An impossible problem. But...
A crowd of thousands followed Jesus into the countryside. There were no buildings in sight, no homes, no shops, no restaurants. The sun was beginning to set. And Jesus’s disciples noticed. They thought ahead, and they realized that they had a problem. All these thousands of people were going to need dinner.
And so they went to Jesus and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
And Jesus replied, “They need not go away. You give them something to eat.”
Did he not understand? There were thousands of people there.
“We have nothing here but five loaves of bread and two fish,” the disciples protest. You can almost hear them thinking. “Isn’t it obvious? Five loaves of bread can’t possibly feed more than five thousand people. This is an impossible problem.”
And the disciples are right, of course. They’re not being mean or stingy. They’re being sensible, thoughtful. Five loaves can’t feed five thousand. Their plan of sending the crowd to the neighboring towns is perfectly reasonable. They don’t have the resources to feed so many.
But still Jesus tells them to feed the crowd.
And we all know how the story ends. Jesus “blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.”
Let me tell you another story.
Many of us here remember where we were on September 11, 2001. I was at work in Washington, DC. We spent that day glued to the TV, horrified. There was nothing we could do.
But it was different for some people in New York City. If you know New York, you know that the island of Manhattan is long and narrow. The World Trade Center was near the island’s southern tip. The air was full of smoke and ash. Subways weren’t running. And hundreds of thousands of people were stranded. It was an impossible problem.
But there were boats in the harbor. Ferries and tugboats and private vessels headed to the shore and started picking people up. Then a Coast Guard Lieutenant made a radio call asking every available boat to assemble near a small island off the coast of New York City. More than a hundred vessels came, and then headed out to help. Their crews found people crowded onto piers and seawalls. They loaded whoever was waiting.
If you were in New York City on 9/11, out on a little sailboat that could hold six people, what could you do to solve such an impossible problem? Hundreds of thousands of trapped people?
In about nine hours, working together, boats carried roughly half a million people across the New York harbor to New Jersey, to Staten Island, to Brooklyn. It was an astonishing feat of coordination. Except that it wasn’t coordinated at all when it began.
It was an impossible problem. But they started.
Eleven years later, the city that had come together after 9/11 remembered what they’d learned that day.
Hurricane Sandy hit New York, shutting down power to much of the city. That’s a problem in a place that relies on elevators and water pumps to reach high floors. As soon as the storm passed, ordinary people started organizing. They didn’t take the time to set up a 501(c)(3). But they connected the networks they already had. Churches opened their buildings as hubs. They put out a call for volunteers. And within about a day, they were helping people in need. I lived in New York then, and I remember going to a church in Brooklyn to help. Every pew was full of donations. Toilet paper in one row, bottled water in the next, diapers in the one after that.
The volunteers who showed up didn’t have the resources to restore power or fix broken elevators and water pumps. But they could carry food, water, and medicine up the stairs. It was an impossible problem, but they started anyway. They reached the hardest-hit neighborhoods days ahead of more established relief organizations. And they helped a lot of people.
It was an impossible problem. But they started.
In both these stories, I hear an echo of Jesus’s command. “You, give them something to eat.”
9/11. Hurricane Sandy. These were historic events, major disasters, in a city far from here. But the same sort of thing happens closer to home and in smaller ways.
There’s a Facebook group called “Helping Humans MHK” where people who need groceries or a ride to the doctor ask for help every day – and get it.
And here this morning, many of you brought donations for the Flint Hills Breadbasket. Thousands of local families visit the Breadbasket every year, and the number is climbing fast.
Food insecurity is an impossible problem. What can a single can of food do in the face of so much need? Not much, maybe. Or maybe it’s the start of something that will feed thousands.
We might hear stories like the ones I’ve told today and decide that they aren’t about us. That they’re stories of people who are braver than we are, better organized than we are. That they’re stories about people who somehow knew at the beginning that what they were doing would work. But they didn’t know. They saw a need, took stock of what meager resources they had, and they started.
There are real problems in the world. The headlines are full of them. Earthquakes in Venezuela, refugees in Europe, people in our own town with nowhere to sleep at night. I know that last one is very real to many of us here. The problems in our world are real, impossible even. I certainly don’t know how to solve them.
We can read today’s Gospel and focus on the miracle. We can ask about the mechanics of multiplying bread. That’s appealing, I think, because it lets us off the hook. If this story is about something only Jesus can do, then our role is simply to watch. But Jesus doesn’t allow his disciples to stand by and watch.
The task may be impossible. We may not have nearly enough. We may not see the full road ahead of us.
But maybe what we’re supposed to do is start.
Because maybe Jesus is speaking to us, too: “You, give them something to eat.”
Cover image: Detail from Loaves and Fishes, by John August Swanson, via Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://act.library.vanderbilt.edu/artworks/56553. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson.