12 Baskets

Sermon Matthew 14: 13-21 May 31, 2015 Casual Sunday/Church Picnic/Festival of Singing

12 Baskets

Leftovers in a deserted place, twelve baskets full!

Just to set the story straight-this is not a story like the story “Stone Soup”. The miracle here is bigger than that. We know that there were leftovers in this story and that is what the miracle is about. Matthew writes this story about the disciples and not the little boy.

It is a story about Jesus commissioning the disciples to do and be the pouring out of the abundance of miracles created by him.

In a world where refrigeration didn’t exist and Sunbeam Bread wasn’t heard of, the disciples were left with twelve baskets of food. What was Jesus thinking when he looked up to heaven to the God of glory?

What was Jesus thinking when he took the loaves and blessed them and then broke them and gave them to his disciples to share with the crowd?

Had Jesus forgotten the date stamp on the bread was only good until morning at best? As we look at the leftover baskets we could consider Jesus wasteful with the resources of God’s good earth. Perhaps Jesus just wasn’t as good at calculating for company when he performed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. 

The disciples were amazed at what Jesus had done to satisfy the hunger of the people.

Yet, they were the ones who had to collect the baskets of leftovers and then figure out what to do with them.

It reminds me of another story in the Bible. When the people of Israel were wandering in the desert they were provided with manna-bread that rained down from heaven. There in the desert, the place of wandering, uncertainty and fragility, God made sure there was bread for every day. There was just enough for each day and no leftovers. The people were warned not to get too much because if they did the manna would rot and get worms.

In today’s text we find Jesus in a deserted place and he is trying to come to grips with the loss of his dearest friend John the Baptist.

But, Jesus has a crowd of followers who want to be close to him, to touch him and be healed by him. They don’t want to let him go for even a minute. They are hungry for his presence. They are hungry for his touch. They are hungry for his words. They are hungry for his love.  The text we read doesn’t say they were hungry for food. The disciples are the ones worried about that. It’s interesting that the ones closest to Jesus were worried about the scarcity around them. The ones who knew him best were the ones worried!

Perhaps it was Judas that was calculating the size of the crowd and realizing that there were not enough funds in the account to cover the cost of sustaining these people with a meal. Perhaps it was Peter who was looking at the amount of work it would take to prepare a meal and then have to share it. Peter saw 12 disciples and 5000 plus people and his head started spinning. There was no way that just a handful of people could do all the work. Or perhaps even John the beloved could only see the scarcity of the situation and couldn’t see past the lack of resources.

The leadership team was more worried about the reality of the situation and felt it their responsibility to let the Savior know that it was time to go. The disciples as they are watching Jesus perform miracles of healing are telling him there isn’t enough food so send those people home!

What is wrong with this picture? Can God provide a table of plenty in a deserted place?

Of course God can!! And that is the point of this miracle. In a world where bread had to baked daily and where the very act of making bread was a sacramental and time consuming process, Jesus held before the masses strength and sustenance. Jesus held before them the provision for their future, all that they needed and in abundance!

More than enough to go around, more than enough to be filled to overflowing, more than enough to have to worry about the leftovers.

When the focus is on the scarcity of resources, God turns it around so that the focus is on the abundance! And this is Good News!

How we steward what is God’s that we can see creates the ethical and moral framework for what we don’t see. (Joel Salatin).

The miracle of this story is as much for us as it was for those first disciples.

When we are faced with the reality of something too big for our imagination that is staring us in the face (like the crowd staring Jesus and the disciples in the face) our tendency is to focus on our lack of resources, our inability to respond to something beyond our capacity or capabilities.

We are human and so all we see is what can’t be done. All we see is how there isn’t enough. All we know is how there aren’t enough people to help.

And when we are faced with a desert story like this one, we are just like the disciples and we speak to Jesus and ask him to send away the crowd. We want Jesus to send away our dilemma. We want to Jesus to send away our crisis, our difficult circumstances. We want Jesus to send away the crowd that is crowding in on us.

But, Jesus responds to us out of the same compassion that he did for the disciples and for the crowd. Everything about Jesus, his mission and ministry, stemmed out of his compassion for humanity.

He became God with us because of his love for us.

Jesus was all about God’s people and still is!

His desire is for us to do and be likewise.

Last year at the Wabash Pastoral Leadership program we (16 pastors) listened to Richard Gunderman the chancellor of the IU medical school. He reflected on the life of Kent Brantly one of his former students. Kent has made national news. He is the medical missionary for his church the Church of Christ serving with Samaritan’s Purse. He has contracted the Ebola virus from the very people he was serving in Liberia.

 Anyone would say he was foolish to take a risk like that knowing that he had a wife and two small children to care for.

Yet, this man even while in medical school had another purpose.

His whole focus of life was about serving God.

As Dr Gunderman said, “Kent sees the micro-challenges of his own life – what field to study, what career to pursue, what kind of husband and father to be – in terms of the macro-challenges of the world – mouths to be fed, wounds to be dressed, diseases to be treated, and suffering human beings to be comforted.” “Kent sees his life as serving others and has the courage to follow it.”

Being a disciple is not an easy task and standing there on the hillside with his disciples Jesus made that point clear as he lifted his head to heaven to bless the five loaves and two fish.

He poured out God’s love into the food before him.

He knew that this would be the one way the disciples could act on the resources that had been given to them as they too were called to go forth and share,

not from the reality of what they could see but from the compassion bubbling up from the heart of what they could not see.

Jesus was setting them up to be good stewards and create a new framework for their lives.

The question for us today is what task or situation before us is so big and so beyond our imagination that we would ask Jesus to send it away?

Are we unable to see the abundant leftovers that there will be because we are so focused on the scarcity of the resources around us?

Jesus shows us in this miracle to remind us that all the resources are there. 

All we need to do is respond from a heart of compassion for the bigger picture.

Twelve baskets of leftovers! One basket full for each disciple!

We are not told how the disciples probably had to scramble to figure out how to share this abundance.

We are not told what their reaction was to this new dilemma.

But we get the joy of God’s work among God’s people. We get it! We really do!

Think of some of the activities we have done together as a church. How many of those activities would have died on the drawing table if we had said things like, “we are small, we don’t have enough people, we don’t have the funds, we don’t have the energy etc.”  But, we haven’t done that (even if we thought it).

And we have been blessed with leftovers!

How will we be good stewards of the leftovers?

How will we handle the baskets of good fruit?

There were twelve baskets and twelve disciples just enough for each one to carry and bring to someone to keep the abundance of giving going.

Jesus gives us more than manna for our daily bread. He gives us leftovers to carry with us and share with others. He gives us so much that we are not depleting our resources but are giving from the abundance given to us.

Let us offer our hearts to God, be blessed and broken, and poured out for many. Amen.