Matthew 14:13-21<\/p>\n\n\n\n
July 31, 2005<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before we sit down at a Chinese banquet, we already know that there will be leftovers. We start off doing pretty good\u2014cleaning off the first two or three dishes. But then when we are barraged by platters after platters, we begin to groan and say, \u201cNo more\u201d when the lazy-susan is turned to us. Before long, relief comes when the wait staff comes out with take out boxes and pink plastic bags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our meals are usually so plentiful that an entire industry has developed for us to take home leftovers or to save leftovers at home. Not only do we have the \u201cpaper boxes,\u201d but there are the Styrofoam boxes that always leak. There are Ziploc bags, Tupperware and Glad containers. We are blessed with such abundance that we can\u2019t usually eat it all at one time. The surplus is so great that we need take out boxes to take food home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two Banquets<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In today\u2019s Gospel text, Matthew tells us about a seashore banquet. But immediately before this passage, Matthew 14:1-12 talks about another banquet ruled by fear and cruelty. Herod is presiding over his own birthday banquet when his stepdaughter, Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. You see, Herod was having an affair with Salome\u2019s mother which John opposed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What a difference from the banquet that Jesus presided. After Jesus heard of the death of John, he withdrew with his disciples to a deserted place across Lake Galilee. But his fame preceded him so the crowd followed him, arriving there ahead him. It was no longer a deserted place. When he saw the crowd, he had compassion for them and began healing the ill. But by the end of the day, the disciples became concerned about how hungry the people were getting. The disciples asked to Jesus to send the people into the nearby villages to find some food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus responds by telling them to feed the multitude of people themselves\u20145000 of them not counting the women and the children! The disciples could only find five loaves of bread and two fish, obviously not enough. Jesus told the disciples to bring the people here with him and have them sit down on the grass. When Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, he raised them up to heaven to bless them. He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to give to the people. They ate and ate until they were satisfied. When the baskets of food on the lazy-susan were turned to them, they had enough. When everyone had finished, they gathered up all of the leftovers and found that there were twelve baskets full. That\u2019s more than 12 Chinese take-out boxes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n What a difference between these two banquets! One presided over by a power-hungry ruler whose fear led him to kill a critic whom he actually admired; the other by a compassionate Messiah whose love led to satisfying people\u2019s needs for healing and nourishment. One banquet ends with a platter of horror, the other with twelve more platters of peace and joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good news message for today is that with Jesus, God provides sufficiently for our needs. Even if we only had limited gifts to give like five loaves and two fish, God is not only saying that it\u2019s sufficient but that he will give us even more than we ever would need. If we think only for ourselves, we end up with the horror of one platter. But when we trust God with what little that we have, we will have all that we need and much, much more!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Extravagance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We live in a world of scarcity. The people in Sudan are dying today over the lack of food after another season of drought that reduced their harvest. We are paying the highest gasoline prices in the country because there are limited reserves of oil. We are asked to turn off lights to conserve electricity and to do laundry at night to save water. Sometimes we wonder if we have enough abilities or resources or time to have just the bare necessities; so we have learned to save, to guard, and to protect what we already have. We want to keep it for ourselves fearing that maybe some day, we would need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet Jesus comes along in front of more than 5000 people and tells them that God is an extravagant, overflowing with love, an abundance of grace type of God. But are we more like the disciples thinking that 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish are not enough or can we trust God to provide for us what we need, not just the bare necessities, but an overabundance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember Jesus told us about the farmer who sows too much seed. Most of it was \u201cwasted,\u201d falling on the wrong sort of soil, rocks, and thorns. But when you are sowing good seed in bad soil, sometimes you have to overdo it a bit. The seed that did land on good soil and germinated to take root produced an abundant harvest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember in John 2, when the wine was gone at the wedding party, Jesus turns water into wine! Not just a little bit of water into wine but about 180 gallons of the best-tasting wine they ever had. For a Baptist minister, that\u2019s a lot of wine. Abundance!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember the father of the wayward prodigal son didn\u2019t just welcome his returning son home. We would have done that after scolding him. But this father threw a huge, expensive party. It was a 10-course Chinese banquet! That\u2019s extravagant!