MUMC

Mamaroneck United                Loving God and Neighbor...

Methodist Church                         

Home

Who we are

Worship

Programs

Outreach

Newcomers

News

Contact us

 Today is

Resources»

Sermon Archive

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

July 26, 2009

Pastor Richard Allen

When the story about the recent increase in requests to the food bank came on the radio, I was only half listening.  So, I don’t remember the name of the client they profiled.  But they had looked her up, they said, because they did a story about her last year, and, at the time, the only food she had in her home was a couple of cans of beans, and two frozen halves of bell peppers wrapped in plastic in her freezer.  Otherwise, the shelves of her pantry, like the shelves of the nearby refrigerator, we empty:  totally empty.

 Finding the woman this year, they discovered that things had gotten better.  She still had no job, no money to buy food.  But someone had responded to her need described in the story a year ago.  Now she received help from a listener to buy groceries every week.  But she was still coming to the food bank, the reporter noted.  Not to get food for herself, but for a neighbor who was too shy, or too embarrassed, or too ashamed to come herself.  A woman, whose name I can’t remember, sharing the little she had with others who had less. I barely heard the story, possibly on NPR.  I can’t remember the reference, but the woman’s generosity has haunted me since. Now that she has enough, though just barely, she shares what she has with her neighbors. (I don’t remember, and I haven’t succeeding in identifying, this recent story, probably from NPR.)

 This radio story reminded me of a recent Op-Ed in the NY Times. In that piece, author Barbara Ehrenreich said this: “…in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the most reliable first responders [were] not government agencies, but family and friends.”  Ehrenreich then remembered how her father, himself a former miner, taught her as a child that if she ever needed money she should, in his words, “go to a poor man.”  He then told her about his own grandfather, who longed to escape his grueling life as a miner in Butte, Montana.  Having scraped together enough money to purchase a farm, on his way out of town, he stopped his horse-drawn wagon to pick up a destitute Indian woman and her child.  Moved by her story, he gave her all his money and turned the horse around to work a while longer in the mines.  Ehrenreich’s main point, that it is the poor who first help the poor, was confirmed repeatedly in generous offers when she worked at menial jobs while researching her book, Nickel and Dimed.  “I was amazed,” she said, “by the generosity of my coworkers, who offered me food; help with my work and even once a place to stay.  Such … random acts of kindness … put the official welfare state, with its relentless suspicions and grudging outlays, to shame.” (Barbara Ehrenreich, “A Homespun Safety Net,” NY Times, July 12, 2009.)  As a pastor, I’ve seen it, too. Sometimes the least wealthy are the most generous.  This may seem counterintuitive perhaps, if you’ve never been a pastor; but still, it’s very true.

 Here’s one example from a lifetime of ministry:  For four years as a pastor at Christ Church I saw a similar generosity repeated every Thanksgiving.  Many of that church’s members live on or near Park Avenue, and their zip code boasts the second-highest median income in the country. But it took a church member from another neighborhood, to notice the needy living quite literally at the church’s doorsteps.  Elderly and on a fixed income, she is notable for her prayer life and her specific recurring generosity.  Every year, year after year, she pays for, prepares, and serves a special Thanksgiving meal to the dozen or so homeless men for whom the church’s patio is the closest they have to an address.  It takes someone who has felt her own need, you know, to see and respond to the hunger these homeless men feel, not just for food, but for compassion, and kindness as well. That thanksgiving meal, by the way, is quite deliberately and thoughtfully served inside at the church’s tables and on china, not on paper plates.

 For today, we let her remain nameless, like the woman in the radio spot, and like the generous working poor who befriended Ehrenreich.  They share their anonymity with the boy in the gospel lesson – notice that he’s famous, but nameless – this boy who offers Andrew the disciple his five loaves and two fish on a hillside in Galilee.  A great crowd of men and women followed Jesus and the disciples.  Thousands of hungry faces:  men, women, and children.  And one unnamed boy offers to share his sandwich.  The disciples, even when asked by Jesus, don’t share.  The leaders of nearby towns send no meals on wheels.  The local religious leaders don’t share their meals, nor do Roman officials.  A boy with a little foresight, perhaps from having been hungry himself on another trip, had brought himself a snack, what one of my friends called “a fish sandwich.”  We don’t know his name.  All we know is that he offers what he has to Jesus.

