September 27, 2020 First UMC Carroll “Defeating our Giants”

 

 

“Boy, you’ll never win” That was Goliath’s boast.  Boy, you are young, inexperienced, weak, and you’ll never beat me.”

We’ve heard that before haven’t we.

THEY say you’re too young to do that job.

THEY say you’re too fat or too scrawny, or too tall or too short you’ll never be able to do it.

THEY say you’ve never been good at… fill in the blank.  You’ve never been good at math, or reading, or managing money, cleaning house.  And you never will be.

The voices attack our self-esteem. THEY keep pushing us down.

THEY say you are weak.

THEY say you NEED another drink, another pill, another page of pornographic images.

THEY say you don’t deserve anything better than this.

The voices of addiction have a solid grip on us.

THEY say you’ll never get those credit cards paid off.

THEY say you’re no good at your job and you will be fired.

THEY say “you really couldn’t blame your spouse if THEY walked out on you.”

The voices attack our security and hope for a better tomorrow.

THEY say look out. Nothing is going to go right.

            When the car won’t start, THEY say you never do anything right.

            When you make a small mistake, THEY say you failed again.

            The voices peck away at us taking advantage of every little frustration.

            THEY say you ARE depression you’ll never be anything else.

THEY say you are bound to get Covid.

THEY say “The doctor wants more tests?” it must cancer.

The voices attack our health and wellbeing both physical and mental.

THEY say don’t trust anyone,

THEY say, he hits you because you deserve it.

THEY say just hold that grudge, you are right, and you don’t need them anyway,

The voices attack us in the relationships that are closest to us.

Who are these “THEYS” that keep pushing us down, keep holding us back, keep telling us, “you’ll never win?”  Who do THEY think they are?

These are the giants in our lives.  Some might be ten feet tall like Goliath. Ohers might be 10 miles tall. And others might be 10 inches short, just enough to make us fall flat on our face. 

I Want to be clear that I am not talking about voices one might hear if they are suffering from a mental illness. The voice I am talking about is our interior voice. We all have a dark voice in our heart… and we have to decide whether to listen or not.

 

In Chapter 17 of 1 Samuel, Israel is in a stand off with their perennial enemy the Philistines. Among the Philistines were a remnant of a people call the Anakin. They were said to be giants. Joshua 11 tells us “"There was none of the Anakin left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain" (Joshua 11:22).”  Notice they were in Gath.  Who else do we know who came from Gath?  Goliath. It is quite possible that Goliath was a descendent of the Anakin and inherited his massive size from that side of the family.

 Depending on who is measuring, (because a cubit is the length of a forearm and that varies from person to person).  Goliath was between 7 and 10 feet tall. 6 cubits and a Span.  He was indeed a giant compared to the average 5-foot-tall Israelite.

So, the Philistines are lined up on one ridge with the Israelites on the other about 15 miles outside of Bethlehem. Twice a day Goliath came out to yell his challenge across the valley.  The offer for one man from each side to fight in order to settle the dispute was a type of representative warfare practiced by some cultures of the day, but somewhat unfamiliar to Israel.

For 40 days and 40 nights… the standoff continued. Not one man from the army of Israel stepped forward.  That didn’t seem likely to change.  Then a red head little brother of some soldiers shows up on the scene.

Why would he do it? David might have had several reasons to take on Goliath. Everyone said he could not do it.  That’s reason enough right?  I’m like that. 

Second, there was the reward including a cash reward, and no taxes for life, and marrying the king’s daughter.  But there was more. David took on Goliath because Goliath had insulted God.  By mocking the Israelite army, he mocked God. And the punishment for blaspheme was death. David says he has to do this because “this uncircumcised Philistine has defied the armies of the living God.” This is a religious quest for David. He is defending God ’s honor. Or carrying out the death sentence required in scripture.

David HAD to do this, but imagine the voices,

you’ll never win you are just a kid,

you’ll never win you’re just a shepherd.

