Prosper the Work of our Hands

Psalm 90, John 6:1-14

November 9, 2008

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to get bread for these people to eat?” Philip looked around at the 10,000 hands of this crowd: the small, soft hands of children, the hardened hands of men and women who worked with wood and soil, with cloth and dough, the wrinkled and spotted and bent hands of those who had seen many years. Philip looked and imagined their hands reaching out for food, not food for the spirit, but real food for real grumbling bellies. Philip looked at Jesus, incredulous, and then he threw up his hands. “Even if we had half a year’s wages between us and spent it all on these people we wouldn’t have enough! And we don’t even have that! We can’t do this, Jesus!”

Andrew heard Jesus’ question to his friend. Then Andrew looked around, and sitting near him on the ground was a boy, and the boy’s slightly grubby hands held a small barley loaf, one of five which his mother’s hands had baked that morning. On the ground next to him were two small smoked fish. Feeling a bit foolish and inadequate, Andrew pointed out the boy’s food, but, with his hands hanging helplessly at his side, he said, “Here’s some food, but it’s not enough to deal with the problem.”

Jesus bent down and whispered to the boy. I imagine he said something like, “Let’s see what we can make of this, shall we?” and the boy then put the bread and the fish into Jesus’ hands. Jesus lifted his hands with the food and prayed, “Blessed are you O Lord our God, ruler of the universe, for you bring forth bread from the earth.” Then he started to walk around, breaking pieces from the loaves and fish. Other people jumped up to help Jesus, taking food into their hands and giving it into the hands of others. Slowly, the food spread through the crowd; 10,000 hands reached out and from five loaves and two fish, everyone got as much as they wanted to eat.

But Jesus was not finished. He told the Philip and Andrew and the other disciples to take baskets in their hands and gather up the leftovers, for there were hungry people elsewhere who needed to eat. Twelve disciples, twelve baskets, and all were full of food to continue feeding those who hungered.

In these strange and scary economic times, it is tempting to throw up our hands in the air with Philip and say, “Jesus, there just isn’t enough and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be enough in the future and we are just a bit worried, so don’t ask too much of us right now.”

It is tempting to look around and see a little bit, like Andrew, and drop our hands in disappointment and say, “Look, Jesus, I have a little bit here, but it barely covers my own needs and would be totally inadequate in the face of the needs of my neighbors, of the church, of the world. There’s really no point in my sharing it.” It is tempting to imagine that the boy might have looked at Jesus and said, “No, this is mine! My father harvested the barley and my mother ground it and made it into this bread and I’m hungry (I’m always hungry!) and I need this for myself!” and we can understand how he might feel.

But I wonder, today, if we might be tempted in a different direction. I wonder if we might imagine being like that child, putting what we have as a church, what we have as individuals, into the hands of Jesus and seeing what might happen. No matter how much we have or don’t have, no matter how much we have lost in the market or how much our salaries or pensions have been frozen or how much food and everything else costs more, no matter that we are young and have so little that it seems to us it wouldn’t make a difference, or that we are exceedingly practical people and know that five loaves and two fish cannot feed 5000 people. No matter.

What if we might be tempted despite all those things to use our hands as Jesus used his. He took what he had and then somehow it became not just enough, but way more than enough. The gospel doesn’t say that the food somehow just stretched so everyone had a little bit. The gospel says that everyone had as much as they wanted! God is not just a careful steward, but ridiculously, maybe even needlessly, but joyously extravagant! So much food that bellies were full and still there were twelve baskets of leftovers large enough to feed more people! This is who God is, in whose image we are made. It was God, after all, whose hands fashioned this flagrantly extravagant world: giraffes, and hummingbirds, and waterfalls, and the ridiculous rosebush that is outside our tower lobby door.

Have you been watching that rosebush this year? I see it everyday, and I have been amazed. It bloomed with absolute abandon this summer, just full of these flowers. Then it stopped, as it should, and Jeff Owens pruned it back, making the bush smaller, thinking it was done for the year and would rest for the winter. The roses, however, had other ideas. Since about mid-September, this bush, smaller now, has once again been bursting with blooms. We’ve had a couple of killing frosts, but no one told the rosebush about that and it continues to throw roses at us, as if to defy our notions of cold and the coming winter. This plant is not carefully conserving its energy against the winter frost so that it is sure it will have enough oomph to bloom next July. God made it and, if I might imagine the mind of the rosebush, it trusts that the one who made it has the power to bring roses in summer out of the coldest winter. It rejoices in showering us with beauty for as long as possible. God created in it an overwhelming desire to bloom. It is not afraid of winter.

Jesus said to Philip, to Andrew, to the child of the loaves and fishes, “What is in your hands?” God asks us the same question. God knows what is in our hands, and so God asks us in order to draw our attention to what is in our hands. With infinite love and a mischievous desire for generosity beyond what we can ask or imagine, God’s hands surround ours and what is in them and God says to us, “Let’s see what we can make of this, shall we?” Shall we? Amen.