Grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. 

It was not what you would call “good times.” Maybe you would call it “challenging” times. Maybe you would call it “lean” times.  Either way things had been better in the past, and everyone was hoping they would be better in the future.  Not in the far off distant in the future either, but soon.  Really, anytime now would be good, right now even. 

They all weren’t gathered on that mountainside because they were in good shape.  Likely many were there in hope of healing.  They knew about the miraculous signs he had been performing on the sick.  They heard he was out there so they made the journey, even though it was a challenge.  They carried along those who could not make it under their own power, the elderly, the blind, the crippled daughter. 

If the world is divided up into the “haves” and the “have-nots” these were the have-nots.  They weren’t without food because they all happened to simultaneously forget their picnic baskets that day.  They had no food to eat that day because they had no food to eat.  They were hurting, hungry, hopeless...

Lean times are not limited to the distant past.  Hard times always manage to come back around.  Hundreds of people line up to apply for one job opening.  A young mother more accustomed to giving help than receiving help finds herself for the first time walking out of the food bank with two brown paper grocery bags of food instead of walking in.  Families, business, and organizations of all types are forced to change the way they have done things.  Their ambitious plans for the future are scaled back or canceled.  Instead of the bigger house, a smaller one, instead of expansion, retraction, instead of hiring more people, letting people go.  Yes, even, congregations come to understand that during the challenging times things will not be as they were.

In times like these people look for leadership.  A leader who understands their plight, a leader who can point the way to a brighter future, a leader who will take the first steps on the hopeful journey.  Moses was a leader like that.  He led Israel out of bondage and toward the promised land.  This rabbi called Jesus, was he a leader like that?  The signs were certainly promising.  Moses himself had told the people of Israel long ago that God would raise up a prophet like him, from the Israelites. 

If the crowds had come to the mountainside that day wondering if indeed this Jesus may be a prophet like Moses, then the events of that day only seemed to confirm their suspicion.  By all sense and reason there was no way that one boy’s lunch could feed so many, but is was enough.  More than five thousand of them, hungry and without anything to eat shared in a banquet of heavenly proportions.   Five thousand fed from five small barley loaves, surely this is another sign.  Jesus is no ordinary rabbi.  Maybe he should be their King.

No wonder the people want him to be their King, here was a leader that brings results.  His teaching, his healing, his miracles all pointed the way to a brighter future for the people of Israel.  Jesus as earthly King, it must be the fulfillment of the promise God made to his people so long ago. One problem, Jesus does not see it their way.  He retreats up the mountain, away from the crowds, for he knows what they want.     

Jesus rejected the kind of leadership the crowds wanted from him.  But who can blame them for wanting that kind of leadership from Jesus.  Five loaves and two fish doesn’t seem like much of a “stimulus package” but look at the results.  Miraculous healing can make for a very effective health care plan.  The problem with that type of leadership is that it is carried out on our terms not God’s terms.  To our mind Jesus must be about achieving our desires our needs.  After all that is what effective leaders do, right.  A leader better respond to the needs of the people, or the people will find a new leader. 

Jesus rejected the role that the crowds wanted to thrust upon him, and he rejects the roles we wish to thrust upon him when we want him to act according to our expectations.  Jesus is the head of the Church, but he will not instantly solve the division and conflict that runs through it.  Jesus is King of Kings, but he will not bring the country out of recession.  Jesus provides for our needs, but he will not make us rich.  So what does this mean for us?  Are we alone, abandoned, left to fend for ourselves?  Jesus would not become King, yet the people were healed, the people were fed.  Jesus may not lead in the way we want, but he still leads us.  He leads us and sustains us through this life.

Jesus went up the mountain, but would not become a King.  Jesus did not come to be hailed as the greatest ruler in the history of Israel, he came to be the sacrificial lamb, the Passover lamb.  He did not come into the world to meet our every demand and need, but to meet our greatest need. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. He came to reveal the Father’s love to us, and bring us into the life of his Kingdom.    

After Jesus‘ retreat further up the mountain, the disciples find themselves caught in the midst of a storm at sea.  The chaos swirls around them and they were terrified.  Jesus, walking on the surface of the stormy sea arrives, to tell the disciples, “I am, do not be afraid.”  In John’s gospel Jesus does not calm the storm, yet he leads the disciples safely to the shore.  He comes to the disciples as they are tossed about in the storm to proclaim to them that he is the great “I AM” and he will lead them safely through the storm.

The apostles were Jesus’ closest followers, his best students, but they were still caught in the storm.  Even though we may follow Jesus with unparalleled devotion, the storms of life will still come.  Those same apostles tossed about, would witness more storms, more terrors.  They would watch their master nailed to a cross, but later they would come face to face with him again, in the upper room, on the beach, in the breaking of the bread.  Knowing the good news of his victory over sin and death, those apostles would go into the world to spread that good news, and as they spread that news they met resistance, and many met their death.  But in their death the Church grew and spread through out the earth.  And all along their journey Jesus sustained them, led them, and fed them.  Sometimes things looked bleak, and the rations looked meager, but it was enough. 

As we continue on our journey in life the storms will come.  Things may look bleak for ourselves, our families, our church, our world.  The concerns and pressures of life will toss us about and like the disciples we will be afraid.  But Jesus will still lead us, Jesus will still feed us, and even when it seems there is not enough to go around, it is enough.        

You could say it was “lean times.”  You could say it was “challenging times,” but that day on the mountain they shared in an improbable feast.  Afterward, there would still be people in need of healing, there would still be people in need of feeding, there would still be storms that tossed and terrified.  Jesus did not bring it all to end, but he led his people through.  Five thousand hungry people, five meager loves of bread, it was enough, it was more than enough.          Amen