Date: July 21, 2024

Scripture: Matthew 14:13-21

Sermon Title: “Abundance in God”

Preacher: Rev. Dr. Bob Jon

You can also listen on Podcast from iTunes and Spotify. Search for “Podcasting from Rev. Bob Jon.”

Last year during the Lenten season, I was watching a movie called The Bible with my two boys. It’s a story about the life and death of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It started as a TV series, but they shortened it to a movie for a couple of hours. When Jesus was teaching the whole crowd for all day long, and they were going hungry, so when the disciples brought the matter to Jesus and said, well, these people are going hungry, what should we do? And Josh was watching it with me, and he said, “Pizza! They can order pizza for them!”

We can say that’s a silly idea, but I thought it was an interesting idea. So, I did some research by going into a website and asked a question. 

• The number of people at the party. We have 5,000 people. 
• The status of the appetite. Moderately hungry, hungry or starving.” I chose the middle, “hungry.”
• The size of the pizza is 14 inches
• Eight slices for pizza.
• Each cheese pizza costs $13.00

So the calculation led to this summary. Feeding 5,000 people on pizzas, you need 2,354 pizzas, and each person can have 3.8 slices, which comes to total cost $30,602. As you know, this number did not include women and children, and maybe when you have pizza, you got to have some soda, am I right? So think about how much it would be, maybe like $60,000, $70,000.

No wonder in the Gospel of John, Philip said, “Jesus, even if we have more than like two hundred denarii, it will not be sufficient to feed all these people.” In Jesus’ time, two hundred denarii were the person’s wage for a whole year working in the field, and that’s how much they got paid. As I was reading the scripture for today, I was scratching my head and was wondering, what were these people doing all day long? Maybe they didn’t have jobs, and they were just following Jesus around, and they had nothing better to do, but just sitting and listening to Jesus all day long. 

As we want to learn more about what these people were like in their time, we should begin by talking about the Roman Empire. Caesar Augustus, he’s the emperor who founded and united the country and started the Roman Empire. And he ruled over about like 40 years, and that’s the time Jesus was born into. But later, the successor became Caesar Tiberius. Well, under their rule, the Roman Empire, occupation, the people who are rich, the socially, economically, and political elite people, they were quite okay. As long as they follow the rules set by the Roman government and pay the tax, and as long as they were not plotting and kind of revolt against the empire, they were able to enjoy their lives. 

However, it was not the cast with the common people, they were in trouble. People who did not have much, people who were just trying to bring the food to the table for their children and their family every day, they were in trouble. It was because Rome did not exist for people, but people had to exist for the Rome. The empire was sacrificing the farmers and the fishers for the sake of the cities. Certain portions of the food had to be brought to the city market, and there were taxes that people had to pay for that.

Gary Paul Nabhan, he wrote a book titled Jesus for Farmers and the Fishers, describes about a group of people called “fellaheen,” which is a contemporary word that we use for the group of people who are the peasantry, like the food producing members of the peasantry, whom we even find today in the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia. These people also existed during the Jesus time, and these people had to pay several heavy taxes. The tax collectors demanded taxes for the use of their fields and the boat docks for fishing business. Brokers came and demanded tax from these people, a percentage of the foods they brought into the city market. Toll collectors also demanded their own portion of the tax for any produce or seafood that these people moved on their privatized roles. 

It didn’t matter if they had a good harvest, and some years they had a bad harvest, but the moneylenders loaned the money to these people at higher interest, therefore increasing their debts year by year. So the farmers often had to sell their property, their land, at a cheap price, turning into sharecroppers, journeymen and daily workers, contract workers for the elite, and some of these people even turned into bandits and thieves or even zealots. They wanted to just control the power by overturning the government. Gary Paul also talks about man men in Jesus’ time who grew sullen, drinking some wine and taking narcotics. Sometimes lashing their physical, emotional pain on their families and their children. These people, it’s not like they wanted not to, it’s nothing to do, it’s just they were taken away from their life. And they came to Jesus, listening to him, his teaching all day long. They were going hungry, they were thirsty.

By the evening, it was dark, and the disciples told them that these people were hungry, we need to send them away to the village so they can go and buy their own foods. And Jesus told them, they don’t need to go away, you feed them. And they brought five loaves of bread and two fish, which we know from the Gospel of John, a young boy, he offered his lunch box to Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew, we don’t know who brought and shared this food with Jesus. Could be one person, two persons, but that’s all they had. Five loaves of bread and two fish. And Jesus took them and looked up to the heaven, as if he was thanking God as the source of all the gifts and the blessing. And he broke them and told his disciples to go around and distribute this to the crowd. And the miracle happened. The baskets did not go empty. Everyone was fully fed, and there were even 12 baskets left over the crumbs.

There’s a story about a schoolteacher one day giving a school assignments to his class. He said, “In our next class, I want you to come and tell us about your religion and show us your religious symbol.” On the day of representation, the first kid came forward and said, “I’m a Jewish and this is my David’s star.” Second kid came forward and she said, “I’m a Catholic, this is my Rosary with which I pray.” Third kid came forward and said, “I’m a Methodist, and this is my saucepan.” You know you cannot be a Methodist without your love for food and fellowship with others. On a deeper level, it is a time we get to experience the miracle of Jesus who blesses what we bring to him and multiplies to feed and nourish us. There’s a miracle of feeding who are hungry. Whether we are physically hungry, emotionally yearning, and trying to fill the void in our hearts with God’s goodness and mercy.

