This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin on Sunday, July 29. It was based on the lessons for the day, 2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145:10-18; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21.

How much is enough?  I heard someone say once that enough is just a little more than what I have. Which is apparently why people who have a perfectly comfortable lifestyle continue to buy lottery tickets, dreaming about what they would do with a whole lot more than what they have. Ask a guitar play how many guitars are enough. Usually it’s one more than they have. How big a boat is enough — just a little bigger than the one you have.

Enough is a tricky thing to think about in a culture that is more about scarcity than enough. Conversations in Washington always give us the impression that we have to cut something in because there isn’t enough money for some this or that. Over the years I’ve talked to many people who have comfortable retirement savings who live their lives in fear that their money will run out before the end of their lives. And of course, I have also known many people who really did not have enough to live on. We are conditioned to think of enough as a zero sum game that is more about scarcity of resources than abundance of resources. If we want to do A, then we can’t do B or C because there isn’t enough to go around. Or if we want to do B, then A will have to be cut and C can’t be done at all.

The narrative of scarcity flies in the face of what we hear in our readings this morning. In the first reading, the prophet Elisha encounters a hungry crowd in the midst of a famine. Someone has some loaves of barley bread, but clearly it’s not enough for everyone. Elisha tells him to distribute the bread anyway, and miraculously, there’s enough to go around. Elisha trusts God; God provides enough and even more to satisfy the need.

In the gospel lesson, the crowds are following Jesus. He has been healing their sick and teaching them. People have discovered that this itinerant rabbi has much to offer. So, Jesus goes up the side of a mountain and sits down with his disciples. But they aren’t alone for very long. The crowds follow him, and Jesus takes the responsibility to make sure the crowds have something to eat. Jesus asks Philip a test question. “Hey, Phil. Help me out here. The crowds are hungry. Where can we get them some lunch?” The first thing Philip does is the calculations. A lot of people. Six months paychecks would not be enough to even get everyone a sandwich and chips. Andrew also recognizes the magnitude of the situation; he doesn’t so much do the calculations as look around to see what’s available. A poor boy has his traveling lunch: a few small loaves of bread and some dried fish. The equivalent of a granola bar and a piece of beef jerky. What’s available is almost a joke in the face of so much need. Andrew asks, “What good is the boy’s picnic lunch in the face of so much need?” I hardly think that Andrew’s question is a serious one. He’s not asking it in the hope that it will do any good, but rather as an indication of how little they have. Of how scarce the resources are.

You know the rest of the story. In the hands of Jesus, scarcity becomes abundance. The poor boy’s lunch becomes provision for thousands.

May I remind you that this is but one story in a large collection of biblical stories that remind us of how things work in God’s kingdom. In the very first story in the bible, creation was filled with abundant provision for people and for all the creatures. When God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God provided  manna — bread — for their journey, and everyone had enough. When Isaiah proclaimed what the coming kingdom would be like, he wrote that the Lord would make a feast for all people, a feast of rich food and aged wines, so much wine that the wine would be dripping from the sides of the mountains.

These stories challenge us. They offer a different reality, one that is often hidden behind the narratives of scarcity and zero sum accounting.  What shall we do with this story of a miraculous feeding? What shall we do with this story in a day when church membership is declining and the cost of keeping the church doors open just keeps going up and up and up? What shall we do with this story in a congregation where our offerings are not keeping up with our expenses and we are looking at roof and siding repairs that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? What shall we do with this story, dear church, in a community where we know that children go to bed hungry, where families don’t have adequate housing, where too many are living on the edge?

One temptation would be just to shrug our shoulders and say, “Well that’s just the way it is.” And then go merrily on our way, certain that there is never enough to go around.

But this story addresses precisely that temptation. When we say the need is overwhelming and our resources are too meager, Jesus says, “Tell the people to sit down.” Because he’s about to act.

Jesus acts. Jesus acts, not just in the miracle, but in his entire ministry, life, death, and resurrection. Jesus acts and address the hunger that is at the very heart of human life. The gospel writer John here wants to tell us something more important than the miraculous provision for a crowd. His purpose is not to suggest that we believers will be provided for miraculously by a wondrous king. Rather, the point is that Jesus himself is all we need for life.

