Proper 13 / Ordinary 18 (July 31-Aug 6)
Texts: Matthew 14:13-21;
Rom 9:1-5; Isa 55:1-5
YouTube: https://youtu.be/SGgG9TDdTzU
Sermon Take-Home Notes
Excerpt Page from John Dear
THE MIRACLE OF MULTIPLYING GENEROSITY
Twenty-six years ago, our group from Emmaus Lutheran flew into Tel Aviv, Israel. It was the trip of a lifetime. After six days in the Holy Land, we were going to Germany to see the most famous, nearly 400 year-old Passion Play in Oberammergau. It helped that my dear colleague, Mary Janz, had been a travel agent before becoming a pastor. Another memorable aspect of the trip was that my parents were on the trip. My mother had never been out of the United States, and my father had only been to Europe as part of the occupying force in 1946, when much of Europe was a bombed-out shell of itself. None of us had been to the Holy Land.
Tel Aviv is right on the Mediterranean Sea, and the June weather to begin our trip was delightful: sunny, 80 degrees, with a cool breeze off of the Sea. The tour bus took us north up the coast to the ruins of Caesarea, where Pontius Pilate and the other Roman governors of Judea spent most of their time. In the afternoon we began to move inland to briefly visit Nazareth, Jesus’s hometown. In the First Century, it had been nothing but a shanty town of impoverished Jews working in the wealthy nearby Greco-Roman city of Sepphoris. Today, because of Jesus, Sepphoris is nothing but an archeological site, and Nazareth is one of the larger cities in Israel. We also took a harrowing ride up Mt. Tabor — the bus couldn’t go all the up, so there were these little taxis that somewhat recklessly took us to the top — where the Transfiguration is believed to have taken place.
But the first big surprise of the trip came later in the afternoon as our bus made its way to our first stop, the Sea of Galilee, the main place of Jesus’s years of ministry. I’m a map and geography geek, so it was a shock to me that I had never realized this. I knew, for example, that the Dead Sea in Israel is the lowest point on earth, 1300 feet below sea level. But I’d never realized that the Sea of Galilee, joined to the Dead Sea by the Jordan River, is in the same trough below sea level. It’s up-river from the Dead Sea, and so 600 feet higher, but still 700 feet below sea level. That means as you’re approaching the Sea of Galilee from the rising plain of Megiddo, where Nazareth is, you suddenly find yourself at what looks like a deep crater in the earth with a big lake in the middle of it. In your Sermon Notes, you see one of the photos from our trip that I took, looking down at the Sea of Galilee from the plain, more than a thousand feet above. There’s also a topographical map showing the geography of the area.
But the reality of my personal experience as we descended down to the Sea of Galilee is that I remember the temperature rising about 10 degrees, and it was quite dry. We spent a couple of days or so around the Sea of Galilee, and here’s the thing: this is the point in our trip at which the tour guides kept warning us, over and over again: never leave the bus without food and water.
So here’s my question about Jesus feeding the multitude near the Sea of Galilee: why would so many people who lived in that space be there with Jesus that day without food and water? Us outlanders were careful never to wander out without something to eat or drink. So why would so many people who lived there and knew the terrain, why would so many be there that day empty-handed? The disciples said they could only rustle up five loves of bread and two fish.
Or did something else happen that day? Did many of them have food and water but were afraid to share? Then, when Jesus proceeded to bless the food as if there was an abundance, it opened their hearts to be able to share with one another. And, lo and behold, suddenly there was an abundance. Twelve baskets left over! (Remember that number 12, by the way, it’s important.)
Let me be clear: I’m not offering this other scenario because I’m reluctant to believe in miracles of suddenly and rather magically multiplying the food that was there. I’m offering this second scenario because I think it represents an even greater and more important miracle here. First of all, remember that the devil tempted Jesus to perform that kind of miracle. The first temptation in the wilderness was for Jesus to turn stones into bread. He refused. Would he turn around here and perform a similar miracle in this instance? Or is there an even more miraculous event at play here? Namely, the opening of the human heart from stinginess to generosity. And the opening of the human mind from scarcity-thinking — thinking that there’s not enough — to abundance-thinking.
There were some reasons for being reluctant to share. The first reason, which might not something we would realize, has to do with kosher laws. We’re more familiar with kosher laws as dictating what you can eat and what you can’t eat. For example, pork, unclean. Shellfish, unclean. Don’t eat these things. But kosher laws, perhaps more importantly, dictated who you could or couldn’t eat with. If you eat with ‘unclean’ people, it makes you ‘unclean’ (hence the Pharisees making a bid deal about Jesus eating with the wrong people, the ‘sinners and tax collectors’). Part of Jesus’ message adjusts the kosher thinking, especially at it pertains to other people. That we need to stop thinking of other people as unclean.
But Jesus came to adjust another aspect of our usual human thinking, which is the second reason why people that day might have been reluctant to share. The common human perception of scarcity, that there isn’t enough of what we need for all of us. Scarcity thinking is an age-old human problem. It’s at the heart of our human way of desiring that I’ve talked about in the last couple years. It’s called “mimetic desire,” where we catch our desires from each other. Think of the children fighting over one toy in a room full of toys. Since they catch their desire for that toy from each other, they perceive that one toy to be scarce. It’s no different for adults, “keeping up with the Jones.” But the things we perceive as scarce also get more abstract: wealth, power, prestige, knowledge. (It’s even represented in the story of falling into sin in Genesis 3. The serpent convinces the woman and man that knowledge is scarce and God is holding out on them. The fruit is desirable because it represents that scarce knowledge.)
We don’t think there’s enough for everyone, so there’s the tendency to see the things we desire as scarce. Do you see? The crucial thing, then, becomes who do you catch your desire from? Who modeled it to you? In our recent human history, given the freedom and productivity of capitalism, it has often been the wealthiest people at the top who model desiring to us. We want to be wealthy like them. And they model to us the hoarding of wealth and power and prestige, and we perceive it as scarce. Think of our situation today, how much power our billionaires have come to have. They tell us that the top one tenth of one percent of the population now controls more than half of the world’s wealth. When that level of hoarding takes place, there is a measure of scarcity that begins to happen, right?
But if there’s another model of desiring around generosity and abundance thinking, what could happen? Unfortunately, you and I don’t control the media, and especially commercials, where we are bombarded with models of desiring. We might see more things, for instance, like what Jeff shared us us at the beginning of worship, how Ed and John with help from others gathered a bunch of clothing and food to take up north to the tornado victims. There are so many examples among us of this kind of generosity.
Siblings in Christ, I lift up for you the chief example at the heart of our faith and life together. Jesus came to teach us that reality is actuality quite different. God created the world very good, with an abundance of what we need. The main difference between scarcity-thinking and abundance-thinking, then, is whom we choose as our model for desiring. Choose Jesus! Who first of all lived that generosity with everyone during his ministry. Such as this morning’s important miracle. Of which I ask again: is it a miracle of multiplying the food, or of multiplying the generosity in the human heart? Modeling for us abundance thinking and a way of living generously?
And we can conclude this morning by remembering what we do here each and every Sunday, as he hosts a meal for us and reminds us: Here’s my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you. Do this! Do this in remembrance of me! Do this generosity. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, August 2, 2026
YouTube: https://youtu.be/SGgG9TDdTzU
Sermon Take-Home Notes
Excerpt Page from John Dear
