An excerpt from Sunday’s message:
John 6:1-21
Ephesians 3:14-21

There’s a little boy in this story. He only gets one line, and of the four gospel writers who tell this story, only John mentions him, but he’s the one who had the picnic basket that made all the difference.

He almost didn’t go that day, I like to imagine. He almost stayed home, where there were chores to do, a baby sister to look after while his mother was up to her elbows in laundry and his father was off working in the field. He almost stayed home, but his mother sees him standing longingly at the doorway, watching people from the town head out to the hillside.

“Go,” she says, “I’ll pack you a lunch.” He grins and scampers back inside to find the basket.

“Take a little extra,” his mother says. “You might need to share with someone.” And she reaches up to the top shelf where the bread is kept. There isn’t much, but she gives him everything she has, and wraps it in a cloth. She kisses him on the head and tells him to be safe, then turns back to the baby and the laundry. The little boy takes the basket and heads out the door.

When he gets there, Jesus is already speaking, and the hillside is already crowded, so the only place he can find to sit is right up front, on the ground. When his mother asks him later what he heard, he can’t remember, exactly, except that it was good.

The little boy is close enough to hear the conversation between Jesus and the disciples when they realized the crowd is getting hungry. He hears Jesus tell the disciples to get the folks something to eat, and he hears Philip say, “We could work for six months and not earn enough money to feed all these people!”

And then the little boy feels a hand on his shoulder. It’s Andrew, and he pulls the boy into the conversation. There’s this boy here, he says, and he has some food. And then there’s this little murmur of possibility, until Andrew says, “But it’s only five loaves and two fish. And what is that among so many people?

And the boy looked, too, at the hungry crowd, and wondered the same thing.

Over and over again, we say to God in despair: What is this among so many?
And God says: What do you have?
We say: Two fish and five loaves.
And God says: Then that will be enough.

The unemployment rate is up; food pantry supplies are down. Everywhere, people are hurting. What is this among so many?

What do you have?
We have two fish and five loaves of bread.
We have a sanctuary where we gather to worship and rest.
We have a small garden where food is growing.
We have a table set with a feast where all are welcome.
We have a passion for the gospel.
We have a commitment to justice.

We have two fish and five loaves of bread.
Then that will be enough.

I’ve discovered a wonderful little book called Longing for Enough in a Culture of More. Just the title says it all for me. The author says this:

“…What do you long for? When you feel like you’re hungry but know you’re really not, what are you really ‘hungry’ for? When you think you’re short on purses or power tools but have a closet full of each, what are you really short on? This sounds kind of backwards, but I often think that the more we indulge our appetites, the deeper our longings grow. It may be precisely the closet full of purses or power tools that leaves me with a vague sense of needing something else. Is it another purse? Another power tool? Another promotion? Another partner?

“Perhaps one of the most rudimentary longings we ever feel is the longing for enough, or rather, for enough to be enough… I tend to think that the urges that lead us to acquire more and more and more – purses, power tools, promotions (oh, yes – and chocolate) – are at least partly urges for the very opposite, longings to shed some of those accretions and walk on through life less encumbered and more attentive, less self-absorbed, and more aware of the world around us, richer, finally, for what we have chosen to let alone… When we’re longing for this, that, and the other, chances are what we are really longing for is a sense of enough.” (Escamilla, Paul L. Longing for Enough in a Culture of More. Abingdon Press: 2007; pg. 38-40)

It is, after all, a miracle story, what happens there on the hillside with those five barley loaves and two dried fish. The people are filled – beyond anything they could ask or imagine – with the fullness of God.

What is this among so many?
What do you have?
Then that will be enough.

The little boy should have gone home, probably, after they’d all eaten. He should have gone home when it started to get dark. He knew his mother would be worried. But he stuck around after the crowds had gone, and followed the men down to the lake. He went quietly; they didn’t know he was there. Jesus wasn’t there yet, either – he’d gone off by himself when the crowds had gotten too demanding. So the little boy watched the men climb into the boat and head into the sea.

And he watched as the wind began to blow, and he huddled under a tree when the rain began, but he could still see the boat tossing and turning in the storm. And then – this was the most amazing of the amazing things he’d seen that day – there was Jesus, who’d been speaking on the hillside just that afternoon, walking across the water, floating, almost, even in the middle of the storm. He could see him come to the boat, though he couldn’t hear what he said, and then he climbed in, and the winds calmed, and the water settled, and the boat went on its way.

There didn’t seem to be much else to do – the people were gone, the storm done – so the little boy turned to head home and nearly tripped over something. It was his basket, and the cloth next to it, filled with leftover bread and fish, more than he’d come with. He picked it up, and headed home, and though it was the dead of night, the path didn’t seem dark at all.