Did you notice the little chronological clue that John gives us? There’s this little throwaway sentence that almost seems not to have anything to do with anything else in the story. Verse 4:  “Now, the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.” The Passover is the feast which celebrates the great deliverance. It was the yearly commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, the beginning of the journey from slavery to freedom. God made it possible to share a new life together with God in their midst. By setting the event near the Passover, when the messiah was expected to appear, John uses the story to proclaim that Jesus is the One. He is the One who has come to bring us from slavey to sin and death to freedom and life with God. He has given himself in death so that we might have life.

Because of that, there is enough. There is enough for all. Our cries of “never enough” are never the final answer. Scarcity is a mindset that refuses to acknowledge how God works. In God’s economy, we are simply called to take what we have and offer it to God, and to the world; and to offer not only what we have, but who we are, our very lives. In the hands of Jesus, what we have and who we are will be multiplied and there will be more than enough for everyone. When we feel inadequate, we recall that it is not up to us to solve the world’s problems; God has already given us what we need. Our task is to open our eyes to see what we have been given and then to open our hearts to share with those in need. The answer to the narrative of scarcity is to consider God’s abundant providence. Remember Andrew’s question? “What good is what we have for so many?” It’s the wrong question. The question is, “What have we already been given?” “What do we have?” And then offer it to God believing that God will bless it. Ministry is not just about scrambling to stretch our meager resources, but to offer what we have so that in God’s hands what we have becomes a revelation of God’s amazing grace.

In 1946, a young woman named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu came face to face with the masses of suffering and dying people in Calcutta. Ever heard of her? You probably know her better as Mother Teresa. She experienced a call to serve those suffering the most.  Her knowledge, her wealth, her wisdom were meager in the face of such human need. Armed only with a call, she began the Missionaries of Charity, a small order of 13 members. In the decades to come, the order would grow to thousands of members giving care in scores of orphanages and charity centers in places of dire human need. Love multiplies meager resources and makes a way forward.

And now, very shortly, the One who fed thousands will feed us with his body and blood. He offers himself again for our life. And there is enough for all.

This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin on Sunday, July 22. It was based on the lessons for the day, Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Last week, I preached about two faithful prophets who spoke a word of truth to power and, as a result placed their lives in danger. I talked about how its hard to be that kind of Christian. Apparently, that sermon sparked quite a bit of conversation. So, I decided to use the theme and a few quotes from that sermon as the basis for our Theology on Tap conversation on Wednesday evening. I opened the conversation with this question, “What does it mean to be a prophetic church and what does that look like? When we had our time for questions at the end, someone asked, “Pastor, what is a prophetic church?” In that moment, I realized that I had mad an unfair assumption. I had been using insider language and needed to be very clear and simple. So, after talking about what it means to be a prophetic church, someone said, “Pastor, I think you have the topic for your next sermon. You need to tell us us what it means to be a prophetic church.”

This morning, our lessons gives us exactly the chance to consider that very question. What does it mean to be a prophetic church?

Jeremiah proclaims a word of judgment to the leaders of the ancient nation of Israel. Throughout Jeremiah’s lifetime, much of the ancient Middle East was in a constant state of warfare. The tiny nations of Israel and Judah often got caught in the machinations of the larger world superpowers. But they were not entirely victims. Jeremiah proclaimed that the nasty plight of Israel and Judah was God’s punishment for their unfaithfulness. In today’s reading, Jeremiah likens the rulers to shepherds who were supposed to care for ALL people as a good shepherd cares for ALL his sheep — to nourish them and to protect them. Here the judgment is placed on rulers who have misused their power and failed shepherd their people. Because the shepherds have failed to visit their flock with vigilance and care, thus ensuring their welfare, God will now visit these shepherds in judgment.

This is one piece of what it means to be a prophetic church. A prophetic church speaks the truth about what it sees going on in the world. A prophetic church stands up for and commits itself to the enactment of God’s vision for the world. God intends a world where all God’s creatures flourish, a world characterized by peace and justice and righteousness.