You can’t do that no one from Jesse’s house has ever done anything important.

You can’t do this; you can’t even carry the weight of a man’s armor.

People like you can’t do anything. 

Too scrawny, too weak, too much red hair… the voices went on and on.

 

David’s only experience was killing lions and bear who tried to carry off the sheep. The standard tools of the shepherd would have been a staff and a sling. Not a slingshot, but a strip of leather or woven material with a pocket in the middle. Anything could be put in the pocket to be slung. I read a biomechanical research paper this week that said they were able to achieve speeds of 110 miles per hour right out of the sling. The damage that could be inflicted was determined by the weight of the projectile. According to the US Army’s lethality tables the sling could inflict enough injury for serious to fatal injury ranging from broken bones to penetrating the skin. It is not at all out of the realm of possibility that David’s sling could have killed Goliath.

 The two met, Goliath more self-assured than he should have been… and David swinging his sling, Goliath just laughed waiting for the stone to bounce off his armor.

And there’s the pitch and the hit right in the middle of the forehead.  It punctured the skin and must have crashed through the skull and sunk in. Homerun! And the giant fell like a tree.

Silence must have broken out on both sides… silent amazement which gave way to the Israelites giving chase to the Philistines, and the Philistines running wee wee wee all the way home.

 David’s speech is the key to understanding.

 David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied….  All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

So here we sit with these voices in our lives… and what will we do.

 First, we have to Recognize that we all have giants. You are not the only one suffering with depression. You are not the only one who has lost a job. You are not the only one facing cancer.  And we all have something that is our giant.  Which brings me to step 2.

 Second, you need to "Name the  giant you are facing". You can't fight what you can’t or won’t see. As you think about this, dig a little deeper than usual.  If you live in constant fear of job loss. Maybe there is reason for that if the company is struggling, or you are not doing a good job. But often behind worries like that is fear that you are not good enough. Fear that you don’t really deserve this good job and someone will find out who you really are.   See what I mean… dig beyond the surface and be really honest with yourself. Identify your Giants.  It might be one of these 6 or something else completely.

You must face your giants. That might seem self-evident, but many times we don’t want to face our giants. We don’t want to admit we are addicted or depressed, or afraid, or unforgiving.  It is not attractive, but this is not a time for vanity. It is also not a time to run in fear.  Sometimes our biggest problem is not the problem we face, but that we won’t face our problems.

Maybe you don’t want to think about your problems because they are way too big and scarry and you think you can't solve them. Actually, you are probably right.  You can’t beat the giant by yourself because… because it is by definition giant. And we are not.    Where does our help come from, our help comes by the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth, and even made you.

But when you recognize the giant, identify the giant and face the giant you are well on your way to defeating the giant.

Well on the way, but not quite there. Don’t reach down to put on your armor. Don’t reach for your sword and javelin. Don’t strike off to slay your giants alone. You need your secret weapon, your sling and stone so to speak… You Don’t have to face those giants alone you need to trust the power of the almighty God with you.  And the giants will begin to fall.

So, take a step today.

Take a step closer and prove to yourself that giants are real, and you have one.

Take another step to see and name the giant in your life.

Take another step to look your giant in the eye and tell them I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel.

Take one last step to rise above your fear and reach out for the hand of the only Giant for whom you have room in your life… The giant loving most powerful gracious God.

 

Let’s listen to the end of voice of truth.

 

Noah's ark (elite 8) 9/20/20

 

Someone put together a list entitled: "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Noah's Ark" The list included:

Noah didn't wait for his ship to come in, he built one.

Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.

Stay fit. When you're 500 years old, someone might ask you to do something REALLY big.

Speed isn't always an advantage. The cheetahs were on board the ark, but so were the snails.

Remember that the ark was built by amateurs and the Titanic was built by professionals.

And above all else... don't miss the boat.

There are a lot of good messages in the story of Noah’s ark.

