Food Enough

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, July 28, 2024
John 6:1-21

If I had to pick a favorite aisle at the supermarket, I’d pick the bread aisle.  There are buns, rolls, pita bread, all kinds of varieties of breads from white to heavy-duty 15-grain; round loaves and pre-sliced. There’s no better smell than when you turn the corner and head past the bakery when fresh bread is coming out of the oven.  If I had an explanation for where I’ve gained a few pounds lately, I’d blame bread, because I love it.  Bread is a staple for many of us.  I know it’s time to head to the grocery store when we’re running low on bread.  
For the next five weeks, we’re going to talk about bread and how it relates to our faith.  We’ll be reading through the gospel of John, chapter 6.  I’d invite you to read through it yourself slowly at home, maybe a few times, this week!  Similar to us today, for people in Jesus’ time, bread was a main source of food.  Stories about bread show up all over the place in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation – in fact, the most common biblical image to describe God’s mercy is food.  God uses ordinary, everyday things to show us how much God loves us over and over again.  In our first lesson for today, we heard about the prophet Elisha feeding one hundred people with twenty barley loaves and fresh ears of grain.  In the first part of John 6, our gospel reading for today, Jesus takes it up a notch, and feeds 5000 people with five loaves and two fish.  Everyone is able to eat until they are satisfied, as much as they wanted, John tells us.  After everyone is full, there are twelve baskets of leftovers.  God’s grace and love are abundant and overflowing!
As we think about food over the next few weeks and in particular bread, we can think about how we show God’s overflowing, abundant love to others through feeding people both physically and spiritually.  Do you have a garden where you can donate some fresh produce to a food pantry, or can you remember those who need food when you do your weekly grocery shopping?  Here at Faith, we regularly support our food pantry, the New LIFE Center in Uniondale.  Our larger church has global partnerships with churches around the world to fight hunger and food insecurity, ELCA World Hunger.  Instead of giving a physical gift for a birthday, Christmas, or other celebration, you can donate goats, pigs, chickens, etc. through a World Hunger donation to help feed a family in need.  There are all kinds of creative ways we can ensure everyone has access to affordable, healthy food as a basic human need, just as Jesus feeds the multitudes with bread and fish.  But of course, this story is about more than meeting people’s physical hunger.
The story of the feeding of the 5000 is the fourth miracle or sign that Jesus is the son of God out of seven miracles in the gospel of John.  The FIRST miracle is the wedding at Cana in John 2, where Jesus turns water into wine – 6 stone jars that can each hold 20-30 gallons of wine.  Jesus makes sure that there is WAYYY more than enough wine for the wedding.  These two miracle stories are some of the many reasons we use bread and wine at Holy Communion. They teach us that Jesus can make miracles out of ordinary things!  But also, both stories are good reminders that God is enough.  Faith is about trusting that God will provide in fact MORE than enough than we need.  God’s grace and love for us is more than enough for each day.  Jesus makes sure that there is more than enough wine and bread so that everyone can eat, drink, and be satisfied.  In meeting people’s physical needs, Jesus is also teaching us about our spiritual needs – that in Christ, the bread of life, the cup of salvation, we will always have enough.  Our faith in Christ will sustain us daily.
As Lutheran Christians, we recognize two sacraments. The word sacrament simply means “holy thing.”  Our two sacraments are Baptism and Communion.  And what makes a sacrament a sacrament is Jesus’ command in scripture (Go Baptize, Do This in Remembrance of Me) and the word/command from Christ is attached to a physical symbol (water in baptism, wine and bread in Holy Communion).  Jesus uses physical things like bread and wine that we can see/touch/smell and even taste to teach us about God’s forgiveness and love.  Jesus feeding of the 5000 is about so much more than just feeding people, while of course, food is important.  Jesus takes ordinary things and makes them extraordinary!  
In the story, Philip and Andrew doubt in God’s ability to provide for the crowd.  “What are they among so many people?” they ask Jesus.  They have something!  They have 5 loaves and 2 fish.  But like we tend to do, Philip and Andrew can only see what they lack, what they don’t have.  It’s not enough. When do we doubt that our faith is enough?  When do we doubt that what we have is enough?  What do we think we need more of?   More money? Better health?  More friends?  More safety or security?  More peace and calm?  It is difficult for us to be satisfied with what we have and to accept what we have as enough.  It is even more difficult to see, like the 5 loaves that fill 12 baskets of leftovers, that what we have is not just enough, it’s abundant – actually, way more than enough.  Where we focus on what we lack, God offers us abundance.  This is what Jesus tries to show us and teach us over and over again.  
Every Sunday, we come forward to receive the wine and the bread at Holy Communion.  It is just a small wafer and a sip of wine. It’s not even really a snack, much less a full meal or feast!  But everyone is fed.  Jesus shows up here week after week for us in bread and wine, and we trust that this little bit of food and drink is enough for this weekly spiritual reminder to trust that God provides, God sustains, and God is enough!  Thanks be to God.  Amen.