A Pastor’s Thoughts: Enough?

We read in Matthew 14:13-21, one of the accounts of Jesus feeding the 5,000, which appears in each of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The disciples came to Jesus and suggested that it was getting late so Jesus should send the crowds away so that Jesus and the disciples may get supper.  

Now the reaction of the disciples isn’t recorded for us, but picture what the looks on their faces must have been when Jesus was going to use the food that they did have – 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish to feed 5,000 people. To make it even more amazing, loaves of bread back then weren’t like the ones we buy at the store. They were round, and were about the size of a kaiser roll.   

The 5 loaves and 2 fish they had wouldn’t have fed Jesus and the disciples, much less 5,000 dinner guests. But the disciples did do what Jesus told them to do. Meanwhile, Jesus looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, reminiscent of our communion liturgy. Then he told the disciples to give them to the crowd, which they did. There were 12 baskets of leftovers!

This passage goes much deeper than feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Sometimes we forget that we serve a God of abundance, not a God of scarcity. When referring to the crowd, Jesus didn’t leave the disciples hanging when he said to them, “You give them something to eat.”  

There are five words in this passage that are not to be missed. When the disciples told Jesus they only had five loaves and two fish, what did he say?  “Bring them here to me. Bring them here to me. Whatever you have, bring it to me,” Jesus said. 

That’s it! That’s what Christ is calling us to do – to bring whatever we have to him, no matter how measly and insignificant we think it may be. The following is not scriptural, but it is a plausible scenario:

One of the disciples found 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. He counted carefully 1,2,3,4,5, loaves. 1,2 fish. That’s not enough – but Jesus told us to feed the crowd. He thought, “Maybe I am counting wrong.” He called over one of the other disciples, and they counted it together: 1,2,3,4,5 loaves. 1,2 fish. Jesus told us to give the people something to eat. That’s not enough. Maybe we’re counting wrong, so they got 2 more disciples to count with them 1,2,3,4,5 loaves. 1,2 fish. That’s not enough to feed a crowd of over 5,000. So they gathered all the disciples together to count: 1,2,3,4,loaves. 1,2 fish. They went to Jesus and told him that they had 5 loaves and 2 fish, but maybe they were counting wrong.  Jesus told them that they were in fact counting wrong. So he took the bread and fish and counted. You’ve got 1,2,3,4,5 loaves, 1,2 fish – and you’ve got me!

Friends, how many times do we forget to count Jesus? Instead we count only on what we can put our hands on, only what we can verify and control. When we count like that, we will never have enough and yet, if we count on Jesus, it is enough.  

Do we have what it takes to carry out the ministries our Lord is calling us to?  We may feel that we face overwhelming odds, but remember: we have nothing here but 5 loaves, 2 fish – and Jesus.  

“Bring them here to me.” Bring them here to me – your dreams, your skills, your children, your grandchildren, your gifts, your strength, your money.  However little we may think we possess in terms of talent or resources, Jesus says to each of us, “Bring them here to me.” Will we?