We want—and, indeed, need—time for ourselves.  Self-care is important!  And Christ shows us a model of sacrificial living that may well feel exhausting: when do I get time for me, if I’m always serving, serving, serving?  Jesus knows, beloved.  He made time to get away by himself and pray.  He invites his followers to do the same.  It is good to make that time, have that time.  We all need recharging, rest, relaxation, restoring, refreshing.  We need a healthy frame of mind and a heart ready to labor, and not just for when we must return to our work.  Church should be a place of quiet refreshing and continual equipping for the labor to which Christ calls his followers, a haven and a harbor.

We know all too well that the press and pressure of the world don’t leave us alone.  We know about demands, deadlines, performance, metrics, evaluations, goals, quotas.  The crowds crowding in for a little attention from Jesus, some Jesus power, some Jesus healing, they pursue Jesus and his apostles around the shoreline.  The crowds arrive ahead of the boat (6:33)!  Sigh.  Now Jesus could have told them, “Hey, guys, it’s so great that you’re so eager and all.  And, you know, I and my disciples, we need a little time.  So, come back later, okay?  Thanks!”  Somehow, though, that doesn’t sound like something Jesus would say, so it probably isn’t something that Jesus followers should say, either.  Sigh.  Not that we’re being sought out by anyone.

You and I, in the pull and push of daily life, we can get to feeling like those apostles—a little break, please!  May I at least eat, please?  Have you ever had to eat on the go?  That’s fun.  It’s rarely super healthy food we’re cramming down our gullets, when we do.  You and I also know what it’s like to feel like those in the crowd: they’re hungry too, they’re in need, and people are saying that Jesus is help for the need, food for the hunger, and we maybe had our doubts, didn’t want to be fooled again, thought it was too good to be true, and then we tried it, and here we are, still.

We know tired.  We know hungry.  We also know Jesus.  We don’t have to ask what Jesus would do because we know what he did: when he “saw a large crowd [ugh!], he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (6:34).  Compassion—beloved, if there were just a little more compassion in this world than what we seem to see today, what a beautiful world it would be!  I like to think that the low level of compassion is not necessarily because people don’t feel it.  It may have more to do with people being afraid to act on their compassion, or not knowing how, or maybe even feeling like—just little gestures and acts and words of compassion . . . they’re little; they don’t make a difference.  I can’t make a difference.  We also know the powerbrokers and hucksters like to work on our compassion in order to pry things out of us: money, votes.  Exploitation is bad enough, but when it’s our compassion that gets exploited, we are left feeling indignant as well as shamefaced and foolish.

And sheep look for a shepherd.  They need a shepherd.  Who can reliably, truly tell us right from wrong, good from bad, true from false?  Who can offer us protection, peace, and a place for flourishing?  There’s a lot of danger and rot out there, and at one time and another, each of us have gotten bogged down in it: it’s overtaken us, and we can get to feeling that there’s no way out, no one to pull us out, lift us up, wash us off and keep us close.

“So he began teaching them many things” (6:34).  Part of me wants to know what Jesus was teaching them; the other part of me already knows.  Jesus is teaching the message he’s always teaching: there is a way; there is hope; trust what I say; follow me; come and see.  If you would see God’s power, if you would know God’s presence, if you would hear God’s Word, if you would know the love of God, follow me; come and see.  There is always more power to see, more presence to feel, more grace and love to receive.  There is always more of God.  It’s like the old bumper sticker: K(no)w God, k(no)w peace.

God gives; the sheep know.  Christ is God giving.  We love all that, and rightly so.  Those in Christ give.  This is the sacrifice and labor part that can make us feel weary and worn, and reluctant.  It’s easy to see impossibility and obstacles—life is like that.  Christ offers us another vision.  “By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. ‘This is a remote place,’ they said, ‘and it’s already very late.  Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat’” (6:35-36).  The apostles, like all those gathered people, are listening to what Jesus is saying, but they’re not expecting, not anticipating or even thinking about the power, not thinking the kingdom way.  It’s not so easy!  Just look at all these people in need, hungry!  Multitudes.  They need food.  We don’t have that kind of food, don’t have enough, not nearly enough.  They’ll just have to go elsewhere, buy it for themselves as they can, where they can, if they can.  Not abundance but lack, not surplus but deficit, deficiency, defeat.

Oh, somebody might have it, somewhere, but we sure don’t!  Not us.  Nope.  “But he answered, ‘You give them something to eat’” (6:37).  I love that.  I can just see the looks on their faces because that’s how I’d look, too.  You do it.  You take care of it.  Now, in ordinary circumstances like we’re used to, that would be a way of saying: it’s not my problem; it’s your problem: deal with it.  I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying.  I think what he is saying is, if you want to know me better, if you want to see the power of God, feed these sheep.  Jesus is saying this because he knows they can, with him, they can, but they don’t know it yet, can’t see it yet.  What they can see overwhelms what they can’t see, and faith is precisely a matter of the unseen.  But just because it is unseen does not mean it is not present . . . air, for example, the beating of your heart within you this very moment.

