Summary: Failure and making mistakes are essential components of growth and learning. Just as the disciples mistakenly believed they lacked the resources to feed a crowd, modern believers often fall into the trap of thinking they do not have enough to offer. When we surrender our limited resources to Jesus in faith, God transforms our perceived shortcomings into more than enough to sustain ourselves and others

One of the joys of life for me has been teaching our kids how to ride a bike.

When my girls were learning to ride, they had training wheel bikes

When my grandsons learned, they rode kick-bikes…no pedals, low to the ground, dragging their feet to stop.  

Soon enough, they’d get going downhill, pick up their feet and learn to balance for the sheer joy and wonder of going fast all by themselves with me hooting and hollering and cheering them on. 

They all fell often, but tears and hugs and bandaids did the trick.

I dusted them off and told them I was proud of them.

You can’t learn to ride a bike without falling any more than you can learn to play the piano without hitting bad notes, to learn to write without misspelling, to ski without fantastic wipeouts.

Failure is essential to learning…

It’s not really failure, but success, to make mistakes…to keep on  trying and trying again until you get the hang of it, gain your balance, make music, write well, slalom down hills like a pro.   

Such is the case with the disciples, who make mistakes again and again and yet keep following Jesus and learning from him.  

***

“You give them something to eat,” Jesus tells them.

“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish,” they reply.

“Bring them to me, Jesus says.

They want to send the multitude away. 

It is late, has been a long and trying day, which began with news that Herod has beheaded John the Baptist, news that leads Jesus to withdraw to a deserted place by himself…

But the crowds follow him from the surrounding villages, the news that the great prophet is no more, has been put to death for telling the truth.

Nothing is more threatening to tyrants than the truth.  

So they come from the villages, gather on the hillside, looking for Jesus.

He is not there but has gone to a deserted place alone, as he often does, but when he sees the great crowd gather, has compassion for them, goes out to them, heals the sick, gives himself to them. 

We might well think that the disciples would learn from his example, the power of his compassion, but they fail to learn compassion and fail to trust the power of his love.

Instead, they mistakenly say…

“This is a deserted place and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so they may go into the villages to buy food for themselves.”

“They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”  

Their response might well resonate with us, 

with this moment in time we are living in, 

Like them we are disciples like them with much to learn, following Jesus as they do,

saying as we often say, we do not have enough to share,
not enough to give, just loaves and fishes enough for ourselves, not enough time, not enough energy, so very little, not enough.  

Bring them to me, Jesus says, bring your not enough to me….

Then listen, and tell me what you hear.

He orders the crowd to sit.

Taking the five loaves, he looks up to heaven,
blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples.  

Took. Blessed. Broke. Gave.

These words are handed down to us, words we use each time we celebrate Holy Communion.

Took. Blessed. Broke. Gave.

Not enough?  

More than enough.  

Put yourselves in the disciples place,

imagine learning from their failure of relying on not on Jesus but on themselves,

of the mistake that it is all up to them, that God who sent Jesus to them is so small and so limited that it is all up to them, that there is nothing more beyond what they know and can measure, can count…five loaves and two fish…

Imagine what they learn from their failure, and learn with them…

As they walk among the people, distribute bread and find there is more than enough….

Imagine what they learn from their mistake as they collect what is  left over, an extra basket of bread for each of them.   

Do we have enough at St. Paul’s to feed the multitude?  

Do we have enough time and energy, do we have enough financial resources?

Are we too old to learn from failure, have we come to believe that we have just a few loaves and fishes for ourselves and nothing more? 

Jesus says to us, “You feed them.” 

But it is late and we don’t have enough.

The disciples learn what we learn…

What we have to give is enough when we give it in faith to be blessed, broken, and given to feed those whom God passionately loves.

Our many failures, our fear that there is not enough to share, is nothing new; 

We disciples learn by following Jesus, learn the miraculous power of God makes more than enough of the little gifts we bring.

The question is whether we modern disciples are willing to learn 

whether we believe learning from our failure is a high calling, whether we trust our gifts will be taken, blessed and broken to feed a hungry multitude.  

After all, the disciples are fed, too.  Jesus gives himself to them to feed them. He becomes the body and blood that feeds and sustains us, and this is more than enough, so much more than enough.  .  

***

The first person I taught to ride a bike was my grandmother.

True story.

She grew up in dust bowl Oklahoma, too poor to have a bike, got married young and migrated to California to work in the fields, pick cotton, tray grapes, hoe weeds.  

She came to stay with us when I was in the first grade and got a new bike, and somehow ended up outside with me learning how to ride.

She was pretty wobbly, but she got to pedaling, and giggling like a little girl; for years she told that story, and I remember how fun it was to see her learn.

We are never too old to learn, and there is never a better time than now; in hard times like these when we are tempted to believe there is not enough.

Jesus is enough, and the power of God is enough, to feed us and to feed the world, so let us learn, so let us fail, and so let us follow. 

God bless you friends and fellow disciples as we lean together

Thanks be to God. Amen.