How To Stretch A Meal
Sermon
How to Preach the Miracles
Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It, Cycle A
My mother's people, the Longs of Longfield House, County Tipperary, came from Ireland to southwest Wisconsin after the great potato famine in the 1840s. Over a period of five years, a fungus known as the black rot destroyed the potato crop that 75% of Irish farmers depended on for their livelihoods. More than a million people died of starvation and disease. About 30% of the population, nearly three million people, left Ireland to seek a life elsewhere. Most of them, like my great-great-great-grandfather, came to the United States where land was plentiful.
We always had plenty of potatoes on the farm where I grew up, just over the hill from where my Irish ancestors settled -- boiled, baked, twice baked, mashed, hashed, in pancakes and bread, fried, scrambled with eggs, frittered, roasted, or diced in Mom's wonderful potato soup. We had potatoes at almost every meal. When my mother said to me, "Johnny, eat your potatoes," the urgency in her voice came from a memory handed down from a time when there weren't enough potatoes to go around. "Food mustn't be wasted; there was a time when we didn't have enough to eat," she was trying to tell me.
Mom was also deeply affected by the lean times her family endured during the Great Depression of the 1930s. She tells about packing bean sandwiches for lunch at school and eating bread and butter sandwiches for supper. Sometimes there was just bread and milk and they were glad to have it. If there wasn't quite enough to go around, her mother would say, "Here, you take my bowl, I'm not very hungry tonight." Grandma knew how to stretch a meal.
Jesus knew how to stretch a meal, too.
In The Midst Of Grief ...
Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.
-- Matthew 14:13
Jesus' day began with unexpected news. John the Baptist was dead, killed under some of the most horrific circumstances imaginable. Matthew's description is like a scene out of a modern horror movie. John had been arrested by Herod because he had the audacity to suggest that Herod was living in an adulterous relationship with Herodias, his brother, Philip's, wife. Herod wanted to put John to death immediately, but was afraid to for fear of the crowds who followed him and called him a prophet. Then came Herod's infamous birthday party and the sultry dance of Herodias' daughter, which affected him so much he made an oath in front of all of his guests to give her anything she desired. Herodias whispered in the girl's ear and she asked that the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a platter. What was Herod going to do? He could not afford to lose face with his guests, so John lost his head and Herod's guests were served up a ghastly entree that must have ruined their appetites for years. John's followers were allowed to bury his body, and then Matthew writes, "... they went and told Jesus" (Matthew 14:1-12).
Jesus must have felt like we feel when we get that dreaded phone call. "Oh, no, it can't be!" We feel like we've been kicked in the stomach. We can't breathe, we can't think, we just want to be left alone, to get away from everything and everyone. There is little energy for work or relationships when our hearts are breaking. But life pulls us onward, often before we are ready.
Tiger Woods went back to playing golf a few months after the death of his father: the father who had mentored him every step of the way in his amateur and professional career, and win or lose, had always been the first to greet him when he came off the course. After winning the British Open in July of 2006, Woods broke down in a most uncharacteristic way. There was the number one golfer in the world "bawling into his caddie's shoulder." He left the green in tears. "I've never done that before ... I'm the one who bottles things up and tries to move on ... But at that moment, it just came pouring out, all the things my father has meant to me and the game of golf, and I wish he could have just seen it one more time."1
Life will not wait for us, and so our grief sometimes pours out at the most unexpected times. We've all been there. We want to take a time out for a while to grieve, but duty calls; we are needed at work, the family still expects dinner on the table, there is the laundry to do, and another committee meeting at church. Even God will not let us mourn in peace, calling us to serve others who are hurting as much or more than we are. Jesus wanted to be alone in his grief, too, but when people got wind of where he was they crowded up to the lakeshore to wait for him.
Perhaps a grieving heart is more open to the needs of others. When we have experienced pain we are more sensitive to the wounds and scars others carry.
Rachel Naomi Remen tells about meeting the Dalai Lama at a luncheon at an exclusive San Francisco hotel. Many of the city's wealthiest, most powerful people were present. She describes a scene when the friend who accompanied her had the privilege of speaking to the Dalai Lama and showing him some pictures of her work with cancer patients. He gave her his full attention, as if there was no one else in the room. And, when their conversation was concluded, he reached down to pick up the bag she had dropped when she removed the photographs. The Dalai Lama simply opened the bag and offered it to Remen's friend, but the way he did it was filled with an unexplainable power:
It was not so much what his holiness had done, but the way in which he had done it. In this tiny intersection I felt something purely joyful in him go forward to meet with her ... Of all those in the world who could have picked up a string bag and held it out, I doubt anyone else could have done it in quite this way. For some inexplicable reason, a place in me that has felt alone and abandoned for all of my life felt deeply comforted, and I had a wildly irrational thought, "This is my friend." In that moment it seemed absolutely true. It still does.2
This may be the way people were drawn to Jesus, by some indescribable power that filled an empty space in their hearts. A look, a simple gesture, a nod, a word, a story, the touch of his hand, healed their bodies and fed their souls for a lifetime. This is a story about hungry people who find, in Jesus, food that fills them full like they have never been filled before.
Hungry Hearts
When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.
-- Matthew 14:14
Jesus could not hold himself back when he saw how much people were hurting. Long before the end of the day, when the disciples came to Jesus expressing concern about the physical hunger of the crowds, Jesus recognized another kind of hunger that most of those who came that day probably would have not been able to identify. They only knew that for the first time in their lives they had encountered someone whose very presence was satisfying. Jesus sensed their deep need and, though he was tired and overcome with grief, had "... compassion for them and healed their sick" (Matthew 14:14b).
Several years ago, the question was asked in a burger commercial, "What are you hungry for when you don't know what you're hungry for?" This is, indeed, one of the burning questions of our time, and it has nothing to do with fast food.
An unknown poet has put to paper a paraphrase that strikes home. He writes:
My appetite is my shepherd, I always want. It maketh me to sit down and stuff myself. It leadeth me to my refrigerator repeatedly. Sometimes during the night, it leadeth me in the path of Burger King for a Whopper. It destroyeth my shape. Yea, though I knoweth I gaineth, I will not stop eating. For the food tasteth so good. The ice cream and the cookies they comfort me.
What is it we are hungry for when we reach for the cookies and cream? Most of us who live in the Western world are overfed; we don't really need to add any more calories to our ever-expanding waistlines, yet we are hungry ... deeply hungry, painfully hungry ... but not for anything we can buy or consume.
