"The Little Boy Who Shared His Lunch"

John 6:1-13

July 24, 2011

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

The story of the little boy who shared his lunch with Jesus and the miracle that generosity made possible is one of the most familiar and beloved pictures in all the Bible. We have heard it so many times that I doubt any of us expect to discover anything new in the story that might have special relevance to our lives today. Better to keep it as one of those childhood stories remembered with nostalgia but left behind in the press and demand of adult life.

I felt that way, too, until recently. But the Bible has a way of taking us by surprise. We think we have “heard it all before” and then – suddenly – some startling revelation leaps out of the page. The old, old story suddenly becomes a new story, our story. New light is thrown on a dark corner of human life and we have to decide how we will respond.

Now that I have whetted your curiosity – at least, I hope I have! – what was it I discovered in this oh-so-familiar story? We remember all the details, don’t we? Jesus is teaching on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. Then as now, that area is a fertile albeit narrow plain under the shadow of the Golan Heights. Several thousand people have come from the villages in the area to hear Jesus.

Concerned that sooner or later the people will need to be fed, Jesus remarks to his disciples that they ought to make some plans to feed them. The disciples point out to Jesus that it would take far more money than they have to feed such a crowd. It is at this point that one of the disciples, Andrew, tells Jesus: “There is a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what good will they do among so many?” And then, of course, follows the miracle. Whether we take the traditional view that Jesus in a miraculous and magical way actually “multiplied” the loaves and fishes or accept the liberal view that the little boy’s act of generosity inspired others to share what they had with those around them, the result was the same: all were fed and there was plenty to spare.

But did that little boy actually offer to give up his lunch? That was the startling new insight that jumped off the page. The Gospel writer certainly implies that the little boy willingly gave his lunch to Jesus. Probably that is the correct interpretation. But I could not help but wonder. The text is more than a little ambiguous. Who knows what really went on? I don’t mean to suggest that Andrew snatched it out of his hands but if the boy was like most kids I know he may well have been showing his lunch around. “Look what I brought!" There may even have been some childish pride in the fact that he had come prepared and the adults had not. “Come here, son,” says Andrew, “We can use your lunch. Let Jesus have it!” And in what may have been either a response of childish generosity or childish subservience to a more powerful adult, the little boy lost his lunch.

Let’s try to stay centered on that moment when the lunch was lost. Let’s not try to soften or sentimentalize it by telling ourselves: “Well, after all, he really didn’t lose his lunch, did he? He got fed along with everyone else just a few minutes later.” Let’s remind ourselves that children live in the moment. Past and future have very little meaning for them. As far as this little boy was concerned, his lunch was gone. Whether through foolish generosity or fearful weakness, he had lost it.

Trying to imagine how he felt at that moment, can you and I recall similar moments in our own childhood when we – willingly or not – were compelled to sacrifice something we wanted or needed for the sake of adults? Perhaps the adults in question were kind when they took what we had. Perhaps they just took it because they had the power to do so. The result was the same. What was ours was now theirs and we were left feeling hurt, angry, confused, deprived.

Can we get in touch with a memory like that from our own past? If not, can we imagine how it would feel to a child to suffer such a loss? Several years ago, some of us were hooked on the continuing saga of the Bellamy family on “Masterpiece Theater.” I recall one episode where Georgina, a young, naïve, but generous-spirited member of the Bellamy clan, decides to surprise the poor family of one of her housemaids by taking them Christmas dinner. The housemaid is rather uncomfortable with this plan and, later, we learn why. When Georgina and the housemaid arrive at the filthy and squalid room where the family lives, the father snatches the food from their hands and gobbles it down like an animal, knocking the members of his family away.

“How awful,” we think to ourselves. “How could any decent person do something like that to a child?” How, indeed? And yet something very much like that is happening every day in our country and you and I and millions of other adults are snatching the food and many other good things away from children. Today, thousands and thousands of Americans are living in poverty and the majority of them are children. I have heard it suggested that 20% of American children are living in poverty. One in every five children! Many of them are always hungry, undernourished and malnourished. Most of them receive little if any medical or dental care. Many of them live constantly under the threat of violence and other abuse. Many of them will never receive an adequate education or other childhood experiences that would prepare them for useful and happy adult lives. As time moves relentlessly on, millions of our nation’s children will become part of a new “lost generation,” a bitter, angry, alienated underclass for which our nation will pay a terrible price for decades to come. We are in the process of destroying what President Herbert Hoover called “children . . . our greatest national resource.”

And who is to blame for this? We all are. We have taken children’s lunches as well as their breakfasts and dinners and much else. As a nation we have unfairly shifted our concern from the young to the old, from the weak to the strong, from the poor to the well-off and rich. As adults we have whined about high taxes and governmental programs and our political leaders have gotten the message. Children are expendable. Private charities and local efforts have tried to fill the yawning gap but the need is simply too great.

Is there any hope that the bleak prospects for the future of America’s children can be avoided? I’m not sure. Sometimes things have to become much worse before they become better. I could wish that our consciences would be stung, our compassion touched, but I also know enough of human nature to know that we have so many ways to hide from painful truths about ourselves. Still, as the stories mount around us of what children are suffering, I hope that we will soften our hard hearts before God hardens them further and sends terrible plagues upon us as a nation.

To return to the story of that little boy and his lost lunch, I cannot believe for a moment that Jesus (who loved children and deeply cared about what happened to them) would have participated for one moment in taking this boy’s food. Do you remember the line in the story before Andrew brought him the boy’s lunch? “Jesus knew what he was going to do.” Forgive me for being an old-fashioned liberal but I believe Jesus knew that he was going to challenge the people gathered around him to be generous and compassionate. He knew that all of them had more than enough food tucked away in pockets and pouches to feed themselves and share with others. In offering them the broken pieces of the little boy’s lunch, Jesus was calling on them all to participate in a sacrament of sharing. If they could not be shamed or inspired by this little boy’s loss, what hope was there for them?

Thank God, they responded. They did the right thing. What could have been a moment of minor tragedy became a moment of tremendous victory. Most wonderful of all, when the people left the mountain that day, they did not congratulate themselves on what they had done but what God had done. They felt closer to God than they had ever felt before in their lives.

Friends, that same feeling can be ours. Personally, I doubt very much that all the selfish seeking after spirituality going on around us these days will prove to be of any lasting worth or value. If we want to feel close to God, truly be God’s people, then the only way is the way Jesus taught us and showed us in his own life: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, taking care of the sick, visiting the criminals, loving and caring for the children. And the moment to begin to share what we have is now.

Loving God, hold before our unwilling eyes we pray the image of children suffering today even as we sit here – children who will not be able to share in the lunch that follows this service, children who will not know when the next meal is coming, children who do not have happy homes and happy faces. Dear God, in Jesus we have been taught that we must love children, for in them we see you.

Help us to open our hearts, our minds, our hands, everything that we have and are, so that children may indeed know the love of God which you have for us and for all people, for we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.