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember that not only did the good Samaritan stopped and helped the wounded man in the ditch. Anybody would have done that. No, he put the wounded man in his car. He took the man to the hospital. He told the doctors, \u201cHere\u2019s all my credit cards, my checkbook, everything. I\u2019ll be back here in a week and, if that\u2019s not enough money to treat the man\u2019s wounds, I\u2019ll give you even more.\u201d Remember that! That\u2019s extravagant generosity when he didn\u2019t even know the wounded man in the ditch!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus said that when just one sinner comes home, turns, and repents\u2014just one\u2014heaven throws a huge party. This is the reason why our Social Committee is one of the busiest committees around. They are always serving up cake and throwing a party! They put extra cake in Ziploc bags for me to take home! We become generous and extravagant like God is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus told stories of such abundance and extravagance. God is like that. God could have made one kind of flower like an orchid and it would be good enough for us. Yet look at the colors and the shapes of the millions upon millions of flowers. We only needed one orchid but God got excessively creative and gave us so much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at all the different kinds of people that we have\u2014all the colors of people, all the diversity of shape and size, of languages and accents. God is so exuberant about his creation that he overdoses almost on everything. Here is a God who, when he started creating people, flowers, birds, animals, or stars, just didn\u2019t know when to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miracles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I pray that when we believe that God is all sufficient for us and provides us beyond our bare necessities that we will become extravagant too. When we look at this miracle of feeding the 5000, we wonder if there was another miracle occurring. When the baskets of 5 loaves and 2 fish were passed among the people and they realized that someone sacrificed what little they had for them, I wonder if maybe each person dug into their secret pockets and sacks to add a bit of bread, a bit of fish that they had brought along for the journey. Some of that food that they were protecting having learned in life that there\u2019s scarcity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the time the baskets had been passed around, everyone has taken enough to eat but also put a little more back in to share with others because that seemed to be the only right thing to do. We become less selfish and more like what God intends us to be. I wonder if that happened too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gospel tells us that when faithful people begin to act with faith, sharing our resources with others, miraculous things begin to happen. Trusting in God, and acting with compassion, scarcity is transformed into abundance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When two people are married, it\u2019s one of the many miracles that we can see. We grow up thinking about getting our share, learning how to survive, feeding ourselves when we are hungry. It\u2019s all about me! But when it comes to marriage, a couple stands before a pastor promises to love one another \u201cin sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty, for better or worse,\u201d in other words to love one another with everything they\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is this wise? Is it realistic to love with such extravagance, to hold nothing back, to love without any limit, \u201cuntil death do us part?\u201d Ought not the bride or the groom to hold some things back just in case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, says the church. Go ahead, love with unbridled enthusiasm and extravagance. When we love each other holding nothing back, we begin to see a miracle because it\u2019s contrary to what we have always been conditioned to think. We become less self-centered and more other-centered. We realized that we have an inexhaustible supply of love to give each other. You end up with many take-out boxes of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Lord\u2019s Supper<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The way Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the 5000 is like the way he and his disciples in the upper room took bread and Jesus broke it and gave it to them to eat. This time, it was more than bread and wine to fill their physical hunger. This time Jesus said this bread represents my body broken for you and this cup is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. Jesus may have told some stories about how God is lavish and extravagant. But this time, Jesus willingly gives the ultimate extravagance of his life for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each time we come to the Lord\u2019s Table, we are heirs to the disciples who brought 5 loaves and 2 fish and we share our little pieces of bread and small cups of wine to God. The risen Christ receives them and offers them back, filling us with his spiritual power so that we may go away with our \u201ctwelve baskets full.\u201d We get twelve take-out boxes to take home showing that life with Christ is abundantly extravagant!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gracious God, you have given us so much and you continue to bless us with abundance beyond our imagination. Teach us to give as much as you have given to us so that through our actions, we may do your work on earth as it is already in heaven. Bless us as we go out in the world with our twelve take-out boxes of love in the name of Christ Jesus who gave everything to us. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew 14:13-21 July 31, 2005 Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco. Before we sit down at a Chinese banquet, we already