I reached a milestone this past week (and please hold your applause). I filled the tank of my almost compact car ... and for the very first time the odometer on the gas pump kachinked to $70.00. Relatively speaking, that didn't bother me as much as my worst day at the gas pump. It was a sunny day in Carolina and I was a college student, preparing for seminary. Some friends and I were returning to campus following a three day retreat, just cruising along a country road. I saw a lonely gas pump offering gas at twenty-one cents a gallon. No garage. No attendant. Just a pump where you put in dollar bills one at a time, depending on how much gas you want to purchase. I was driving a real gas guzzler and since gasoline was going for an average of twenty-eight cents a gallon, I pulled up to the pump. Since I was preparing for seminary, and in order to practice for my career, I turned to my passengers and took an offering. I then walked over to the pump and slid three well-worn one dollar bills into the machine and began pumping. Knowing me as well as you do, you might guess this did not go well. The tank topped out at one-dollar-and-seventy-six cents. I had wasted a dollar twenty-four. In those poverty stricken student days, a dollar twenty-four was significant. So when the pump kachinked to $70.00 a few days ago, it was not pleasant; but neither was it my worst day at the pump.

I suppose gas prices are nothing to joke about. Prices in general. Some pastors are worried that too much paid at the pump will cause parishioners to cut back at the plate: not the dinner plate, the offering plate. I have no such worries at Grace ... this is such a generous congregation that if people do find they have to cut back, it may well be in terms of dining out and not at the offering plate. You recognize that when we come to Grace ... grace comes to us. Sure we offer only small potions of bread and wine - but when that bread and wine is experienced as Jesus well, indeed we are well fed. And though this economy is affecting some of you more than others, I trust none of us is really impoverished.

A well known preacher with the improbable name of King Duncan, compiled a list of ten ways to know that you're broke. Here a few: American Express calls and says: "Leave home without it!" Long distance companies don't call you to switch anymore. You rob Peter ... and then rob Paul. At Communion you go back for seconds. And one so appropriate as we think about this Wednesday at Grace, you give blood often, just for the orange juice. I'm sure all of us can relate even as none of us it truly living in poverty. A more realistic assessment is that many of us are reluctant to acknowledge how well off we are and so we cultivate what one person has called "a mentality of scarcity." Relatively speaking in relation to the rest of humanity, our cups overflow.

"A mentality of scarcity." A bit of this might have been going on in our Gospel text, as the disciples are on the cusp of learning a marvelous lesson about the ways of Jesus. Jesus serves up a miracle - a miracle so central to our faith and lifestyle, that all four Gospel writers recognize that centrality and see fit to pass the story along. And the miracle has nothing to do with withered arms and blinded eyes. Nothing to do with ears that cannot hear nor legs that cannot stand on their own two feet. The miracle is about a picnic lunch with a few small loaves of bread and even fewer fish. And a picnic lunch becomes a banquet for 5,000!

Now the main point of this miracle story is how it was that Jesus brought about the miracle. It is late afternoon and the people are getting restless and the disciple inform Jesus it's time to call it a day; time to send the crowds home to their own dinner tables. The dinner bell is calling, the people are hungry, so send them away. Once Jesus was speaking to some adults and some children were crowding in and the disciples wanted to send the children away. Why do the followers of Jesus sometimes so misinterpret that they find it easier to dismiss people than to deal with them? Something for we latter day Christians to continually keep in mind. As well as the response of Jesus; this we always must remember: "Hey, don't send them packing; you give them something to eat." That's the key. This is no rehash of the wandering Israelites in Sinai when God provided manna from heaven. "You give them something to eat!" Don't look to God to help; don't look to the government, "You give them something to eat!" Certainly we who live in the richest and most generous of nations, certainly our government can help feed the hungry in a way unheard of in the days of Jesus. But that's beside the point this morning. The disciples wanted to dismiss the people. Jesus wants to distribute the food: "You give them something to eat!"

You can almost picture the disciples scanning the crowd like anxious FBI agents, coming to the conclusion that five-loaves-and-two fish won't cut the mustard. But Jesus takes that bread and those fish, and blesses them. Nothing is impossible, the disciples are soon to learn, absolutely nothing is impossible when it comes to sharing meager resources which have been blessed by Jesus! Sure, the crowd this day on the shore is large. This the disciples see. Their resources for feeding the crowd are small. This the disciples know. However, they fail to remember this basic truth, a truth that sometimes eludes even us: when God's children hunger, God hungers too. This is what the Christian faith teaches about our God. We stub our toe and our God says "ouch"; we stub our hearts and our God feels the pain - and shares it. For our God has walked in our shoes. Our God has died the death we one day shall partake. Our God has overcome that death - in a way we too shall overcome! And our God, in Jesus, blesses meager resources and feeds five thousand! Five loaves and two fish - touched and blessed by Jesus - not only feed a multitude ... there are leftovers - twelve baskets of leftovers!

Here's how I think this miracle went down. When Jesus said to the disciples, "You give them something to eat," the first thing they probably did was roll their eyes (Yeah. Right). But the second thing they did was to obey. They rolled up their sleeves and began to pass around the five loaves and two fish. And their eyes got big as saucers as suddenly it seemed there was food in abundance. They had a mentality of scarcity which was trumped by the generosity factor. I'm not sure how good a father I've been, but in addition to sharing my faith with my kids, I've tried to instill this bit of advice: you cannot go wrong by being generous; and ... you can never be too generous.

You see, when the disciples started sharing somebody's picnic lunch, they recalled that they also had a bite or two to share. And when they began to share their food, others played copycat. Generosity begets generosity. "The back packs of the people might have contained some hummus or a bit of lamb wrapped in a grape leaf, a few raisins, a chunk of pita left over from breakfast."* These folks recognized that as they journeyed to the countryside to hear a Rabbi preach, they knew they were in for a long day. So when it came to food, many determined not to leave home without it. And so when the disciples start to share their resources, that little trickle of generosity set off a tsunami of sharing.

I want to conclude by paraphrasing a wonderful preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor: We sometimes have the tendency to approach situations of need skinny, with only five loaves and two fish; when in actuality we are fat, with twelve baskets to spare. It's something to remember when our own resources look too meager. When the gas pump odometer seems to roll on and on and on, and when the cost of milk goes up even as the economy dips - we need to hold onto the fact that we are not caught up in scarcity ... but we are people of great abundance.

Brothers and sisters, do not give up on your sharing - your generosity on behalf of others. Jesus is with you, perhaps even now whispering in your ear, "Got bread? How many loaves can you share?"

" A paraphrase from a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor