"There is no explanation of this story except the abundance of God. A miracle is a change in perception, not a change in the rules."

Rev. Bill Tully is Rector at Saint Bartholomew's Church in the City of New York.  

St. Barts is located at 109 East 50th Street,
New York, NY 10022. You can visit their web site at www.stbarts.org.

On a Sunday morning a vacationing minister got a call from a local congregation—very small and very poor—telling him that their pastor was ill and they needed him to preach on Sunday. He agreed. The next morning he and his young daughter journeyed to the church, where he preached before eighteen people.

When the service ended, the deacon said, "You gave a wonderful message. I wish we could pay you, but we just don’t have any money."

The minister said not to worry, he was glad to help out. As he and his daughter were leaving the church, the minister noticed a completely empty offering plate. Moved by the poverty of the church, he put a crisp $20 bill in the plate, and the two of them went hand-in-hand out to the car.

As they started to drive away, the deacon came running across the lawn with an envelope in his hand. The minister rolled down his window and the deacon handed him the envelope, saying, "We couldn’t let you leave without giving you something." The minister opened the envelope and inside was a crisp, familiar looking $20 bill.

As they drove away, the minister asked the little girl, "Did you learn a good lesson from this morning?" She said, "I sure did, Daddy. If you had put more in, you would have gotten more out!"

It sometimes takes the fresh, intuitive intelligence of a child, or a newcomer, or an outsider to penetrate through the familiar to the true. And that’s just what we’re called to see today in our annual reading of the miracle of the loaves and fishes: the miracle of abundance.

If you get this miracle, you can penetrate the questions you bring to it.

Get it and you enter life’s deepest mystery.
Miss it and you work for nothing.
Get it and you begin to understand how the energy of creation itself—the power of God—could enter human life in the person of Jesus Christ.
Miss it and you write off a substantial hunk of the spiritual history of the world.

Let’s look at this familiar story, in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel. Notice that the context is the Passover feast, so the people already had feeding on their minds. The people were there, because they had heard of Jesus’ healing miracles. When Jesus asked Philip, "Where are we to buy the bread?" he was actually testing Philip, because Jesus already knew—he was operating on a different level. His anxious disciples were worrying about supplies and probably how a hungry crowd could turn unruly.

Philip cites six months’ wages as insufficient to buy food for such a crowd, a measure based on his thinking. Remember that we all have an internal measuring rod for our value thinking.

The reference to the "boy with five barley loaves and two fish, but what is that among so many" is a whining reference to scarcity. Isn’t there at least one whiner in every crowd or family or community? Isn’t there a whiner someplace deep in each of us, saying "We never have enough"?

And notice that Jesus, when he took the loaves, "gave thanks." That means he blessed the bread. Those there thought "Passover"; we probably think "Eucharist." We bless food when we know that it’s more than a meal.

"When they were satisfied" is the phrase that is the clue to the whole meaning of the story. A miracle had happened. There was more than enough. A miracle is a "sign," beyond rational explanation. You accept or reject it, or perhaps admit the possibility of it.

I once helped produce a children’s chancel drama on this story. Our solution was to have a group of kids milling about, eyeing each other suspiciously, wondering where the food would come from. When they sat down, little sandwiches squeezed out of their pockets onto the stage; suddenly there was enough from what they already had. That neatly solved our rational question, but missed the point. I repent of that play! There is no explanation of this story except the abundance of God. A miracle is a change in perception, not a change in the rules. I hope you’ll work and work on this story. Take it for what it is. Reject it if you must, but reject it honestly as a miracle, not because you can’t explain it.

Finally, note that when the miracle had been accomplished, the crowd "wanted to make him King." Jesus withdrew. In the rest of the chapter, we find people questioning Jesus about the loaves and fishes.

Jesus said, accusingly, "You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." Most of us are satisfied, but stuff that fills us up does not last. Most of us dismiss the miraculous, and overlook the sign. When the bantering ended, Jesus issued a personal testimony that has become, among other things, the basis of one of our favorite hymns: "I am the bread of life. Those who come to me shall never hunger." The argument turns into a poem—another miracle.

