August 17, 2014
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Most of us would rather avoid crowds and protect our personal space. But then there are those days when we willingly brave the intrusions of our personal space to do something we like or to be close to someone we admire. We might go to Disneyland ready and prepared to be in the crowd because we like Mickey Mouse. Have you been to the new Levi Stadium in Santa Clara? It can hold 70,000 people! That’s a crowd! If there’s an entertainer or celebrity who we would like to see, we might brave the crowds just to say that we saw the person for ourselves even if the person is hundreds of feet away.
Jesus caused crowds…most of the time. Sometimes, people who wanted to get to Jesus couldn’t because there were too many people around Jesus.
It was so bad that he once pushed out in a boat so more people could hear him. He pushed out onto the water before the big crowds might push him into the waters. He broke away from the demanding crowds to spend time with the Father because it was too crowded. He did this over and over.
But what is interesting is that in large crowds, Jesus still extended a personal and intimate invitation. In a crowded situation, Jesus intimately said, “Come and rest. Come and follow. Come and drink. Come and dine. Come away with me. Leave that crowd and be with me.”
Jesus’ understanding of crowds goes beyond ordinary and usual. He has the unmatched ability to give personal attention to every face in the room or every soul on the hillside. It’s like watching Paul McCartney at a concert and he makes you feel as though we have our own audience with him.
Aware of the Crowd
In our lesson for today, Jesus was trying to avoid the crowd. Jesus has just heard that his cousin, John, had been beheaded. He’s now seeking to withdraw from the crowd to a solitary place. Jesus’ reaction to this tragic event and personal loss combined with his rejection in Nazareth, his hometown, where he did not do many deeds of power because of their unbelief is understandable. Surely, no one would fault him for his need for solitude in order to ponder these recent events. In a quiet place he could offer up prayers to his Father, express his sorrow and seek consolation without interruption.
What we know for sure was that Jesus was withdrawing from the crowd, not looking to gather one. But the text says, “But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns” (v. 13b). The crowds may have followed Jesus to console him in the gruesome death of John or they may have pursued Jesus out of their self-interests. In other words, they follow because they want something from him.
The first point of this message is that Jesus was constantly aware of the crowd. His disciples or curious onlookers always surrounded Jesus. Good guys or groupies. He simply had people following him everywhere he went and at all times. He always had the disciples close by, and they would ask him questions or, at other times, add their own human observations. Some of these comments were nothing more than predictable outbursts about the demands Jesus was making upon them, questions about seating arrangements in the future kingdom or questions about when Jesus was going to overthrow the government.
This is good news for us. It’s great news because it reserves us a place in the crowd too. With Jesus, there’s always room for doubt and questions, for false assumptions and faithless forgetfulness. We too are people in the crowd.
Jesus knew then and he knows now that there are some people who have no faith in him at all. There are people who are looking for proof of life in other people’s faith. There are people in this crowd this morning who are looking for their place within the crowd. They are wondering if they would fit in this crowd.
But Jesus’ all-seeing eyes see each of us in the crowd. When he is crowded in by many spoken and unspoken expectations, he’s able to see you. He’s thoroughly piercing in his glance on you. That is what makes the relationship between him and his people possible. He is fully aware of the complexities and the simplicities that make us up. And in the grand scope of life, from its beginning to its ending, he has been in control so there’s nothing in the crowd that is new, and nothing in the crowd that will cause his authority to be in jeopardy. He knows the crowd.
Aware of Our Needs
Matthew says Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion for them. They have been sitting through the hillside and lakeshore seminars without any of the coffee breaks that we are used to. No bottled water or croissants. It’s late in the afternoon and hunger has set in. The second point for today is that Jesus sees that we have noticeable needs.
Jesus’ response was very tangible. He touched their lives in a way that would allow them to put their trust in Jesus. After giving a blessing, Jesus multiplied the little that they had and could find and fed their bodies.
Jesus’ interest was not just then or just limited to heaven. His feeding of the 5,000 was not about future spiritual blessings, but current tangible needs. It was not only about the hope of a brighter tomorrow. It was not only about becoming stronger in faith. But rather, Jesus cares deeply for what we are going through right now.
Jesus told the disciples to distribute the little that they had—five loaves of bread and two fish and to not just sit at the table to eat but to go out into the crowd to wait on tables and serve.
