Thomas J Parlette
“Food in Due Season”
John 6: 1-21
7/25/21
What’s your favorite food? The food you could eat once a day for the rest of your life, if you had to? At this time of year, you can find food festivals all over the U.S. that celebrate just about any kind of food you might enjoy. There’s a Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. Waikiki, Hawaii, hosts a Spam Festival every year. And in Atlanta, Georgia, there is a Chomp and Stomp Festival every year that features a chili cook-off and bluegrass concert and dance. I’m sure you can think of a few of your favorites. If not, google it–I bet you’ll find some interesting food festivals.
For example, the town of Yamagata, Japan, holds a festival every year to celebrate a traditional soup called imoni. Thousands of people come from all over Japan, indeed, from all over the world to eat imoni and have a good time. So the folks in Yamagata built a massive soup pot, which they fill with 6 tons of water, 1 ½ tons of beef, 3500 onions, and lots of other ingredients, and let the soup cook for hours.
As you might imagine, cooking that amount of soup can be a real challenge. And then you have to wonder – how do they serve it? Target doesn’t see 1- ton soup ladles, at least not the last time I checked. So a few years ago, a team in Yamagata found a creative way to solve this problem. They bought two brand new earth diggers with specially made and sanitized buckets. The baskets allowed them to dip out hundreds of servings of soup at once. In 8 hours’ time, this team of cooks fed 12,695 happy festival goers bowls of hot imoni soup. They even earned the title for “Most Soup Served in 8 Hours” in the Guiness Book of World Records.(1)
Feeding thousands of people: that’s what brings us to the passage for this morning. When you think about this story from John, think about it through the eyes of Jesus’ disciples. They had traveled to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee hoping to get away for some rest. But the crowds of people, thousands of people, followed them to this remote area. They were hungry for a miracle or a message of hope. The tired disciples hoped Jesus would send them away, so they could all get some rest.
The situation of these tired disciples is reminiscent of a study that the U.S. Army did a few years ago to determine the factors that contributed to the maximum level of output they could get out of their soldiers. How far could soldiers push themselves before their performance started to decrease? They determined that after seven consecutive days of hard work without any rest, the soldier’s performance level dropped. The interesting thing is, the soldiers weren’t aware of this. They thought they were fine. In their worn out state, they believed that they were still operating at peak performance levels.(2)
Jesus’ disciples needed some rest–that is why we have a thing called the Sabbath. They wanted Jesus to send the crowd away. Instead, Jesus asked Philip how they were going to feed this crowd of thousands of men, women and children. Philip was probably taken aback when Jesus asked this question about something so seemingly impossible. He answered, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread to feed all these people.”
Fortunately, another disciple named Andrew at least tried to be helpful. “Um, Jesus–there’s a boy here who has 5 barley loaves and a couple of fish, if that helps.” But then he changes his tune–“But what is that when we have so many to feed.”
I like to think Jesus had a wry little smile on his face as he said, “Make the people sit down.” And then. I’ve always loved this little detail of this story–“for there was a great deal of grass in the place, so they sat down.” It’s like they were all getting ready for a relaxing little picnic.
The feeding of the five thousand is a marvelous story of God’s provision for our human need. The focus is on bread and fish, but the real lesson is about all of life. So, let’s break this story down a bit.
First of all, we experience God’s blessings when we take time to sit down. I know, it sounds simple. But many of us say we’re too busy to read the Bible ar attend fellowship groups or just take a minute to meditate. We pray in our cars as we rush to and from work or class or running our kids around town. The idea that we should stop for a minute and sit down–well, its almost unthinkable. It’s like we’ve forgotten that we have a God who is just waiting to supply what we need–we’ve just got to slow down for a minute and listen.
There was once a man who was waiting for a bus to Pasadena. In the bus station, he spotted a machine advertising: Your height, weight and your fortune only $1.00. So he decided to give it a try. So he popped in a dollar and stepped in front of the machine. Out popped a card that read: “You are 5’10”. You weigh 160 pounds. You are waiting for a bus to Pasadena.”
