For Sunday, July 26, 2015 – John 6:1-21
At this point in Jesus’ ministry he faces the twin problems of success and popularity. Problems? Many of us feel we could do with a little more of each. Isn’t greater success proof that we are accomplishing more? Doesn’t popularity mean greater influence? With these kinds of “problems,” we imagine beginning to relax a bit more, no longer needing to prove ourselves. People might see what we’re doing and want to be a part of it. We could start to reap the rewards of our steadfast service and be a little more appreciated. But popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Jesus can go hardly anywhere now without large crowds following him, craving miracles. So desperate are they for a glimpse, a touch, a word from him that they lose sight of everything else. Time, weather, food? What are these compared to the wild hope he inspires? Jesus is teaching his disciples on a mountainside when he sees a large crowd closing in. As a good teacher is apt to do, he poses a question for their consideration: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He could have asked, “How are you going to heal all these people?” Or, “Where do you get what you need when you know you will not be enough?” The question is not about buying bread so much as whether or not we will learn at last to draw upon the hidden power of our limitations, whether or not we will turn to the Source. Maybe if we can begin to loosen our grip and let our hearts break open and be shared among us like bread, we will learn to trust what cannot be bought but gives the only true sustenance and life.
We can devote ourselves to striving after success and popularity, or we can notice the least likely to succeed parts of ourselves—What? All you have is one little boy with a few loaves and fish?—and imagine them new. Our child heart is open; it offers what it has, saying not a word about what it has not. What good will come from such a small offering? Yet ages since, we still ponder the outcome: “Gather up the fragments left over,” Jesus says, “so that nothing may be lost.” If we fall under the trance of success and popularity, we risk overlooking the power of crumbs. What is left over when we have nothing more to give, is enough. Immense potential lives among the fragments.
