The Character of God

Isaiah 55:1-5

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.

See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

 Matthew 14:13-21

Now when Jesus heard this, 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 for 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.

           

We’ve gone from parables over the past few weeks, to a miracle this week. From the stories Jesus told, to the stories told about Jesus.

This miracle, the feeding of thousands who came to see and hear and be healed by Jesus, is the one and only miracle story that is carried in all four gospels. The miracle of feeding so many, when all they had was five loaves of bread and two fishes, is quite something in and of itself. But as we look more closely and also more broadly at the story, we can begin to see how it tells some very important things about the character and nature of God.

Because one of the things Jesus, God Incarnate, God With us, offers us, is an up-close-and-personal look at the God who could not be seen. As we see the character and nature of Jesus, we see the character and nature of God.

The first characteristic of God that we see in this story is compassion.

Jesus has just learned of the execution of his cousin, John the Baptist. Jesus is fully human as well as fully God, so we can begin to imagine the pain and sorrow he is feeling. He went away by boat to try and find some solitude, perhaps to mourn, to pray, to seek a brief time of rest in order to gather strength and courage to continue his work. But the people follow him, and when he goes ashore, he is not alone as he had intended. He does not get angry; he does not try to go somewhere else to be alone. Instead, he has compassion for them, and he heals their sick. He turns his focus from his own needs and concerns to theirs.

By evening, the disciples are getting worried, because the people had followed Jesus to this deserted place, and there are no resources for feeding them. The disciples, being appropriately sensible and logical, look at the crowd and look at the resources at hand and say – “we got nothin’.”

And Jesus says to the disciples – “you feed them.” “You work it out”.

And he says to the people – “sit down.” “Take a load off.”

The message is, you are welcome here. You are not on your own for finding your daily bread. We’re going to eat together.

Both the disciples and the people receive this message – “don’t worry about where it’s coming from.”

But why should they (or we) believe this? Is this where Jesus gets out the magic wand and does the unimaginable, the incalculable? Well, the truth is, even though we know that nothing is impossible for God, we do not know how this happened, specifically.  We know that there were five loaves and two fishes to start. We know that is a finite amount of food. We know there were way more than five thousand people there, because that was the approximated count of only the men. We don’t know how it was enough for all those people and where the additional came from. We don’t know how there could have been leftovers.

But we do know this: that the scarcity of the resources at hand didn’t stop Jesus. And it didn’t stop the disciples. When Jesus looked up to heaven and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them to go feed the crowd, they set aside their misgivings, and did what he asked them to do.  And what we see happening is that generosity and trust turned scarcity into abundance.

And this is another key characteristic of God. God calls us to generosity and trust, so that scarcity can be turned into abundance. God knows that we have enough to fulfill God’s kingdom. God has provided enough.  What makes the difference is the way we respond to God’s call to be generous, and to trust, and to not be afraid.

We hear these themes in the Isaiah passage as well. Come – you with no money – come to eat! There is rich food here for you! This is good news to those who have little or nothing. They are called to trust.

And you who have plenty, exactly what are you using it for? Things that don’t satisfy you or anyone else….

How can you be generous with what you have? How can you trust the future that is out of your control? How can you trust God?

These words were given to people who had spent years in exile – with little reason for hope. The message to them is this: Trust in the abundant grace and mercy and compassion and justice of God.

So what about us? What about this church at this time? We can view our situation as one of scarcity, of not enough. We can look at our buildings and our congregation and feel like we are trying to squeeze water from a stone.

Or we can look at the resources we do have – those pledged, those resident in the talents of the congregation – those available as we choose to provide them – and we can ask ourselves, what could we do if we were as generous and trusting as those disciples and those people that day? what if we took the little that we have, and increased our generosity and trust in the way we use it? What if we stopped worrying about a balanced budget or a comfortable safety margin, and started worrying about whether we are the best stewards we can be, of all that we have and all that we are? What miracles might happen if we asked ourselves, What Would Jesus Do? and we responded with “be generous and not afraid, trust in God to turn scarcity into abundance”.

When I was growing up, we went out east every summer to visit my mom’s family. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and all her siblings had stayed around there. So we would see Aunt Adele and Uncle Sal in Bala Cynwyd, PA, and Uncle Tony and Aunt Betty in Teaneck, NJ, and Aunt Helen and Uncle Tom in Brooklyn. I have great memories of all three places, but the Brooklyn place in particular stands out. Aunt Helen and Uncle Tom’s kitchen and dining room were small, and every night at dinner they were packed full – with their kids, who were mostly adults – and their dates or spouses – and their kids – and of course, us too. Aunt Helen and my mom, helping her, just kept cooking and cooking and cooking, and the pasta and the meatballs and the sauce just spread to feed everybody that came through, usually in shifts, with dishes being brought into the kitchen and washed and put back out for the next group of people. It was like feeding the five thousand. The people kept showing up, and the food kept coming out of the kitchen. Never did Aunt Helen turn people away. Never did someone leave that table unsatisfied. She was generous, and she trusted that there was enough for everyone, and she just kept filling the bowls and sending it out to the dining room. And scarcity turned into abundance. And family and friends were richly fed and nourished by the food and the love around that table.

If we think about just a few of the terrible situations the world is facing right now, there is this common thread of scarcity, generosity and trust running through them all.

In the heartbreaking and seemingly unsolvable conflict in Israel and Palestine, which is so terribly complicated, but where perceptions of scarcity of land are at its core – what if scarcity were addressed through generosity and trust? Could abundance result if those characteristics of God could be brought back into the lives and hearts of the people there?

And in the tremendous numbers of children coming across our borders seeking refuge in our country, creating fear about their impact on jobs and security here, what would happen if we approached this perception of scarcity of resources with generosity and trust, to turn scarcity into abundance? What would it look like if our churches all over the country led the way?

God says through Isaiah the prophet –

Why spend your money for that which is not bread?

Why labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me. Listen, so that you may live. Listen to the living Word.

Eat what is good.

Delight yourselves in rich food.

What are we spending our money on? How can we be more generous to help others be fed? How can our labor help more to be satisfied? How can we trust that from scarcity will come abundance, when God is in our midst?  

Friends, here at this table is the food that is good, that is rich, that unites us with Christ. Here is the food that he gives us, given through his sacrifice for us, so that we can give to others, generously -  and trusting always in the grace and mercy of our Lord, who turns scarcity into abundance, for those who believe.

Come to the table, be nourished to nourish others with the rich food that satisfies, with the grace and mercy that is abundant beyond our wildest imaginations. Come.