Matthew 14: 13-21 On Beyond Ourselves

Have you experienced a crisis? Or maybe you have encountered circumstances that overwhelmed you? Perhaps you have looked upon a task and thought, “there is no way I can do that, that is impossible.” “I don’t have the skills.” “I don’t have the talent.”

We all know we have limitations. No matter how hard I flap my arms, I can’t fly. No matter how much I study, I will never know everything. No matter how long I hang upside down hoping to grow a few inches, I will never be 6’5’’. We all know there are things that we simply cannot do.

The disciples confronted something that they simply could not do in our Gospel reading today. No matter how hard they tried they could not feed the thousands of people who had gathered to hear Jesus speak with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. It was impossible. So they went to Jesus with a solution to the crowd’s hunger. They told Jesus that he should send the crowds into the city so that they could purchase their own meals there.

But Jesus said “no” and told them to feed the people. Confused and probably a little frustrated the disciples told Jesus that they only had 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. What part of “you can’t feed thousands of people with a meal for 15, did Jesus not understand? There was no way that they could feed the people. It was impossible.

But Jesus said, “bring them here.” Jesus blessed the 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish and gave it to the disciples to distribute. . . and when they were done, there was 12 baskets of food remaining.

The disciples could not see beyond themselves. They could not see God standing right next to them desiring to do something great with that limited amount of food.

Jesus took the impossible and made it possible. He took something that the disciples believed was hopeless and made it a reality. God took the disciples beyond themselves and accomplished something that no one thought possible. God prompts us to do the same. . . to let him do amazing and miraculous things with our lives. We must be willing to go beyond our perceived limitations, however. We must be willing to believe that God can do amazing things with us. That God can destroy our limitations.

The Dr. Seuss story On Beyond Zebra! urges readers to imagine life beyond the boundaries that others have placed on them or perhaps beyond the boundaries that we have placed on ourselves. Most people confine the English alphabet to 26 letters, with Z almost always standing for “Zebra.” But not the person who was teaching Conrad O’Dell to spell:

Said Conrad Cornelius O’Donald O’Dell,
My very young friend who is learning to spell:
“The A is for Ape. And the B is for Bear.
The C is for Camel. The H is for Hare.
The M is for Mouse. And the R is for Rat.
I know all the 26 letters like that. . . ”
And I said, “You can stop, if you want, with Z
Because most people stop with Z.
But not me!”

Little Conrad’s teacher then goes on to introduce Conrad to a whole new world that he’d never imagined before. The teacher introduces letters such as Glikk and Snee and Thnad, and characters such as Sneedles and Nutches and Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs. Conrad’s teacher destroys the boundaries that he had set up and pushes him to explore deeper and to dream bigger.

What happens when we go “on beyond Zebra”. . . or step outside of the boundaries and limitations that we have placed on ourselves. What happens when we do not see Z as the end of the alphabet. We open ourselves up to a whole new world of possibilities through God’s work in our lives. We begin to understand that God is big enough to make our 5 loaves and 2 fish feed thousands of people.

God is capable of taking us to places and heights that we could have never imagined, but we must be willing to go. We must be willing to go beyond ourselves and enter into a limitless world in which God is in control. . . where all things are possible. Where mountains can be moved. Where walls can be toppled by trumpet sounds. Where the blind see and the deaf hear. Where the dead rise again.

We must be willing to let go. To open ourselves up to the possibility that God can take imperfect and broken people like ourselves and use us to accomplish amazing things.

A young, new priest was walking with an older, more seasoned priest in the garden one day. Feeling a bit insecure about what God had for him to do, he was asking the older priest for some advice. The older priest walked up to a rose bush and handed the young priest a rosebud and told him to open it without tearing any of the petals. The young priest looked in disbelief at the older priest and was trying to figure out what a rosebud could possibly have to do with his wanting to know the will of God for his life and ministry. But, because of his great respect for the older priest, he proceeded to try and unfold the rosebud while keeping every petal intact.

It wasn't long before he realized how impossible this was to do. Noticing the young priest's inability to unfold the rosebud without tearing it, the older priest began to recite the following poem:
It is only a tiny rosebud
A flower of God's design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine.
The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so sweetly,
Then, in my hands, they die.
If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
The flower of God's design,
Then how can I have the wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?
So, I'll trust in Him for leading
Each moment of my day.
I will look to Him for His guidance
Each step of the Pilgrim's way
The pathway that lies before me
Only my Heavenly Father knows.
I'll trust him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.

Our lives are like this rose. If we keep control of them and don’t appreciate them for their uniqueness and fragility, we will fail to fully realize their beauty. Our lives will fall apart in our hands. We will limit are ability to do great things.

We must go beyond ourselves and dwell in the limitless and miraculous presence of God. Only God can unlock the amazing nature of this world and our potential. Only in God’s presence will we fully recognize who we are as creatures created in the image of God himself. Only through God will we be able to feed thousands of people with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.

Psalm: 139 - Hope and the God Who Gives It

There were once two identical twins. They were alike in every way but one. One was a hope-filled optimist who only ever saw the bright side of life. The other was a dark pessimist, who only ever saw the down side in every situation.

