When John tells us stories about Jesus, he’s usually very intentional about pointing out that Jesus has this divine foreknowledge of what’s about to happen, and this morning’s story is no exception. John tells us that Jesus knows exactly what he’s going to do about the big crowd who come chasing him to see wonders. So it bugs me a bit that Jesus very particularly nudges the disciples and us into thinking about the situation as our problem, an unsolvable dilemma, when he asks Philip, “Where are we going to buy bread for all these people to eat?”.
Now, the right answer to that question is that it’s actually the wrong question. The feeding of this hungry crowd is never going to be addressed by going out to a shop and purchasing food.
No disciple – not Philip then, not you or me now – can get these people fed by staying within the conventional lines of where food comes from and how it’s provided.
But Jesus’ question specifically frames the problem in conventional terms. And Philip answers him in those terms – outlining the immense, unbudgetable expense of even trying; even purchasing a token bite of bread for all those people.
And now, I think, John’s got us, his readers, where he needs us.
The problem is clearly unsolvable. It’s too big.
It’s like so many – so many – of the problems: the hungers, the injustices, the slow-building disasters, (the weather) that surround you and me from day to day. Some of them urgent and personal; others looming and global, all of them problems that need solving, and are absolutely too big for me, for you, to address.
So many painful global and local situations where we can’t imagine being able to make even a token difference.
Many of us recognize the kind of situation Philip is confronted with here, even if none of us have ever personally been suddenly made responsible for catering for five thousand guests we didn’t invite.
And then the very next thing that happens is: “here are five loaves and two fish”. Here’s a boy with roughly a meal for a single family.
Among five thousand people.
But among all those thousands of people, how did this one small meal come to Jesus?
Has Andrew been trying to solve the meal problem himself? Did he survey the crowd, the region, his fellow disciples… then bring back to Jesus the only thing he could come up with – one kid, with his family’s dinner?
Or did that one boy come up out of the crowd on his own?
Did he bring his loaves and fish because he saw the crowd and thought Jesus needed help with the hungry people?
Or did he not even think about the crowd, but brought his meal to Jesus because he thought Jesus might need a snack?
Or because he wanted to just get closer to this extraordinary, holy man?
Whoever took that initiative, this moment in the story when the five inadequate loaves and mere two fish appear is a ringing triumph of hope.
Hope not in the sense of “I hope someone can fix this”, but hope that’s a maybe below-conscious-thought experience of the world as possible, rather than hopeless.
Hope that looks not at the impossible size of a problem, but looks at what’s right in front of me, of you; at what happens to be in our hands or within reach, and says “what do I want to do with what I have?”
And in this case “I have lunch; I want to bring my lunch to Jesus” turns out to facilitate a miracle.
A miracle of abundance so overwhelming that the leftovers could feed many families well.
(I don’t know if the clean-up team was holding up those baskets of leftovers in awe, ready to put them in a museum, or preserve them as holy relics.
Or whether – like after shared meals at Trinity – they were asking around pleading to find folks who would take a basket of leftovers home with them.
But the fact that the leftovers were too abundant to be ignored matters to this story. To making sure you and I know that God doesn’t work small. No “just enough” solutions for Jesus; abundance is God’s first answer to our needs.)
I wonder what you and I have among us, right now, that might be the material for a miracle of abundance if we brought it to Jesus.
I wonder what ordinary things are in your house and mine (or your car or desk drawer or wherever things get stored) that might miraculously multiply in Jesus’ hands.
Wonder what ordinary experiences and ideas or even dreams are in the hearts and lives and minds gathered here, that might turn out to be the starting point of extraordinary transformation – for needs we might not see, as well as for impossible problems in front of us – if offered to Jesus at the right moment.
So it might be worth looking at the food in your pantry or refrigerator this week, or at your grocery budget, and asking yourself “what do I actually want to do with this? Who do I want to share this with?”
Maybe you’ll find yourself feeding hungry strangers through the multipliers at a local food pantry; maybe you’ll be feeding your own hungry soul, or someone else’s, by a meal you invite a friend – or someone you want to be friends with – to share with you.
Or discover an unexpected pocket of God’s creative delight and abundance by putting ingredients together in a way you hadn’t before.
Some miracles are small and hyper-local.
Many good and holy things aren’t miracles at all.
But sometimes – just sometimes – looking at what’s in your dinner basket puts you in the right place to watch God do the most impossible, glorious, extravagant acts of care and love and power.
We want – we need – to be people of hope. People who look at what’s right in front of us, what’s ordinary and ours, and wonder what God might do with it. Practicing that wondering also helps a lot to avoid David’s approach that we heard about this morning, when he looked at someone who wasn’t his, and asked “how can I get that for myself?” The only abundance that comes from that question is abundance of grief and guilt.
So it’s worth practicing the holy questions, as we look at what’s around us.
Maybe this week you might look at the tools of your trade or hobbies – whether those are a keyboard, a pen, a camera, a set of power tools, an expert’s education, a mindset for asking questions, the trust of your colleagues – whatever you use to do your job, or to be creative, or care for yourself or others.
Practice looking at what’s in front of you – so ordinary you might not notice it until you try – and asking “what do I want to be able to accomplish with this?
What problem do I wish this could solve?
Who would I be glad to share my skill, or time, or knowledge, or tools with?
How could I bring this laptop, pile of reference books, circular saw, family car, scalpel, whatever, to Jesus?”
I don’t know what might happen when we do that.
I suspect that the boy with the fish and loaves had no guess what Jesus might do next.
But I suspect it’s worth finding out.
I know it’s always worth the time to wonder.
Because that’s hope.
Hope that lives and acts and breathes and strengthens us, wherever we find ourselves. Hope that makes the world possible.
Hope that lets God be God, and lets Jesus make us miracles.
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