The man was amazed–and intrigued. He wondered if he could somehow fool the machine. So he went to the men’s room and tried to change his appearance. He turned his cap around backwards, put on some sunglasses, turned his shirt inside out, pulled a jacket from his bag. Finally, he stuffed the jacket full of toilet paper so he’d look heavier. Then he went back out and stepped up to the machine again. Another dollar and another card popped out. “You are still 5’10”, you’re still 160 pounds. And while you were wasting time in the men’s room, you missed the bus to Pasadena.”(3)
How many of us get so busy messing around with lesser priorities that we spend our whole life disconnected from God? Time with God is not a burden. It’s what we were made for. We find our identity, our purpose, our strength and our wisdom in spending time with God. But we get so caught up in doing, so caught up with the details of everyday life, so pressed for time, that we end up cutting out what gives us the strength we need to live richly. We need to do what this passage says and sit down in the presence of Jesus.
Then, we need to receive what Christ has to offer us, just as the crowd received the loaves and fish. We have a generous God, a God that wishes to give us everything we need. When we shut God out of our lives–whether intentionally or unintentionally–we shut out the One who has everything we need and wants nothing more than to give it to us. Our God is a generous God.
Famous dancer and choreographer Bob Fosse was known for being abundantly generous. When he went out with friends or colleagues, he always grabbed the check and paid for others. And when he died, Fosse set aside $25,000 in his will with instructions for 66 of his closest friends to use the money to go out to dinner together one more time. Even toward the end of his life, he was still thinking of ways to show his appreciation for his friends.(4)
In the same way, God never stops thinking about us. God awaits the opportunity to meet our needs, but we are not accustomed to receiving from God’s loving hand. And it never occurs to us to pray. So we wander blindly from problem to problem.
“Make people sit down,” said Jesus. Then he took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed both the loaves and the fish to all who were seated, as much as they wanted. So also do we receive God’s blessings when we sit and wait, and receive what God has to offer.
Notice, finally, how John concludes this story: “When they had all had enough to eat, he said to the disciples, “Gather the pieces together that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.” There was more than enough to go around.
When we receive what God has to offer us, we discover that God is a wondrous provider for our needs. One of the lessons Christ tried to teach us was the extravagance of God. Our God is the one who provides food in due season, as the Psalmist said–who sets before us a table in the midst of our enemies–who fills our cup to overflowing. The God who, when wine is needed for the wedding feast tells us to fill the water pots, and fill them to the brim–who when the prodigal returns home kills the fatted calf and throws a big party.
Our God is the God who provides in abundance. A group of children was once asked to describe what abundance means to them:
* Alison, age 7, said “Abundance is an extra bowl of ice cream and getting to stay up late and laughing a lot.”
* Emily, age 9, said, “Abundance means I have as many books as I want to read and lots of warm clothes for the wintertime. And it means there’s always lots of love.”
* Brian, age 10, said, “Abundance means having everything we need even though we don’t have everything we want yet. It makes me feel safe.”(5)
Abundance means we have everything we need even though we don’t have everything we want yet. It makes me feel safe. Every miracle Jesus ever performed, including this one, was meant to show us the priorities or the nature of God. The healings, turning wine into water, feeding the multitudes, calming the storms. All the miracles in the New Testament emphasize the priorities and nature of God. So what is the reason for God’s extravagance? I think maybe God wants to prepare us for the greater extravagance of Heaven.
In Rome, right next door to the Vatican, is a beautiful 19th century palace, the Palazzo Migliore, that was recently available for sale. It’s size and beauty and location right off St. Peter’s Square made it worth a small fortune. And someone could have made a lot of money turning it into an exclusive hotel or something. Instead, the family who owned it chose to donate this gorgeous palace to the Roman Catholic Church.
And Pope Francis made a decision that must have made God smile. He turned it into a homeless shelter. The palace, which has 16 bedrooms, houses 50 homeless men and women. Volunteers provide them with hot meals. Residents report that the palace feels more homelike than any of the crowded shelters that are usually open to them.
Sharon Christner, a researcher working on a project involving homelessness commented, “ …what is special about this place is that it’s not about maximizing dollar signs, but giving people a really beautiful place to be, with the idea that beauty heals.”(6)
The Palazzo Migliore is a vision of the abundant blessings God has prepared for those who love God. Homeless people in need of food and shelter are welcomed into a luxurious mansion and fed hot meals. Curious crowds of people following Jesus are invited to sit for a surprise picnic, and they all eat their fill. And there are still plenty of leftovers. This is a vision of the priorities and nature of a loving, generous God who desires to provide for our needs. This story illustrates what our Psalmist wrote about in Psalm 145: “The eyes of all look to the Lord, and you give them their food in due season.”
And for that, may God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, pg 62
2. Ibid… pg 62
3. Ibid… pg 63
4. Ibid… pg 63
5. Ibid… pg 64
6. Ibid… pg 64-65
