The news these past few weeks may have filled you with anxiety about our nation’s financial situation, or made you wonder at the acrimony and fighting across political parties while our national programs for the poor and sick are teetering on the edge. It seems that since the economic crash that our nation as well as the individuals in it have been struggling to get back on its feet. We delight in hearing that the Chrysler plant production has outpaced the last three years and we look for stronger indicators that the US economy is bouncing back.
Elsewhere in the world, especially in poor countries of Africa, there is famine and hunger, the natural disaster of Japan, bombings in Oslo, unrest in Sudan. The world does not seem to be living the life of abundance of the crowds seeing Jesus.
Jesus meets the crowds in a deserted place where night is beginning to fall, without any meal available. The disciples want to send the crowds away, but Jesus instead tells them to feed the crowd. Jesus blesses the few bits of bread and fish the disciples can find, and a miracle of abundance occurs, with more than enough food left over.
Why, you may ask, isn’t our world like this, with enough left over to fund all our programs, meet our debts, feed the hungry of the world?
Maybe we don’t know where to look for this miracle occurring right in our midst.
For instance, in Capron a woman living on the financial edge has been bringing food for a Monday lunch at the Lutheran church for many years. She bakes wonderful pies, cakes and breads, and brings abundance from her garden every week. Two weeks ago, this woman fell and sustained a serious head injury and has been hospitalized ever since. When the Lutheran pastor went to visit her last week, the woman did not recognize her because of her brain damage. Monday lunch has not occurred at the church since the woman’s injury, and people have suddenly realized what her presence has meant for the abundance shared every Monday.
You might think this woman is a faithful member of the Lutheran church, but no, just the opposite. She does not like and never attends church. She nevertheless lives the life of Christian hospitality, sharing her skills at baking, sharing her garden with others in her community because it is her particular calling.
This miracle of abundance may seem small in the face of the trillions of dollars of US debt, the millions dying of hunger in Africa, and the thousands of homeless in Japan or Joplin MO. Jesus fed only 5000 men and perhaps another 8000 or more women and children in the deserted place, but his compassion not to send them away made a difference in their lives that day. The woman of Capron has touched hundreds of lives every Monday for years.
The arithmetic of compassion adds up. When anyone receives compassion from another, the love adds up—it is spread in goodwill, in thanksgiving, in abundance that then overflows to others in a geometric progression. Think of a pebble dropped into water, how it ripples to reach the shores—this is the power of sharing abundance.
How did the miracle of the loaves and fishes happen, what made the five loaves and two fishes turn into enough to feed the crowd with twelve baskets of bread left over? We could surmise something as mundane as people in the crowd each sharing whatever they had with them and the total was overwhelming. However you want to think of this miracle, we do know that Jesus blessed the food before the people ate, and his blessing made all the difference.
I believe that whenever Jesus blesses our work, it becomes powerful. The blessing of God assures of us God’s never-failing love and therefore of the abundance that love brings with it: Abundance of care for each other and our neighbor, abundance of sharing what we have, however meager, giving of ourselves for others and not counting the cost. God’s blessing makes the small seem big, the little person stand tall, those without courage do brave acts, and small acts of compassion into sweeping changes.
God’s blessing turned a single woman in Capron into a wonder worker there. We don’t know how what each of does each day in small acts of care and compassion impacts those around us, but we are assured that if God is in our acts and our speech, then that compassion will flower all around with more compassion.
May God bless our parish and its acts of love and compassion, that the small ways we share our abundance may ripple into our community and beyond. That others will see and want to do as we do. That those lives we touch will be filled with the abundance of the love of God and spill throughout their own lives. May we see the miracle of abundance in each of our lives.
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