 There is a message about the way people behave “that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”  They were incapable of thinking a kind, loving, hopeful, God-filled thought.  (Gen. 6:5)

There is a message about how sin affects God’s heart. “The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” That must be the most tragic sentence in all scripture. “The lord regretted that he had made human beings.” (Gen. 6:6)

There is a message about consequences for sin,  “So the LORD said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created” (Gen 6:7)  You may remember that in the end God said, “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Gen 9:11) Do not make the mistake, however, of thinking that there are no consequences for sin. There are many.

There are messages about faithfulness, and patience, and hope.

But today I want to focus on one particular part of the story. God’s calling and Noah’s response.

 Noah was a standup guy. Everybody knew that he was honest to the bone, as reliable as they come, as generous as anyone could be, and he lived a good life following God’s commands. The Bible says, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” (Gen 6:10)

So much so that, as offended as God was, Noah caught God’s eye as someone who was different. Noah and his family would not be destroyed.

God spoke to Noah and said, “‘I am going to put an end to all people…’  So, make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.”

 

 Clay said he once compared the size of the ark to the size of the church in a children’s sermon. I am going to try using Boeing 747’s.  The ark was big enough to  hold 6 Boeing 747 fuselages (That would be the plane without the wings but including the tail.)  2 rows of three fuselages would fit in the ark.  And it was about as tall as the top of the tail of the 747.

Is that bigger than you thought?  Even having done this kind of comparison before, when I put it in terms of these huge flying beasts, I even surprised myself. 

 

 God said, “Noah, make yourself an ark.”

I think there are parts of the conversation that the authors didn’t record, so (if you will indulge me) I will take the liberty of filling it in.

I suspect Noah looked around for his jokester youngest son and said, “Japeth, I know it’s you. Come on out. Joke’s over. “

The thing was, it was not Japeth, and it was not a joke. It was God. And God was completely serious.

When God calls you, will you recognize God’s voice? That would be the first step to faithfully answering God’s call.  Would you recognize the voice of God?

Casting crowns has a song called “Voice of truth.”  The last line of the chorus says, “Out of all the voices calling out to me, I will choose to listen and believe ethe voice of truth.”  Only by walking with God and listening to God’s voice in our lives on a daily basis will we recognize God’s voice when it calls us to do something big.  Only by being connected to God, walking with God, talking with God, listening to God can we ever recognize the voice of God among all the other voices in our lives.

 

 Continuing to fill in the conversation, I am pretty sure that Noah’s second response  was. “Build a what?”  That would be my first question. I can only think of two occasions in history and literature where the word “ARK” is used. Noah’s ark and the Ark of the Covenant the Israelites carried through the wilderness.  I looked it up, and in the first two definitions I saw  only referred me to those two biblical stories.  Websters, however, says that an ark is “something that provides protection and safety.”  A safehouse would be an ark. A vault would be an ark,

Seeing I couldn’t find any other uses for the word “ark” I’m pretty sure that when God told Noah to build an ark, Noah said, “I don’t know what an ark is, but I am almost 600 years old and I’m not building nothing.” Noah probably felt like he had done his part and was ready to pass it on to his sons.  He was old and he had walked faithfully with God all his life. We can all relate to that. No matter our age, sometimes we get tired and we are ready to let someone else take over. I get that way sometimes. We all do. But that didn’t stop Noah and it shouldn’t stop us. We keep walking with God.

 

 Besides being old, Noah had no idea how to build an ark. He lived all his life in the desert. What does he know about boats?  And even if he knew how, it would be foolish to build a boat in the desert.  It was hundreds of miles to the nearest body of water big enough to accommodate a boat of that size.  This seemed truly foolish.

But in the end, Noah walked with God and did what he asked.

 

 Finally, as though building a boat as big as 6- 747’s wasn’t hard enough. Noah had to deal with the jeers and probably hatred of the neighbors. You see, it wasn’t just that Noah heard God’s voice when everyone else in the human race was listening to  anything but God’s voice. It wasn’t just that Noah was building a boat in the middle of the desert.  Noah was a prophet with a message of judgment that got bigger and bigger right along with the ark.