In this story of scarcity, we are reminded of some current trends that we see in our world today. The higher one climbs in our educational system, the less emphasis one has in sharing and more on one’s individual achievement. At the highest levels—postgraduate professional schools like medicine and law—there are harrowing tales of cutthroat competition, of students sabotaging their classmates’ research in order to snatch the highest grades.
Isn’t it interesting that this is the polar opposite of what those same people were taught in kindergarten? Why is it that we teach sharing to young children and competition to adults? We have all read stories about how the middle-class is shrinking and the wealth gap is now greater than ever before. The wealthy 5% has little empathy for the rest of the people. Jesus identifies with the crowd in the 95%.
Ironically, more and more employers today are looking not so much for fierce competitors as for talented collaborators. It turns out that sharing is not merely a Christian value; it’s an essential requirement for getting by in today’s world.
Aware of Hope
The third and final point I wish to make is that in any crowd with Jesus, there are a few seeds that Jesus intends to multiply. No crowd is devoid of hope. We may think that five loaves and two fish could hardly feed a crowd like this one today.
But in addition to the bread and fish, there was something else in the crowd. It was an initial act of obedience and sacrifice. The little boy’s lunch and his willingness to share it started the miracle.
If Jesus were to ask you, “What do you have?” Most of us would say, “Not much,” and give up. Yet, when it is all said and done, the disciples gathered up twelve baskets full to take home, symbolic of the truth that the disciples had food for the next day.
How might we multiply what we have as an act of obedience and sacrifice? Many of us have been to Panera Café for a meal. But there’s a Panera Café in Boston where there is no one to take your money. There are no prices either—just suggested donations and bins to leave money, if you can afford to.
While most of the Panera Cafes operate in traditional menu-with-prices mode, this is a social outreach project of the Panera Bread Company. At a few select urban locations, the company’s Panera Cares Foundation has been experimenting with this new business model. The surprising thing is, it seems to work.
The concept is that those who can’t pay for their meals volunteers a little time to help operate the place, and those who can afford it leave a little extra money on the counter. The Panera Cares Cafes are feeding considerably more than 5000—and what’s more, they’re helping more than 5000 feed themselves.
Today we have a crowd by having joint English Worship and then our crowd will get even bigger when our Cantonese congregation joins us for an All-Church Promotion Sunday. Jesus knows this crowd. He knows the 10:00 English congregation, the 10:00 Cantonese congregation and the 11:20 English congregation and especially when we are all together. Jesus is aware of the crowd, aware of our needs, and aware of the hope in the promise that God continues to make miracles happen. In our obedience to Christ, what sacrifices might we make to feed the crowds of the world?
Let’s just take a few simple examples. At this year’s Youth Camp, we had a significant number of Day Camp campers and volunteers attend. And when we added two more churches to the three that we have had, we multiplied the total attendance of Youth Camp larger than we have seen for a long time. The Youth Camp staff and counselors sacrificed their vacation days to serve and we fed many campers this year.
When we sent this year’s mission team to Thailand of only 8 members, they were complimented by one of the ITDP staff as one of the best teams he has ever worked with. The result of the team’s sacrifice of time and talents they built a fresh water system so that many people in this village can now quench their thirst.
Ever since we moved back into the church building after our retrofit was completed 15 years ago, Joe Chan and his crew have been faithfully cooking breakfast. They have fed countless people including those who are homeless and need a little something to get by.
And when the whole church family gathers next Sunday for our annual church picnic, the Social Committee and all of the dedicated volunteers will prepare the food but the annual miracle is that there is always enough. You sacrifice and donate beyond what is expected and as a crowd, we are blessed because Jesus is always aware of our needs.
There’s such a thing as “crowd-funding” when random people might support a particularly worthy project on the internet. But today, we are Crowd Christians following Jesus wherever he is going having the assurance that Jesus is aware of our earthly needs today and aware of the needs that we have tomorrow.
At FCBC, we are Crowd Christians tapping into gifts and talents that we all have and together, we can maximize our efforts to accomplish God’s kingdom work on earth. Crowd Christians will multiply and all of us will eat and be filled with Jesus, the Bread of Life.
Let us pray.
Merciful and gracious God, like the disciples we are shortsighted and small-minded. We focus on problems and needs and on what seem like logical or “possible” solutions. We rely on our own strengths and resources and are quickly overwhelmed. We forget to turn to you, and we fail to depend on your Spirit. Forgive us, Lord. Remind us yet again that your ways are not ours, and that, with you, all things are possible. Renew us, Crowd Christians in faith and commitment that we might trust you in every situation of life. Thanks be to God! Amen.