Sermons for the Month
Be Prepared to Give Up Your Lunch
DATE: July 30th, 2006
SERVICE: 8th Sunday after Pentecost
TEXT: John 6:1-21, Ephesians 3:14-22“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Besides Jesus, who is the most important "character" in the first story told in today's Gospel lesson? There are varying opinions about that, I suppose, but this time when I read it my attention was drawn to the boy who had five barley loaves and two fish. I had not thought much about him until I came across this question in some materials I was reading, "What if the boy had been unwilling to share his lunch?" We do not know how it was that his lunch became available, but if the disciples saw him with the bread and fish and asked him for it, he might have said, "No, I need it for myself." Or, if he came up with the idea on his own he might have decided that his little offering was useless and kept quiet. What if he had withheld the loaves and fishes? While you are considering that, let me tell you a story first told by another pastor. It's about a professor of religion at a Presbyterian college. His name is Gerald Sittser and 30 years ago he was anything but a person bound for a teaching ministry. It seems that when he was a scruffy 20-year-old he had a job as a counselor at a church camp. How he acquired that position is a mystery because he had a cynical attitude about matters of faith. Then the problem was magnified when, during a counselor training session, a pastor explained the Gospel. Whatever he said offended Gerald Sittser, so much so that he told the pastor that if that was the Gospel he did not want anything to do with it. So, he went off to be a counselor, armed with his own resources. In was not long until he found himself crushed by the burdens that the kids were carrying and his inability to help them. It was then that he remembered what the pastor had said about the Gospel, and he finally realized that Jesus had something that he needed - and that the campers needed too. His cynicism was overwhelmed by God's grace. He not only became a professor, but also an author. Probably his most well-known book is titled, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss. He wrote it after his mother, his wife and his daughter were killed in a tragic accident. Pastor Bill Hybels, who is well-known in evangelical circles, describes it as "the single most redemptive book on sorrow and loss that I have ever read." In other words, this once-cynical man, even in the midst of horrendous loss, is a devoted follower of Jesus through whom lives are being transformed. BUT, let's go back 30 years; what if that pastor who spoke to those counselors-in-training had failed to explain the Gospel? What if he had looked out at their uninterested faces and decided to let everyone leave for supper early? At first it seemed as if he had failed; one of the young counselors rejected his words about the Gospel saying, "I do not want to have anything to do with it." That was not the end of the story; Jesus blessed that pastor's words and gave them the power to change Gerald Sittser's life. And, that's still not the end, because that pastor's words were blessed through the ministry of Gerald Sittser to his students and through his books. It's entirely possible that that pastor's faithful words about the Gospel have been multiplied to such a degree that thousands of lives have been changed. (1) Now, let's get back to my original question. What if that little boy had withheld the loaves and the fishes? As one writer put it, "I'm sure that the disciples did not take the boy's lunch by force." (2) Would the crowd have gone hungry? Was Jesus counting on that boy? I cannot answer that question, but I certainly do agree with what it implies. We all have something to offer that will extend the reach of the transforming love of Jesus. And, we all are asked - called - to offer it. We may feel that what we have to offer is nothing; that it is completely inadequate. Yet, the Apostle Paul reminds us that the power of God at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine. In the last session of The Lutheran Course discussion group the presenter on the DVD, Kelly Fryer, described the best evangelist she had ever known. This woman works in a salon and is extremely shy; if you met her in a crowd she would be the person standing quietly against the wall. Yet, she was responsible for bringing more people to her congregation than anybody else. They were people she worked with at the salon, her neighbors, the parents of kids who played on ball teams with her kids. How could this be when she seemed to have so little to offer due to her shyness? How is it possible that she was such a successful evangelist? The answer is three-fold. She loved her church. (That's no small thing; our church should be a place to which we are anxious to invite people, a place where transformation occurs.) More importantly, she loved people and she truly saw them. The Holy Spirit stirred within her and helped her see their emptiness and to know their difficulties, and then empowered her to do the most natural thing in the world for her; invite them to worship. That God-given love for people was her "lunch" so to speak; it was her two fish and five loaves that she offered and from which many, many people were fed. We all have the opportunity to give our lunch away. We too can offer something that we will miss, give that which requires some sacrifice and devotion, and yet is small enough to cause us to wonder if giving it could possibly make a difference. Just as that little boy in the Gospel lesson handed his lunch over to the disciples, we too let go of our offering and trust that God will use it. We may not see how exactly that happens, which is why the word "trust" is so important. And, just as was true in the Gospel lesson, there is good ending to our story. If enough people let go of their lunch, there would less suffering from physical, emotional and spiritual hunger. In fact, there could be a surplus of food to meet those needs. Does that seem impossible? Perhaps it does. So, let me offer this very concrete example of how giving up our lunch - literally - can make a difference. Let's say that one time each quarter - four times a year - everyone who regularly attends worship here at Faith Lutheran Church gave up their lunch for people who are hungry. In order to quantify that I took 250, which is approximately our average Sunday attendance, and multiplied it by $5, an average cost of lunch, and then multiplied it by four. The total is $5000. You may recall that there are four envelopes for World Hunger in our offering envelope packets. So, what if we gave that $5000 from sacrificed lunches to World Hunger? We would be donating more than twice what our congregation now gives, and I can tell you that in a concrete, real way hungry people would be fed. And, that's just the tip of the ice berg. Just think what might happen if we believed that God is able to accomplish IN US far more than ALL we can ask or imagine? Then we could expect astounding events when we let go of our lunch.
AMEN
(1) Sermonwriter, Proper 12B (July 30), John 6:1-21, pgs. 11-12, www.sermonwriter.com
(2) Same as above, pg. 10
(3) The Lutheran Course, Leader Book, Augsburg-Fortress, Minneapolis, MN., 2005, pg. 97.