Preached at St. Paul's Lutheran, Maynard, August 6, 2023
Abundance over scarcity.
Scarcity is a real fear, especially in rural, agricultural communities. There are fewer things. Fewer opportunities in our towns, in our schools, in our churches. Fewer people. Less and less.
When I was a pastor in NW Minnesota, I did a little research in our church history books. I looked at the year when church attendance peaked in our congregation. An average of 430 people every Sunday in 1965. At the time (in 2016), average attendance had fallen under 100. So, I went back into the church council minutes to see how the church felt about all of its growth in 1965. Surely, they were basking in the glow of all those baby boomers, thrilled at all the vibrant ministries possible with over four times as many people as would eventually be there?
Not so much.
The Luther League report read much like a youth report in 2023: There was not enough engagement with the young people, it said. Young people needed to be more involved in the church, they worried.
Those Lutherans couldn’t see abundance when it was staring them in the face. The truth is: There would never be enough to satisfy.
Our churches have drifted in the same thinking that drives capitalism—the premise that everything must grow in perpetuity in order for us to strive. And capitalism may well be the best of all the dismal economic systems we have developed as human beings, but God’s economy does not work like this. God’s economy is nonsense to all our sensibilities. God’s economy suggests something absolutely startling:
The problem is not that we have too little; the problem is that we still have too much.
God’s economy is Jesus, taking a look at the five thousand men (plus women and children) and saying, “Five loaves? Two fish? That’s plenty!” After all, we are dealing with a God who spoke the world into being with words. A few loaves and fish are more than enough.
For us to participate in God’s economy, we have to give—our selves, our money, our time—until there is nothing left. This is why in another story we have a rich man who comes to Jesus looking to justify himself only to go away disappointed. He followed the laws. He obeyed the commandments. But he was lacking one crucial detail: He had things.
Faith is only faith when all the other things that we are really trusting in are cast aside.
As usual, I am mostly preaching to myself this morning, because I was born in 1986 and in the 37 years of my life, the ELCA has declined in numbers every single year. Since the pandemic, many churches have fewer people around. At Ewalu, we have fewer campers around. The landscape has changed swiftly. When I was ordained in 2011, I waited five months for a first-call. Now, I had a lot going for me—I mean, I don’t know if I was a particularly good pastoral candidate, but I was single, male, white, straight. The grand slam that would offend nobody in any church. In 2011, there were exactly as many pastors graduating seminary (211) as there were calls open to first-call pastors (211). In 2023, seminary graduates are roughly half that and open calls have ballooned.
It is entirely likely if you are under 65 years old, you have never experienced a church that is growing in worship attendance.
All of this is to say that it is incredibly easy to be scarcity people. There is less and less and less every year. Or it feels that way.
Clearly, we are not Jesus, who can do so much with so little. But I don’t believe we are the recipients of that feast either. Yes, we ought to remember that Jesus can do much with so little. Yes, our problem is still that we have too much. But man, that doesn’t sound like good news, does it? Like the rich man who came to Jesus, we would do well to give more away—more of our time, our talents, our gifts—but we can’t give it all away, can we? That is the harsh word of the law and what Jesus demands: Give everything. But shoot, that is kind of depressing, isn’t it? Not only do we feel we have less and less; we also feel we have less to give; and we feel even less capable of giving it away.
This is where we stand, feeling the weight of scarcity UNTIL we consider a vitally important question: “Where are we in this story?” Where are we in the feeding of the 5000? We are not Jesus, clearly. But are we the people—hungry and with little to offer? Or are we the bread and the fish—provisions for a needy world? In some ways, we may be both hungry people and the food to feed them, but I believe that most of us are neither the hungry people nor the bread and fish. But we ARE in the story.
You and me? We are the broken pieces.
We are the bits of bread and fish gathered together that are more than they started with.
We are the broken pieces, because we see a world that appears to be spread thinner and thinner, but we cannot see the whole picture. In fact, we can see very little of what Jesus is doing. We are only ever feeding one person here, another there. On our own, we are not enough. And yet, by some mystery, our whole is greater than the sum of our parts. We are broken for the sake of those who need it, but that act of breaking does not destroy us. In fact, that breaking is the only hope we have.
I see it at camp every single year, every single week. We are an ecosystem full of broken people. By this point of the summer, literally broken people—like a broken foot here, a broken thumb there. Exhausted, humbled, broken people. But the broken pieces are where you will find God’s handiwork. The broken pieces are evidence of the proclamation of God’s grace. You can’t follow after Christ without breaking apart. You can’t rise without dying. This is the paradox of the Christian faith. The less you have, the more capacity you have for God’s grace to fill you.
The problem is not that we have too little; it’s that we are holding on to too much.
So, we break apart, and that’s when God puts us to use. When we admit we are not enough, we discover that God is.
So, what to do with all this—what nuggets of wisdom to take away—how then shall we live?
I suspect it’s pretty simple: Be open to being broken open, because God will do just that. Be put to use. Do not be afraid to be broken pieces. Broken pieces are the surest evidence of good work, after all. But also, and this is probably an important point in a broken world, don’t let others break you. Instead, choose to break for the sake of those you care about—for the sake of those who need you.
There is no need to pretend that we have it all together, because nobody in this story does. Jesus does everything with nothing. We, in turn, are called to remember that our problem is not that we have too little; it’s that there is too much in the way for us to see God at work.
My prayer is that we all let go. That we break—willingly and completely. Because I have found, whether at camp or at church or in the lives of my children, that the most meaningful moments happen when we just let go—when we break apart and let someone in.
May you be broken and discover your worth—and may you be healed by Jesus Christ, who is broken for you.
