, the issue isn’t usually some big thunderstorm.  Rather, it is this particular spinning weather pattern that sets up and just sends band after band after band of rain.  Everything ends up wet.  You can’t start a fire.  You feel like a glazed donut, only the “icing” is dirt.  It’s miserable.  At that point, you learn a lot about the people you are with.  Some people find a way to laugh it off.  Some people just keep working to dry out just enough kindling to get the tiniest fire started and then spend the day drying slightly larger pieces of wood until there’s a fire in the evening.  Other people do everything that they can not only to make their misery clear but to make their companions equally miserable.

I remember a particular time when I was the least experienced outdoorsman on the trip.  I wasn’t a “newbie.”  It was just that the three other guys were at least as at home in the woods as they were at home.  We had been working all day to paddle against big winds—hard work in a canoe.  We ducked behind island after island for protection until finally we ran out of islands.  What was in front of us was a huge bay.  The waves on that bay were enormous.  Because these guys were experienced, there wasn’t even a discussion before they began to set up camp.  Some risks were worth taking.  Some risks were not.  We had families at home.

The camp sites on the island were rocky and uncomfortable.  Firewood was scarce.  All of us had been tuning our expectations all week to being out of the woods—TODAY!.  And, because we were experienced travelers, we had planned our food supply so that it would run out just as we came out of the woods.  Rookies haul around pounds and pounds of extra food.  Meanwhile, the wind was howling.  We had no idea how long this was going to last.

Here’s the thing, though.  No one hoarded food.  No one talked about what they wished they were eating.  No one talked about how tired they were of this island.  In fact, everyone talked about how grateful we were to have a place to stay.  Most of all, though, to a person, each traveler looked the others in the eye and in their own way said, “If I have to be stuck, I’m glad I’m stuck with you.”

I will never forget going to bed that night with the sides of the tent folding in with every gust of wind.  Then, at four in the morning, the wind stopped.  It was the most overwhelming silence that I had ever heard.  Without anyone saying a thing, we were out of our tents and packing things—fast.  In the light of the full moon, we carefully balanced our packs in the canoes because who knew if the wind was coming back.  Then, we paddled across the surface of the bay that had been so churned up but in an instant had become like glass.  My paddling partner in the stern began singing hymns that set the pace for our paddling.  We were on our way home.

I keep thinking about that trip in these unprecedented days.  We have all done what we can but if we have any common sense and any sense of civic responsibility, we are each now on our “island,” hunkered down with a handful of fellow travelers.  We don’t get to look at each other as I did on that camp site and think, “Well, it’s a good thing I’m with these experienced folks!”  None of us have had this experience!  Still, though, it wasn’t so much the wilderness skills those men had as it was the content of their character.  Whatever we had was going to be shared—whether that was food or wisdom or encouragement or just funny story after funny story to pass the time.  The conclusion was that if I have to hunker down and wait and be patient, these are my people.  And, we all felt the need to say that out loud to each other.  We all felt the strength that came with actually saying the words.

Everyone had something to add to the moment, to the common effort.  Everyone had to “edit” what they said and did to not undercut that common effort.  It wasn’t the time to whine or complain or worry—though there was more than enough to whine or complain or worry about.  The question was what can I say or do that would actually help.   

This is my first challenge to you this week.  I want you to look the folks that you are hunkered down with in the eye and tell them that there is no one you would rather be with.  I want you to be generous enough to add all that you can add.  I want you to be disciplined enough to choose not to go down the rabbit hole of worry or complaint.  I want you to know that you are doing the wise thing and hold on and trust, that at some point the wind will stop blowing, that what felt so turbulent will become smooth and, that, under the light of a full moon, we, too, will sing each other home.

The second point that I want you to take in has to do with our text.  It is such a familiar story—Jesus feeding the five thousand.  At the heart of the story, though, is something pretty unfamiliar to most of us: scarcity.  Really, scarcity is at the heart of the Gospel, itself.  The people whom Jesus cares for do not have enough money.  They do not have enough food.  They do not have enough power.  And, most tellingly of all, they are being told in so many ways that there is not nearly enough love to go around—God’s love or the love of other people—for them to be loved by anyone.  In short, these people practiced living with scarcity every day.

