Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, July 28th, 2024

Simple barley loaves, that’s all they were. The food of peasants, of those who couldn’t afford much else. Not meant to impress or able to wield influence, but simply the first and the best of what they had. A man comes to the prophet Elisha with the first fruits of his harvest, before any of it was consumed – he offers it to Elisha because Elisha is the spokesperson for God Almighty, standing in for the One who is the Source of all things. Perhaps this man expects that to be the end of it – offer his gift to God, go on home, and hope for the best in a difficult time. 

But Elisha says something unexpected: “Give it to the people and let them eat,” he says. Not, “God thanks you, God appreciates your gift and will reward you,” but, “Give it to the people.”

Centuries later, and more simple peasant barley loaves are offered – not even twenty this time, but only five, a paltry sum. These loaves are offered to God, although perhaps the boy doesn’t know it yet. But just as Elisha knew that the loaves were meant to nourish the people, so also Jesus knows that God intends these few loaves and fish to be for those who need them most. 

When Jesus asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” he is inviting him into an ancient pattern, a pattern of offering and sacrifice transformed into abundance. The pattern goes back not only to Elisha but is as old as time, and here, on a mountain in Galilee it is repeated. An offering is made that emerges from God’s creation and the work of human hands, and the power of God uses this seemingly inadequate gift to bring life and joy.

These are not the only two instances of such a pattern in scripture; it happens over and over and over again, not just with food but with all kinds of gifts that humans offer to God. And not just objects, but entire lives, given over to what God might do with them. Small gifts, small lives, inadequate to the task of God’s great purposes, yet somehow, God is able to nourish and sustain and even transform the world by means of these offerings. Such a pattern is so prevalent, so utterly typical in the stories that tell us of God’s doings, that we simply have to pay attention to it. Not only pay attention, but search for ways to replicate the pattern in our own lives.

The first thing to ask is, what am I being asked to offer? What do I have that might be of service to the task at hand? Don’t think about how small it seems, how insufficient to the needs before us. We are simply called to ask, what do I have? What gifts has God given me? What is at this moment in my hands, in my knapsack of tools or time or 

And then, not surprisingly, it must be offered. Not just provided to the work at hand, but offered, purposely and prayerfully, to God. Whether we are giving money, goods, time, or skill, there is a moment when the act of offering needs to become explicit, intentional. Something miraculous happens when we take what we have and hold it up to God, offering it to God’s purposes. 

If we don’t know exactly how to do this, we need look no further than to the Holy Eucharist as an example. Whenever we bless the bread and the wine we are shown how to offer up all things to God. The gifts of bread and wine, processed down the aisle to the altar, are brought up from the people, by the people, just as the man brought his first fruits to Elisha, and the boy carried his loaves and fishes to Jesus. There is the moment when the presider holds up the bread, and the wine, a physical gesture which says very clearly, “God this is yours – we know it belongs to you and you can fill it with blessing.” 

Later there is the moment that we call the “oblation,” when the presider gestures toward the gifts and says openly, we offer you these gifts. We know they came from you to begin with, but we now release them back to you, to be filled with the Holy Spirit and returned to us with infinitely more power. 

In Rite One of the Eucharist, it is not only the gifts we offer but ourselves, in these words: “Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.” It is a reminder that God desires not only the things we have and use, but all of us, everything we are. 

What if we prayed those words each time we give of our resources to God? For that is the point of every eucharistic prayer – to provide a lens through which every action of our lives is viewed, to give us words to express our self-offering to God, not only here in the sanctuary but everywhere.

There is a prayer that comes from the Jesuit tradition that expresses this well, I think. It goes like this:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

This is an offering we can only make to God. To offer our liberty, our memory, our understanding, our will, our lives, completely to any human leader not only invites tyranny, but is idolatry. But to offer ourselves to God is to find complete freedom, because God does not take our gifts and hoard them; God gives those gifts and our very selves back to us, with baskets and baskets left over.

Every donation, every act of service, every gesture of compassion, every stand for justice, becomes a loaf or a fish in that basket lifted up to Jesus on the mountain in Galilee. This is what we might call “eucharistic living, an ongoing cycle of offering and receiving between us and God. And we find that nothing is wasted, nothing lost – when we offer everything we have and are to God, it is returned to us, transformed and magnified. 

May all that we are and do be caught up in this pattern of eucharistic living. Thanks be to God, who “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”