Loaves and Stories

Sermon snippets:
John 6:13-14

"...The brown paper up here is flimsy, but it’s holding our stories. The stories we share and the brown paper in our minds that stretches back thousands of years and forward for uncountable years are sturdy. They are powerful. They are why we are here.

Sure, we’re here because someone asked us to be here, to show up early, to bring lunch, but why we are here is that we have a faith that stretches back thousands of years, and will live on thousands of years. That’s the miracle.

The fish and the crust of bread become a meal.

The miracle in the feeding of the multitudes is that everyone pitches in – their fish, their bread – and today we all pitch in, our stories. It takes more than a fish here and a crust of bread there, a story here and a photo there. And at the same time, all it takes is the fish and the bread, the stories and the photos – that’s all we need. All it takes is each of us pitching in with utter trust that our God of abundance works miracles through our sharing, works miracles through our trust, and we have a meal. It is when we open up our hands and give all we have that all are fed.

So we can cling to our stories and our photos and our wishes that the church would be different. We can cling to our worries that we don’t have enough – that we don’t have enough people, we don’t have enough energy, we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough vision. And then we don’t have enough.

It only works when we open our hands wide, hold nothing back, trust completely and let God work a miracle.

Through our trust we have a meal. All are fed.

And there are twelve baskets leftover. Because it’s not just for us that we do this, it’s not just for those of us in this room that we gather and break bread and share fish and stories. It’s for the world around us. Those 12 extra baskets are needed outside of these doors...."

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