How the disciples respond bears some thought.  “They said to him, ‘That would take more than half a year’s wages!  Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?’” (6:37).  They weren’t exactly saying, That’s crazy, Jesus!  Though they may have been saying that, too.  Note they also didn’t say that they didn’t have half a year’s wages.  They said it would take a lot to feed all the people.  Yes, it would.  A lot of what, though?  “Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”  So, maybe they actually do have the funds.  (Perhaps Judas was a good treasurer when he wasn’t stealing from them.)  Sometimes churches can get so bound to the physical that they sort of lose sight of the spiritual.  How can we see, regard, what we do have in new, kingdom-honoring, kingdom-ushering ways?  It does take a lot to help, that’s true.  A lot of what?  Resources?  Capital?  We’re all a little short, a little strapped, that way, and always will be, even when we have more than enough.

Maybe, just maybe, the disciples had the money.  But what about the next time?  And where could they go and spend it, in that remote place?  It’s a remote place!  It’s the sort of place where even money won’t do much good!  Now, what sort of place is that?  We can barely imagine a place where money wouldn’t do much good.  I’ll just buy what I need!  But what if your money is no good, there?

The usual reading is that the disciples are objecting that they don’t have the resources, the abundance necessary for what Jesus has told them to do.  Even if we had the money—which we don’t—there’s no place to spend it for this sort of problem!  We couldn’t pull together enough to feed these people, even if we had the means.  We’re in a fix, Jesus!  All we can see is impossibility, obstacle, failure.  What a mess!

But let’s remember, just here, where the twelve had been before this moment, and what they had been doing: they had been out, proclaiming the Word and showing the power of God in Christ, power given to them by Christ for that very purpose.  All they can see in this moment, though, is mess.  Not that long before, they had been proclaiming the message.  Beloved, what happens when the message meets the mess?  Nothing?  Disaster?  Failure?  Painful reminders of inadequacy?

Thinking of how the twelve are objecting, I can’t help but recall Peter and John, there in the Temple, much later, the lame beggar on the ground before them sort of mechanically, hopelessly, habitually begging for some little help, some little comfort, just enough to be able to eat some little something for that day.  Peter looks directly at the man and says, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you.  In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (Ac 3:6).  Not silver or gold, the material resources this world stingily apportions or coldly withholds.  Jesus—spiritual resources—The Spiritual Resource sine qua non, without whom we have nothing and can do nothing.  When we freely give what we do have, it is enough.  Do we or do we not have Christ?  Big church, small church—every church ought at least to have Christ to give, to one another and to those outside these doors today and all too often.  Have faith that what you have is enough because you’re giving Christ: restored relationship, grace, truth, the love of God; this is compassion.

Discover what you have.  Those few loaves and the two fish—I mean, come on!  Jesus isn’t talking about loaves when he asks them to find out what they do have.  Loaves and fish are for a visible reminder, an assurance, a means Jesus can use, to show them and to help others to see, too.  Do we have anything, anything at all?  Well, yes.  We do, after all.  We do, don’t we?  And what we have we have been given, and what we have been given, we are asked to give.  But if we give what we have been given, what will be left?  What will be left for us?  Shall we just give it all?  Resources, you know—they’re limited!  Lack, shortage, outage—these are the realities of life!  And Jesus provides us another life, abundance, surplus, overflow.  We’ll never lack, with Jesus, in Jesus.  That’s the message.  Share it, give it.  When we bring the message to the mess, the Messiah is there: savior, friend, food and rest for our troubled, wearied souls.  Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

That day, Jesus took the little the disciples had and reminded them that, with Jesus in it, with them, their little can do much.  How?  First, Jesus thanked God for His sure provision.  Then Jesus shares it by breaking it—do you imagine him tearing off huge chunks of bread and fish, or maybe—maybe—just small pieces, insignificant, really?  He gives it to his followers to share; he distributes the gift through his disciples so that others may receive.  He had sent his followers out in power, and they were astounded, excited.  He sent them out telling them to take little for themselves and proclaim the news, call others to repentance, into Jesus life.  Now, he tells them, again, to do much with what looks like little.  How?  With Jesus, in Jesus, through Jesus.  Teaching, teaching, teaching, and blessing, blessing, blessing.

“They all ate and were satisfied” (6:42).  Satisfied?  With a little crumb of bread, maybe a little sip of wine?  Beloved, when we offer what we have to Jesus, when we let Jesus touch what we offer, he does not disregard the gift, nor the willingness to offer it to him for his use, though all we may have to offer may seem insignificant to us.  And the outcome of it all?  “[T]he disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish” (6:43).  Where’d that come from?  I put it to you, beloved, that it was there all along, but the disciples just couldn’t see it, which means they couldn’t believe it.  And the proof positive was then always there for a reminder: now you can see that you have more than enough; now you can’t honestly say we don’t have enough, or we can’t do it, or what’s the use.