"Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?" (v. 5b)

A minister was making a home visit to one of the younger families in his parish. A five-year-old boy answered the front door and told the minister his mother would be there shortly. To make some conversation, the minister asked the little guy what he would like to be when he grows up. The boy immediately answered, "I’d like to be possible." "What do you mean by that?" the puzzled minister asked. "Well, you see," the boy replied, "just about every day my mom tells me I’m impossible!"

What seems to be impossible in your life these days, my friend? Some task you are facing in your personal life? Or maybe as you look out on our weary world and society today, you are prompted to ask, "Who is going to accomplish all the things that seem so impossible in our world today?"

In such times Jesus Christ is asking you and me to join with him in being partners in the impossible. To his friend and follower, Philip, Jesus says, "Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?" An impossible task, indeed!

But as we look at this question of Jesus in the Bible this morning, let’s try and take hold of the encouraging truth that emerges, and it is this: Christ never asks us to do the impossible unless he himself provides the power and resources to get the job done. So today let us confidently answer his call, for he is our divine partner in doing the impossible.

I

The story is familiar - even over-familiar - to most of us: the Feeding of the Five-Thousand. You know the wonderful climax to the story: how Jesus took the loaves of bread and the few fish, and how this little meal was multiplied until over 5,000 people were fed and satisfied.

But the story all begins with Jesus’ question. This leading question is perhaps just as important to the story as its grand climax. Jesus surveys the crowd and then turns to Philip, whose hometown was very close by. He asks Philip, "Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?" There are three things to note carefully about the question:

1. It is Christ who asks the question. We are told that Jesus already knew what he could do and what he would do. Therefore we might expect the disciples, or the hungry people themselves, to ask the question. But it is Jesus who asks it!

You see, Jesus is always nudging you and me to entertain the key questions about living. He is always laying before us the great issues of life. Jesus is hereby suggesting that Christianity is not a religion for the lazy of mind, it is a faith to think about and to grapple with. God wants us to wrestle with him about what’s going on in the world and around us. "Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?"

2. Yes, it is Christ who askes this question, and thereby, in the second place, he is showing us that God usually uses his people to accomplish his work in the world. Even God’s work doesn’t get done with the snap of a finger. He is not one who throws his power around. Rather, God fills his people with power, working through them to solve the needs and problems of the world. "Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?"

3. Yes, it is Christ who asks this question, and by asking it, is he not also bestowing a great dignity upon you and me? Sometimes all of us can fall into a less-than-glorious outlook about getting on with the tasks of our daily living. But here, think of it! You are a partner with the Lord himself. Not a shabby invitation. What glory our whole life has as Christians, whether that’s standing in front of the kitchen sink or standing in front of a congregation at the pulpit. What privileged people we are. We’re not alone in this business of doing life and living life. We are fellow-workers with God in redeeming the world. God invites us to he partners with him in "buying enough food to feed all these people."

II

There are at least four areas of need where God is inviting you and me to be partners in the impossible today.

1. The first is what we might call "the moral turn-around." Christ is enlisting his Christian followers to be partners with him in turning the world around morally. "An impossible task," you say, and you are right! The so-called moral breakdown across the Western world these days is nothing new. But it is bizarre, it is farreaching, and it is frightening.

What may make it all seem even more impossible to turn around is the fact that, taken as a whole, there has probably been very little moral progress made in our human society since the time of Christ, and for thousands of years before the time Christ walked the earth. Moral stagnation has always plagued the human scene. The sickness of people in their sin has seen to that. The on-going struggle to be right, to do right, and to act right has ever been with us humans and will be until time ends.

If there seems to he little moral progress, the situation today looks even more dim because of a new dimension to our moral poverty. It is what we might call a resignation toward our own immorality. This is more than mere tolerance of evil and moral failure. It is the paralyzing attitude which concludes that nothing can be done about it, so "let ‘er rip!" Let society do what it will. Let us all "do our thing," "as long as it feels good."

This attitude is not limited to, but may be a special hazard of, young people today - teens and young adults who are just maturing into the adventure of life. To them especially our immorality may become quickly demoralizing. The striving toward moral excellence and public responsibility by youth today is often overshadowed by a feeling that "my personal struggle with evil and self-serving living will probably not matter much anyway, so why not join the crowd if you can’t beat them?"

But amid this widespread moral resignation of our times, let me tell you about a beautiful teenager I know. She is a popular young lady - a cheerleader at her school, a whiz at the books, and a coveted Saturday night date. With the way I know she helps her family at home, and with a typically rushed high school schedule, this seventeen-year-old nevertheless is doing something I consider unusual. Every day, I mean every day, she drops by at a nursing care home near her school. There she visits with an elderly member of our parish - an old lady far removed in years and vitality. This beautiful young girl excites the memory and imagination of this forgotten senior Christian by sharing her activities and dreams, and by discussing with her a different passage from the Bible. Each day! Each day this young girl, who is struggling with her own dreams and future, gives of herself to another human being in need.