Have you ever been hungry? Truly hungry? Not dieting hungry? Not too-busy-to-eat hungry, but didn't-know-where-your-next-meal-was-coming-from hungry? Physically starving.
A man came into our church building asking for bus ticket money to go to Indiana for a job he had waiting there. I knew him to be an honest man, about my age, who migrated from city to city and job to job. He had stopped several times before on his way through Milwaukee to visit his brother's family. They had refused to help him again. So I went with him to the bus station to buy a ticket with money from one of our special funds.
On the way out to the car, it occurred to me to offer him a plate of cheesecake bars my wife, Jo, had made for the staff. "A little something to eat on the bus," I said. I handed him the travel package and then we walked down the stairs and through the fellowship hall toward the back door. Before we reached the door, he had eaten every one of those bars. After we purchased his ticket at the bus station, we walked across the street to a sandwich shop and I bought lunch for this very hungry man who had not eaten for two or three days and was too proud to tell me how hungry he was.
During the war in Bosnia, in 1992, the Serbian forces allowed no food to pass through their roadblocks during the siege of Sarajevo. Some families survived on a gruel made from water and nettles taken from the surrounding hills. "When two Western reporters entered the city ... one of the first people they encountered was a professor of biophysics from the medical faculty of Sarajevo University, Dr. Hamid Pasic. 'I am hungry!' he said. 'I am 76 years old, I am a professor, and I am hungry!' "3
Most of us have not known real physical hunger like that. But we know other kinds of hunger. We who live in the time of fast food restaurants and supermarkets and shopping malls, whose refrigerators and pantries are full, know another kind of hunger -- the hunger of the heart, the hunger of the soul. It is a longing in the depths of our beings that cannot be satisfied by anything we can buy at the grocery store or the mall.
I remember hearing someone say in a sermon at a pastor's school that the best symbol of our consumer world is the "open mouth." We are always hungry, or think that we are; we are always wanting more. Advertisements in the media all around us are continually stimulating our appetites for super-sized meals, bigger houses, plusher furnishings, and smarter and faster technological gadgets. We are never satisfied and we don't know why.
What are we hungry for when we don't know what we're hungry for?
Mother Teresa once told about visiting a seminary in the United States, and how, after hearing her speak, they took what proved to be a very generous offering and proudly presented it to her to take back to the poor in India. She told them, "I cannot accept your offerings. I did not come to the United States to collect money for the poor in India. I came to talk about people here starving for love and starving to love."
Peter Fonda, of Easy Rider fame, and son of the great actor, Henry Fonda, tells how uncommunicative his father was with his family. Peter writes, "Dad could sit on the bus and talk to strangers for hours, but for us in the immediate family, he never knew how to fill the space. The more we demanded, the further he withdrew, and we misinterpreted that as anger."
Peter tells how he taught his father to say, "I love you." He said to his dad on the phone one day, "If I could, I'd write a scene for Henry Fonda and direct it. The name of it is 'I love you very much, Son.' And my dad went, 'Uggggh!' and hung up." But, it was the beginning. Before long, he had coached Henry to sign off each phone conversation with those longed-for words. Later, Peter flew to Los Angeles to visit his father, who was by then frail and using a walker. "When I was ready to leave, he grabbed me by my shoulders," Peter recalled. "With tears he said, 'I love you very much, Son.' I hugged him so hard I could feel his pacemaker and said, 'I love you, Dad.' And I got in my car and wept like a baby."4
We are hungry for intimacy. We yearn to know that we are loved, and not just by parents and children and spouses, and siblings and friends.
Marjorie Thompson writes in Soul Feast about what she calls the "deeper reason for the spiritual hunger of our day ... Human beings are innately religious. We harbor a bedrock desire for a transcendent wellspring of meaning and purpose in life ... We are made for relationship with God. Therefore until that relationship is sought and found, there will always be an existential emptiness at the core of our beings."5
God is not unaware of this sometimes desperate need. A clergy colleague, who prefers to remain anonymous, tells a story about a desperate need that was met one day with more than a little help from the Spirit.
Desperately Hungry
One day, many years ago, I had a rather strange experience. It was back in the days when I believed in miracles, when I expected the unexpected. It was back in the days when I thought everyone should think like I did. I was dogmatic, judgmental, rigid ... well, you get the picture.
It was a bright, sunny day that particular Thursday. Thursdays were the days that Viola and I went door to door in the neighborhood (I am embarrassed to admit this, but I must), evangelizing. Yep, we had our set of questions, and though we shivered a bit at the thought of approaching people we didn't know, we tried to be courageous. Viola was a gentle soul in her seventies. She and her friend, Nellie, and I would often go for dinner at the diner down the street. I grew to love them both. Today we were headed out the door of the education wing of our Lutheran church in a neighborhood of Queens that had become home to me very quickly. We waved at the older gentleman who lived across the way, and was headed the opposite direction from us, down to the market where there were fresh fruits and vegetables, a regular grocery store, and a bagel shop (my favorite thing for Sunday mornings!). I was thinking about the bagels when the subway roared past above us. Viola and I rolled our eyes at one another. "I don't know how you have gotten used to that thing."
"I'm not sure, either. The first night I was in the apartment and it roared past, I sat bolt upright in bed, certain that the train was coming right through the bedroom. Every 45 minutes, the same thing. Now I sleep like a baby. Who would have guessed a Nebraska girl transplanted to Queens would adjust so easily?"
Just then I noticed that my left hand was tingling. Viola was turning right. I almost went with her, but decided to risk sounding a little crazy. "Viola, would you mind if we went left? I know it sounds strange, but I just have a feeling that we're supposed to go that direction."
As fervent as I was at the time, my faith began to sag when, at the first house, a large, burly, hairy man answered the door. "What do you want?" He asked belligerently.
"We are from the Lutheran church around the corner, and we have a questionnaire. We wondered if you had the time...."
"We don't want any." The door slammed in our faces. We took deep breaths and headed to the next house. This time it was a woman with a facial mask of some green, pasty-looking stuff, who answered the door.
"Hello," I beamed at her, and Viola smiled her most winning smile.
"Do I know you?"
"No, we are just out and about with a survey for the neighborhood. We wondered if you had the time to answer a few questions?"
"Not interested." And she politely, but firmly, closed the door.
