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July 20, 2003; Proper 11, Year B
    The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector

Paul Conn in his book Making It Happen writes about an experience he had while living in Atlanta.  One evening while he was looking through the yellow pages for a restaurant to go to for dinner he came across an advertisement for an establishment named the Church of God Grill.  Curious about the name of the restaurant, he dialed their number.  A cheery voice answered, “Church of God Grill!”  He asked how the restaurant had gotten such an usual name.  Here was the reply:

“We had a little mission down here, and we started selling chicken dinners after church on Sunday to help pay the bills.  People liked the chicken, and we did such a good business, we eventually cut back on the church services.  After a while we just closed down the church altogether and kept on serving the chicken dinners.  We kept the name we started with, so we’re the ‘Church of God Grill.’”[1]

Imagine what the “church” would be like today if the disciples had capitalized on the feeding of the multitudes we have just heard in our Gospel reading from Mark.  What a profit margin they could have realized from feeding more than five thousand people with just two fish and five loaves of bread!

Thank goodness the disciples marveled at the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand and not dollar signs.

This morning we have an opportunity to participate in a miracle.  This is Focus on the Fund Sunday, the Sunday on which we ask you to consider making a contribution to the Episcopal Relief and Development Fund.  Paul Lyon spoke about the fund last Sunday, but I also want to encourage you to support this worldwide outreach fund of the Episcopal Church.  In our name this fund has helped to feed far more than 5,000 people.  Of course there were more than two fish and five loaves of bread that were sent to people living in famine stricken countries or to the victims of disaster.  But aid was sent because people like us were willing to share, share even the price of a fish or a loaf of bread to help others in their time of need.  A dollar, two dollars, times lets say a hundred and twenty, that is about what our attendance is this morning, that equals $120 to $240.   Then let’s take that times sixty-three, the number of parishes in the diocese, that equals, lets figure at two dollars each, $15,120.  Then if we take that times ninety to be on the conservative side, the number of dioceses in the Episcopal Church, we now have $1,360,800.  That’s a pretty impressive figure at $2 a head.

It all started with the willingness to share two fish and five loaves of bread.  We marvel at the miracle of so many fed with so little, and wonder why miracles like that don’t happen today.   They, miracles that is, may not be as dramatic as what we read about in the Bible, but they still happen.  They happen, when people of faith, in the name of Jesus Christ, share what they have with others.

While studying third world countries in college, my world history professor asked one day who had gone without food for a day because they could not afford to buy food.  He waited for a while, and after no one raised their hands, he went on to explain that we cannot appreciate the predicament that millions of the people face every day – that of hunger because there is no food on the table.  He went on to say what we have all heard before, we throw away more food than some people have to eat on any given day.

Did you notice in the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand that the leftovers weren’t thrown away?   Either Jesus and his disciples ate fish and bread for the next several days or they gave the leftovers to the hungry people in the next village they visited.

The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is about stewardship of scarcity and abundance.  I read an article this past week in the Clergy Journal that talked about our willingness to share or give depends on how we view our resources.  If we feel that we don’t have enough (scarcity) they we are less likely to give or share what we do have.  If we feel that we have enough to live on (abundance) then we are more likely to give or share.   All of this makes sense until we add God into the equation.  We believe in a God who is generous and who has set us in charge, as stewards, of the “abundance” he has given to us. 

The disciples returned from their mission and reported to Jesus about how people had listened to what they had to say and how they had healed sick people.  Jesus seeing that they were tired invited them to retreat for some rest.  But the people saw where Jesus was going and gathered around him.   Toward evening the people were getting hungry and the disciples urged Jesus to send them on their way.  Jesus turned to the disciples and said, “You give them something to eat.”  The disciples looked at one another and said to Jesus, but we only have food for ourselves.  Jesus took the two fish and five loaves of bread, looked up to heaven and blessed it.  And what little they had became abundant enough to feed all the people. 

The people of Church of God Grill tried a different method to find abundance for their scarce church treasury and in process lost their focus only the one who had been generous to them in the first place. Some might claim that a miracle happened at the Church of God Grill, by the sad fact is that they replaced God the Father, with the god of money.

I believe that God has been generous to us in many different ways.  I also believe that miracles still continue to happen.  They happen whenever the people of faith are willing to cooperate with God and share of their scarcity or abundance to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, and visit those in prison.

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