The folks for whom scarcity was new were Jesus’ disciples.  They had jobs and homes and families who loved them until the day that Jesus arrived.  Jesus called them.  They followed and left everything they had behind.  They didn’t have any idea of where they were going or what they were going to do.  Suddenly, they didn’t even know where their next meal was going to come from or where they would sleep that night.  Imagine how disoriented it must have been to have felt so secure and then to have even just a whisper of insecurity.

Now, I have to pause and point out that there is always a difference between being temporarily poor and being impoverished.  Do you Chicagoans of a certain age remember when Walter Jacobsen, the local news anchor, decided that he wanted to know what is was like to be homeless?  He spent one whole night on the streets—surrounded by his camera crew, under the warmth of those television lights.  He laid there and moaned about how miserable he was…but, of course, all he had to do was stand up and say, “That’s a wrap!”  He wasn’t going to starve to death.  He was going to have a big breakfast in the morning.

Jesus’ disciples were more like Walter Jacobsen than the folks who were inescapably poor.  They would eat.  They would have places to stay.  It was just going to be uncomfortable and inconvenient and uncertain.  It’s as if Jesus is saying to them, “Having had a little dose of this, don’t you care more about these people?”  Jesus is looking for a little empathy and compassion and maybe even a little action.

So, something terrible has happened just before our text.  Jesus has just learned that John the Baptist has died a terrible, senseless death, all for Herod’s wife’s amusement.  Jesus is devastated.  All he wants is a moment alone, to go off into a quiet place and grieve.  The crowds, though, spot him and follow him.  He has compassion for them so he heals people and teaches them.  

It may be timely to pause again and think about these people.  Jesus’ healing work may make us uncomfortable.  The whole miracle thing may push our buttons.  However, the miracle to these people would have been that anyone cared about them when they were sick.  That ancient country had terrible health care. Worse yet, poor people had no access whatsoever.  Imagine the fear that accompanied almost any illness with so little medical understanding.  (I think we can imagine this when one virus that we don’t understand has inspired so much fear in our world.)

So this group of needy, sickly, societal rejects follows Jesus  and he spends all day caring for them.  At the end of the day, the disciples get “partial credit.”  They recognize the needs of these people.  They see that they are hungry.  They suggest that maybe it’s time for the crowd to move on and scrounge for their next meal.  Jesus looks them in the eye and says, “Maybe it’s time for you to feed them!”  And, their answer is classic:  “We don’t have enough!”

Think about how alive this moment is for us right now!  People who have never experienced scarcity—people like us— now have rolls and rolls of toilet paper in their homes simply because they caught a whiff of scarcity and gave in to the need to hoard what they could hoard.  It wasn’t that they didn’t have enough.  It was that they might not have enough.  That was enough to lead to fights between otherwise reasonable people about toilet paper.  (I’m sure you’ve heard about the guy with 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer.  Nice job, dude!)

People don’t do well with scarcity.  However, the people who really don’t do well with scarcity are the people who are totally unfamiliar with the concept.  If I’ve never not been able to get everything I want at the store, just limiting myself is new and ominous.  If I’ve never not been able to see the doctor exactly when I want to see the doctor, waiting is new.  If I’ve always felt in charge enough of my own life, the mere notion that I might not know exactly what’s coming next is new.  The thing is though that however long this lasts, these inconveniences will be temporary for us.

But here’s the thing…they won’t be for the folks for whom this was a way of life long before Covid-19.  Will we learn that people should have food and should have access to heath care and should have some basic security?  Or will we forget such needs when the crisis is over?  What if this crisis might lead us to be more empathic, more compassionate, and even more ready to take action in response to the needs that others live with every day? 

The disciples say that they’d love to share but they don’t have enough.  Jesus tells them, “Give me what you’ve got.”  Jesus blesses what they have and then tells everyone to sit down.  Why are they invited to sit down?  They should relax and enjoy what they are about to share with each other because everyone belongs.  There is room for everyone.  There is enough for everyone.  When people operate this way, instead of out of fear, there are leftovers in the end.