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November 20, 2011 | 4:00 p.m.

Abundance: Far More Than We Can Ask
or Imagine

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Ephesians 3:14–21
John 6:1–14

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I want to show you a couple of things. This is a tube of face wash I use. It’s a tube that I’ve had to cut in half, because about three weeks ago, the tube was empty enough that I couldn’t get any of the face wash to squeeze out of it. And I didn’t have enough time—or I wasn’t organized enough to find time—to buy a new tube. So I cut this tube in half so that I could eek out just enough each morning and each evening to wash my face. I’ve been making this work for three weeks now.

And this is a bottle of makeup I use. It too is almost completely gone. But again, I haven’t found enough time to buy more, and so each morning, I’ve been unscrewing the lid and have turned the bottle upside down and have pounded it against the palm of my hand to get just enough to put on my face each morning.

I have been amazed that I have managed to have enough face wash and makeup for these last few weeks. The containers have looked empty, but I have used what was there—what was evident in each one of them. There has been far more than I would have imagined for a far longer time than I would have imagined.

Nothing I say in this sermon is rocket science. What I have to say is about using what you have, as individuals, as participants in a church community, as participants in the human community. It’s about offering yourself and watching to see the abundance that comes when you do.

At several junctures in my life, I’ve wondered if I was enough. I’ve wondered and worried about having the right gifts or being smart enough or having the right words to say. Others of you may not begin jobs or calls or tasks this way. Instead you start with the need to prove that you have every gift and that you know everything there is to know. In some way, no matter how we come at this, whatever veneer we manage to create as we live life and tackle new tasks or join new ventures, we all have the same human worry about who we are and if we are enough. When I first went to college, I was scared to death about being smart enough to succeed in a new level of academic demand. When our first daughter was born, I wondered if I had what it took to be a good parent. When I went to Palatine as the only pastor, after having been an associate pastor, I followed a woman who had preceded me, whose style of ministry was hard hitting and directive and I knew my gifts were not her gifts. There would be session meetings at the beginning of my time there—meetings I was suddenly responsible for moderating and leading—and I’d think to myself, “If only I knew more” and “If only I could give them a flow chart, a step-by-step plan” and “If only I were more like their previous pastor.” And as I’ve made the shift to Fourth Church, it’s been the same question: “How will I do this?”

It’s been this scripture from John that has instructed me in every one of those situations and still instructs me today. It’s in this Gospel that a little boy appears. It’s the little boy who has the gifts that end up being the food that feeds five thousand people. The disciples had no idea how this large crowd would be fed. In other versions of the story, the disciples tried to talk Jesus out of attending to the people at all. The story doesn’t tell us how Andrew became aware of the boy and his five barley loaves and two fish, but I imagine that the little boy went up to Andrew and tugged on his sleeve and said in the voice of a seven- or eight-year-old boy, “I’ve got this.” And to Andrew’s credit, he told Jesus about the boy’s suggestion. He told Jesus even though Andrew didn’t see how those five loaves and those two fish would make much difference. But Jesus—Jesus took them. Jesus said, “Go get this boy and his gifts.” And Jesus used them. And a miracle happened. There was not only enough food but more than enough.

When we don’t offer our gifts because we dismiss their value, or when we wish we had someone else’s gifts or someone else’s style because we’ve dismissed the unique gifts that are ours, or when out of a sense of bravado we cover our own insecurity and try to do everything, even though we’re not suited to doing everything, we get the process all flummoxed up. The little boy offered the gifts that were right in front of him. They didn’t look like much. But they were his gifts. And Jesus used them, and there was abundance to behold.

This scripture has reminded me as a pastor to calm down and simply look for the gifts that appear around me in the people God has placed in our churches. And this scripture has reminded me as a pastor and a person to just offer the gifts that are mine, because I can’t offer someone else’s gifts or be someone else. That’s just too hard. In your own tasks, no matter what your work or your involvement with community, looking for the gifts that are there—nothing fancy, just the simple gifts in the people with whom you work or the simple gifts that the people you live with have or the simple gifts you yourself have—that’s where to start. The little boy in the crowd just had five loaves and two fish. He offered them to Jesus. And once he did that, Jesus used them, and a miracle happened.

There is a benediction that was used by a longtime pastor, Dick Halvorsen, when he was chaplain of the United States Congress. It goes like this: “You go nowhere by accident. Wherever you go, God is sending you. Wherever you are, God has put you there. God has a purpose in putting you there. Christ who indwells you has something he wants to do through you wherever you are. Believe this and go in God’s grace and love and power.”

Do you believe that about yourself each day: that wherever you go, wherever you are, God has put you there, and in each moment you have gifts, gifts that are your own, to use? You might choose to use those gifts in this church community or to step up the gifts of fellowship or camaraderie you have in your workplace, to use the gifts of your own personality and your own training and your own particular skills and talents in whatever situation you find yourself. Using the gifts you have and valuing them—that’s what this sermon is about.

But also, as we approach Thanksgiving, we’re reminded of looking around at the gifts that are right in front of us, the blessings we’ve received—as simple as they may be—and valuing those, too. I once was responsible for a worship service at a senior center. Many of the people were in wheelchairs. Before the service started, I had to get the people from their rooms and bring them to the center of the floor where the worship service would be held. One woman was a woman in a wheelchair, with both legs amputated. I began the service by asking the people gathered around what they were thankful for. Her answer: “I’m just thankful for being able to open my eyes this morning and for being here right now.” That’s a woman with a deep sense of gratitude, a sense of gratitude that goes with her wherever she goes, and each time I tell the story about her—which happened almost twenty years ago—she and what she said is still blessing people.

On November 2 the New York Times ran a story about a congregation in Brooklyn and its pastor, Thomas Vito Aiuto, a pastor with a tattoo and a shaved head. His parishioners were for the most part young, artistic, according to the article “clad in skinny jeans.” The article quotes the pastor: “I’m shocked I’m a preacher,” he said. “There’s part of me that did feel and in some ways still feels that I have no place standing up and telling other people what to do or believe.”

We should all be shocked that God needs any of our gifts. Shocked that God values us and what we can offer. But it’s our gifts God does want—as simple and as uncomplicated as they might be. Not someone else’s gifts.

As human beings, we have worries—many of them. We worry about our security and we worry about having enough. But we are called into the human community and into the church community. As Christians we are called to an amazing mission after the manner of Jesus. That mission is to tell the good news of salvation, to heal and reconcile and bind up wounds, to feed the hungry—and the list goes on. Each one of us has gifts that can help with that mission. Believe that. Offer what you have. Offer what you have and the abundance will be far more than we can imagine. Alleluia. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church