Do you remember why he is building the ark? Because people are so wicked that god is going to destroy them. How do you suppose the neighbors took that news? I’m sure Noah would never be as childish as to say, ”Nana nana boo boo, I have a room in the ark, and will have to sleep with the fishes.”   But that’s exactly what the ark said to the neighbors every time they looked out their window.  And how could you NOT look out the window just to see what those neighbors are doing?

For Noah, and for us, the Ark is a symbol of safety and salvation.  For those whose “every inclination and thought of the heart was only evil all the time,” it was a tombstone with their names engraved on it just waiting to be put to use.  

Don’t you suppose people jeered at noah…don’t you suppose they called him names? Don’t you suppose someone probably stole his tools a few times or hid is material? Don’t you suppose there was a good deal of anger and resentment toward Noah?  I would be shocked to find out that it wasn’t true!

But did that stop Noah? NO. He continued to walk with God every step of the way, even when the going was really, really hard.

 

Has God ever asked you to do something that seemed kind of foolish? I’m not talking about building an aircraft carrier.  I am talking much smaller. What about inviting that new neighbor to church, forgiving someone, teaching or serving some way in the church, going on a youth mission trip, speaking up about racism, or homelessness, or immigration. Some of those might seem foolish to you, but I have an even crazier thing.

Sitting at lunch with other pastors and on conference calls, I can’t find anyone who ever dreamed of pastoring a church through a pandemic. It is the last thing we want to do.  Frankly, for me, It is harder than the fire and rebuilding of  Musserville church. I thought that was the hardest thing I would ever do. But here we are, the church is on the precipice of what I called last week a new easter.  Things will never be the way they were. There is no going back now. Some days I think it would be easier to build a boat out in the middle of the desert.

 God is not calling us to build an ark. God is calling us to walk with him into the new future of our church. It will take every single one of us…Listening to the voice of truth, looking for God’s little nudges, walking together with God into the beauty of the easter God has prepared for the Carroll United Methodist church. Will some label us as foolish?  Probably.  So let’s be foolish for god together. Let’s join God’s ark building, church building, kingdom building post-pandemic adventure. Together, I think we just might be foolish enough to become what God wants us to be.

AMEN

 

“The New Creation” Elite Eight #1 Carroll first UMC 9-13-2020 (easter celebration)

  “The New Creation”

Elite Eight #1

Carroll first UMC 9-13-2020 (easter celebration)

 

 I have been known over the years for celebrating holidays at odd times. I’ll never forget the Christmas in July we had in Muscatine. As I walked in the church, I heard one of our grumpier remembers grunt “Humph, Christmas in July. What's next fireworks In December?” I will admit I was sorely tempted. I wonder what she would think if she saw Easter in September.

 Happy Easter. It may seem strange, but not as strange as other things in the last 8 months.

Everything has been turned upside down just as much as it was from Palm Sunday too Good Friday.

The loss of businesses and jobs has plunged us into a dark cave much like the newly hewn tomb in was Jesus was laid.

Social distancing, fear of one another AND the politicization of the pandemic has left us mistrusting and confused like the disciples must have been in that locked room on Saturday

The list goes on:

Separating families even when a loved one resides in a care center or are dying in the hospital

Derecho and hurricanes including twin hurricanes

Record breaking wildfires scorching the earth

Drought

Racial unrest and rioting.

Then add on top of that our inability to have face to face worship in our sanctuary for 21 weeks starting on Palm Sunday and this has seemed like a truly dark time in which our morale, our mental health, and our relationships have been deeply, if not fatally, damaged.

The church suffered during this time too. Next week would have been the first Sunday of Sunday School. He can’t have UM kids. We have postponed funerals. Almost all pastoral visits are by phone, text, or messenger now. Honestly, Covid has taken a tremendous toll on the mental, relational, and spiritual health of churches… us included. 