C.H. Dodd, one of the greatest students of John’s Gospel, has written, "Though the crowd had been witnesses of the ‘sign’ which Jesus had worked in the loaves and fishes, they saw no further than food for the body, which perishes in the using. Although they had not only seen and handled that which Jesus gave, but actually fed upon it, they had not in the deeper and true sense, ‘seen signs.’ "

Why? What makes it so hard to see the miracle of our abundance? Why do we think we have so little? We obviously have more than we need, and yet most of us will say we don’t have enough. Why?

There are many explanations. We live in an economic system which produces inflation. All of us came to a conscious understanding of value at a fixed point, like my grandmother who was outraged the day the venerable three-cent postage stamp went to four cents. An inflated, consumer-driven economy trains us in only one notion of value. "Sticker shock" is a reality because we each have a prior reality of what something is worth.

You and I know there is plenty of food to eat in this world, but people in this city will go to bed hungry tonight. "Sin" in this context is our interrupting the flow of God’s abundance, messing up the distribution system because we whiningly believe "we" might not have enough.

But that doesn’t begin to touch the issue of whether there is true abundance. And there obviously is. Yogi Berra was asked if he wanted his pizza cut into four or six pieces. "You’d better make it four. I don’t think I can eat six pieces." He was a smart man; he knew that the measurement is what counted. The size of the pizza didn’t change.

We also have too high an opinion of what we make happen, and what we "make." We tie ourselves to certain outcomes. Many assume that money naturally makes more money, but to do that requires trusting the money and not the real source. And, of course, most of us know that abundance applies to our sense of well-being. Psychotherapy has become an industry because so many feel cut off from their natural abundance, and pay money and work hard, under expert guidance, to try to find it again.

And then, the effort of just getting by sometimes skews our understanding. In his novel The First Circle, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes a Russian proverb: "It’s not the sea that will drown you, it’s the puddle". Most of us will not be martyrs. Instead, we will be caught up in a war of attrition: the war of everydayness. That everydayness will often defeat us from seeing the superabundance of love, of spirit, and yes, goods, that God makes available to the children of God.

On the island of Crete they remember the old man who loved his land with a deep and beautiful intensity, so much so that when he perceived he was about to die he ordered his sons to bring him outside and lay him on his beloved earth. As he was about to breath his last, he reached down by his side and clutched some earth into his hands. He died happy.

Later, when he arrived at heaven’s gates, God answered as an old white-bearded man.

"Welcome," God said. "You’ve been good; come into the joys of heaven." But as the old man started through the gate, God said, "Please. You must let the soil go." "Never!" said the old man stepping back. "Never!"

God departed sadly, leaving the man at the gate. A few eons went by, and God came out again, this time as an old friend. They had a few drinks, told some stories, and God said, "All right, now it’s time to enter, friend. Let’s go." As they started for the gate, God once more requested the old man let go of his soil, and once more he refused.

More eons rolled by. God emerged again, this time as a delightful and playful granddaughter. "Oh granddaddy," God said, "you’re so wonderful, and we all miss you. Please come inside with me."

The old man nodded, and she helped him up for by this time he had grown old and arthritic. In fact, so arthritic was he that he had to prop up the right hand holding Crete’s soil with his left. As they moved toward the gate, his strength gave out. His gnarled fingers could not longer stay clenched, and the soil sifted out until his hand was empty.

He then entered heaven, and the first thing he saw was his beloved island.

We clutch at what we have, and miss what we really have waiting for us in this life. It’s been said that true Christian living is experimental. There is no code of laws or detailed plan, no do-this-and-get-your-reward standard. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works."

Experiment with letting go. Start operating out of abundance instead of scarcity.

Release your grip on the stuff. Watch and see if you don’t find what you want. See if you don’t already have so much that there is something left over, something to give. Just see.

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