To speak the truth and stand up for what’s right is not where the prophetic church begins, however. The great Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann suggests that the first task of the prophetic church is to lament. That is, to grieve over the shattered vision of what God intends for the world. To lament the structures that were created good but have been coopted for evil. To get a stomach ache over the fact that so many people are not allowed to flourish and to live as God intends. In the gospel lesson, Mark tells us that Jesus had compassion on the crowds because they were stumbling through life as though they were sheep without a shepherd. The Greek word there, the one we translate “had compassion for,” literally means to have a stomach ache over. Jesus had a stomach ache over the plight of the people.

I spent two days this past week at a statewide conference on affordable housing. What I learned is that the challenges we face in Door County in providing decent affordable housing for our working people are not unique to our community. It’s nationwide crisis. I learned how many of the poor are spending over 50% of their income on housing that is often in horrible condition. Matthew Desmond’s powerful book, Evicted, tells the story of what it’s like to be poor and try to find a decent place to live. A prophetic church is heartbroken when it sees economic and social structures that chain the poor in cycles of need that they have little chance of escaping.

A prophetic church is realistic. Jeremiah rightly understood that the king was never going to be able to be that leader that the people so desperately needed. So, he placed his hope in a king that God would provide, a new David, one who would come without the flaws of the first David, one who would fully and perfectly care for his people and protect them from evil. Jeremiah’s hope is a reminder that our salvation and the salvation the world needs will never be realized by any earthly ruler. A prophetic church is starkly realistic about what we can expect from any ruler or any government or institution. We don’t look for more than is possible; we are realists; we understand that salvation is from God. The prophetic church looks to God and to the leader whom God would raise up. That leader is Christ, the One who came as the Good Shepherd. He’s the One Jeremiah was pointing to. He is the One who knows his sheep, the one who looked at the people who were like sheep without a shepherd, and in order to care for them and protect them, gave his life for them. See, if Jesus is Messiah — and we believe that he is — then God’s care, God’s shepherding does not come as we might expect.  It does not come through pursuing war and violence and force — even if the war and violence and force are waged by the good guys. God’s provision and God’s purposes will not be realized as armies and powerful nations defeat their worldly enemies in battle. It comes through God’s offering God’s self in vulnerability and weakness. The great 20th century rabbi and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “To the prophet. . .God does not reveal himself in abstract absoluteness, but in a personal, intimate relation to the world. He does not simply command and expect obedience; he is also moved and affected by what happens in the world. God is concerned about the world and shares its fate. Indeed, this is the essence of God’s moral nature: his willingness to be involved in the history of humanity.” We have seen this very miracle of divine love, that God is so wiling to be involved in the history of humanity that God has sent God’s son, “born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” The miracle of divine love comes to us and to the world through the Messiah’s crucifixion and resurrection. As the followers of the crucified one die to themselves and rise to new life, they in turn share that self-giving love with the world.

Here’s where we come to the final piece of what it means to be a prophetic church. A prophetic church is involved in the world, becomes the agents of God’s intentions and purposes for the world. The church, individual children of God who have died to themselves in their baptism, and have risen to new life in Christ, collectively become the agents for what God intends in the world. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians that in Christ Jesus, we who were once far off from God have been brought near by the blood of Christ. So, we become agents of reconciliation, repairers of the breach, bringing all things into their fullness in Christ Jesus. We become the ones who spread the compassion of Jesus in the dark corners of the world. Compassion is different than pity. When we pity people, we can keep them at arm’s length, never getting our hands dirty and our hearts broken. That’s not what Jesus did. They laid their sick at his feet and his touch healed them. Jesus’ compassion is not distant and it is not condescending; Jesus compassion identifies with the hurting, the burdened, the broken and gets down in the midst of them.  Now he calls us to come out of our places of comfort and distance and identify with, and show solidarity with, the hurting, the burdened, and the broken.

Mark offers two descriptions of those who gathered around Jesus, each as true today as it was  then. In all the comings and goings of our lives, our community and our nation, we are like sheep without a shepherd. Yet in all of it, our Shepherd is present and the crowds around us recognize God in Christ in us, with us, and among us. So, don’t be surprised, dear church, when they rush about and start to bring the sick and the needy to touch Jesus. And we, dear prophetic church, will be there as Christ touches them and heals them through us.