Tomorrow's Sermon Draft: Hunger FINAL

My brother died on a Friday and the people started pouring in almost immediately. And I don't mean the people that I am closest to. My mother has three sisters and them, and their kids and my brother and sister and I are all very close. I am as close to my cousins almost as I much as I am to my brother and sister. We have taken family vacations and celebrated all our holidays together. And you've all heard about the weddings. I don't mean them. I mean the other ones. Now my mother or my grandmother might disagree with this, but I mean all the extra relatives. The funeral was going to be on Tuesday. My grandmother's sister Sarah and their niece Julia showed up I think on Friday. (And now let me say I'm sure they were a great comfort to my grandmother.) Julia is almost as old as my grandmother and her sister because Julia is the oldest daughter of their oldest sister. Anyway Aunt Sarah and Julia were staying with us. Then there were the ones who weren't staying with us. The nieces and nephews of my grandmother--the cousins of my mother. And there are a lot of them. On Saturday some cousins came and sat for a good 4 hours--four hours! Made me nuts! I did not want them around I just wanted to be alone. So I found myself escaping a lot. If I could I would lock myself in the backroom, but sometimes that wasn't even enough. One night I had to take my Aunt Janey back to my cousin Janelle's house. So we left and even though there was a house full of food we went to Chili's. We had margaritas and some food that I don't even really remember that we didn’t really even eat. We did drink the margaritas though--you know we didn't want to be wasteful. But we did this because we had to get away. Then on Sunday night, I had been at my parents house and as I was pulling up to my grandmother's house I could see that the driveway was full, so I called my mother and had her call my grandmother to find out who was there and then to call me back. So she did. And I didn’t even go up to the driveway, I did a u-turn and left. I didn’t know where I was going, I just knew I had to get away. So I thought I would go to Macy's and buy a new tie for the funeral, but it was Easter so on account of the resurrection Macy's was closed. So I ended up at a Sonic Drive-In eating a chili dog and drinking a lemonade. It was kind of gross and king of fantastic, because it wasn't funeral food and I was alone.
So I get what Jesus was doing. Jesus was going out on his own. He wanted to be alone with the people he knew and loved the most. He had just found out that his cousin, John the Baptist, was dead. He was grieving and he just couldn't be with anyone right then. But eventually he had to go back and when he got back to shore they were still there. And they still needed his help. They were still hurting too. And so he healed the ones of them who were sick. And then after a long day everyone started to get hungry. And so the disciples came up to Jesus and told him this and said for him to send them away. All the people needed to go down the hill, maybe to the local bakery and get themselves a sandwich, something to eat. But Jesus said no we have plenty here. Now the disciples knew what they had. They knew they had five measly loves of bread and two little ol' fish. There was no way that was going to feed five thousand men, plus all the women and children. But Jesus knew they had enough. Despite the pain he was in over the loss of his cousin he knew he still had to feed all these folks too. When people would come over to our house, my mother would still shoot into the caregiver role that she plays so well and immediately start asking them if she could get them something to eat. She knew we had plenty and she wanted to take care of the other folks.
But again we had a refrigerator full of chicken--we really did have enough--the disciples only had that bread and those fish. That was not enough, or was it?
This is one of the many miracles that Jesus performed. And it is possible that when Jesus blessed the bread and the fish that something extraordinary happened and that bread and those fish just continued to multiply and multiply until there was enough, more than enough. So much more that there was left over. But what if it was a miracle of a different sort. Remember I said that it was 5000 men, plus women and children. Well think about the women and children. How many mothers do you know that leave the house without something to eat for their children? When I was with my friends Tracy and Dave last week it took an additional 15 minutes for Tracy to make up snack bags before we could leave the house. Those of you who were at Dave and Jeff's wedding a few weeks ago remember how precious Taylor was eating his cheerios during the wedding. After the wedding before the food was brought out I went scavengering through Jacob's bag looking for something to put in my stomach. It is quite possible that something magical happened with the fish and bread but the greater miracle to me seems to be that those women noticed that people around them needed to eat. And so they opened up their bags and they started looking at what they had. If we were to do this today we most likely wouldn't find bread and fish, but we would find goldfish crackers and cheerios, fruit roll ups, puffed wheat and we'd probably find enough sippy cups full of water and milk that we wouldn't be thirsty either.
When Jesus looked to heaven and blessed that bread and those fish. He was inviting the people around him to look up to heaven as well. And when they had looked to heaven, suddenly they were looking at things differently, they were looking with the eyes of God. And their eyes saw only a few fish and some loaves of bread but God's eyes saw more. Their eyes only saw their immediately family, but God's eyes saw more. Their eyes only saw their needs, but God's eyes saw the needs of the many. And when they were looking through God's eyes they couldn't ignore the many any longer.
Most of us are like the disciples, we want to send people away. Our society tends to send hungry people away to someone else or some other agency. We're hurting too, let someone else tend to the hungry. Let Glide feed people, let the soup kitchens feed people, let the food pantry feed people. Let the politicians decide how we can eliminate hunger and poverty and homelessness. We don't have enough ourselves. We only have a few fish and a few loaves of bread. We see our needs. We see a crashing stock market. We see our 401ks and pensions dropping. But God sees something else.

God sees the 862 million people across the world who are considered hungry, up 10 million from last year.
God sees the 1.4 billion people living below the poverty level of $1.26 per day.
God sees the 820 million people in the developing world who are undernourished.
God sees the children who are not growing and developing because of malnutrition.
God sees the 9.7 million children who died in 2006 in places that also have the highest rates of hunger and malnutrition.
God sees the 20 million low-birth rate babies born every year.
God sees all of this and much more.

I said this a few weeks ago, we cannot wait for our government to start talking about the poor and the hungry, because they are not. I wish there was a candidate talking about the poor and the hungry. But they aren't. We cannot send away these people to fend for themselves. We have to do it. We are hurting too, but we have to feed the hungry as well. We have to stand up for the children and the poor. We have to open our bags and see what we have laying around. We have to share our cheerios and our juice boxes. Our grief and our pain is not diminished. But as I mentioned yesterday at Cecil and Rubens wedding we must choose life. We must get out of the boat and have compassion on the ones on the shore. Vote with a heart for the poor. But more than that let us act for the poor and the hungry. Let us look not through the eyes of Barack Obama or John McCain or Joe the Plumber or even our eyes, but instead through the eyes of the one who sees differently. Let us look through the eyes of the ones who were still wet with his own tears at the loss of his cousin and still saw people in need. Let us look through God's eyes. Amen.