We have all adjusted. From online Good Friday services, we had a trial by fire becoming an all-digital church. (actually, it felt more like a trial by fire) We started online communion, had two virtual vacation Bible schools, learned how to do even better online services. We had the car-naval. We're still adjusting to using zoom. You all saved the day when you picked up and made caring for one another a priority. I was so proud of the way you took care of one another. Others stepped recording music and scriptures, and Sherri became a video editing superhero. Like every other organization including our schools, businesses, and government we have experienced locked doors, masks, shields, testing, quarantine, and anxiety. We are having Easter to remind us that when all this is said and done… God is the God who brings life out of death.

How many times during the last 7 months have we heard, “The world will never be the same?” I would be very surprised if those same words were not on the disciple’s lips after Jesus arrest.

 We are in desperate need of resurrection. We need Easter; individually, in our congregation, and everywhere else. We need to do over for 2020. We need a fresh start. Fortunately, God is the God of do overs and fresh starts. God is the creator and re creator. God is both the Alpha and the Omega. Alpha is the 1st letter of the Greek alphabet and God was not only at creation but was the sole cause and source of all creation. Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and it is a promise that in the end God's plan, purpose, and power will be victorious over all else.

God is the source and the power behind the divine incarnation in Jesus Christ, ALPHA. And God’s all-time best promise is that nothing can keep him away from us. Neither the Roman government, unfair trials, hatred, fear, torture, death, or darkness will be able to put out the light of Christ. Nothing: including coved 19, quarantines, isolation, anxiety, locked churches, economic crisis, political crisis, natural disasters like fires and derechos…can keep God from bringing us new life. We need a resurrection… and we need it now. 

 

Last spring you voted for your eight favorite Bible stories. This is the first sermon in a series of eight in which I will try to Help you see new things in your favorite stories. Our first story is creation. We heard that story. Now I want us to look back and see the how the gospel of John’s connects creation and Easter, which he understands as the new creation of easter.

 

 What was there before creation? Emptiness. Genesis says, “the earth was Formless and void.” It had neither shape nor substance. It was a vast emptiness.

Before Jesus there was emptiness. The powerful emptiness of sin. God seemed far away and unapproachable. Much like today, hypocrisy was rampant. There was even an emptiness in religion; a lot of going through the motions.

 In Genesis, besides nothingness there was only God.

In the gospel of John, we read, “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.” The word of course is Jesus with God the creator. That’s all there is.

 In Genesis God says, “Let there be light, and there was!”

The first chapter of John says, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

 The climax of the creation story is on day six when God creates people, God looked at people and said, “It is good.”

 “After questioning Jesus, Pilate brought Jesus out for the crowd to see saying “Ecce Homo” look at the man- He is innocent. “Look, It is good.”

 In the creation story Adam and eve are placed in a beautiful garden to be with God forever.

John says, “There was a garden called gethsemane where he and his disciples prayed.”

 Again, in the story of creation The Garden of Eden is the cradle of all life.  It is were all life starts.

John writes, “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified and, in the garden, there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.” The garden where new life starts.

 Finally, Genesis tells us that God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Days 1-6 were creating days.

It is no accident that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go very early on “The first day of the week.” The first day of the new creation.

In so many ways John is trying to tell us that Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of a new creation. Easter was day one of the new creation. You know how they say, today is the first day of the rest of your life. John says Easter is the first day of the new creation.

 

Now I wish I could say the pandemic is sealed in the tomb and we've all been raised to new life, new normal, and a new way of being. I can’t say that, by a long shot. But I can say that this day… EASTER is beginning to bloom…This is easter … this is the first day of the new creation and new life for you. Starting right now we have a new opportunity to begin to bloom for God and change the world with Jesus Christ.

There is a gift in all of this. We don’t get many do-overs in life. Churches, including ours have been doing the same thing for years, and doing it well. But maybe what we have been doing is not quite what we want it to be… that’s OK. Easter gives us a do-over. Maybe we have dreamed of a certain program but never taken be big step…Easter gives us a new opportunity. Maybe we have been doing something with diminishing returns, but we can’t figure out what else to do… That’s OK Easter brings us a new creation and a new vision of who we are.

