July 28, 2024

“Give Your Lunch to Jesus”

I must confess, it’s been so many years that I can’t entirely remember from whom I first heard the line.  I think it was the great Black preacher, Sandy Ray, holding forth at the Mordecai Johnson Institute of Religion, but I know it was over forty years ago.  All I remember is the ringing sound of the voice saying, “Give your lunch to Jesus!”  He had just told the story of the feeding of the five thousand, and of the little boy who offered his five barley loves and two fish, a little boy who, in fact, gave his lunch to Jesus.  And he admonished us to do the same, to give whatever we had to Jesus, no matter how meager, no matter how seemingly inconsequential.  Just give whatever you have to Jesus, and see what he can do with it.  I was carried away by the simple power of that message all those years ago, and in reflection, I still am.

My theology has changed a lot over those years, but I’d like to reflect with you this morning on how, after all these years, and all the hard knocks of over fifty years in parish ministry, and all the frustrations, sacrifices, disappointments and painful lessons of a guy who’s been around the block so many times now that my beard is grey and my hair is falling out, those simple words, “give your lunch to Jesus,” still carry meaning for me.

It is particularly now that the simplicity of “give your lunch to Jesus” strikes a deep and powerful note, because it is now that the world seems a far too complicated, too painful, and too confusing place.  But I am not drawn to the simplicity of this phrase because it’s an escape from the problems of the world.  I’m drawn to it for exactly the opposite reason – it describes three miracles that are the only means I can think of for saving the world.

Before I share those three miracles with you, I have a few things to say about water, economics, and war.  You’ve read the news.  You know that while the oceans are rising, there are also places where water is becoming more scarce every year.  More heat and dryness out West in our country has led to drought worsening in Northern California, the Northwest, Northern Rockies, into the Plains, but that’s nothing compared to places on this globe where clean water has become such a scarce commodity that it’s like gold – and the poor have about as much access to it as they do to gold.

Now, I have a little morning ritual that I’ll tell you a secret about.  My shower head has settings on it for wide spray, concentrated spray, and shower massage.  I personally love the massage setting, so I just keep it there most of the time.  Unfortunately, the water pressure from our well pump varies quite a bit from time to time depending on where we are in the backflow cycle of our filtration system.  So, sometimes the flow is strong and vigorous, and other times it’s merely acceptable.  But when it’s at its lowest, there’s not enough water pressure to drive the massage mechanism on my showerhead.  So, here’s my morning ritual.  I put the showerhead on massage and hope that it keeps working.  I try to divine the pulses and sounds of the system to determine if it’s going to keep going or stop and just squirt a steady stream.  So I try to get in a little massage action on my back before it might quit on me.  Now, I realize that this is a trivial little part of my day that most of you are probably not be the slightest bit interested in, but here’s the point: somewhere in Nigeria there’s a mother who, like hundreds of thousands of others all over the continent, wakes every morning hoping against all hope that she will be able search out, scrounge, or steal from somewhere, somehow, enough clean drinking water to keep herself and her children alive for one more day without giving everyone a deadly disease.  When I awake in the morning hoping that my shower massager will keep working, I should at least have the decency to be embarrassed.

Water is an increasingly precious commodity.  We have lots and lots of it here where we live; even when there are dry conditions, none of us has been terribly inconvenienced.  We haven’t figured out a way to get water from here to sub-Saharan Africa; redistribution of this resource is pretty tough to work out.  But even if we could, how ready would you and I be to share?  Would we happily, or even grudgingly, limit our own water availability to the point that it impacted our ease of living?  I raise this question because it strikes at the heart of a very large issue for our world.  I suppose it’s largely an economic question: how do we come up with an equitable distribution of limited resources?

We have a presidential campaign underway (in case you haven’t noticed) in which economic policies are front and center.  The Republicans and Democrats are perhaps not as far apart on this score as many of us suppose.  The difference between the two parties is only a matter of degree in terms of taxes for the wealthy, how much government should be involved in things like private sector support, health care, regulation of the financial markets, etc.  Each party has its own vision for what kind of policies will prove to be best for all Americans.  But the truth is, no economic system or set of policies and laws will be the determining factor in that larger question of equitable distribution of resources.  If people want to accumulate for themselves everything they can, hoard resources, assets, and the means of production, while others are left to fight over the table scraps, they will do it.  No economic system, no set of regulations, will keep us from it.  We will find a way.  And whether people who earn over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year pay 35% income tax or 39.6% is not going to change that dynamic one iota.  If I thought political systems were the answer I’d be a politician.  The answer has to do with what’s going on in the hearts and minds of people, and that’s one reason I have been in the ministry.

Which takes us to war.  War is always about inequality.  It’s always about some people wanting what others have and adopting any means necessary to get it.  The primary instigation for such conflict is always the desire on someone’s part to get the wealth, power, influence, religious privilege, resources that someone else has.  It is the dynamic of greed and desire based on perceived social, political, religious, or economic, inequalities writ large.  And the stockpiling of nuclear weaponry, and the actions of wing-nuts like Vladimir Putin are all part of the global distrust and hubris that grows out of this human condition.