As a matter of fact, I believe that the potluck was a great way to survive the Great Depression in this country, back in 1929 to 1939. People losing their jobs, the factories were shutting down, people losing their homes and their workplaces to foreclosure, the meals, they were also being abandoned by people. Between 25-30% of people, they had no jobs, and the wages cut down by 50% back in 1930s. People had to basically use whatever they had in the saving account and just try to turn whatever they had into a blessing to survive as a family or the community. 

So according to my research, this is why people at the time in this country, they had to eat, and they had to eat milk toast, chipped beef on toast, cucumber mustard sandwiches, ketchup sandwiches, nothing but just ketchup in the bread. Turtle or tortoise. Gopher, potato soup, not milk-based, but just water-based. Dandelion salad, cornbread in milk, gravy and bread as a main dish. Squirrel, has anyone tried squirrel here? Chicken feet in broth, and whatever you could catch for that day, you had to eat them as family. People could not afford to have several dishes on the table, they had to eat from one dish. And the potluck at the church was a great way to help families survive together. And I can imagine the church fathers and mothers that bring the casseroles to help the young families with children to gather on the week after week. Even today, whenever we gather for potluck lunch, it gives nourishment to those who may not have enough for that day.

And I know that it can also happen in a community, in this world, that Jesus turning into what we bring to him into blessing for others, multiplied to feed and transform their lives. Mully is a documentary film that came in 2015. It’s a story about Charles Mully. He was born into a family in a small village in Kenya back in 1949. His father was an alcoholic and was very abusive to his mother, his wife, Charles’ mother. At the age of six, Charles was kicked out of his family, and he had to move from house to house begging for food every day.

One day, he went to a church building. He was sitting there. He just started weeping, and he felt like in his prayer, that he could feel that God was calling him, that he was below the child of God.He had some purpose bigger than what he was dealing with at the time. So he walked 43 miles to the capital of Canada, Nairobi, in search of a job, and dramatically, he was welcomed by an Indian family who gave him a job. He became a farm assistant, later bought a vehicle, and began his public transportation business called Mullyways. He was not only driving the bus for people, but also singing and just being encouraging to his neighbors, and people just loved him. He became successful, expanding his business to include oil, gas, and even real estate. He was being the millionaire in his country, and people recognized his name, and every night was like a feast with his eight children and his wife Esther, cooked and prepared by the servant in the household. He was sending his kids to a private boarding school in Nairobi. Everything was just going great for him. We can call him that he was enjoying the abundance that we can imagine in this world.

And one day, something happened that dramatically changed his life forever. When he drove down to the city, a group of young people came and asked if they could watch over his car, and later he could pay them for just protecting and watching over his car. He said, “No, I don’t need your protection.” When he came back from after his meeting, his car was gone. It was stolen. So he had no option but to take a bus which was owned by his own company. 

And in his ride to home, he’s regretting why he did not help these people when he was actually one of them as a kid. And he felt like God was calling him to bring what he had and turn it into blessing for the people like him when he was a kid. So, one day, he went to the city and saw the orphans. And he said hi to them and held them in his arms. And he brought the orphans in his car to his home. Initially, his wife and his own children could not accept the fact that they were bringing the kids out of the street. But the three kids became ten kids, ten kids became hundred. Six years later, they were nurturing and taking care of 300 children, 300 children, which today grew to be more than thousands.”

The kids, saved by Charles and Esther Mully, when they came to their house, the first thing they heard from this couple and the family is that we love you, as God loves you. And they started giving them education, food, and bed to sleep on. They even moved to another place later where Charles and Esther had planned to retire into and built an orphanage for these children. It became a big house to hold everyone in. They started planting trees , teaching their children how to do construction work and also irrigate and fertilize the land. Because they were planting trees and vegetables and irrigating the land, the rain became more frequent, helping them to fight the climate change. They were realizing the vision of Prophet Isaiah 35:6, “For waters shall break forth in the wilderness and the streams in the desert.” Charles and Esther were giving these children not just food and shelter and education and medicine, but most importantly, they were giving them the love of God. Thousands of children went through this program and they’re becoming the leaders in their country to fight the hunger and poverty.

And the question for us is, what can we bring to Jesus if we believe that he has the power to turn that into blessing for others? I know that in our church, I come to church in the morning, I see a group of people, the garden club, tending to the garden and vegetables, so they could harvest and share with everyone at the church on Sundays, and also donate to the food pantry for our community. A group of ladies giving their time together in the conquer room, and they meet and share their stories, and they make the prayer show. Recently, I brought it to my neighbor who was dying from cancer, and she just genuinely, genuinely appreciated the love and prayer from our church. 

As we’re talking about Jesus and the food that’s coming today, and I saw that Betsey baked scones for us. You know, a group of people in our church always comes a little earlier, and they share their time and energy in preparing the table of fellowship and coffee for all of us. So you give your time and your energy. You staff at the table and volunteers, teachers and the leaders for your vacation Bible school. I love whenever I see Evelyn. She comes and walks slowly with her cane and sits at the table. She greets and welcomes every family as they come in through the door. “I’m so glad you’re here with us today.” What can we and what can you bring to Jesus?

A few days ago, I was watching TV on my computer, which was showing the hungry and orphaned children in another continent. And Joshua happened to pass by, saw these children and asked me, “Daddy, who are those children?” And I told him that they are hungry, and they have no food. And he said that we need to help them. He said, “If we don’t help them, they’re going to die.” In my mind, when I heard that, many adults would answer, “That’s just the way the world is today.” or “Why?” We don’t have enough to help all those children in the world. But Jesus has told his disciples, if you want to enter the kingdom of God, you should be like these children. When I felt like the disciples who said, “Let them go and find their own food,” I felt like Jesus was saying, “You give them something to eat.”

What can we bring to the table for Christ and his kingdom?” Amen.