A sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 12
July 28, 2024, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs
Readings: John 6:1-21
“The secret is in the hands.” A French baker told me that once, holding up his hands while he said it. I would go to the farmer’s market every weekend to get food when I was a student in France. I bought my bread from the same guy every week. I asked him what made his bread so good, thinking he must have some secret ingredient in his recipe. He said, “The secret is in the hands.” He went on to explain that his bread was simple: flour, water, salt, yeast–just like any bread. But he claimed to have some special method of kneading the dough by hand to perfection. That alone, he claimed, set his bread apart.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about bread a lot. So much so that a friend makes these next few weeks its own season, like Eastertide or Christmastide. He calls it Breadtide. In the weeks to come we will hear over and over that Jesus is the bread of life, and Jesus will expound on what that means. It all starts with this miracle, the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness with five loaves and two fish.
John opens by telling us that Jesus has a lot of people following him. In addition to his band of disciples, Jesus is followed by masses, yearning to hear a word of hope, to receive a touch of blessing and healing. And Jesus sees that they are hungry. Scholars tell us that hunger was a problem at Jesus’s time and place. When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray for their daily bread, it’s a literal prayer. Jesus, who has no doubt experienced hunger himself, is moved to compassion for these hungry people. So he asks, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”
It’s a simple question that speaks to a big problem. John says Jesus is asking this question to test his disciples. I think Jesus asks those kinds of questions a lot. Those questions today might sound like, Where are we to find shelter for all of these people on the streets? Where are we to find food for all those throughout the world who won’t eat today? Where are we to find health for those who can’t afford medical care, who have to choose between food and prescriptions? Where are we to find courage to do what is right, to care for our neighbor, to sacrifice for the common good? Where are we to find compassion in a polarized nation? Where are we to find hope in a world that is despairing? Perhaps Jesus asks these questions to test us, too.
Philip speaks up. He says what I would have said: Good luck. We don’t have the resources. We don’t have the time. We don’t have the patience. We don’t have the courage. We don’t have anything that would be helpful here. With each “we don’t have” we tighten the knots holding our hands behind our backs, keeping us from moving forward.
But then there’s Andrew. Thank God for Andrew. He doesn’t focus on what they don’t have; he names what they have. He says, well, we do have five loaves and two fish. And he asks a question of his own: But what are they among so many? Maybe he’s actually asking, But what are they in your hands, Jesus? Jesus takes the bait. He blesses, breaks, gives, and there is more than enough to go around. In the hands of Jesus, what Andrew had was enough.
There is pain and brokenness and suffering all around. There are problems in our lives, in our community, in our world that lead us to despair and drown out all hope. And we feel our back against the wall. We feel that what we have could never be enough. Surely there must be some secret ingredient. Surely our short supply of flour, water, salt, and yeast is not adequate to meet these challenges. Our meager courage is wanting; our skills are lacking; our resources are waning; our energy is fading. Surely there has to be some sort of secret ingredient, secret plan, secret hat trick. We can be tempted to think that if we don’t have that secret, it’s not even worth trying. What is the paucity of what we have to offer in the face of the world’s challenges?
Remember what that French baker said: the secret is not the ingredients. Rather it’s in the hands that work the dough, he claimed. The secret to this miracle is the hands of Jesus that take the most basic and even meager gifts, and feeds a hungry multitude with leftovers to spare.
Perhaps you, like me, can be guilty of thinking you don’t have that secret flair. Perhaps you, like me, can be guilty of thinking you don’t have what it takes, that you’re not enough, that something more than what you can give is required. My friend, just give what you have and see what Jesus can do with it. Because the secret is not anything that we must provide; the secret is Jesus and what he can make out of us and through us and in us. In the hands of Jesus, who you are and what you have is enough–more than enough–to make a difference in this world.
Storied Grace 