"Well, Viola, maybe I was wrong."
"Let's try one more before we give up."
We rang the doorbell and a woman with long, dark hair came to the door. Her eyes were puffy, as though she had been crying. We told her about our survey and introduced ourselves. We learned that her name was Rosemary. When we started asking our questions, and she realized they were spiritual questions, she burst into tears and told us to come in. We sat with her and listened for a long time as she said that just five minutes earlier she had been praying for God to send someone. She wanted to kill herself. And there we were at her door.
We talked about our faith. We invited her to Bible study. Her life changed. It really did. Rosemary and I met every week for many months, studying scripture. Her face seemed to shine, and everyone in her world knew something had happened.
I have never had exactly that kind of experience before or since that day, but it was a holy thing to find myself sharing my love of God with someone who was so hungry. It was profoundly, unspeakably holy to watch this young woman come alive with the light of Christ.6
What Then Shall We Do?
When it was evening the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." And he said, "Bring them here to me."
-- Matthew 14:15-18
The disciples had been doing crowd control all day. They came to Jesus and said, "People are restless and hungry, and there are no vendors or port-a-potties out here. We're tired; you're exhausted. Why don't you tell everybody go into town and get something to eat? They won't listen to us, but if you tell them they'll go." It was a reasonable suggestion, given the circumstances, and Jesus rejected it. "We don't need to send them away. You feed them."
The disciples' blood pressure must have begun to rise at this point. It had already been an unusually stressful day. They must have thought to themselves, "Where are we going to find food for 5,000 people? Is he expecting a miracle?"
But if the disciples were thinking that, they didn't say it. They swallowed their exasperation and replied the way you and I would have replied if something like this had happened in our workplaces. "We have nothing here but a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish."
You can almost hear the strain in their voices, the unspoken complaint of employees who have been pushing themselves all day and are now being asked to work overtime. We've all been there, feeling exhausted, checking our watches, counting the minutes until quitting time. Then, when it is just about time to clean up and go home, the boss comes in and says, "Let's keep at it until we get it done. Nobody is obligated to stay. I know you have families to care for, but this order is already late and it's for our best customer."
You groan inwardly because this is what the boss always says when she wants you to work late, but you stay because you need the job -- or maybe because you respect and love your boss.
We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.
-- Matthew 14:17
How often have we said this to God and to each other in the church?
"We've called everyone and there are not enough teachers for all of the Sunday school classes this year."
"You want to add onto the building? We could never raise enough money in a million years. Think of all of the members we have who are on fixed incomes and the price of gasoline keeps going up. Can't be done. And besides, we can't keep asking for money; it turns people off."
"All the church wants is our money. If that pastor preaches one more sermon on stewardship, I'm not coming back."
As I write this, I have just received a letter from our bishop asking our congregation to take another special offering on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in a few weeks. This, after we have already given thousands and thousands of dollars in the past fifteen months for the tsunami survivors in southeast Asia, for hungry refugees in Darfur, as well as for the survivors of Katrina. We have had an overwhelming response, more than we have ever given before to needs outside of our own community. This is a time of overwhelming need.
I know, as I think about how I am going to present the request for this offering, that we are experiencing some "compassion fatigue." We have come to a point where we think we can't give anymore. Our resources are exhausted and we are emotionally drained, but the needy crowds keep coming.
We become angry, sometimes, when we are reminded of one more need in the world. Thelma Wilson, a pastor from the Isle of Man in Britain, wonders if "Jesus' command to feed the hungry makes us angry ... because he challenges our complacency," and makes "us reflect on our self-centeredness."7
Whatever our response, we may be sure Jesus has heard it all, and says to us what he said to his weary disciples, "Bring me what you have."
The Miracle
Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about 5,000.
-- Matthew 14:19-21
There is a miracle in here somewhere, and the church is still sorting out what it is and what it means. If we allow ourselves to be pulled into a debate about miracles -- with one side saying, "This literally happened: Jesus created food out of thin air, and if you don't believe that you are not a 'real Christian,' " and, the other side insisting: "This is a metaphor, you uneducated fool; it teaches us to have faith that God will provide in all circumstances" -- we will not only waste our time; we will miss what the gospel writer is trying to teach us.
There is mystery in this story and therein is its power for us today. Celebrate the mystery. Learn from it. What matters more than what happened back then, is how this miracle empowers our ministry with Jesus today.
Mark Galli tells about a trip in which he had an opportunity to attend one of the most successful churches in the United States. Twenty thousand people worship there each weekend, the pastor is internationally known and a writer of popular books. It is a church with a vital and relevant ministry. "Fortunately," Galli wrote in his recent book, Jesus Mean and Mild, "it became impossible to attend there, and instead I was blessed to end up at an irrelevant church." He was welcomed at this second church by a woman who had been pulling weeds by the church sign. "The service, which included maybe 45 people, bumbled along -- that is by contemporary, professional, 'seeker sensitive' standards." It was when the announcements began that Galli said he "... began to realize he was in 'the midst of the people of God.' " The pastor announced "... a new milestone for the church: They had served 22,000 people with groceries in ten years." Galli concluded, "... for all the good the megachurch does, this little fellowship manifested the presence of Jesus in a way that is unique and absolutely necessary in our age."8
Bob Stimmel, who retired from Downey United Methodist Church in southern California not long ago, said in one of his sermons, "We know the importance of food shared ... Our salvation is somehow tied up with food; I think it's always 'shared food.' And because it's shared, it is also sacred. It is not what we get for ourselves, but what we give away, and what we share with others."9
New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristoff, reminded the nation on the third anniversary of 9/11 that almost as many people are dying in Darfur every week as died on September 11, 2001.
In my last visit to the Darfur area in Sudan, in June, I found a man groaning under tree. He had been shot in the neck and jaw and left for dead in a pile of corpses. Seeking shelter under the very next tree were a pair of widows whose husbands had both been shot to death. Under the next tree I found a four-year-old orphan girl caring for her starving one-year-old brother. And under the tree next to that was a woman whose husband had been killed, along with her seven- and four-year-old sons, before she was gang-raped and mutilated.