 The story of the boy and his fish sandwich is a familiar story, because it’s one of the few moments in the life of Jesus recorded by all four gospel writers.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, John tell the story, each in their own way. It’s familiar, because it is uniquely remembered by all four gospel writers.  And it’s remembered by all of them, because it is so important to the early church, and to us.  Its importance might be because it tells us something about God and about our living out of our faith.

 This story of the boy sharing his meal is a parable, in a way, of how God shares with us all that God has, all that God gives, and all that God is.  Even the earliest Christians understood the importance of their belief in the incarnation.  To say that God, the creator of all that is, and the infinite being who shapes all that was, is, or will ever be, comes to us in the diapered baby who dies alone on Calvary because of God’s unchanging love for each of us is to say that God loves us relentlessly.  This is a gift.  God gives God’s very self.  To us.  Without price, and forever, God gives to us.  The boy with the loaves and fish reminds us of God’s steadfast love.  God is the giver – of life, of forgiveness, of daily bread, of flowers and dogs and families and art.  God is the great giver.  Early Christians affirmed this as a core truth, and so do we.

 And, because God is the great giver, God invites us to give in like fashion.  Because God gives, we give.  Because God loves, selflessly, we love in like manner.  Because God forgives us as a parent forgives her children, we forgive.   

Many interpreters of this story see it as a miracle because Jesus produces, as it were, excess fish and loaves from nothing at all, showing Godly powers of creation.  But other interpreters see the true miracle as the change of heart in every person on the hillside.  This view suggests that the boy’s generosity invited others in the crowd to do likewise.  Food that had been hidden and hoarded is shared in a celebratory, egalitarian feast.  God has provided already, and the miracle is less in the provision than in the sharing. 

 In other words, whenever God gives any of us a fish sandwich, or its equivalent, we’re invited to share.  And, if we are followers of Christ, sharing becomes a way of witnessing our faith in the world.  We share, because God has shared Christ with us.  We give, because God has first given to us.  We love, because God has first loved us.

 There are many ways to share the bounty that God provides.  I’ll close by recommending just one possible way of sharing.  Fifteen or twenty years ago now, this church helped establish the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Food Pantry, housed at the CAP Center here in Mamaroneck.  Carol Cauley has worked with the pantry for years.  Mindy Wintermantel has graciously agreed to assume Carol’s job as liaison between the Pantry and the church.  They want you to know that the Food Pantry is an excellent way for each of us to share our own God-provided loaves and fish with our human family here in this corner of God’s world.  They want you to know that the Food Pantry has 30 to 40% more clients these days than in better times.  You can share your loaves and fish by bringing cereal or dried milk to church any Sunday, and leaving them in the Food Pantry’s basket.  You may also share by volunteering an hour or two on a Tuesday night to help prepare the bags of food that are distributed on Wednesday morning.  Talk to Carol, Mindy, Bruce Meighan, Bill or Yvonne Lumsden, Evelyn Fava, or Kay Heyward to find out more.  (And there are probably others, as well.)  Or, you may share your loaves and fish, like the boy on the hillside with Jesus, by writing a check either to the Food Pantry or to the church and designating Food Pantry in the memo line.

The “how” of sharing is easy, once you commit yourself to giving.  God provides our bounty, after all.  That’s the truth the people following Jesus learned on that hillside in Galilee.

 Once we learn that basic truth, we respond like the boy with his sandwich.  Trusting God for all good things, including our daily bread, we share what we have with those who have none. When the bounty is shared, with us as with the crowd on the hillside, all will be satisfied.

 And the satisfaction comes both from having enough to eat, yes; but our satisfaction comes also from having more than we need, and sharing God’s goodness with brothers and sisters beside us.

Amen.

Go to Top

© Copyright 2005 Mamaroneck United Methodist Church

546 East Boston Post Road, Mamaroneck,  New York 10543, (914) 698 4343