2 Kings 4:42-44
One day a messenger from Baal-shalishah brought God’s
prophet Elisha a sack of fresh grain and twenty loaves of barley bread made
from the first grain of his harvest. Elisha said, “Give it to the people so
they can eat.”
“What?”
Elisha’s servant exclaimed. “Feed a hundred people with only this?”
But Elisha repeated, “Give it to the people so they
can eat, for this is what the Holy One says: Everyone will eat, and there will
even be some left over!” And when they gave it to the people, there was plenty
for all and some left over, just as God had promised.
John 6:1-14
After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of
Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him,
because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the
mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival
of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward
him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”
He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip
answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to
get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to
him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are
they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there
was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand
in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he
distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they
wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the
fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up,
and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten,
they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they
began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”
***
“It is Enough”
Will you pray with me? Holy One, you provide more than
enough for all your children. Teach us how to use your many gifts generously,
so that no one goes without—food, housing, education, health care, love,
understanding, opportunities. Give us the grace to recognise our own stinginess
and the wisdom to become more like you, sharing all that we are and have with
all who have need, not only the ones we know and see. Open our hearts and
spirits to your teaching today and every day. In all your names, amen.
Enough. What
does it mean to you? We all say we only want “enough,” but what is enough for
one person is not enough for another, whether we are talking about food or time
or books or money or talent. A single childless person’s “enough” in income is
not nearly enough for the family with three children. For a city dweller, one
car may too many; for a family in the country, two or three may be enough. And
so on. Enough in God’s economy means more than the minimum, not an amount to
satisfy basic needs. It means leftovers, abundant leftovers. Enough, to God, means “more than you can
possibly need.”
Which brings us to a question. Do we trust God for
that generous “enough?” Even more, do we have confidence not only that there
will be enough, but that what we have is more than enough? That we can supply
all the needs—the real needs—and have some left over? I am not talking so much
about finances, although the concept could be equally applied to money as well,
but gifts, graces, talents, abilities.
I am more interested in how well we share—or don’t—our
gifts and talents and other resources, like time and energy. Gifts—those abilities we simply have, not
skills we have learned or knowledge we have gained, but gifts. We all know
people who have gifts—the person who can sit quietly with a friend, just
listening; the person who preaches a sermon so strongly that your life is
changed; the musician who can move you to tears with the depth of their music;
the person who always knows what to do for those in need. Those are gifts.
Some skills can be learned—bookkeeping, playing the
piano, writing computer code, laying tile, leading a meeting—but some of us can
go beyond those basic skills to genuine talent and gifts, to creativity. The
ones who are gifted go beyond those with skill and talent to create. Many
people know how to dive; lots of them are on university diving teams and some
of them even are selected for the Olympics. Only a very few, such as Greg
Louganis, can create a new dive. That is
a gift. Pretty much anyone can learn to lay tile; that’s a skill. Doing it
well, so that all tiles are even and make a pleasing pattern—that’s talent. But
creating new patterns, finding new ways to use tile—that is a gift. Everything
we do has these three levels of ability—skill, which anyone can learn or do;
talent, doing the skill well and excelling at it; and gift, creating something
new, going beyond what is known and usual. It’s relatively easy to understand
when we think of concrete abilities like tiling or gardening or bookkeeping,
but applying that to more abstract or spiritual abilities is more difficult—and
yet we easily can recognise those with gifts in those abilities. For example—we
all have friends and people we care about; most of us talk to those individuals
about what matters to us—struggles, hopes, joys. Some of us feel heard and
understood. But those with a gift for hearing others—they are the ones who
offer us new insights and understands, who help us know ourselves better. And
that is the going beyond, the creating anew, that is a gift.
We are not all stars—Albert Einstein, Archbishop Tutu,
Roger Clemente, Bruce Springsteen, Sir Laurence Olivier, JRR Tolkien—but what
we have, who we are, is enough. Whatever gift we have, it is enough—it is what
God needs us to have, needs us to share.
When we are doing God’s work, when we are called by God to a task or a
life, we have what we need, even if we don’t think we do, or don’t even know
what our gift might be. There is always a place for us—God knows who we are,
and has given us the gifts we have and has a place for us to be, and to be fully all that we are.
Paul mentions many gifts in his letters to the new
churches—some people teach, some lead, some are musicians, some can sit with
the ill and dying—all these gifts are needed, and the needed gifts will appear
if they are not already present.
In the end, the choice comes down to us—will we share
those gifts? Will we be part of that “more than enough?”
And it is indeed part of having those gifts to share
them—a gift that is not shared is sterile, useless to everyone, not only the
people who might have benefitted but the rest of the world as well. If someone
has the gift of counselling, but does not reach out and support others, then
not only do those who are in need suffer, but those who depend on them in turn
suffer when they are comforted or healed—their partners or children or
co-workers. What we do—or don’t do—affects so many other people.
Look around you; think of all the prayer requests in
our book each week, the prayer requests you see on Facebook or an email list or hear
from family and co-workers and friends, what you see in the news—all the
situations that are in desperate need of someone’s gifts, in some way, shape or
form. You can see needs for financial
resources, for teachers and carers and listeners and creators of beauty. We can
see these needs, and sometimes it is frustrating, because we don’t have that
gift and we know it is needed.
But—we cannot control or direct God’s call, God’s
gifts to us or others. Just as Jesus eluded the crowd that wanted to make him
ruler and wouldn’t go with the disciples in the boat, God goes God’s way, not
ours. I wish I had the gift of music, so that I could compose hymns. When I
selected the hymns for last week, I had to compromise, because there were no
hymns that said exactly what I wanted them to say. If I had the gift of writing
hymns, I could create one to fit the need, whatever it was—but I don’t. I can
read music, I know the basics—the very basics—of music theory. I could learn the
intricacies of music theory, I think I can write lyrics, verses, and
theoretically I could put the two together, and have a hymn. So I have the
skill, not the talent, And I will never have that creative gift of an Isaac
Watts, a Michael Smith, a Shawn Thomas.
A gift cannot be forced, cannot be demanded from God.
What we have to do is use the gifts we do have—use
them fully, and as God intends for us, fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives.
There’s no point in whining for gifts we don’t have. It’s easy to do. We see
the need for those gifts in the church, and no one currently in the church
seems to have those gifts, so we wish we had that gift. Sometimes we even try
to pretend we do, or that we at least have the skill; and sometimes it works
and sometimes it doesn’t. But, perhaps someone is on their way, someone we
don’t know yet who has that very gift in abundance, who will share it
generously with the church. The other side of that coin is pretending to ignore
the ones we do have.
It may be scary or a venture beyond what we know to
share our gifts. We may have to speak to strangers or challenge the way things
are. A gift may mean paying a price—in time or energy or finances or simply
giving up what we want for what God wants. It’s true of big things—giving up a
lucrative law career, as a seminary friend of mine did, in order to answer the
call to ministry. It’s true of small things—instead of sleeping late or hanging
out at home on a Saturday, we work at a church fund-raising event or maintain
the community garden.
Whatever the gifts that are present—in the church, in
us, at work, in our community, in our families—they are enough. If we share
those gifts, there is more than enough. What we have is enough—God’s enough,
which means an overflowing abundance.
In all God’s names, amen.
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