Several years ago, a proposal was made to remove tax exempt status from our churches. The next Sunday at homily time, our pastor was more fired up than I’d ever seen him; after preaching against the proposal, he practically demanded that every member of the parish vote against it. What puzzled me is that I’d never seen the pastor nearly so fired up about Jesus, saving souls, or even church attendance.
Why is it that even in our churches, money seems more important than Jesus? When there is a problem, why is it that we first seek a financial solution rather than a “Jesus solution.”
Jesus wasn’t that way. He had an impossible problem on his hand. A crowd of about 15,000 people were with him and it was past dinner time. No local pizza places in the vicinity or catering services. How would he feed them? As an effective administrator, he delegated this to his staff members (Mark 6:34-44).
Let’s listen in.
“By now it was already late and his disciples approached him and said, ‘This is a deserted place and it is already very late. Dismiss them so they can go to the surrounding farms and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”
Did you catch that? The staff members are telling the boss what to do. Their solution was to “end class” and send the 15,000 people out to fend for themselves. Jesus made it clear that he was running the show.
“He said to them in reply, ‘Give them some food yourselves.’” What! Jesus you must be out of your mind. Did he really expect these nincompoops to come up with a strategy for doing the impossible?
“But they said to him, ‘Are we to buy two hundred days’ wages worth of food to give it to them to eat?’”
Remember most of the apostles were businessmen and were pretty good at math. 15,000 people at $2 a person would cost them $30,000 divided by $150 would amount to 200 days wages. They did the math and concluded that the problem couldn’t be solved.
“He asked them, ‘How many loaves do you have? Go and see.’ And when they had found out they said, ‘Five loaves and two fish.’ So, he gave orders to have them sit down in groups on the green grass.’”
What confidence Jesus had. Jesus didn’t bother doing the math; he simply told them to organize the people in groups. He didn’t look at their meager supply of food nor their almost-empty treasury. As he always did, Jesus looked to his heavenly Father.
“Then, taking the five loaves and two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; he also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied.”
Jesus knew that his Father could take a small seed and make a huge tree of it. He then put his disciples to work serving tables. There was no scrimping– everyone was satisfied.
How did he do this? He just put a loaf of bread in God’s hand and trusted. The one who created the whole universe out of nothing would certainly have no problem in feeding a hillside full of hungry people. Jesus knew that “nothing is impossible with God.”
We are even more startled to read.
“And they picked up twelve wicker baskets full of fragments…”
When we give God all we have, though it seems little, he is quite able to take care of the rest. He is a God of abundance.
Like the disciples, we tend to look to money and our own resources rather than to the power of our heavenly Father. I wonder what would happen if every Catholic parish began first to look to Jesus instead of their bank accounts to solve their problems? I wonder what would happen if we got into the habit of turning over all our predicaments to Jesus and doing what he tells us.