Kristoff describes a woman he met on his last trip to Darfur. Hatum Atraman Bashir
... was pregnant with the baby of one of the twenty Janjaweed raiders who murdered her husband and gang-raped her. A few days ago, I received an email note from an aid worker in the International Rescue Committee, which is assisting Ms. Bashir, saying that she had given birth but could not produce milk for the baby -- a common problem because of malnutrition.10
When we respond to needs such as these by putting money in the offering plate for the hungry, bringing food for food pantries, working in soup kitchens and homeless shelters, and building Habitat for Humanity homes, we discover that our own hungry hearts are fed. In giving of ourselves we find sustenance for our souls. That is the miracle.
Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."
-- Matthew 14:16
The Feeding Of The Fifty
Jo Perry-Sumwalt
Nancy Baker's cooking had become something of a legend at Our Savior's Church. Whenever there was need for advice or action on a church dinner, Nancy's phone would ring, and she was always happy to comply because she loved to plan and cook meals. In part, people's high regard for her expertise came from the fact that Nancy had taught home economics at the local high school for thirty years. Equally important was their firsthand knowledge that her home-cooked meals were delicious. But the most likely reason Nancy was so often consulted was the miracle she had performed. Now, Nancy pooh-poohed the suggestion that there was any miracle involved, and her husband, Vince, jokingly referred to it as "The Feeding of the Fifty," but those who were present to assist did not take what she had done lightly. In their eyes, it had been a true miracle.
It had all come about because Our Savior's hosted an annual leadership training event for their denomination's area churches. A planning committee arranged for workshops in a variety of different leadership areas: trustees, parish boards, music, church school, finance, and so on. Our Savior's provided meeting and worship space, music, and snacks.
On the day of that most memorable of training events, the morning had dawned overcast and forbidding. Thunderstorms were forecast for the entire day. However, the church volunteers and workshop leaders arrived early and made their preparations. By 11 a.m., an hour-and-a-half before show time, the rain that had been falling all morning began to freeze. Salting and sanding trucks were out on the streets and highways, so the planning committee reasoned that, while the numbers of those in attendance might suffer, it was already too late to cancel the event.
Two hundred and fifty hearty souls had arrived at the church by 12:30, through an unseasonably late shower of heavy, wet snowflakes. The weather people on local radio and television stations were chuckling over this April snow shower, explaining that it was an arctic blast that had veered much farther south than expected. "Enjoy!" they said. "Christmas in April could be fun!"
But while the leadership training workshops kept their participants occupied, area businesses, schools, and offices began to close. Snowplows made repeated passes along major thoroughfares, but the snow was relentless. Workshop participants who had come from a distance began to slip out a few at a time. By the 3 p.m. break time, several had returned saying it was no use -- they couldn't get home in the raging storm conditions.
Pastor Erickson and the planning committee called the remaining 109 participants together in the sanctuary at 3:15.
"We have begun calling our nearby church members and constituents to find overnight accommodations for everyone who is stranded here," Pastor Erickson announced. "As soon as the phoning is completed, you can take turns contacting your families to let them know you are taken care of."
But the phoning netted only 56 available beds, couches, cots, and rollaways within walking distance. When those people had been met and escorted away through the storm by their hosts, 53 stranded participants still remained.
"I can take four of you," Pastor Erickson announced, suggesting as diplomatically as possible that those with strong backs, muscles, and joints remain to sleep at the church, allowing four with more fragile constitutions to accompany him.
The group graciously complied. But as the telephone volunteers were being instructed on their next campaign for nearby blankets, pillows, sheets, and sleeping bags, someone brought up the problem of food.
"What will we feed those who are left here?"
City traffic was almost literally at a standstill. There were numerous cars abandoned as much off the streets as possible, most where they had become stuck or struck. Snowplows had been ordered back to the public works garages until there was a let-up in the storm, but still snow flew and blew with raging ferocity. The entire city had shut down, including any grocery stores or restaurants within walking distance. Two people whose car was stuck in a drift up the street had seen the lights on in the church and come in asking for shelter: 51 snowbound guests, four church volunteers, and no food.
"Have the phone volunteers ask for whatever food people can spare along with the bedding," Nancy Baker said sensibly. "God will provide."
So the nearby parishioners trudged out into the vicious storm one more time to deliver whatever they had to offer. While the sparse volunteer crew helped their stranded guests find the most comfortable spots in the building for making up beds, or set tables for 56, Nancy Baker shut herself in the church kitchen with the hodgepodge of food offerings. There wasn't a lot to work with -- mostly canned goods, a little hamburger and chicken, cheese, pasta, eggs, and milk -- but she began to rummage about the kitchen and work her magic.
The guests occupied themselves with get-acquainted conversations, and cards and board games from the youth room, after the eating and sleeping arrangements were completed. At 5:45, they were called to the tables by the clinking of a spoon on a glass by Nancy.
"Please, find a seat and let's pray before we eat," the pastor, who hadn't been able to make himself stay away, said as the group assembled and grew quiet. "Thank you, dear God, for the warmth and shelter of our church building, for the generosity of those who have provided food and bedding, and for the love and fellowship around these tables. Bless this food we are about to eat. In Jesus' name. Amen."
And then the kitchen doors opened, releasing wonderful aromas, and the four volunteers began carrying out bowls and platters and casserole dishes full of steaming, mouth-watering food, and everyone ate their fill, with plenty to spare.
The story of the quality and quantity of the food offered at that meal grew as it spread in the days and weeks following the storm. When the snowplows had done their work, and the shovelers and snowblowers had freed trapped vehicles, and everyone had returned home (after an equally amazing breakfast!), Nancy Baker was already on her way to being a legend in Our Savior's Church history.
"Such a lot of fuss!" Nancy said to Vince, "I told them God would provide!"11
____________
1. Anthony Cotton, Denver Post, repeated in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 24, 2006.
2. Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging (New York: Riverhead Books, 2000), pp. 159-160.
3. The New York Times, International, June 8, 1992.
4. Marjorie Rosen, Parade magazine, March 8, 1998.
5. Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1995), p. 5.
6. The author prefers to remain anonymous.
7. Midrash, July 30, 2002.
8. Mark Galli, Jesus Mean and Mild: The Unexpected Love of An Untamable God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006), pp. 122-123.
9. Bob Stimmel, PRC-L Listserve, July 25, 2003.
10. Nicholas Kristoff, The New York Times, September 11, 2004.
11. Jo Perry-Sumwalt, "The Feeding of the Fifty," Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle C, John Sumwalt and Jo Perry-Sumwalt (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing, 1996), pp. 150-153. Jo Perry-Sumwalt is Director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee. She is also the co-author of Life Stories: A Study of Christian Decision Making (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing, 1995). More recently, from 2002-2005, she and her husband, John served as the editors of StoryShare, a weekly online e-zine published by CSS.