So, the question is not simply economics, it’s a moral question: how do we come up with a world in which people are willing to share, even to the point of some self-sacrifice?  That takes us to our three miracles.  Most people think the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand was that Jesus used some magic power to make the loaves and fishes grow and become tons of food.  If that’s all there is to it, I have to confess, I’m not impressed.  No, the miracles in this story are bigger than that in my mind.  They are no less than the potential salvation of the world.

It all started with a little boy who brought a basket lunch to the first century equivalent of an outdoor rock concert.  As rock concerts are wont to do, the show went on a lot longer than anyone figured it would, and we all know what happened.  Anyone who’s ever put up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with potato chips in a brown bag knows the point of greatest significance in this story: it’s about what happened when a little boy decided to give up his lunch.

But it didn’t have to happen the way it did.  The boy with the loaves of bread and fish in his basket might have looked around at this sea of people and clutched his lunch a bit more closely.  He might have logically concluded that, in a crowd so vast, in a place where no clear answers were evident, in a situation that looked murky at best and at worst defied all attempts to offer a reasonable solution, the best course of action was to hold on to what little he had, withdraw from the problem and leave the perplexing task of taking care of all those people to “those who are more familiar with the situation.”  But he didn’t.  And that’s the first miracle of this story.  He did a miraculous thing: he gave his lunch to Jesus.

It could have gone differently.  Andrew might have seen the boy approaching with his little basket of barley loaves and fish, and intercepted him with a warm and appreciative smile: “Thank you, son.  Your desire to help means a lot, but I’m afraid we need a bit more than a few pieces of bread and fish.  You might as well hold on to them.”

It could have gone differently.  Philip, who knew that they needed more than 200 denarii might have gotten so involved in the “Over the Hillside, Over the Top” financial campaign that he might not have even noticed the little boy trying to offer his lunch.

But it didn’t go that way.  The boy gave up his lunch, and I think that gesture changed everyone at the gathering.  I know I’m reading into the story, but I can’t help it; it only makes sense.  I think he inspired the disciples.  And I think, so inspired by his gesture, the disciples were able to be inspiring to the crowds as they went among them.  Which takes us to the second miracle.  People passed the food among themselves and each one shared with his neighbor.  I suspect, that, inspired by the act of this small boy, others in the crowd who had something to eat were motivated to share what they had as well.  In how many crowds of five thousand people would that happen, without a few grabbing as many baskets as they could and running off to another hillside with their booty?  Everyone shared what was there.  For me, that’s miracle enough.  It’s miracle enough to demonstrate that human beings aren’t destined by their genetic code or “survival of the fittest” to live always and only for themselves.  It’s miracle enough to convince me that we are all capable of becoming more than we are, and even sacrificing some of our own riches, pleasures, and security for the sake of others.

Which leads naturally to the third miracle.  The food was distributed, and scripture says, “they were satisfied.”  There’s the miracle.  Everyone in that place was satisfied with what they got.  I don’t know how much each person ate.  Some surely ate more than others.  Some surely just took a few bird pecks, to leave more for others.  Some were probably ravished, and gobbled up loaves; others were probably not that hungry, or decided to wait till they got home.  There were probably five thousand different stories of eating loaves and fishes on that day.  But here’s the miracle: everyone was satisfied with what they had.  How many of us in this land of plenty are satisfied with what we have?  How many of us instead yearn for something else, something more in life, some different life circumstance, some more dependable security, some greater comfort?

What a miracle took place on that hillside!  It was the miracle of a little boy who in spite of his own desires, amidst the intimidating atmosphere of people in authority, and in the face of ridiculous odds offered up his lunch.  It was the miracle of an overpowering spirit of sharing that spread through the crowd like some benign virus.  It was the miracle of five thousand people all deciding at last that they were satisfied with what they had.

Do you find yourself at times lost in sea of uncertainty about the future, maddening debates that miss the point, and confounding dilemmas that seem to be ignored?  Do you find yourself looking at your own meager resources of faith, finances, and fortitude, and feel ready to just give up?  Do you wonder if your own little drop in the bucket of time spent volunteering to bring meals to a family in crisis, or helping with the food pantry, or tutoring children, or visiting someone in the hospital, or just being thoughtful and kind really matters in the grand sweep of things?  I have a word for you today: “Give your lunch to Jesus.”

The power of your faith or convictions may seem quite flimsy and of little merit in comparison to those around you who seem to have so much to offer.  The possibility of being a friend to a person in need may not seem of any real value in a world where people are hurting and suffering by the hundreds of thousands.  But I have a word for you today: “Give your lunch to Jesus.”

We are faced with a world of so much need, and so many seemingly unanswerable questions.  But we keep learning, in one context after another, that putting forth a little effort and doing the best we can with what we have is often blessed by the Spirit of Christ in ways that surprise us, and lead us closer to true understanding and true community.  As for me, I’ll never turn on my shower massager again without thinking about some woman and her children in Nigeria scrounging for enough to drink.  And I’ll be motivated by that thought to do my part in whatever small way I can.  In various and wondrous ways we keep discovering anew the profound value of a simple lesson:

Don’t cling to what’s yours with a death grip;

don’t flail around grasping for more;

don’t despair;

don’t surrender;

don’t give up;

just “give your lunch to Jesus.”