Psalm 145:10-18; John 6:1-21
The 8th Sunday after Pentecost
July 26, 2009
Pastor William S. Waxenberg

One of the great joys in my life—and there are many—but one of them is my early morning daily walk near our home.  I usually take the same path: down our street, and then I turn right and follow a walking path that parallels a creek lined with trees on both sides.  Walking this route over and over affords me the opportunity to see the same people, almost daily.  Last Wednesday morning was cooler than it had been for weeks.  There was a slight breeze coming out of the north, and it was pleasant enough for us to open our windows for a while.  Thursday morning was just about as nice, and as I passed one of the couples I’d seen and spoken to the day before, she said, referring to the cooler weather two days in a row, “What did we do to deserve this?”

Of course, we didn’t do anything!  And, if asked, she probably would have acknowledged that.  The cooler breezes, after all, were part of a weather pattern over which we had no control.  Temperature, barometric pressure, the jet stream, all went together to bring about those cooler breezes that gave us a brief respite from the Texas summer heat.

The psalmist, however, in our psalm for today, Psalm 145, would remind us that, like everything else in life with which we are blessed, he would remind us that cool breezes too are a gift from the hand of an incredibly generous God.  A God whose “greatness is unsearchable” (vs. 3); a God who does mighty acts on behalf of those he loves (vs. 4); a God who “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (vs. 8); a God who is “good to all, and (has) compassion…over all that he has made” (vs. 9).

In short, the psalmist reminds us that all of life is a gift.  And we know that.  But it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of this eternal truth.  Because, frankly, it’s so easy to forget.  It’s so easy to receive the gifts, enjoy the gifts, but not remember where they come from. 

Which is why the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is so important.  “Give us this day our daily bread,” we say.  And we pray these words over and over again, not because God won’t give us our daily bread if we fail to ask, but we pray these words again and again so that we can be reminded who the Giver is, so that we can be reminded of the One to thank. 

The psalmist in Psalm 145 captured this truth long before Jesus taught us the Lord’s Prayer.  In fact, some of us may use the psalmist’s words for our Table Prayer at mealtime:

The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.

You open your hand,

you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

It’s in that spirit of thanksgiving that one day, a long, long time ago, Jesus went up a mountain, which is always a sign for us that something of the character of God is about to be revealed.  Jesus sits down, looks up, and sees that a large crowd has gathered.  5000 people we’re told!  And he turns to Philip, one of his disciples, and asks, “Where are we going to buy bread for (all) these folks?”  And Philip is dumbfounded.  “Impossible!  Why, six months wages wouldn’t be sufficient to buy enough bread for all these people.”  But another disciple, Andrew by name, pipes up and says, “Well, there’s a lad here with five barely loaves and a couple of fish.”  And then he thinks better of it.  So what?  What difference would that make?  “What are they among so many?” he says.

But all along, Jesus knows what he’s going to do.  And so he takes the bread and the fish from the little boy, and what?  What does Jesus do next?  He offers a prayer of thanks.  Why?  Because he knows the origin of every good gift.  He knows that even these small gifts among so many come from the hand of a generous God.  Maybe his words of thanksgiving were from this morning’s psalm.  Maybe Jesus said,

The eyes of all look to you, and you give

them their food in due season.

Or maybe Jesus said,

You open your hand,

you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Or maybe Jesus offered another ancient Jewish prayer:

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of

the universe, who brings us forth bread from the earth. 

Whatever he said, Jesus gave thanks.  And then he takes the five barley loaves and the two fish and distributes them.  All eat.  All are satisfied.  There are even fragments left over.  The fed-and-full people are amazed!  “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world,” they cry.  Yes, indeed a prophet, but more than a prophet as we’ll hear the next four weeks.  For the gospel readings for the next four Sundays all come from the 6th chapter of John.  All flow from the Feeding of the 5000.  Today, however, it’s enough to remember that this God of Jesus, this God in Jesus, is the Giver of every good gift, and he feeds us with daily bread.

But not just us.  For as the disciples participated in the feeding of the 5000, as they helped to distribute the food and then picked up the leftovers, so Jesus now invites us to participate with him as he feeds a hungry world.  That’s part and parcel of what it means to share the Gospel with others.

For the world is hungry.  We know that.  People in Dallas are hungry.  We know that too.  13% of the world’s population is undernourished.  That’s 854,000,000 people.  And yet, the world produces enough food to feed every man, woman, and child with 2700 calories a day.  The United States alone produces almost 10% of the world’s wheat, close to 2 billion bushels a year, and exports half of that.  We produce 13 billion bushels of corn and export 20 percent of that.  But people still die every day by the tens of thousands because they don’t have enough to eat.  There’s either not enough land to grow sufficient crops.  The land itself can’t produce. There’s not enough income to buy land.  Distribution is thwarted by inept policies and corrupt regimes.

But just as overwhelming numbers didn’t stop Jesus from feeding the hungry, we’re not about to stop either.  Which is why we bring hundreds and hundreds of pounds of food the first Sunday of every month—to help feed the hungry right here in Dallas.  Which is why Lutheran World Hunger Relief is one of the most successful hunger programs in the history of the world.  Which is why we’re called on to be generous with our gifts for Water to Thrive, a Lutheran ministry that’ll help to build wells in drought-stricken Ethiopia.

For just as we’re dependent on God for our daily bread, so we’re inter-dependent on each other.  There aren’t any farmers here in our congregation.  We depend on them, and upon the wholesaler, and upon the grocer.  And the hungry depend on us.  They depend on us for their daily bread, and they depend on us to do what we can to help break the cycle of poverty that got them there in the first place.  Which, of course, is what political power is all about.  And which is why it’s so important that we hold our elected officials to account when it comes to caring for the poor.

So, in the Last Judgment, we’re not going to be asked whether we were Republican or Democrat, whether we were conservative or liberal or moderate.  Nor will we be held accountable for the things we cannot change.  But we will be held accountable for what we could have done and didn’t do.  We will be held accountable for our role as individuals and as a congregation and as a nation in helping to feed the hungry and break the cycle of poverty in this place and in our time. 

Because the words of today’s psalm aren’t just for us.  There’s a greater vision here.  For the words of Psalm 145 are words that will someday be sung by all of God’s creatures gathered around the banquet table in his eternal kingdom.  It’s the banquet table that’s one of the most powerful images of eternity in the Scriptures.  And around this banquet table, all of God’s children will be able to sing the words of the old psalm:

They eyes of all look to you, and you give

(us our) food in due season.

you open your hand,

you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Amen.