In Liturgics we say Every Sunday is a little Easter, so every Sunday brings with it the opportunity to be a new creation. We find ourselves again and again standing at the precipice of the new creation promised from the beginning. A flower bud, just ready to burst open.

This worship service is part of the new creation… This church is in the new creation. The next person you invite to church, you can invite to our budding church in the new creation. The next time we bless our community and neighbors, we will be doing that as a budding church...in the new kingdom of the resurrection. (Now people will think we are still the old first united Methodist church… but the way you treat them will prove that we are new.)  This week’s Ad Council meeting will be the first meeting for pour budding church in the new creation. And all the possibilities are open. You say, “we’ve never done it that way before” and someone is likely to say “True, but we have never been here before, everything is new.” Anything is possible for the new church in the new creation.

But it starts with you.

The next breath you take, will be as a new creation blooming in Christ Jesus. The next beat of your heart will be a beating of your new hearts not made with stone but made with flesh by the heart of God. The next step you take will be into as a new creation in Jesus Christ.  So, let’s join our hearts as brothers and sisters of the new creation and take one giant step into the new kingdom, the resurrection kingdom, the kingdom called “EASTER.”

 

 

 

YOU Give Them Something to Eat – Luke 9:12-17 Carroll First UMC 9/6/2020

Imagine that you are in a big green pasture, and the sun has started to cool off and drop behind the nearby hills.  The gras under our feet feels cool and refreshing after a hot day. There’s even a comfortable little breeze from the north northwest.

You have been hanging out with Jesus, watching him heal the blind, the lame, and the possessed. Maybe you were healed too, or maybe you came to be inspired, or maybe you came because you thought it would be cheap entertainment.  It has turned out to be more than entertaining. 

Then your stomach begins to growl, and you realized that the day is coming to an end and you are hungry.  What are your plans? 

The disciple’s stomachs must have rumbled too, and they told Jesus, “The day is getting late. It’s time for these folks to go home so they can get something to eat and get cleaned up. Some of them are a little ripe after standing in the sun here all day.  We’re going to go pass the word.”

“But wait!” Jesus says, “Don’t send them away. YOU give them something to eat.”  What was he thinking? Luke says that there were 5000 men were in the crowd.  Add a wife and 2.5 kids per family there could easily be 22,000 in the crowd. 

What would you do if you had 22,000 people to feed? Remember, Galilee is just a little out of Lidderdale Caterers service area.

In spite of asking the impossible, Jesus casually says, “you feed them.”

The understatement of the day is on Phillip’s lips in John’s version of the story. “It would take more than 6 months  wages to give each one just a little bit.”

Still Jesus says, “No, you feed them.”

Let’s stop right there and think a moment.  Have we ever been in that situation?  Yes, we have. A young  child told to clean their  room. It seems impossible. An older student trying to pass a big test or an employee who is told to have a 2-week project ready in 2 days. Impossible. A family trying to pay 10 pounds of bills with only 5 pounds of money. There are some thigs that just seem impossible. 

We have it at the church too.

• Jesus commands, “preach the good news” but we have to close down 2/3 of our sanctuary?  

• “Love our neighbor”. But loving the wrong neighbor might literally kill you.

• “Feed the hungry and clothe the naked.” Some of our folks have trouble feeding their family or buying school clothes for their own kids this year. 

• “Teach the children and youth” but can we do it safely?

• “Reach out to the community” Have you seen the streets lately?  Many people are just not coming out much. 

• We want our church to flourish and grow. As pastor, I want our church to stay on mission. But how do we help people connect and socially distance at the same time. We might want to throw up our hands and surrender to the events and uncontrollable forces around us.  But before we do that, let’s check in with the disciples.

They must have huddled and inventoried the available supplies and came back with a list saying, “We have five loaves and two fish but that’s all.”

