Eat Mor Chikin

The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the 14^th Chapter  

Now when Jesus heard about the beheading of John the Baptist, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.  But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.  When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd;

and he had compassion on them and cured their sick.  When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”  Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”  They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”  And he said, “Bring them here to me.”  Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass.  Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.  And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Even on the most boring commute, a full sized plastic Holstein cow standing in front of a completely white billboard is going to catch your attention!  I commuted into Atlanta every day back then and normally the route was completely predictable.  Then, one day, there was a cow up on a billboard.  The next day the cow was standing on just it’s back legs and appeared to be writing giant sized words with black paint.  Over the next week the cow moved down the sign and the words began to appear and in the end, the sign read, “Eat Mor Chikin” and it was the beginning of the Chick-fil-A fast food chain’s most effective ad campaign ever.  

It was a sign... a literal sign... but having folks just stop and marvel at their clever sign was NOT Chick-fil-A’s goal.  Their goal was for the sign to point to something else... their goal was to get people to stop and break their routine... to choose one of their special chicken sandwiches instead of the burger they always automatically ordered before.   

In the same way, the miraculous elements in today’s Gospel lesson are not meant to be where we stop either.  It’s easy to get mesmerized by the sign:  Five Thousand men and then the women and children too; five loaves, two fish, everyone fed and then twelve baskets of leftovers!  It’s easy to get caught up in what is clearly amazing!  But no matter how amazing it is, THAT is not where we are meant to stop.  The amazing details are meant to points us to something more.  The “more” it’s pointing to is the heart of this story... the part where Jesus tells the disciples, “The people don’t need to go away to be fed, you, disciples, give them something to eat.”  Jesus is trying to convince the disciples that they have indeed been given the ability to feed the people.  

This was a tremendously challenging lesson for the disciples then and it’s equally challenging for us disciples now!  The disciples saw a crowd of well over 5000 people, they didn’t know what to do with them or how to handle that many people.  Their solution was, in their panic, to just ask them to go away.  But Jesus, even before he knew there were only five loaves and two fish, challenged the disciples to fed the people… ALL the people.

You and I are faced with a similar overwhelming challenge.  We’ve got a few more than the dozen disciples sitting here in church this morning than Jesus had and we’ve got several thousand less people out there on the island that are hungry than Jesus had, but the odds are still pretty overwhelming.  The people though... they’re hungry just the same.  They are hungry for God’s unconditional love, they are hungry to be included, they are hungry for justice.  They are hungry for deeper relationships and deeper meaning in their lives.  They are hungry for a connection to the infinite that they might not be able to name, but long for at the depths of their beings.  The hunger is the same.  The overwhelming challenge for the few of us to feed ALL of them is the same and the overwhelming panic at that enormity of that challenge is the same.  How can so few, care for that many?  Where would we put them if they came?  Our methods for connecting to God don’t seem to translate to what those outside the church are able to hear these days?  What would we feed them if they all stayed for lunch?  It’s so overwhelming to think about that it’s tempting to say, or maybe just act in a way that says, “go somewhere else to get fed.”

But Jesus tells us the same thing he told the disciples.  “They don’t need to go away; you give them something to eat.”  When the disciples heard that, their little disciple minds panicked!  Jesus, you must be insane, we have nothing…NOTHING to give them... well, we’ve got these five loaves and two fish, but what’s that?  It’s NOTHING... isn’t it?  In the panic of being told they were supposed to feed the whole crowd, the disciples stopped being able to see all the things they DID have to accomplish that task, including their most valuable resource...Jesus!  Those disciples weren’t the only disciples to have that kind of trouble.  Disciples all over the world continually do the same thing when we are suddenly challenged with something that seems overwhelming.  Like a mackerel suddenly coming face to face with a shark, all we can think about when something overwhelming confronts us is how fast can we swim away and where can we hide!  In that moment of overwhelming panic, our brains stop using the parts that God gave us as humans and we forget that God has blessed us with an incredible abundance of gifts which can be creatively used to conquer even the hardest problems we might face.  We forget or dismiss or can’t even see the gifts God continually showers on us and we forget the biggest resource we could ever want or need... the power of God that comes to us through Christ!  

The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 is a sign that jumps up and down and shouts at us to NOT PANIC when we are faced with what seems to be an impossible calling from God!  It begs us not to miss the loaves and fishes right in front of our faces!  Union Church has WAY more in the way of gifts and resources than any of us could ever ask for or even imagine!  Look at the compassion we show for each other, look at the generosity, look at the people around you.  Do you know what gifts they have tucked away?  Do you know where they’ve been or what they’ve done in their lives? Look at the time and passion folks give in this church... the service done here that overflows out into our whole community and into the world.  Look at the natural beauty of the island and the super glue-like bonds among the people who live here.  Look too at the gifts people bring with them when they come from “away”.  Summer residents, visitors, day trippers and our new denomination all bring all sorts of loaves and fish with them when they come.  And all of them are hungry for the loaves and fish we can share with them while they are here and send with them when the ferry takes them back to the mainland.   Look around and really see the incredible abundance of loaves and the fish around you right now and then remember, on top of ALL that abundance... we also have Jesus!

There are a couple thousand people outside those doors and they have a hunger for a deeper connection to other people and a deeper connection to the Divine.  It is a hunger that is growing in them every single minute of every single day.  Jesus has called you and me to feed them.  Jesus didn’t ask the disciples then to do something they couldn’t do and didn’t have the resources to accomplish and Jesus doesn’t ask us to do something we are not able or equipped to do either.  Every Sunday when share bread here, we are reminded that Jesus is with us... our most valuable resource... calming our fears so we can see the incredible abundance we have been given and challenging us again to take that abundance and do nothing less than give the hungry something to eat.  Amen.