Deer Park United Church How Many Loaves Have You?

How Many Loaves Have You?

From June 2009 Newsletter

By Marie Goodyear

"And he said to them, 'How may loaves have you? Go and see.' When they had found out, they said, 'Five, and two fish.'…And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish”

The story of how five thousand people sat down and ate their full of five barley loaves and two fish is very familiar to us. A miracle, we call it. And it was. Not so much because so little fed so many, but because what was hopeless became possible. We would look at the food available and then at the crowd needing to be fed and say that there is no way there's going to be any success with this venture. But, as we often find, a surprise is lurking in the shadows. And the surprise is the ability of God to work through what seems very, very little.

We live in a culture that believes and promotes the understanding that large is the only size that matters; that the bigger, the better; that too much is superior to enough. Small is very rarely a good size (unless, of course, we are talking about clothing!!). In fact, small is often equated with failure.

This is especially true in our churches. Most people see small as undesirable, as deficient, as failure. But small is often able to do what large cannot. Intimacy, a shared sense of mission, an enhanced feeling of pastoral care for one another, joys celebrated and sorrows borne by the whole community, these are the things that a small church has. And when a task is undertaken, all share in the work and the feeling of accomplishment that comes at the completion of the work. In the best small church communities, no one gets left out.

But that understanding is not widespread and often small churches wonder if there is anything that they can offer that can be worth what the larger churches do. Barbara Brown Taylor, in a sermon on the feeding of the five thousand, entitled Local Miracles, says this: "God always makes good on his promise to match our gifts, such as they are, with his own. It is something to remember when the crowd looks too big, the odds too poor, the work too hard, the situation too hopeless. It is something to remember when our own resources look too meager, our efforts too puny, our spirits too low. So,…take what you have—whatever you have—take it…and hold it lightly, very lightly. Then bless it—thank God for what you have and make it holy by giving it away for love. Then…spread it around, and never mind that there does not seem to be enough for everyone. It is not up to you to feed the whole crowd, to solve the whole problem, or to fix the whole world. It is up to you just to share what you have got…The rest will come. Because God is God, the rest will come. For now, for your part, how many loaves have you? Go and see."