The parents were so worried about the extremes of optimism and pessimism in their boys they took them to the Doctor. He suggested a plan. "On their next birthday give the pessimist a shiny new bike, but give the optimist only a pile of manure."

It seemed a fairly extreme thing to do. After all the parents had always treated their boys equally. But in this instance they decided to try to Doctor's advice. So when the twins birthday came round they gave the pessimist the most expensive, top of the range, racing bike a child has ever owned. When he saw the bike his first words were, "I'll probably crash and break my leg."

To the optimist they gave a carefully wrapped box of manure. He opened it, looked puzzled for a moment, then ran outside screaming, "You can't fool me! Where there's this much manure, there's just gotta be a pony around here somewhere!"

The twin that was the optimist saw hope even in difficult circumstances.

As Christians we are given this firm and unchanging hope. A hope that provides us light even in darkness.

In Psalm 139, our first reading today, the psalmist is proclaiming the amazing nature of God and what it means to be God’s creation. Beautifully made. Artfully crafted. Brilliantly conceived. And the psalmist continues by pointing out God’s presence wherever we are. . . but most importantly the psalmist points out God’s amazing interest in us. How He has made each one of us unique and special. . . and how he cares deeply about who we are. Yes, it sounds simple, but God knows each of us intimately. He knows those things about us that no one else knows. He understands our fears. He sees our insecurities. He watches our failures. He witnesses our sins. He participates in our joys.

And the remarkable thing is that he never leaves us. He stays right with us where we are. He loves us regardless of anything we could do. We are his creation and there is nothing that we can do to prevent God from loving us.

As a creator of his creation, God knows how we work. Each of us individually. He knows what we need.

Take for instance a car. Who knows the most about a car. It’s owner? I don’t think so. How about the guy at the oil change place? Probably not. The mechanic? Maybe, but I don’t think so. So who? The designer, the maker, the creator of the car knows the most about it. He saw the car before it was assembled, when it was just bits and pieces. He knows how it all came together. He knows exactly how the parts fit and knows what is needed when something is missing.

God is our designer, maker, and creator. He knows our ins and our outs. He knows who we are at much deeper level than any human could. And He desires for us to know and receive his love. He desires for us to be released emotionally from our hardships and experience glorious freedom.

This is why God gave us His son, Jesus. He not only wanted to provide a perfect example for Godly living, but he wanted to demonstrate his love for us. Regardless of how humans had responded to him in the past, God allowed Jesus to die on the cross. Not for His own sake, but for ours.

God offered and offers us hope in a fallen world. As we are surrounded by violence and evil on the news and in our own lives, we are left wondering how can we hope, what good can come of any of this. . . but God continually knocks on the door to our hearts. . . We are His creation. . . He loves us deeply. . . He wants in. . . and He wants to give us hope.

Not only has God created us and knows what we need, but we have a God-shaped whole in each of us. We may not know it, but it is there. Each of us has a yearning for the divine. To experience unconditional, authentic, and pure love.

C.S. Lewis, a great Christian thinker, suggested that all our desires, all our human appetites, are reminders of our ultimate hunger for God. Our sexual desires, our food desires, our desire for meaning and purpose, our work desires, all point to a deeper longing to feel God’s embrace, God’s gentle caress.

I think that out of our sadness, and our hurt, and our pain. . . we desire something authentic and true. We continually try things of this world to fill our God shaped hole. But nothing fits. It is like sticking square pegs in a round hole. Nothing quite fills the hole. We may use money, or drugs, or other people hoping that they will make us feel better, but the truth is we never feel at peace.

Nothing in this world is perfect enough. . . no one in this world knows us well enough. . . to fill us up. Our God, our maker and creator is the only solution to our difficulty. We must open ourselves up and allow God’s goodness and peace to patch our holes.

And we must maintain hope that God has secured for us a better and perfect place with Him in heaven.

In God’s new world God will not only be closer than the air we breathe but we will experience God as closer than the air we breathe.

While a student at theological college in the United States a well-known theologian was playing basketball with some friends. They were using the court at a nearby school, where a friendly old janitor would patiently wait until they had finished their game before locking up. One day the theologian noticed the janitor was reading the bible. In fact he discovered the old janitor was reading the Book of Revelation.

The theologian was surprised. It was a difficult book to interpret even for highly trained bible students! "Do you understand it?" asked the theologian.

"Oh yes, I understand it" the janitor replied.

Now the theologian was really intrigued. Here was this book that baffled scholars, that was the focus of every conspiracy theory known to humanity, and this old man, a janitor with little formal education, claimed to understand it!

"You understand the Book of Revelation?! What do you think it means?" asked the theologian.

The old man looked up at him and very quietly said, "It means that Jesus is gonna win."

The Christian faith is not about complex theology or about mathematical formulas. It is simply a matter of a Creator who loves his creation so deeply that He draws us to Him hoping that we will accept His beautiful and precious gifts to us.

This is the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. No matter our pain. No matter our hurt. No matter our injuries. No matter our sadness, our difficulty, our strife. God promises us that if we trust him and have faith in his plan. We will win. We will be with Him in the end. We will experience His divine goodness.

God gives us hope. In this hope we can find rest and in this hope we can find truth.