We always had plenty of potatoes on the farm where I grew up, just over the hill from where my Irish ancestors settled -- boiled, baked, twice baked, mashed, hashed, in pancakes and bread, fried, scrambled with eggs, frittered, roasted, or diced in Mom's wonderful potato soup. We had potatoes at almost every meal. When my mother said to me, "Johnny, eat your potatoes," the urgency in her voice came from a memory handed down from a time when there weren't enough potatoes to go around. "Food mustn't be wasted; there was a time when we didn't have enough to eat," she was trying to tell me.
Mom was also deeply affected by the lean times her family endured during the Great Depression of the 1930s. She tells about packing bean sandwiches for lunch at school and eating bread and butter sandwiches for supper. Sometimes there was just bread and milk and they were glad to have it. If there wasn't quite enough to go around, her mother would say, "Here, you take my bowl, I'm not very hungry tonight." Grandma knew how to stretch a meal.
Jesus knew how to stretch a meal, too.
In The Midst Of Grief ...
Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.
-- Matthew 14:13
Jesus' day began with unexpected news. John the Baptist was dead, killed under some of the most horrific circumstances imaginable. Matthew's description is like a scene out of a modern horror movie. John had been arrested by Herod because he had the audacity to suggest that Herod was living in an adulterous relationship with Herodias, his brother, Philip's, wife. Herod wanted to put John to death immediately, but was afraid to for fear of the crowds who followed him and called him a prophet. Then came Herod's infamous birthday party and the sultry dance of Herodias' daughter, which affected him so much he made an oath in front of all of his guests to give her anything she desired. Herodias whispered in the girl's ear and she asked that the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a platter. What was Herod going to do? He could not afford to lose face with his guests, so John lost his head and Herod's guests were served up a ghastly entree that must have ruined their appetites for years. John's followers were allowed to bury his body, and then Matthew writes, "... they went and told Jesus" (Matthew 14:1-12).
Jesus must have felt like we feel when we get that dreaded phone call. "Oh, no, it can't be!" We feel like we've been kicked in the stomach. We can't breathe, we can't think, we just want to be left alone, to get away from everything and everyone. There is little energy for work or relationships when our hearts are breaking. But life pulls us onward, often before we are ready.
Tiger Woods went back to playing golf a few months after the death of his father: the father who had mentored him every step of the way in his amateur and professional career, and win or lose, had always been the first to greet him when he came off the course. After winning the British Open in July of 2006, Woods broke down in a most uncharacteristic way. There was the number one golfer in the world "bawling into his caddie's shoulder." He left the green in tears. "I've never done that before ... I'm the one who bottles things up and tries to move on ... But at that moment, it just came pouring out, all the things my father has meant to me and the game of golf, and I wish he could have just seen it one more time."1
Life will not wait for us, and so our grief sometimes pours out at the most unexpected times. We've all been there. We want to take a time out for a while to grieve, but duty calls; we are needed at work, the family still expects dinner on the table, there is the laundry to do, and another committee meeting at church. Even God will not let us mourn in peace, calling us to serve others who are hurting as much or more than we are. Jesus wanted to be alone in his grief, too, but when people got wind of where he was they crowded up to the lakeshore to wait for him.
Perhaps a grieving heart is more open to the needs of others. When we have experienced pain we are more sensitive to the wounds and scars others carry.
Rachel Naomi Remen tells about meeting the Dalai Lama at a luncheon at an exclusive San Francisco hotel. Many of the city's wealthiest, most powerful people were present. She describes a scene when the friend who accompanied her had the privilege of speaking to the Dalai Lama and showing him some pictures of her work with cancer patients. He gave her his full attention, as if there was no one else in the room. And, when their conversation was concluded, he reached down to pick up the bag she had dropped when she removed the photographs. The Dalai Lama simply opened the bag and offered it to Remen's friend, but the way he did it was filled with an unexplainable power:
It was not so much what his holiness had done, but the way in which he had done it. In this tiny intersection I felt something purely joyful in him go forward to meet with her ... Of all those in the world who could have picked up a string bag and held it out, I doubt anyone else could have done it in quite this way. For some inexplicable reason, a place in me that has felt alone and abandoned for all of my life felt deeply comforted, and I had a wildly irrational thought, "This is my friend." In that moment it seemed absolutely true. It still does.2
This may be the way people were drawn to Jesus, by some indescribable power that filled an empty space in their hearts. A look, a simple gesture, a nod, a word, a story, the touch of his hand, healed their bodies and fed their souls for a lifetime. This is a story about hungry people who find, in Jesus, food that fills them full like they have never been filled before.
Hungry Hearts
When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.
-- Matthew 14:14
Jesus could not hold himself back when he saw how much people were hurting. Long before the end of the day, when the disciples came to Jesus expressing concern about the physical hunger of the crowds, Jesus recognized another kind of hunger that most of those who came that day probably would have not been able to identify. They only knew that for the first time in their lives they had encountered someone whose very presence was satisfying. Jesus sensed their deep need and, though he was tired and overcome with grief, had "... compassion for them and healed their sick" (Matthew 14:14b).
Several years ago, the question was asked in a burger commercial, "What are you hungry for when you don't know what you're hungry for?" This is, indeed, one of the burning questions of our time, and it has nothing to do with fast food.
An unknown poet has put to paper a paraphrase that strikes home. He writes:
My appetite is my shepherd, I always want. It maketh me to sit down and stuff myself. It leadeth me to my refrigerator repeatedly. Sometimes during the night, it leadeth me in the path of Burger King for a Whopper. It destroyeth my shape. Yea, though I knoweth I gaineth, I will not stop eating. For the food tasteth so good. The ice cream and the cookies they comfort me.
What is it we are hungry for when we reach for the cookies and cream? Most of us who live in the Western world are overfed; we don't really need to add any more calories to our ever-expanding waistlines, yet we are hungry ... deeply hungry, painfully hungry ... but not for anything we can buy or consume.
Have you ever been hungry? Truly hungry? Not dieting hungry? Not too-busy-to-eat hungry, but didn't-know-where-your-next-meal-was-coming-from hungry? Physically starving.
