3/5/67

Scripture: John 6: 1-15.

The story of Jesus and the feeding of the five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes raises some questions in the modern mind. Similar stories are known to the ancient world, for they are found in other religious traditions than our own. But our New Testament writers are united in giving attention to this story. It appears in all four of the gospel writings. Actually it is reported at least six times, in slightly varying versions. Mark and Matthew each refer to it twice. Luke and John each tell it once. The story appears to have made a profound impression on the people of the early church.

How shall it be regarded? Some prefer to take it as a miracle with no explanation --- just read and accept it without the complexity of questions. Some feel that it has deeper meaning if it can have some natural explanations.

To begin with, anyone can see that Jesus had some concern for, and compassion upon, the great crowd of people who had come out from the cities and villages to see him and hear him speak. It was meal time and they had need for food. His disciples were a bit “panicky” over the situation. How could anybody provide food for that crowd! Jesus told them to have the people sit down on the grass. The only bread in sight was five loaves that were on hand -- John says a boy was carrying them. And there were a couple of fishes. Dried and salted fish was often eaten along with the barley bread of the common diet. Jesus apparently always gave thanks for food, and so he blessed this meal. Strangely, there appeared to be enough to go around, with plenty to spare. Some scholars reason that, as soon as these loaves and fishes were distributed, others pulled out the lunches of food they had brought along, each sharing with his neighbor. And the sharing itself was a splendid kind of miracle.

And indeed it is! Hosts of people owe their actual lives to the sharing that has come after some disaster of nature or of man’s making! We hope that our special offering of today may be part of some such miracle where need is so urgent, and opportunity is so great. With this kind of comment, then, I suggest that you interpret the story in your own way. Let it be the kind of miracle that seems to you to make Christ most vivid; and his ways most real.

There is this about the story that I want to point out in today’s meditation; something that appeared too small to matter became very important. This is so often true that it deserves our careful attention. When Jesus suggested to the disciples that they feed all those people, Andrew looked at the Master incredulously, saying, “There is a boy here with five barley loaves and two fishes; but what is that among so many?” And if Andrew felt that way, what do you suppose the boy himself felt? The need of that great assemblage made his little resources look pretty useless. What could he do? Look at the size of the problem! What he had to offer was like one little drop of water in a whole bucket or barrel of water --- pretty small and seemingly useless!

That kind of individual futility has been one of the major trials we face today. We look at mankind convulsed with injustices, with war, with drought and famine. And we say, one by one, “Well, what can I do? I’m only one, and I can’t really do a thing about it.” We allow ourselves to feel that the world’s calamity is like an earthquake; we are lucky if we can keep our own footing, personally; but as for stopping it --- what can I do --- what can you do individually?

It isn’t all blackness, and it’s not all futility. We do know that difficulty can be stimulating, arousing in us an effort and a character that easy days do not call out. But to produce the effect of “rising to the situation,” we feel that there must be some relevance and proportion between the size of the problem and our ability and resource. A lot of the world’s problems are so vast in scope, so far beyond our individual control, that we feel, not stimulation, but personal futility and helplessness over them. To be sure, we go on day after day trying to do our part as fairly good citizens. But that is hardly an answer to the deeper problem. Behind our “busyness” with what is immediately at hand we wonder what will come for our children. Will not a few powerful people in our government take the whole nation wherever we’re going? Isn’t the world we’re to live in shaped pretty much by a few dictatorial fellows who can compel whole masses of people to go along? What is “one voice,” here or anywhere, going to be able to do about making a better world?

Probably no one of us here today has altogether escaped that mood of futility, or heard it echoed in other voices, and looking at himself has said, like Andrew: “A boy with five barley loaves and a couple of fish; but what is that among so many?” Nevertheless, that boy has gone down in the history of those who have heard the story for 19 centuries, as the one whose slender lunch has been worth remembering. It may seem like a miracle; but, by the grace of Christ’s spirit, a whole multitude of people got fed! The boy, and his modest bit of food, illustrates something everlastingly true about the importance of individuals in the face of massive problems.

1) For one thing, it is clearly true that, in the long run, everything good or bad depends on the quality of individuals. In times of war, we are made to feel our importance to the national effort. Whether at battle front or on the home front, hard-headed realists make us feel that the whole business might bog down if we, one by one, do not stand by. We would not have this feeling generated if there were not a very practical belief in our individual capacities -- our five loaves and two fishes --- added to those of so many others. If the individual counts for so much in times of war’s danger, why not in global peace as well? For good or for ill it does matter what common people think and do; it does matter what they are. Our opinions count, our efforts count, our votes count. Maybe Tuesday’s judicial election does not seem important. But it does matter, to all the people of this state, who is to serve as chief justice of the supreme court. And the only way for a good, and legally competent man to get there, is for voters to put him on the ballot.

