Meditation for January 31, 2007

From The Rev. Peter Munson

Mark 8:11-26

The Abundance of God

"Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.  And he cautioned them, saying, 'Watch out - beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.'  They said to one another, 'It is because we have no bread.'  And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, 'Why are you talking about having no bread?  Do you still not perceive or understand?  Are your hearts hardened?  Do you have eyes, and fail to see?  Do you have ears, and fail to hear?  And do you not remember?  When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?'  They said to him, 'Twelve.'  'And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?'  And they said to him, 'Seven.'  Then he said to them, 'Do you not yet understand?'"  - Mark 8:14-21

Gay Hendricks says that what we focus on enlarges, and becomes bigger and bigger in our lives.  So many of us focus on what we are lacking, or on what other people are lacking.  We often hear this in the church, too.  "We can't do that.  We don't have the money!"  Or, we look at someone and tell them what they have done wrong, and we fail to see all the things that that person has done right - things that have helped build up the body of Christ.  If we focus on what we ourselves are lacking, or on what others are lacking, and what we focus on enlarges, what does that mean?  I think it means, among other things, that we are not living by faith, and that we don't see as God sees.  It also means that, more and more, we are going to be living out of a mindset of scarcity and lack.  That will become our filter, our way of being in the world.

God sees possibilities.  On two different occasions when Jesus had been teaching a crowd of people for a long time, he recognized that they were hungry, and needed nourishment before they walked back home.  (See Mark 6:34-44 and Mark 8:1-10)  Jesus' disciples saw the limited number of loaves and fish, and the great size of the crowd.  They saw lack, scarcity, impossibility.  Jesus, looking with compassion upon the crowd, saw possibilities.  He saw that these were special moments when the overflowing love of God could be revealed.  In each case, he took the "meager" amount of bread and fish, blessed them and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to distribute to the crowd.  He trusted in God's abundance, in God's gracious provision.  And you know the rest of these two stories.  Thousands were fed, and there were plenty of leftovers!

God is not a puppet on a string, or a magic lamp.  Just because we say, "I want it", it doesn't mean that we necessarily get it.  On the other hand, we so often act as if God is not for us.  We so often act as if there are no new possibilities, where God is involved.  We so often focus on the apparent scarcity, and as we do that, our focus gets narrower and narrower, and all we can see is the way we see things - through this narrow focus!  And it is often just flat out wrong - the way we see things.  Our vision is often beyond blurry.  We are blind!  Our hearing is often not just weak.  We are deaf! 

At times I believe that Jesus looks down on us and is just as frustrated as he was with the disciples on that boat on the Sea of Galilee.  "Do you still not perceive or understand?  Are your hearts hardened?  Do you have eyes, and fail to see?  Do you have ears, and fail to hear?  And do you not remember?"

Do you not remember?  As in, do you not remember all the ways that you have experienced the abundance of God?  Do you not remember all the ways that God has transformed your life, bringing blessing and love and grace, where before you really knew God you knew scarcity and hate and anger and despair and emptiness? 

Do you not remember how it was when I was not intimately involved in your life?  That is the question that God asks us sometimes, when we start focusing on scarcity, and what we don't have, or when we focus on what others around us don't have.

May we be open to the ongoing transforming power of God.  May we pray for soft hearts, not hardened hearts.  May we pray for our eyes to be opened, and our ears to be unstopped, so that we see as God sees, and hear as God hears.  May we see the abundance of God - God's amazing grace, amazing love, His amazing bounty.  And may we walk in faith, trusting that God will continue to be for us, even if all the people around us are proclaiming scarcity, and what can't be done.

In the very words of Jesus, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God, all things are possible." (Mark 10:27)  In other words, there are entirely new possibilities when God is involved.  Let us try to focus on that - and as we do that - that approach, that attitude, that faithfulness will be enlarged in our lives.