A man came into our church building asking for bus ticket money to go to Indiana for a job he had waiting there. I knew him to be an honest man, about my age, who migrated from city to city and job to job. He had stopped several times before on his way through Milwaukee to visit his brother's family. They had refused to help him again. So I went with him to the bus station to buy a ticket with money from one of our special funds.
On the way out to the car, it occurred to me to offer him a plate of cheesecake bars my wife, Jo, had made for the staff. "A little something to eat on the bus," I said. I handed him the travel package and then we walked down the stairs and through the fellowship hall toward the back door. Before we reached the door, he had eaten every one of those bars. After we purchased his ticket at the bus station, we walked across the street to a sandwich shop and I bought lunch for this very hungry man who had not eaten for two or three days and was too proud to tell me how hungry he was.
During the war in Bosnia, in 1992, the Serbian forces allowed no food to pass through their roadblocks during the siege of Sarajevo. Some families survived on a gruel made from water and nettles taken from the surrounding hills. "When two Western reporters entered the city ... one of the first people they encountered was a professor of biophysics from the medical faculty of Sarajevo University, Dr. Hamid Pasic. 'I am hungry!' he said. 'I am 76 years old, I am a professor, and I am hungry!' "3
Most of us have not known real physical hunger like that. But we know other kinds of hunger. We who live in the time of fast food restaurants and supermarkets and shopping malls, whose refrigerators and pantries are full, know another kind of hunger -- the hunger of the heart, the hunger of the soul. It is a longing in the depths of our beings that cannot be satisfied by anything we can buy at the grocery store or the mall.
I remember hearing someone say in a sermon at a pastor's school that the best symbol of our consumer world is the "open mouth." We are always hungry, or think that we are; we are always wanting more. Advertisements in the media all around us are continually stimulating our appetites for super-sized meals, bigger houses, plusher furnishings, and smarter and faster technological gadgets. We are never satisfied and we don't know why.
What are we hungry for when we don't know what we're hungry for?
Mother Teresa once told about visiting a seminary in the United States, and how, after hearing her speak, they took what proved to be a very generous offering and proudly presented it to her to take back to the poor in India. She told them, "I cannot accept your offerings. I did not come to the United States to collect money for the poor in India. I came to talk about people here starving for love and starving to love."
Peter Fonda, of Easy Rider fame, and son of the great actor, Henry Fonda, tells how uncommunicative his father was with his family. Peter writes, "Dad could sit on the bus and talk to strangers for hours, but for us in the immediate family, he never knew how to fill the space. The more we demanded, the further he withdrew, and we misinterpreted that as anger."
Peter tells how he taught his father to say, "I love you." He said to his dad on the phone one day, "If I could, I'd write a scene for Henry Fonda and direct it. The name of it is 'I love you very much, Son.' And my dad went, 'Uggggh!' and hung up." But, it was the beginning. Before long, he had coached Henry to sign off each phone conversation with those longed-for words. Later, Peter flew to Los Angeles to visit his father, who was by then frail and using a walker. "When I was ready to leave, he grabbed me by my shoulders," Peter recalled. "With tears he said, 'I love you very much, Son.' I hugged him so hard I could feel his pacemaker and said, 'I love you, Dad.' And I got in my car and wept like a baby."4
We are hungry for intimacy. We yearn to know that we are loved, and not just by parents and children and spouses, and siblings and friends.
Marjorie Thompson writes in Soul Feast about what she calls the "deeper reason for the spiritual hunger of our day ... Human beings are innately religious. We harbor a bedrock desire for a transcendent wellspring of meaning and purpose in life ... We are made for relationship with God. Therefore until that relationship is sought and found, there will always be an existential emptiness at the core of our beings."5
God is not unaware of this sometimes desperate need. A clergy colleague, who prefers to remain anonymous, tells a story about a desperate need that was met one day with more than a little help from the Spirit.
Desperately Hungry
One day, many years ago, I had a rather strange experience. It was back in the days when I believed in miracles, when I expected the unexpected. It was back in the days when I thought everyone should think like I did. I was dogmatic, judgmental, rigid ... well, you get the picture.
It was a bright, sunny day that particular Thursday. Thursdays were the days that Viola and I went door to door in the neighborhood (I am embarrassed to admit this, but I must), evangelizing. Yep, we had our set of questions, and though we shivered a bit at the thought of approaching people we didn't know, we tried to be courageous. Viola was a gentle soul in her seventies. She and her friend, Nellie, and I would often go for dinner at the diner down the street. I grew to love them both. Today we were headed out the door of the education wing of our Lutheran church in a neighborhood of Queens that had become home to me very quickly. We waved at the older gentleman who lived across the way, and was headed the opposite direction from us, down to the market where there were fresh fruits and vegetables, a regular grocery store, and a bagel shop (my favorite thing for Sunday mornings!). I was thinking about the bagels when the subway roared past above us. Viola and I rolled our eyes at one another. "I don't know how you have gotten used to that thing."
"I'm not sure, either. The first night I was in the apartment and it roared past, I sat bolt upright in bed, certain that the train was coming right through the bedroom. Every 45 minutes, the same thing. Now I sleep like a baby. Who would have guessed a Nebraska girl transplanted to Queens would adjust so easily?"
Just then I noticed that my left hand was tingling. Viola was turning right. I almost went with her, but decided to risk sounding a little crazy. "Viola, would you mind if we went left? I know it sounds strange, but I just have a feeling that we're supposed to go that direction."
As fervent as I was at the time, my faith began to sag when, at the first house, a large, burly, hairy man answered the door. "What do you want?" He asked belligerently.
"We are from the Lutheran church around the corner, and we have a questionnaire. We wondered if you had the time...."
"We don't want any." The door slammed in our faces. We took deep breaths and headed to the next house. This time it was a woman with a facial mask of some green, pasty-looking stuff, who answered the door.
"Hello," I beamed at her, and Viola smiled her most winning smile.
"Do I know you?"
"No, we are just out and about with a survey for the neighborhood. We wondered if you had the time to answer a few questions?"
"Not interested." And she politely, but firmly, closed the door.
"Well, Viola, maybe I was wrong."
"Let's try one more before we give up."