Away back in ancient Greece, one of the great thinkers of all time, Socrates, was condemned to death. We can say that misguided Greeks forced him to drink the poison that ended his life. But it is not quite so simple. On the people’s jury that condemned Socrates were 501 men. 281 of them voted for his death; 220 voted for acquittal. If only some individuals had changed their minds and their votes, what a change would have been made, and what gain for the world!

It is not too many years ago that Will Rogers was one of the most widely loved comedians of the world. One day while Will Rogers was seated in a lunch room, the man next to him asked, “What’s wrong with the world anyway?” To which Rogers drawled in answer, “Well, I dunno. I guess it’s people.” I guess it is! The evils of the world are massive. But they amount to a lot of individual influences. We can’t build a 24-story office building or condominium in any city out of loose sandstone. Like the stones of a great building, we do count --- each one of us. And the good of a whole structure depends on the kind and quality each one of us is.

2) The truth we are dealing with gains force when we note that each one of us is more than just an individual; he is an individual, plus the ideas he stands for. A very small window can let in a lot of light; a slender wire can carry a strong current of electricity; an ordinary person can stand for ideas on which the world’s salvation depends.

One of the marvels of history is the way mankind’s great gains have started. An idea gets hold of an individual person. Perhaps he feels elated, with a feeling of discovery. Or perhaps he feels a kind of shock at the disproportion between himself -- and ordinary person -- and is humbled like Isaiah, saying: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” [Isaiah 6: 5] or like Jeremiah: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child.” [Jeremiah 1: 6]. Nevertheless, that extraordinary idea, for which even an ordinary person can stand, possesses him. And when he stands for it, he becomes more than himself, just as a window is more than glass itself when light shines through it.

Mankind’s major gains start this way; and then the saving idea goes out into the world appealing to persons, one by one, as if to say, “Believe in me; stand for me.” And when enough individuals believe in it and stand for it and become its representatives, it overrides the ignorance and sin that man musters against it.

Was not this the case with one who was raised in a carpenter’s home in Nazareth? He became filled with a great idea about righteousness and integrity. And his idea was communicated to some ordinary people who believed. They were only a few, who could be held in a kind of contempt by the whole ecclesiastical structure of their day and by a mighty political empire. But the idea could not be stamped out. It spread from person to person until it became a world-wide influence --- as it still is! Did not Jesus come to the earth to demonstrate what a person can be when given over to the will of the good God?

Some of the most important ideas that mankind has ever faced are asking, today, for the use of our personal influence. By ourselves, one by one, we do not appear to amount to much --- this is true --- but the ideas we stand for are crucial. A world organized for peaceful pursuits is one that struggles for recognition --- free from the arrogance of “master races,” free from the greed of imperialistic nations, free from the curse of racial prejudice, free from intolerant bigotry and ignorant hatred -- a world in which people and nations move out toward a day of cooperation for the good of all. These are ideas that have started -- they are on the way -- they are mankind’s hope.

We can say that these ideas depend on political organization. But that is only partly true. For political organization depends on people like you and me --- ordinary, average people -- who believe in the great ideas, stand for them tirelessly, deeply, undiscourageably. If we don’t stand for them, the debilitating sense of futility in us stands out in tragic contrast, in that our individual weight contributes only to a denial of the greatness and goodness. It is a tragedy when great ideas fail. It would be tragedy for one person, in a time like this in which we live, to look at his five loaves and two fishes and say, “What is this among so many?”; to retreat into a discouraged mood of personal uselessness and do nothing. The one who does so retreat usually goes farther; thinking that he can do nothing, he generalizes his sense of helplessness until he concludes that nothing at all can be done. And if enough individuals take that tack, we’re done for!

Early in the last century, back in 1828, a debate was held at Harvard University as to whether or not it would ever be possible for one presidential administration to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And they decided, on that occasion, that it was inconceivable. If, today, we have a continental nation that does span the distance from Atlantic to Pacific, and extends even out to the Islands of Hawaii and up to Alaska, that achievement is the result not alone of somebody else’s political decision, but of the supporting ideas of millions of individuals who, through thick and thin, have believed in the United States and have stood for the idea despite towering difficulties, until it has come true.

