You Get What You Need

Not too long ago…well, a few years ago…okay, many years ago, in our parish, the McCoy family were doing pretty well.  Dad had a small business.  Mom was a teacher.  Nothing is ever easy, however.  They had three sons, all of whom had muscular dystrophy.  They were wheel chair bound, and needed constant care.  Luckily, thanks to her job with the school district, mom had good health insurance.  In spite of their disabilities, all three boys were in college.  They obviously had challenges, but they were a happy family.

Then, one morning, the alarm clock went off, and dad rolled over to nudge his wife out of bed to get ready for work.  He nudged her.  She didn’t respond.  He nudged her again.  Something didn’t seem right.  She was dead.  Sometime, in the middle of the night, she had suffered a massive heart attack and died.  She was gone.

Now, here was a middle aged man, with three seriously ill sons, and the only person with any health insurance was now dead.  What was he to going to do?

Well, as soon as our priests heard about her death, they began contacting people in the parish to help out.  Before long, people had signed up to provide meals for the family, three meals a day, for the next three years.  Yes, three years.  Various lawyers signed on to take care of all legal matters having to do with the estate and with insurance for free.  People came over to take care of the boys.  That weekend, when her death was announced during mass, a special collection was taken up.  In just one day, over $10,000 was raised to help pay for funeral expenses and medical bills.  More money followed.  We have a generous parish.  I am pleased to say that when the McCoy family needed help, our parishioners were there.

We’ve all heard the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes.  The same story occurs in all the gospels.  In the Gospel According to Mark, the story occurs right after his pals come home from going all over the countryside talking about seeing God in a new way.  Jesus wants to go off with his friends and get away from the crowds for a little while, but the crowds find them.  Here’s what the Gospel of John has to say:

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee.
A large crowd followed him,
because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick.
Jesus went up on the mountain,
and there he sat down with his disciples.
The Jewish feast of Passover was near.
When Jesus raised his eyes
and saw that a large crowd was coming to him,
he said to Philip,
“Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?”
He said this to test him,
because he himself knew what he was going to do.
Philip answered him,
“Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough
for each of them to have a little.”
One of his disciples,
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him,
“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish;
but what good are these for so many?”
Jesus said, “Have the people recline.”
Now there was a great deal of grass in that place.
So the men reclined, about five thousand in number.
Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks,
and distributed them to those who were reclining,
and also as much of the fish as they wanted.
When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples,
“Gather the fragments left over,
so that nothing will be wasted.”
So they collected them,
and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments
from the five barley loaves
that had been more than they could eat.
When the people saw the sign he had done, they said,
“This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.”
Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off
to make him king,
he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

This miracle, the phenomenon of feeding a large number of people, happens more than once in the story of Jesus.  It could be one event mentioned several times.  It could be that the same thing happened more than once.  Since it is mentioned in all four gospels, we can assume that it’s a pretty important story.  Of course, that doesn’t mean it really happened this way, or even happened at all.  There is a similar story in the Old Testament, in the book of Kings.

A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing to Elisha, the man of God,
twenty barley loaves made from the firstfruits,
and fresh grain in the ear.
Elisha said, “Give it to the people to eat.”
But his servant objected,
“How can I set this before a hundred people?”
Elisha insisted, “Give it to the people to eat.”
“For thus says the LORD,
‘They shall eat and there shall be some left over.’”
And when they had eaten, there was some left over,
as the LORD had said.

Now, in the Old Testament story, the bread came from the firstfruits.  These were the offerings prepared to be sacrificed to God.  And the prophet Elisha tells his servant to give the offerings to the hungry people.  Obviously God would prefer that we sacrifice for one another.  Feed the hungry.  It isn’t a new message.  Frankly, that is one of the great gifts of Judaism.  The Jews gave us charity.

Whether you believe the stories in the bible or not, they still have a powerful message.  And the message in this story of the loaves and fishes is no exception.  If we share what we have with one another, we have more than enough.  Nobody has to starve or go homeless.  We have all we need.  We keep looking to God to take care of our needs.  That’s because we don’t want to do it.  It’s a lot easier to go to church and pray for God to end hunger than to share our own abundance with people.

And in each case, when we think that what we have isn’t enough, God multiplies our efforts and makes our contributions more than enough.  Let’s face it, sharing is an act of faith.  It’s scary.  What if I share what I have with you, and then I don’t have enough for myself?  When I share, I have to trust that somehow I will have enough to get by.

A couple of years ago, a teacher at our school, a wonderful man I know and love, had cancer.  They caught it early.  He needed a lot of treatment, and some time off.  Chemo is not for sissies.  Even though we have good health insurance, however, a disease like cancer can be financially devastating. But all of us at work stepped up and donated some of our sick pay for the guy.  Yeah, we can do that.  This little story has a happy ending.  Our teacher regained his health.  Thanks to our staff, he had plenty of sick time.  He survived financially too.  And we didn’t mind donating sick leave, because we all know that if any of us gets sick, the same thing will happen.  See, there was more than enough for us all.  The secret is in the sharing.

Part of the Christian story is seeing Jesus as an example, as the model.  Jesus told his followers to “be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect.” Well, of course, we aren’t perfect, nor can we be perfect.  But we can try.  So what does Jesus show us by his example?  Jesus shows us to share what we have.  Jesus is our God on earth.  He is the model of our God.  It doesn’t matter if you take this literally or figuratively. God wants us to share.

When his friends come to ask him to solve the problem of hungry people in the wilderness, Jesus tells them, “You feed them,” according to Mark.  There is that joke about the guy in the flood, stuck on the roof of his house.  He prays for help.  Some guys come by in a boat and the guy refuses their help, saying God will save him.  Some other guys come by in a helicopter, but he refuses their help to, for the same reason.  When he drowns and goes up to heaven, he’s pissed, so he complains to Saint Peter.  Peter checks his clipboard and says, “Well, it says here that we sent you a boat and a helicopter.”

We have everything we need.  God has given us everything we need.  We can make this a beautiful world, or we can make it a living hell.  The choice is ours.  We can feed ourselves, or we can starve.  Sure, there are a lot of greedy, crappy people out there. But look at the story of the loaves and fishes.  Sharing is contagious.  Once one person starts to share, others join in.  Pretty soon, everybody has enough.  It’s got to start somewhere.

You know who shares the most?  The poor.  Ask anybody who has lived in a really poor country, like India, or Africa, or México.  Those people share out of their poverty.  Most of us our stingy in our abundance.  Maybe that’s why the poor are so blessed.  They’ve figured it out.  The only way they can get by is by learning to share.  And right now, with times as tough as they are, maybe this is a good message for us.  Maybe this is something we need to hear.  That great theologian, Mick Jagger, put it very well, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some times, you might just find, you get what you need.”