We rang the doorbell and a woman with long, dark hair came to the door. Her eyes were puffy, as though she had been crying. We told her about our survey and introduced ourselves. We learned that her name was Rosemary. When we started asking our questions, and she realized they were spiritual questions, she burst into tears and told us to come in. We sat with her and listened for a long time as she said that just five minutes earlier she had been praying for God to send someone. She wanted to kill herself. And there we were at her door.
We talked about our faith. We invited her to Bible study. Her life changed. It really did. Rosemary and I met every week for many months, studying scripture. Her face seemed to shine, and everyone in her world knew something had happened.
I have never had exactly that kind of experience before or since that day, but it was a holy thing to find myself sharing my love of God with someone who was so hungry. It was profoundly, unspeakably holy to watch this young woman come alive with the light of Christ.6
What Then Shall We Do?
When it was evening the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." And he said, "Bring them here to me."
-- Matthew 14:15-18
The disciples had been doing crowd control all day. They came to Jesus and said, "People are restless and hungry, and there are no vendors or port-a-potties out here. We're tired; you're exhausted. Why don't you tell everybody go into town and get something to eat? They won't listen to us, but if you tell them they'll go." It was a reasonable suggestion, given the circumstances, and Jesus rejected it. "We don't need to send them away. You feed them."
The disciples' blood pressure must have begun to rise at this point. It had already been an unusually stressful day. They must have thought to themselves, "Where are we going to find food for 5,000 people? Is he expecting a miracle?"
But if the disciples were thinking that, they didn't say it. They swallowed their exasperation and replied the way you and I would have replied if something like this had happened in our workplaces. "We have nothing here but a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish."
You can almost hear the strain in their voices, the unspoken complaint of employees who have been pushing themselves all day and are now being asked to work overtime. We've all been there, feeling exhausted, checking our watches, counting the minutes until quitting time. Then, when it is just about time to clean up and go home, the boss comes in and says, "Let's keep at it until we get it done. Nobody is obligated to stay. I know you have families to care for, but this order is already late and it's for our best customer."
You groan inwardly because this is what the boss always says when she wants you to work late, but you stay because you need the job -- or maybe because you respect and love your boss.
We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.
-- Matthew 14:17
How often have we said this to God and to each other in the church?
"We've called everyone and there are not enough teachers for all of the Sunday school classes this year."
"You want to add onto the building? We could never raise enough money in a million years. Think of all of the members we have who are on fixed incomes and the price of gasoline keeps going up. Can't be done. And besides, we can't keep asking for money; it turns people off."
"All the church wants is our money. If that pastor preaches one more sermon on stewardship, I'm not coming back."
As I write this, I have just received a letter from our bishop asking our congregation to take another special offering on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in a few weeks. This, after we have already given thousands and thousands of dollars in the past fifteen months for the tsunami survivors in southeast Asia, for hungry refugees in Darfur, as well as for the survivors of Katrina. We have had an overwhelming response, more than we have ever given before to needs outside of our own community. This is a time of overwhelming need.
I know, as I think about how I am going to present the request for this offering, that we are experiencing some "compassion fatigue." We have come to a point where we think we can't give anymore. Our resources are exhausted and we are emotionally drained, but the needy crowds keep coming.
We become angry, sometimes, when we are reminded of one more need in the world. Thelma Wilson, a pastor from the Isle of Man in Britain, wonders if "Jesus' command to feed the hungry makes us angry ... because he challenges our complacency," and makes "us reflect on our self-centeredness."7
Whatever our response, we may be sure Jesus has heard it all, and says to us what he said to his weary disciples, "Bring me what you have."
The Miracle
Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about 5,000.
-- Matthew 14:19-21
There is a miracle in here somewhere, and the church is still sorting out what it is and what it means. If we allow ourselves to be pulled into a debate about miracles -- with one side saying, "This literally happened: Jesus created food out of thin air, and if you don't believe that you are not a 'real Christian,' " and, the other side insisting: "This is a metaphor, you uneducated fool; it teaches us to have faith that God will provide in all circumstances" -- we will not only waste our time; we will miss what the gospel writer is trying to teach us.
There is mystery in this story and therein is its power for us today. Celebrate the mystery. Learn from it. What matters more than what happened back then, is how this miracle empowers our ministry with Jesus today.
Mark Galli tells about a trip in which he had an opportunity to attend one of the most successful churches in the United States. Twenty thousand people worship there each weekend, the pastor is internationally known and a writer of popular books. It is a church with a vital and relevant ministry. "Fortunately," Galli wrote in his recent book, Jesus Mean and Mild, "it became impossible to attend there, and instead I was blessed to end up at an irrelevant church." He was welcomed at this second church by a woman who had been pulling weeds by the church sign. "The service, which included maybe 45 people, bumbled along -- that is by contemporary, professional, 'seeker sensitive' standards." It was when the announcements began that Galli said he "... began to realize he was in 'the midst of the people of God.' " The pastor announced "... a new milestone for the church: They had served 22,000 people with groceries in ten years." Galli concluded, "... for all the good the megachurch does, this little fellowship manifested the presence of Jesus in a way that is unique and absolutely necessary in our age."8
Bob Stimmel, who retired from Downey United Methodist Church in southern California not long ago, said in one of his sermons, "We know the importance of food shared ... Our salvation is somehow tied up with food; I think it's always 'shared food.' And because it's shared, it is also sacred. It is not what we get for ourselves, but what we give away, and what we share with others."9
New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristoff, reminded the nation on the third anniversary of 9/11 that almost as many people are dying in Darfur every week as died on September 11, 2001.
In my last visit to the Darfur area in Sudan, in June, I found a man groaning under tree. He had been shot in the neck and jaw and left for dead in a pile of corpses. Seeking shelter under the very next tree were a pair of widows whose husbands had both been shot to death. Under the next tree I found a four-year-old orphan girl caring for her starving one-year-old brother. And under the tree next to that was a woman whose husband had been killed, along with her seven- and four-year-old sons, before she was gang-raped and mutilated.
Kristoff describes a woman he met on his last trip to Darfur. Hatum Atraman Bashir
... was pregnant with the baby of one of the twenty Janjaweed raiders who murdered her husband and gang-raped her. A few days ago, I received an email note from an aid worker in the International Rescue Committee, which is assisting Ms. Bashir, saying that she had given birth but could not produce milk for the baby -- a common problem because of malnutrition.10
When we respond to needs such as these by putting money in the offering plate for the hungry, bringing food for food pantries, working in soup kitchens and homeless shelters, and building Habitat for Humanity homes, we discover that our own hungry hearts are fed. In giving of ourselves we find sustenance for our souls. That is the miracle.
Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."
-- Matthew 14:16
The Feeding Of The Fifty
Jo Perry-Sumwalt
Nancy Baker's cooking had become something of a legend at Our Savior's Church. Whenever there was need for advice or action on a church dinner, Nancy's phone would ring, and she was always happy to comply because she loved to plan and cook meals. In part, people's high regard for her expertise came from the fact that Nancy had taught home economics at the local high school for thirty years. Equally important was their firsthand knowledge that her home-cooked meals were delicious. But the most likely reason Nancy was so often consulted was the miracle she had performed. Now, Nancy pooh-poohed the suggestion that there was any miracle involved, and her husband, Vince, jokingly referred to it as "The Feeding of the Fifty," but those who were present to assist did not take what she had done lightly. In their eyes, it had been a true miracle.
It had all come about because Our Savior's hosted an annual leadership training event for their denomination's area churches. A planning committee arranged for workshops in a variety of different leadership areas: trustees, parish boards, music, church school, finance, and so on. Our Savior's provided meeting and worship space, music, and snacks.
On the day of that most memorable of training events, the morning had dawned overcast and forbidding. Thunderstorms were forecast for the entire day. However, the church volunteers and workshop leaders arrived early and made their preparations. By 11 a.m., an hour-and-a-half before show time, the rain that had been falling all morning began to freeze. Salting and sanding trucks were out on the streets and highways, so the planning committee reasoned that, while the numbers of those in attendance might suffer, it was already too late to cancel the event.
Two hundred and fifty hearty souls had arrived at the church by 12:30, through an unseasonably late shower of heavy, wet snowflakes. The weather people on local radio and television stations were chuckling over this April snow shower, explaining that it was an arctic blast that had veered much farther south than expected. "Enjoy!" they said. "Christmas in April could be fun!"
But while the leadership training workshops kept their participants occupied, area businesses, schools, and offices began to close. Snowplows made repeated passes along major thoroughfares, but the snow was relentless. Workshop participants who had come from a distance began to slip out a few at a time. By the 3 p.m. break time, several had returned saying it was no use -- they couldn't get home in the raging storm conditions.
Pastor Erickson and the planning committee called the remaining 109 participants together in the sanctuary at 3:15.
"We have begun calling our nearby church members and constituents to find overnight accommodations for everyone who is stranded here," Pastor Erickson announced. "As soon as the phoning is completed, you can take turns contacting your families to let them know you are taken care of."
But the phoning netted only 56 available beds, couches, cots, and rollaways within walking distance. When those people had been met and escorted away through the storm by their hosts, 53 stranded participants still remained.
"I can take four of you," Pastor Erickson announced, suggesting as diplomatically as possible that those with strong backs, muscles, and joints remain to sleep at the church, allowing four with more fragile constitutions to accompany him.
The group graciously complied. But as the telephone volunteers were being instructed on their next campaign for nearby blankets, pillows, sheets, and sleeping bags, someone brought up the problem of food.
"What will we feed those who are left here?"
City traffic was almost literally at a standstill. There were numerous cars abandoned as much off the streets as possible, most where they had become stuck or struck. Snowplows had been ordered back to the public works garages until there was a let-up in the storm, but still snow flew and blew with raging ferocity. The entire city had shut down, including any grocery stores or restaurants within walking distance. Two people whose car was stuck in a drift up the street had seen the lights on in the church and come in asking for shelter: 51 snowbound guests, four church volunteers, and no food.
"Have the phone volunteers ask for whatever food people can spare along with the bedding," Nancy Baker said sensibly. "God will provide."
So the nearby parishioners trudged out into the vicious storm one more time to deliver whatever they had to offer. While the sparse volunteer crew helped their stranded guests find the most comfortable spots in the building for making up beds, or set tables for 56, Nancy Baker shut herself in the church kitchen with the hodgepodge of food offerings. There wasn't a lot to work with -- mostly canned goods, a little hamburger and chicken, cheese, pasta, eggs, and milk -- but she began to rummage about the kitchen and work her magic.
The guests occupied themselves with get-acquainted conversations, and cards and board games from the youth room, after the eating and sleeping arrangements were completed. At 5:45, they were called to the tables by the clinking of a spoon on a glass by Nancy.
"Please, find a seat and let's pray before we eat," the pastor, who hadn't been able to make himself stay away, said as the group assembled and grew quiet. "Thank you, dear God, for the warmth and shelter of our church building, for the generosity of those who have provided food and bedding, and for the love and fellowship around these tables. Bless this food we are about to eat. In Jesus' name. Amen."
And then the kitchen doors opened, releasing wonderful aromas, and the four volunteers began carrying out bowls and platters and casserole dishes full of steaming, mouth-watering food, and everyone ate their fill, with plenty to spare.
The story of the quality and quantity of the food offered at that meal grew as it spread in the days and weeks following the storm. When the snowplows had done their work, and the shovelers and snowblowers had freed trapped vehicles, and everyone had returned home (after an equally amazing breakfast!), Nancy Baker was already on her way to being a legend in Our Savior's Church history.
"Such a lot of fuss!" Nancy said to Vince, "I told them God would provide!"11
____________
1. Anthony Cotton, Denver Post, repeated in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 24, 2006.
2. Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging (New York: Riverhead Books, 2000), pp. 159-160.
3. The New York Times, International, June 8, 1992.
4. Marjorie Rosen, Parade magazine, March 8, 1998.
5. Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1995), p. 5.
6. The author prefers to remain anonymous.
7. Midrash, July 30, 2002.
8. Mark Galli, Jesus Mean and Mild: The Unexpected Love of An Untamable God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006), pp. 122-123.
9. Bob Stimmel, PRC-L Listserve, July 25, 2003.
10. Nicholas Kristoff, The New York Times, September 11, 2004.
11. Jo Perry-Sumwalt, "The Feeding of the Fifty," Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle C, John Sumwalt and Jo Perry-Sumwalt (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing, 1996), pp. 150-153. Jo Perry-Sumwalt is Director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in suburban Milwaukee. She is also the co-author of Life Stories: A Study of Christian Decision Making (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing, 1995). More recently, from 2002-2005, she and her husband, John served as the editors of StoryShare, a weekly online e-zine published by CSS.