In his day, Thomas Jefferson said something about Americans that one prays may be true in our day. If it had not been true then, we could hardly have been here now. “It is,” said Jefferson, “part of American character to consider nothing as desperate.” Whether or not that be a permanent part of American character, it ought to be a part of Christian character!

See what might easily have happened to that boy with his loaves and fishes. The disproportion of his resources in relation to the need seemed to make him a mere spectator, tempted to do nothing but watch the unraveling of events among the multitude --- just as we are tempted to stand off and watch this torn and anxious world as a vast spectacle. Then Christ, to the boy’s surprise and amazement, turned him from a spectator into a participant. He did matter! His loaves and fishes did count! He was not on the sidelines, but in the center of the game. Give our world enough individuals in whom Christ has wrought that change, standing for saving ideas, each in his own way, and the world is challenged to achievement that is not impossible.

3) If ever in history mankind needed that lesson, those first disciples needed it. They themselves did not amount to much. What could a small group of fishermen, and the like, do against the towering might of the Roman Empire and the well entrenched ecclesiastical establishment of the church? Every man of them could have put himself in the place of that boy --- five loaves and a couple of fish; but what is that among so many? Yet Christ did something with them -- as incredible as the miracle of yeast --- vastly more significant than the feeding of one meal to five thousand.

Why God so works out his consequences, no one can tell. But this is the way He does work, even in the physical realm. I have read that a variety of wheat, known as Marquis wheat, was developed only about 60 years ago, soon after I was born. It seems to me that I can remember my father talking to neighbors about that variety. When it was first developed, the first seeds could have been put in a singly small bag. Now it is grown by the millions of bushels to feed ourselves and the world. Less than a boy’s lunch has been multiplied to feed an innumerable multitude.

In the spiritual realm God works in ways that we can not understand, but that we can see. Says the New Testament: “None of us liveth to himself.” [Romans 14: 7]. We are joined together -- each of us so linked to others -- and they to others more -- so that we are a part of the whole system of humanity.

James Russell Lowell sang in poetry:

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the

broad earth’s aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from

east to west. ----

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,

Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right

or wrong.

That was true when Lowell said it. It is more evidently true now when interlacing communications accent its truth. Nothing matters more to us than what the common people of India, Africa, Britain, France, South America, Spain, Russia, China, Mexico are thinking one by one. We want to know what people are thinking. We try to find out by polls of opinion and by every other available device. For every individual starts a ripple that, like waves of water, sooner or later reach the farthest shore.

It takes imagination to see this; but that is not too difficult. For example, it is clear, is it not, that the right kind of individual is essential in creating a good home. As Christ came from the Holy Family in Nazareth, so the center of the world’s redemption is the home. Our Christian ideal for the world is to make a good family of it, where the fatherhood of God is fulfilled in the brotherhood of mankind. In a good home every personality is valued for its own sake, and all live together in friendship and good will. If that ideal is to come true for the world, it must be more and more true in more and more families. Whoever helps build a good home is, in so far, furnishing indispensable material for the building of a good world.

A fellow had been away from home a long time. In fact he had been off in the war zone as a soldier for what seemed an age. When he came back, he described to a friend what meant most to him: “One has gripped my hand and said, a bit huskily, ‘Well, son -- O son, but it’s good to see you.’ One has held me in her arms and cried a bit and seen that I had my favorite dessert after dinner. One has said and done a number of things that are nobody’s business but hers and mine. One has put muddy paws on my uniform and nearly wagged his tail off to let me know he’s glad to see me.”

Let no dust gather on these simple, humble home relationships! Here is the affirmation of Christian faith: we believe in it; we believe in it so much that we see in it some of the eternal truth about God and mankind; the relationships of a good home are the prophecy and foretaste of a redeemed world. Though empires rise and fall, and battles rage, God’s star still stands above the Holy Family. Every individual who helps to make a good home -- wife, husband, child, parent -- matters to the whole world. And, beyond these inner groups on which our personal influence plays, we can add our individual strength to the right side of the world’s issues, with voice and act, with gift and prayer, with might and main.

Five barley loaves and a couple of fishes -- what is that among so many? That is not the last word in a world where God still works, as Jesus said, through the yeast in the meal. For Christ is still appealing to the young ruler with his riches, to fishermen and tax gatherers, to shepherds and physicians, to each of us, to bring what we have. When he puts our resources to work, it is an amazing miracle what can be accomplished in him!

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, March 5, 1967.

Also at Kalahikiola Church, February 26, 1969.

And also at Waioli Hiu’ia Church, February 25, 1973.