There is little sense of moral resignation in her life. Like Jesus, she deals daily on a one-to-one basis with another human being. And each visit, I imagine, is like the chip of a sculptor’s chisel, forming her into what will be - and is: a responsible arid productive contributor to society, a Christian of the highest moral order.

Is the moral turnaround impossible? Not when Christ has such partners in the challenge. "Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?" One beautiful young girl I know is doing her part. No dramatic moral turnaround perhaps, but in the long run, who knows?

2. A second area of need where God is inviting you and me to be partners in the impossible has to do with the evangelization of the world - quite simply, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the saving message of his cross and rising, to all peoples of the world.

This is not the only work of Christians and the church, of course. But it is the unique task given us. No other enterprise or institution has been chartered to preach Christ crucified except the church. And the task, statistically speaking, seems all but impossible.

Here are the facts. Christians have grown from one-half billion in 1900 to one-and-one-half billion today. But percentage wise, with the population explosion, we have actually declined from thirty-four to thirty-two percent of the world’s population. And the percentage of Christians continues to decline day by day, month by month. All this after 2,000 years of evangelizing, and all this precisely in a time when technical communications and the blessings of the media have never been more advanced or accessible to us.

Are we engaged as partners in the impossible? It may appear that way. But remember the Apostle Paul. When he started out, proudly claiming for himself the title of an "ambassador" of Christ, things must have seemed almost totally impossible. The whole church consisted of a few disorganized believers in Jerusalem, a remote city of the world in its day, to be sure. Saint Paul could have thrown up his hands in utter frustration.

But he went. He traveled. He endured danger. He bore insults. He stuck to it. He creatively proclaimed Christ. And today, not a handful, but one-third of the world’s billions confess Jesus as Lord.

Two-thirds of the world remains ready for the harvest, and the work seems impossible. The fact that the overwhelming majority die without ever having heard the name of Christ baffles me. The mystery of why God allows so many unreached souls brings a pang to my heart. I cannot figure out God’s heart in this matter. I can only go on his call and invitation however: "Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?" I will be thrilled - and moved - again by the words of Jesus, "The fields are ripe unto the harvest ... Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every person."

3. A third area of need where God is inviting you and me to be partners in the impossible today concerns the feeding of the world’s hungry people. And this is our Christian calling! To eat is a basic human right. It is no shame to want and demand to be fed. Feeding the hungry was part of Christ’s mission, and is part of ours.

But again the statistics make us partners in what seems to be the impossible. Two-thirds of the world’s food production is consumed by one-third of the people. That leaves the food supply for two-thirds of the world’s people in question. And of those two-thirds, one-third live in severe, agonizing hunger each and every day. By what kind of impossible political coup do you and I turn those facts around?

This story in our text is indicative of where Jesus’ heart is. His heart is with the hungry! That’s what he meant when he gave his church the parable of the Good Samaritan. This parable is still in effect for Christians. In fact, it is the state-of-the-art story for God’s people who want to he partners in the impossible. To get us started, there is little more we need do than take Jesus’ question quite literally and quite seriously. "Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?" You know where the answer lies.

4. Finally, there is a need for us to be God’s partners in the seemingly impossible task of healing the world. By that I don’t just mean healing people by curing them medically of their illnesses. That’s not all there is to healing. Healing is also a matter of what we might call "wholeness" - being able to bear the illness we do have, and being able to bless God in the midst of it. It’s a matter of taking on our illness instead of allowing our illness to take us on.

The ill who are not whole are the ones who have become intolerably depressed, who have given up, who bear intense loneliness, who could get by in their illness if only someone were standing with them.

Where do we find people who will bring this wholeness to the ill? Sometimes during daily afternoon visits in the hospitals and nursing care centers of our city, my mind becomes crowded by thoughts of futility. "Where can we buy enough bread to feed all these people?" - these people wheelchaired in the hallways, stretching out an arm to you, almost desperate just to feel the touch and concern of someone other than those paid to do it.

Many times our human reaction to the illness of others is to avoid them instead of standing with them. After all, we’re not professionals, we surmise. We don’t know how to act. We don’t know how to react. We don’t know what to say or what not to say. So we withdraw. Just when healing in the sense of wholeness is needed most, we are not there. And the victims of our flight are legion!

Jesus often became weary of bringing wholeness to others too. Once he was almost beside himself with feelings of being overwhelmed by the infirmities and human demands of the broken ones. But always the Father’s work was done through his care and presence and touch.

Christ never asks the impossible of us unless he gives us the same divine power which raised him up on Easter Day. He will give you power to bring a healing touch to those who are waiting for you to come.

"Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?" What a searing question of Jesus! An impossible question. But he is your partner, and with him all things are possible. Christ is counting on you and me to help bring the whole world to a new day. Be a partner with him in the impossible. It is worth it. It is the only way that, losing your life, you will find it!