Last week Pastor Stephanie said something in her sermon that I can’t get out of my head. And I will say that sermon was incredibly timely and relevant, and if you haven’t listened to it, you should. But the thing I can’t get out of my head, and definitely not the main takeaway of last week’s sermon, but Pastor Stephanie said: Jesus loves a good party. Ever since she said it, I cannot unsee it. Whenever I opened my Bible this week, I seem to have found Jesus gathered around another meal.
We have been noticing that pattern throughout these weeks of Lent.
On Ash Wednesday we heard the parable of the great banquet, where the invitation keeps widening until there is room for everyone at the table. Two weeks ago we heard the story of water turning into wine at a wedding feast, when Jesus quietly transforms a moment of scarcity into an overflowing celebration. Just last Sunday when we heard from Pastor Stephanie that Jesus loves a good dinner party, it was from the story of Jesus attending a Pharisee’s dinner, where a woman kneels at his feet and washes them with her tears in an act of great love.
And the gathering around a meal continues again this week.
As told in the Gospel of Mark, the disciples have returned from traveling and teaching in the surrounding villages, and Jesus invites them to come away to a quiet place to rest. However, the crowds see where the disciples are going and arrive ahead of them. Before long, thousands of people have gathered in this deserted place. Although it is no longer quiet nor deserted like the disciples intended.
As evening falls, the crowd of thousands begins to feel hungry. And the disciples think of a practical solution: it’s time to end the teachings to the crowd and send them on their way to find their own food and shelter.
But Jesus won’t have it that way. He gives the disciples the directive that they will feed the crowds. They are told to go and see what they have, and they find five loaves and two fish. Hardly enough for a crowd like this.
But Jesus gathers the people into groups on the grass, blesses the bread and the fish, and places the food into the hands of the disciples to distribute. What begins with five loaves and two fish becomes enough for everyone. The crowd eats, the people are satisfied, and when the meal is finished the disciples gather twelve baskets worth of leftovers.
Our Lenten small groups are reading a story this week that sounds surprisingly similar.
A few months ago, a small coffee shop in Portland, Oregon, Heretic Coffeeshop[1] learned that many people in their neighborhood were about to lose access to food assistance through SNAP benefits. The owners looked around their café and realized something obvious. They had food. They had a kitchen. They had the ability to cook breakfast.
So they decided that if people in their community were going hungry due to the government shutdown, they would begin offering free breakfast to anyone who needed it. They call it the SNAP breakfast.
But small local coffee shops do not usually have the resources to give away food and feed large numbers of people every day. In fact, when Heretic Coffeeshop first shared the plan, some people warned them that the café might not survive financially if they tried to do something like this.
But instead of abandoning the idea, the community offered to help.
They started a fundraiser, hoping to gather enough support to make the breakfasts possible, and within a short time neighbors, customers, and strangers from across the country had contributed more than $184,000 so the café could keep feeding people who needed a meal.
Two stories that begin in remarkably similar ways: large crowds of people who are hungry with just a little food to offer. And yet in both stories something unexpected begins to happen: when people begin sharing what they have, the food somehow never seems to run out.
It is easy to look at overwhelming needs and see only the problems forming. But this story is just as much about Jesus’ directive to the disciples to feed the crowds, to trust in God’s provision and abundance, as it is about everyone in the crowd being fed.
To the disciples Jesus says: “You give them something to eat.”
To be a disciple of Christ is to notice when people are hungry, to see the needs of the people around us, and to take responsibility for everyone in the community rather than assuming someone else will take care of them.
That invitation is not limited to that hillside in Galilee, to that one moment where the 5000 gathered. It echoes across every generation in the church.
Because the truth is that we often find ourselves living in moments that feel very similar to the one the disciples faced. We look around at the needs of the world and wonder how anything we can offer could possibly be enough.
We see communities struggling with hunger and poverty. We see violence and fear shaping the life of nations. We see the suffering unfolding in places like Burma and in the Middle East, where ordinary people, families, children, neighbors, find themselves caught in cycles of conflict and war and grief that feel impossibly large.
And even closer to home, communities of faith like ours find themselves asking honest questions about what the future holds and how they will continue caring for the people God has placed before them.
Into all of those moments, the words of Jesus are still clear: “You give them something to eat.”
Following Christ means trusting that when we begin with compassion and share what we have, God has a way of making something that seems impossible, possible.
Which is why the prayer we heard from Ephesians reads more like a promise meant for communities of faith like ours. The author prays that the church would be strengthened inwardly by the Spirit, that Christ would dwell among them, and that together they would begin to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love.
The passage is praying for the church. Not for a building nor an institution but for a community of people trying to follow Christ together.
And then the prayer concludes with these words: “Now to Christ who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
More than we can ask. More than we can imagine.
This promise matters in moments like the one our congregation finds itself in now.
Last week we began a conversation about the future of our church. Many of us stayed after worship to participate in the town hall conversation hosted by our Session, and in the coming weeks we will continue gathering for listening sessions where we share our hopes, questions, and prayers for where God may be leading this community next. Those conversations are faithful work. They require honesty, patience, and trust. They invite us to listen carefully to one another and to the Spirit as we discern the path ahead.
But this moment is not only about asking questions about the past. It is also a moment that invites us to dream.
The Feeding of the 5000 and the prayer in Ephesians remind us that the life of the church is not limited by the size of our imagination. God is able to accomplish far more than we ask or imagine, which means communities of faith are invited to dream beyond what feels standard or predictable.
This is a beautiful moment in the life of this congregation, not because every answer is already clear, but because we are being invited together into the holy work of imagining what God might still do through this community. Moments like this give the church permission to dream again.
Dream about what God might still be calling First Presbyterian Church to become. Dream about the ways this congregation might continue feeding people who are hungry: for food, for belonging, or for hope. Dream about the ways our life together might continue to serve our neighbors and the Valley in ways we have not yet imagined.
We are not called to dream little dreams when we follow a God who promises to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine.
The disciples did not begin that day on the hillside knowing how the story would end. They began with doubt and seeing what they had as limits. But with a call to discipleship, they trusted the invitation of Christ and participated in the care of the people in front of them. Because somehow, in the hands of Christ, what began with five loaves and two fish became enough for everyone.
That is the miracle inside of this story. There is enough for everyone.
So as we continue our own conversations about the future of this congregation, we do not need to begin by asking whether we have enough. We go and see what we do have.
We begin by asking different questions. What do we have? What gifts has God already placed in the hands of this community? What compassion has already taken root here? What faith has already been nurtured here? What relationships have already been formed here?
When communities begin there, when we begin with what God has already given and share it with the people around us, something powerful can happen. The impossible becomes possible.
And then we dream.
God is able to accomplish more than we can ask or imagine or dream. The Spirit of Christ is still at work among our community as we place what we have into God’s hands and trust that somehow, in ways we cannot yet see, there will be more than enough.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
As our congregation dreams about our future, what hope do you carry for what God might do through this community?
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[1] https://abcnews.com/GMA/Living/portland-coffeeshop-raises-184k-free-breakfast-snap/story?id=126951978