THERE IS NO SCARCITY WITH GOD

(Preached on Sunday, June 8, 20008)

And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.                                                -Matthew 14:20

 

Let=s take a little quiz.  (Have them find the AAre you ready to talk about money in your Church@ brochure.)

 

One reason we don=t like to talk about money in the church is that we fully understand that God will just ask for too much!  Look at Jesus in this story.  He and his disciples were trying to get away for a retreat.  But the crowd followed them and in typical Jesus fashion, Jesus spends their day of retreat teaching and healing the crowd.  Then as the night approaches, his disciples, being very pragmatic, approach him to remind him that he needs to end his work and send the crowd away to find food for themselves.  But Jesus doesn=t agree.  No, instead he says to them: Ayou give them something to eat.@  Now we are talking about 5,000 men, plus women and children, easily a crowd of between 6,000 and 7,000 people.  Where on earth did Jesus think his followers had food enough for all those people?  No, he just always asks too much. 

 

At least that=s the way it seems.  Because we live with an attitude of scarcity.  We live with an attitude of fear.  We are afraid that there is not enough to go around.  But Jesus understood that with God, there is always enough.  Jesus understood that God is a God of abundance, of extravagance, of richness.  And God continues to bestow blessings on us every day.  Jesus understood that with God there is always enough.

 

When his disciples said they didn=t have enough he asked them what they had.  AFive loaves and two fish.@  It is enough, he said, and had them seat the crowd on the ground in small groups.  Jesus then took the food, gave thanks for it to God, the source of all our blessings, and then broke it and distributed it.  And lo and behold, everyone ate, had enough, and there were leftovers, more than at any Thanksgiving feast.  No scarcity, plenty to go around.  That is the way it works with God.

 

 

Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, once told a group who came to him for his advice on starting a Habitat chapter in their community: ALet me tell you something very important.  Listen very carefully.  The whole future of what you are about to do rests on what I am about to say.  It would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible and injudicious for you to start your Habitat affiliate without having at least $1 in the bank.  To start with anything less would be ludicrous.@  The group laughed nervously, see they had figured they needed at least $6,000 to begin, and had only raised $3,000.  Fuller grinned and said, AHabitat is founded on the economics of Jesus, which was manifested in the feeding of the multitudes.  Here it is.  You take what you have C one dollar C and you give thanks for it and then give it to the Lord to be blessed.  Then you step out in faith.  Pagans need money in the bank before they start something, not Christians.  You take the first step, create a crisis where people know there is a poor family without shelter, and motivated Christians can help out, and watch God provide, sometimes in ways you will never imagine.@  To the amazement of the group, months later, they saw Fuller=s words come true, even to the point of having a Ku Klux Klan dropout offer to do the plumbing for the house of a black family C for free!

 

The commodity most often in shortest supply is imagination.  Faith that God is able to provide, that God does not mean for any to be sent away empty, that God has given us what we need to give the world what it needs.  Faith that if we share the blessings we receive from God, it really won=t mean less for us, but in fact, it will mean more.

 

For almost a hundred years after the Civil War the American South held firm to racial segregation.  African American were allowed only the menial, dead-end jobs.  They were not allowed into the textile mills to work, never given an opportunity to advance into professional jobs.  AIf you let the blacks in here, they will take white jobs,@ was the justification for this economic injustice.  A few years ago an economist showed a group of southern clergy the statistics on the rather remarkable economic advances in the American South.  One of the group, looking at the graphs, noted a huge jump in the poor Southern states= economies about 1968.  What happened?  AThe Civil Rights Movement,@ said the economist.  AWe in the South were trying to fight with one hand tied behind our backs.  When black people were allowed into the economy, the economy really started to boom.@

 

We continue to try to send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.  But Jesus keeps calling us to give them something to eat.  We keep clinging to the false idea that it is possible to buy food for ourselves.  Jesus keeps trying to show us that we are fed only by grace.  He says to us over and over again: The food we need is not something we buy for ourselves; the food we need is God=s abundant love.  Love always comes by someone else=s hand.  You give them something to eat.  It=s about relationship.  We all live in relationship.  You feed them as I=ve fed you.