A Step Beyond

July 26 2009
17th Sunday in Ordinary time.

John 6: 1-15

6After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ 6He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ 8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ 10Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

I love the way Jesus never stopped challenging his disciples, often in a way that zeroed in on one disciple’s need to grow and stretch in a particular area. I suppose that means I really love it when he challenges me to grow and stretch in a particular area. Well, yeah, I do – but generally only in retrospect! At the time I’m being challenged it can be quite discombobulating.

We don’t know a lot about Philip and what kind of a guy he was but perhaps he was a man to be concerned about logistics. He was probably quite gifted in quickly sizing up a situation and, on a natural level, being able to see whether things could be handled well with the resources at hand. Any group or organization needs someone like Philip on board to keep life organized, to ascertain the needs of the group and to assign tasks.

These are valuable skills and I have no doubt that Jesus encouraged Philip to practice his skills in the day-to-day lives of the disciples. He may have been the group’s operations manager. Each time he is mentioned in the Gospels, he is taking on a role of quiet leadership. He is one of the first ones to follow after Jesus and firmly tells Nathanial to seek him out.. When some Greeks want to have private conversation with Jesus, they approach Philip first. During the last hours the disciples spend with Jesus, the Lord says, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well…” Then Philip says, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." That statement has a slight ring of authority to it. Philip was deciding what would be enough for all of them to understand what Jesus was talking about. Whether or not the rest of the disciples agreed with that is an interesting question...

It would seem in this week’s gospel that Jesus is challenging Philip particularly. It is not Jesus’ intention to deflate Philip or to indicate that Philip’s skills are inadequate or inappropriate. Philip obviously was very quick to understand that not only did they not have the resources to handle a crowd of five thousand, but he also was able to immediately assess what it would take to feed such a crowd. ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,’ he said to Jesus. But Jesus, knowing exactly what he was going to do, challenged Philip to go beyond his known skills and to open himself to stepping out beyond his comfort zone, beyond what he knew he and the other disciples could naturally handle.

Jesus was definitely not belittling Philip’s lack of vision; he was simply preparing Philip to have his vision of who Jesus was and what he was capable of widened and deepened.

Have any of you ever thought about all the logistics of spontaneously feeding five thousand people and then gathering up all the leftovers? It boggles the mind. I have no doubt that Jesus totally used Philip’s leadership skills to organize everyone to receive, distribute and gather up the remains of God’s immense abundance. Philip’s God-given gifts were used to the max that day while his spiritual walls were pushed beyond what he ever thought possible. No doubt, while he was running around assigning jobs, making sure everyone was doing their duty and seeing that everyone received their fair share of food, he was thinking, “This is so bizarre. This is totally outrageous. This is beyond what I ever thought Jesus would or could do. This is completely beyond what I thought I could do. If he can do all this and give me the capacity to do what I’m doing, he can do anything!”

The Lord deeply values our natural skills, gifts and experience. Why would he not value them? He gave them to us and he created us with all our wonderful abilities. He appreciates it very much when we use what we have to serve him, whether it’s a capacity for leadership or teaching or organization or serving his people or offering a small bit of something that we have even if it seems inadequate. He loves it when we give what we have and offer who we are to him.

But then he challenges us to understand that what we are and what we have and the things we know, once again, are not the end of the story. What really challenges us is that we actually have no ability to conceive of what kind of ending to the story the Lord has in mind. All he asks is that we are open to risking our sense of being in control and let go of thinking we know how the story should end. He asks us to be open to using our gifts and then waiting and watching to see how he will take those gifts and create overflowing abundance. What we have is the seeds of creation and they look nothing like what he can make grow out of these seeds.

You know, it’s kind of sad but so many people offer their skills and gifts to the church but never take them first to Jesus to ask him to use these skills and gifts as raw material for abundant kingdom creation. It has to be an open-ended request in order for the Lord to take us on an adventure of the sort he took the disciples on when he fed the five thousand. Too often we say, “Lord, please use my skills and cause this and this and this to happen.” We have such set in stone expectations and when our desired results don’t happen we get discouraged. We might keep on serving and offering our gifts but little by little our expectations of God’s abundance dwindles.

We need to pray a prayer of risk. “Take what I have and do whatever you want, Lord. It’s your story and you are the author. I just want to go with you wherever you take me.”

Don’t pray this prayer lightly…and be prepared. The Lord loves to travel with risk takers and those who are willing to go one step beyond ordinary.