Text | Isaiah 55:6-11; Matthew 14:13-21
Focus Verse | Matthew 14:15-17
A few of you have been around recently as some neighbors have stopped in looking for some financial assistance.
I’ve watched as you have greeted them with kindness and respect and helped them find their way to my office.
I often sit down and visit with these new friends about what is happening in their life and how the church might be able to make an impact on their struggles.
But I have to be honest with you.
When I really listen to their stories, what I feel is overwhelmed.
Because we don’t have the kind of resources in our account to actually make a difference.
Every month I turn away folks who stop in or call and who need $250 for a utility bill…
or $700 to help make rent…
or $45 to fill up their gas tank…
Or rather, I could help one or two people one time, but certainly not the next, or the one after that.
And I started to recognize over a couple of years of providing this emergency assistance on behalf of the church is that many of our neighbors are chronically in need of help.
They have full time work, but they can’t make ends meet because their wages are too low to provide a living for themselves and their families.
Or, an illness or injury have taken them off of the job and they don’t have a backup plan in place.
The other day, a young man came in and needed some help to make rent. He had lost his job due to downsizing and had no savings built up. When he couldn’t immediately find a new opportunity, he got behind on rent.
The day he came in to see me, he had begun a new job, but had not yet received a paycheck. And that day, he had eviction proceedings and had to bring a check for two months’ worth of rent or he would be out.
I personally, and we as a church, don’t have the resources to provide two months of rent for a neighbor in need. I sat there and all I could think of was our own limitation.
Over 100,000 children in Iowa are food insecure – which means they do not have access to three meals a day.
Just under 3,000 people are homeless in our state.
37,000 of our neighbors in Iowa struggle with serious mental illness daily.
Real needs.
Real problems.
Real ministry opportunities.
And we can’t feed all of those kids.
We can’t build houses for all of those homeless neighbors.
We can’t completely turn upside down our mental health infrastructure.
We can only see our own limitations.
In the gospel of Matthew, the disciples are faced with a similar dilemma.
These multitudes that we talked about last week had flocked to the countryside to listen to Jesus… but now it was getting late.
We actually don’t know how many people were there – if you pay close attention to the story, it mentions that 5,000 men were eventually fed… 5,000 – not counting the women and the children.
Let’s pretend for just a moment that there was just one woman or child for every man who was counted… that’s 15,000 people who are hungry, tired, and out there in the middle of the wilderness.
To put that into perspective – the seating capacity for Drake’s Stadium is 14,557.
A stadium full of people are in need.
Right now.
And so the disciples kind of pull Jesus aside and whisper to him.
“Hey friend, you know, we probably can’t keep all of these people here. They are going to need to sleep, they need food, they need shelter and water. Wrap it up so that we can send them on their way.”
You see, they had already looked in their bags and they saw their own limitation.
They couldn’t take care of all of those people.
So send them off.
Bless them, say a prayer, and just hope that they’d find some sustenance somewhere else.
It’s the feeling I have often when I sit and visit with someone who is in some financial need.
I really don’t have what it will take to help you, but I can listen. I can say a prayer and give you this list of resources and hopefully someone out there can make a difference.
Surely, Jesus understand that.
Except…
Well, except Jesus has a totally different plan in mind.
“We don’t need to send them away. You take care of them. You give them something to eat!”
And those disciples, well, they look back in their bags.
“Umm… Jesus. There are twelve of us, and we barely brought enough dinner for ourselves. We’ve got five loaves and two fish. That’s it.”
The disciples saw only their limitation.
They’d already made plans.
They had budgeted and prepared and were doing their best to live and minister within those resources.
They had no capacity to imagine that this unexpected ministry opportunity would arrive on their doorstep.
And when it did, they immediately decided it was impossible.
We can’t do that.
We don’t have the resources.
We don’t have the staff.
We don’t have the bread. Literally.
But as the prophet Isaiah reminds us… God is not bound by our limitations.
God’s plans aren’t our plans.
God’s ways aren’t our ways.
And as Paul writes to the people of Ephesus… God can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.
I think in this moment in the story, Jesus is inviting the disciples…
Jesus is inviting us…
To imagine.
Imagine if we could feed all of those people.
Imagine if we could house all of our neighbors.
Imagine if we could bring mental wellness to our friends and family.
Imagine if we could stretch beyond our own capacity and limitations and tap into the gifts and resources of the divine.
Last week, when I asked you to think about what kept drawing you back here… what kept you coming back to Immanuel… one of the most frequent answers I heard was that this is home. This is family.
Imagine if we could be a place where people who have no home, have no family, have no support found that, too.
For sure, it’s not in our budget.
It’s not in what we have planned and prepared for ministry.
This plan is far bigger than anything we have the capacity to do right now.
We’ve only got five loaves and two fish.
But we have a ministry opportunity with thousands of people on our doorstep.
So imagine with me…
Dream with me…
What would we do if we weren’t limited by our own resources?
Or to put it another way…
If you were gifted $150,000 to respond to a need, any need that is right in front of us here in Des Moines… what would you do?
Take a minute and dream.
Take a minute and imagine.
If God was starting a miracle right here in Des Moines with our meager fish and loaves… what would God want us to do?
Use the paper in the insert and write down your impossible dream and your wildest imagining… and then in a few minutes I want you to give them up to God with your offering.