Jesus replied, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking all the disciples had, five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled.

Wait, “they ate and were filled?” Really?  

If you do the math, if they were 1-pound loaves everyone gets a crumb weighing 4/1000 of an ounce. But This was little the boy’s lunch. Chances are he had small fish, a little bigger than minnows and something more like crescent rolls or hot dog buns. It is impossible to us, but nothing is impossible with God. 

When everyone was full, they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.” Do you suppose that was one for each disciple just to show them the abundance of the miracle?

While I love this miracle and it makes a great story, if we only focus Jesus, or on the crowds or the fish or the bread we are missing an important point.  “YOU give them something to eat.” Puts the ball squarely on the disciple’s shoulders.  Jesus says, don’t send them away. Don’t look for a way out. Don’t hope for someone else to do it. Don’t even wait for tomorrow. Don’t leave it all up to me. “YOU give them something to eat.”

I can hear the disciples because I have said the same thing. “We don’t have enough bread.”  Sometimes bread means time, or money; energy, willingness, or ability; faith, love, compassion, or whatever. A lot of the time, if you’re anything like me, you are just downright full of excuses.

Jesus does not want our excuses. But Jesus also did not expect the disciples to feed the whole crowd.  He expected them to do SOMETHING. To offer SOMETHING, to give SOMETHING, and they did. It was woefully inadequate, but they did SOMETHING. And Jesus took those sad little crumbs and turned them into a banquet for 20,000 people.  In this situation…

• The disciples were completely powerless, so are we. 

• The disciples were completely empty, so are we. 

• The disciples were unprepared, so are we. 

• The disciples wanted to solve the problem their way, so do we. 

• The disciples would have been glad for Jesus to bail them out with no effort on their part, so are we. 

• The disciples were tired, so are we. 

• The disciples were out of fresh ideas, so are we. 

• The disciples had no hope of doing what Jesus asked them to do.  Neither do we. 

The disciples knew there was not enough to go around, sometimes I am sure of that too. 

YET… YET… they gave what they had. They offered their measly 5 loaves and two fish. They were willing to be part of Jesus plan by trusting him to do great things with the little bit they had.  Are we? That is the question for the day

What I hear Jesus saying is, “Don’t wait for someone else to do it.” “Don’t pretend you don’t have the time or the skills or the resources to do God’s bidding in the world.” “Don’t pretend you’re not qualified or capable.” “Don’t put it off for another day or time or moment when it might be more convenient for you.” “Don’t even wait for me to do it in your place.” Do SOMETHING and trust me. 

Will we? Can I? Are you willing to give whatever you have and trust Jesus to do great things? Are we willing to do SOMETHING?

• Rarely is there enough of me to go around, but instead of giving up, I do something and trust Jesus to use what I have. 

• Sometimes I feel like the little bit I can contribute to a mission project or a disaster isn’t going to make much difference, but instead of not giving I do something trust Jesus to do great things with it. 

• Sometimes the sermon never gets to where I really want it to be before Sunday morning, but instead of retiring, I do something… I offer it and trust that I have done my best and Jesus will take it from there. 

How about you? Not sure you have enough bread? …whether that means time, or money; energy, willingness, or ability; faith, love, compassion, or hope, or focus, or inspiration, or confidence, or anything else… are you willing to give what you do have… and let Jesus do the rest? 

The message here is not “God will take care of you,” but … do something… do what you can… and let Jesus do the rest. Just do something

What can you do to see the church survive the pandemic, and not just survive but be stronger than we were before, better than we were before?  Just do something. Just say yes. Say yes, I’ll help, Yes, I’ll try, Yes, I’ll be there Yes, I’ll do what I can, Yes, I will DO SOMETHING.

You have cards in your hands. During the song I would like you to write one SOMETHING that you will do for Jesus, for the church, or for your neighbor… one thing. It might not seem like much but offer what you have.  Let’s listen to the lyrics of Matthew west’s song.