The Miracle of Abundance

A sermon preached on July 31, 2005 at Faith Episcopal Church.

The little village had suffered greatly as the war raged on. Many young men had died and there was little food. It was all they could do to survive on the little that was left. So when the weary soldier appeared in the square, shades were drawn and shutters closed. He stood there feeling their presence behind the barriers and he understood. He began gathering up sticks and soon had a small fire started. Then he took a battered pot from his pack, and went to the well to fill it with water. After he put the pot on the fire he looked around and chose a medium sized stone and added it to the pot. Then he sat down to watched the fire.

Not long after, a man came out of his shop and walked over to the men. “What are you doing here?” he asked. The soldier said, “I’ve been walking for long time and this looked like a good place to stop and make some soup.” The man’s eyes darted to the pot which was beginning to simmer. “What kind of soup are you making?” “Oh, just a simple thing my mother taught me, stone soup.” “Stone soup! Who ever heard of such a thing.!” “My mother really had a way with these kinds of things, it’s really good; it just takes a while.” Then he added, I remember sometimes she liked to add potatoes – said it gave a better texture.” He sniffed and said “it always smelled so good.” The man from the village stared at him and realized that he could almost smell that soup. He ran back to his store and came out with a handful of small hard little potatoes. “He said, why don’t you try these.” Then he sat down.

Soon a woman came by and after looking suspiciously at the two men, went and peered into the pot. “What this?” she demanded. Her neighbor said, “Stone soup with potatoes – it’s be ready soon.” She looked at the pot again and said, “It will be bland, you need some onions.” And then she disappeared. When she returned, she wasn’t alone. Her neighbor was with her. She pulled out a sad looking onion from her pocket and a small knife. She dropped the pieces of the onion in the water and motioned to her friend who produced three carrots which she broke and added to the pot. They joined the group sitting around the fire. Soon, others ventured out from behind their shutters and the soup blossomed with garlic and herbs, peas, turnips and even a small piece of dried meat. The last little treasure was salt. Little bits of food that had been hidden and hoarded bubbled together making a savory satisfying meal that the town shared with the soldier. Someone was heard to comment, “Best darn stone soup I ever had!”

It’s easy to see how this story fits with the gospel story of the feeding of the multitude. It wasn’t merely 5000 since it slips in “along with women and children.” Jesus saw to that even those that don’t count are counted and fed. As tempting as the stone soup process is to explain the miracle, I’m leery of it because it offers up an explanation of how it might have happened. Once we begin to picture people drawing little crusts of bread and other bits of food out of their pockets the story loses its power. While there is always a good message in people sharing what they have with those who have less, that’s not really the God messge here.

One reason we don’t hear the message is that we read the story without hearing the story that precedes it. It is the story of a banquet – actually it’s Herod’s birthday party at which his step-daughter Solome danced her famous dance. She was so enchanting that Herod offered her anything she wanted. As any smart young woman would, she went and asked her mother “What should I ask him to give me?” Herod’s wife had an ax to grind with the recently arrested John the Baptist. John had blown the whistle on the adulterous and therefore illegal nature of her marriage to Herod. This was her opportunity to silence him. So as is often to case with whistle blowers, John’s head ended up on a platter, literally. It was displayed to the guests at Herod’s birthday party. It also says that Herod hadn’t wanted to kill John because he knew that he was popular figure, a prophet, but he didn’t want to offend his guests by not honoring his promise to Solome!

Matthew’s gospel takes directly from that story to our open air banquet of bread and fish with this segue “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. He is grieving and probably angry, more determined than ever to teach his understanding of the Kingdom of God.

One point made here which we miss is that in the original Greek, Jesus has the crowd recline (not sit down), which is the traditional Roman banquet posture – you can only do that if you are being served. Here were the ordinary people who struggled to have enough to eat, who were the slaves and servants, the ones unseen by the powerful being treated like the guests at Herod’s birthday party. At this banquet, instead of the fruits of oppression and violence, they were given miraculous divine plenty.

This feeding story is more about God’s intention to bless than it is about how it happened. God’s infinite generosity is something we can count on. This generosity creates a dynamic of abundance that is open to all. God’s abundant intent is ours to accept and allow to flow in our lives or we can thwart it.

We can thwart God’s abundance of blessing by living lives cut off from others, lives devoid of mystery, lives motivated by fear and anger and illusion of scarcity. When people’s chance to receive God’s blessing is denied you end up with something like Herod’s birthday party that makes your skin crawl.

But when the flow of blessing is unimpeded miracles happen. Jesus, as occupied by grief as he was, became the source of blessing to the crowds. He gave them health, compassion, presence. He loved them and then he fed them. He was saying – take that, Herods of the world, this is the real banquet because here God is the host.

Back to stone soup, a story that teaches us how to approximate the miraculous feeding. That story turns the feeding of the 5000 all around. It’s as if Jesus came into town and allowed his hunger to teach the community how to be like him. He taught them and he teaches us that we can be instruments of abundant blessing to each other and those who cross our paths. We look at the world and we know that there are lots of people in need of a banquet. They need something to prime the pump of abundance so that they can turn around and be a blessing to someone else.

God has a ready supply of this kind of miracle just waiting for us to get out from behind our shutters and meet over a good steaming hot bowl of stone soup.