Turning Shortage into Surplus

TURNING SHORTAGE INTO SURPLUS

Mt. 14:13-21

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus took upon Himself the role of host for a large dinner party.  He did not have to do it.  Most of the guests were uninvited.  They had imposed themselves upon His privacy.  He was grieving having heard about the death of John the Baptist.  He wanted to be alone with His disciples.  They had sailed across the Sea of Galilee to an isolated place, but throngs of people saw where the boat was heading and went there on foot.  When Jesus arrived, the seashore was teeming with people.  What started out to be a time of rest and quiet turned into a day of work.

As evening drew near, a crisis began to take shape.  It was almost suppertime.  Everyone was hungry, but no plans had been made.  How were those people going to find food in that out-of-the-way place?  The disciples saw the situation and, apparently, felt some responsibility for it.  The only solution was to send the people away and let them try to buy food in the nearby villages, but Jesus had a different idea.  He took charge of what appeared to be a woefully inadequate food supply.  In His hands, the shortage became a surplus.  Matthew tells us that all ate their fill.  The fragments which remained, when gathered up, filled twelve baskets.

This story was obviously very important to the early church.  It is the only miracle of Jesus that is reported in all four of the Gospels.  The evangelists wanted to be certain that everybody heard it.  This story is important to the modern church as well.  A lot of things have changed in the last two thousand years, but one thing that has not changed is the problem of shortages.  That is still with us.  Everyone seems to struggle with it.  Many families have a hard time making ends meet, they just struggle to pay their bills. 

Even in the prosperous countries in the West there is trouble making ends meet.  Shortages are everywhere.  They are most acute in places where people lack the bare necessities of life.  For you and me to talk about a food shortage is one thing.  It may only mean that we have not been to the shops for a few days, but for a family with no food at all in the house, shortage has a different meaning.  To them, it means hunger.  It means undernourished children.  In extreme cases, it means starvation.  When Jesus fed the five thousand, the issue was not that critical.  The people had probably eaten that morning and they were within a few hours' walk of their homes.  No one was in danger of starving.  It was simply a case of ordinary hunger.  The disciples argued that there was too little food to meet the need, but Jesus demonstrated how a seeming shortage can actually turn out to be a surplus.

He started with the principle of cooperation.  The disciples had, in their possession, a small picnic basket, containing five loaves and a couple of fish.  John's Gospel tells us that it originally belonged to a young boy.  He shared it with the disciples.  The disciples gave it to Jesus.  Jesus offered it to God in a prayer of thanksgiving.  He then broke the bread and gave it back to the disciples.  They, in turn, shared it with the people, and everyone had plenty to eat, with enough left over to fill twelve baskets.

The Gospel writer offers no explanation as to how so many people were fed with so little food.  I, therefore, will not attempt to explain it either.  What happened to the food is not the issue.  The point of the story is what happened to the people.  They cooperated with Christ and with one another.  They conducted themselves as a family.  They acted like brothers and sisters.  There was room at the table for one and all.  They shared their mutual needs and their mutual resources and by that process, everyone was fed.  No one went away hungry.

That is the real message of this story.  We are all members of the same human family.  Our very existence on this planet links us by many bonds to many people.  We are mutually dependent upon God.  Every time we sit down to eat dinner, this truth is right there before our very eyes.  The bread on our table preaches a sermon about the human family.  Think of how it gets there.  Hold it in your hand and trace it back to its source - first to the shopkeeper, then to the baker, then to the miller, then to the farmer, then to the seed, then to the soil, then to God.  Cooperation is a necessary principle of life.  Without it, we would all go hungry.  With it, everyone can eat, and there will be food to spare.

Our reading points out one other way that Jesus turned shortage into surplus.  It was by means of conservation.  When the people had eaten their fill all of the leftovers were carefully preserved.  Nothing was wasted.  There was a time when that may have seemed an indifferent matter, a negligible detail of the story, but no longer.  More and more we are coming to understand that this earth is a fragile planet with limited resources.  It is a beautiful and bountiful place.  If we take care of it, it will take care of us, but if we waste its resources and ravage its beauty, we could destroy it.  In the process of doing that, we would, of course, destroy ourselves.

Scientists have been telling us this for a long while and finally, it seems we are beginning to listen.  We are teaching it in our schools.  We are preaching it in our churches.  Save all that you can; don't waste anything.  Recycle everything that can be recycled.  Save the rainforests; our lives depend upon them.  Do not pollute the atmosphere.  Save the rivers and oceans.  Save everything.  With His keen mind and penetrating insight, Jesus saw the necessity of this centuries ago.  In John's account of this same story, He told His disciples, "Gather up the fragments that are left over so that nothing is wasted."  How modern and imperative those words have now become.

Lord Jesus, cooperation and conservation were the two principles You used to feed a hungry crowd.  They worked then, and they will work now.  If we would take them to heart and put them to use, most of our shortages could be turned into surplus.

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