14:13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.

14:14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.

14:15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

14:16 Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

14:17 They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

14:18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.”

14:19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.

14:20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.

14:21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

1. Getting to the end of your tether.
Have you ever wished that you had some of the Wisdom of Solomon?
Perhaps in your place of work?
You’ve wished for the wisdom to know how to manage your business or work responsibilities better. The wisdom to know how to deal with difficult people at work, irritable, lazy employees or whinging and impatient customers.

Perhaps you need wisdom for a family situation?
A rebellious or troubled child or a long standing family conflict?
You lie awake wishing for the gift of wisdom.

Maybe you wish you had the wisdom to work with fellow Christians, especially when you’re disappointed by them, or when their expectations are unrealistic, or when they seem unforgiving.
Have you ever got the ‘end of your tether’ in one of these situations?

Ever got to the point where you wish you could simply lay down your responsibilities and walk away from the situation?
“It’s beyond me! It’s too much for me! This problem is too great!
Here Lord, you do something about it!”

It seems that the disciples were experiencing some of this on the day of our gospel reading.
What a day it had been!
Jesus had started out that day, trying to get away from crowds, trying to find some quiet time for himself, but they had found out where he was headed and tracked him down.
All day long he ended up ministering to the ‘great crowd’ that had sought him out.

Perhaps the disciples had been irritated by this…
Perhaps they were tired of all these people who demanded something from Jesus…
Maybe they had been looking forward to spending some quiet time with Jesus themselves and were feeling resentful about that time being ‘hijacked’ by all these people with needs!

Anyway, by the end of the day they are evidently tired and strung out and the situation just seemed ridiculous.
They are surrounded by a huge crowd, they are out in the middle of nowhere – and now it’s getting dark!

2. Seeking a simple or quick solution… which does not come.
The disciples make a request of Jesus. “Lord, send them away! They’re going to need to get something to eat and we want to rest! We’ve had enough Lord – we’re at the end of our tether!”

Problem solved – right?
Not yet!

Jesus bounces the ball right back at them.
“They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

Here’s where we can surely relate to the disciples!
The quick and easy solution to the problem has not appeared like they hoped it would.
In our case, the challenging situation that we’re facing just got more complicated, or returned in a new form.
What we’re facing just seems to just go on and on – and on!
We’re starting to recognize that the problem is one that ‘I’m just going to have to live with’.
(And quite frankly, we’re sick of other people telling us that!)

Whatever the case sometimes Jesus doesn’t let us ‘off the hook’.
The ball keeps coming back over onto our side of the court.
We’re tired, strung out…
This is so unfair!

With the disciples we cry out to the Lord: ‘Do something!’
But the problem remains.

‘You give them something to eat…”

What happens next?
In response to Jesus unyieldingness, the disciples do a quick check of their pockets – and this is what they come up with: “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish…”

3. Crying out to the Lord: ‘But we’ve got nothing here!”
Can you hear the angst at this point?
‘We have nothing here!’

Their cry to Jesus has intensified.

When do you and I do this?
“What I’ve got isn’t much – it’s not enough!”
“What they’ve got is so much more.”
“God hasn’t given me gifts like other people.”
“I can’t cope with this problem. I just can’t!”
“Someone needs to fix this for me!”

We’re tempted to fall into this kind of thinking aren’t we?
For very understandable reasons.

But is it true?
Have we really ‘got nothing here?’
Have we really been ‘left with nothing’ by our Lord?

4. An invitation to see something new in all of this…
When the ball comes right back at us, perhaps there’s an invitation for us in there somewhere?
The gift in the midst of all the frustration may be a radical new reframing of the problem.
A new way of seeing the situation that we are in.
Perhaps the person or the relationship that is causing us so much angst has become the focus of too much of our attention and energy (and we’re even neglecting other important relationships that can be a source of life and nurture to us in our stress).

Perhaps the need is for us to recognize that we can’t change or control the other person (we need to stop trying to do so), and we’re not responsible for the choices they make either.

The old cliché is really true: The only person we can change is ourself.

Remember the old advertisement: “If the problem persists, take another Panadol.”
(I’m joking of course)

No! Don’t do that!
Don’t keep doing the same old thing!
If what you’re doing now isn’t working, then it’s time to try something new.
And don’t try and do it yourself! Get some help. Talk to somebody . Talk to your pastor.

In all the talking and being listened too, be prepared to be challenged, even be prepared for the ball to come right back at you… the best counsellors will not try and fix it for you, but they will listen and provide suggestions to help you identify resources that you have that might be lying dormant, undiscovered so far.

5. In the Church also…
A quick comment about our church life together.
In our church life we fall into this trap whenever we fail to see the gifts that we have already got! When we fail to see what the Lord has already done and is already doing right under our noses.
Congregations can become exhausted by the seeming overwhelming nature of the task of sharing the gospel.

Perhaps there’s a large and well resourced congregation up the road that seems to be doing so much? They have programs and facilities that we can only dream about. And so we look yearningly over the fence at what they are doing. Or even try and model ourselves on what they are doing… and we neglect the very thing that they can’t do!
Have we thought: their size and complexity limits them. Our relative smallness allows us to be nimble and responsive.

So often we compare ourselves to others. Instead of using the gifts that God has given us uniquely, we turn ourselves inside out trying to be somebody else.

6. Jesus final answer: ‘Bring it here to me!’
It may not look like much – ‘what we have here’. It may look like five loaves and two fish…
But…
In response to all this ‘paucity thinking’ – when we’re concentrating on what we haven’t got Jesus says drags our attention back to himself:
‘Well, what you have got – bring it here to me!”

‘Bring it here to me’, Jesus says to us.

The image that I have as he does this is of a loving Mum or Dad saying to a child who has been struggling long and hard with some project that won’t come out right – ‘bring it here to me!’
‘Bring it here to me’ says the parent, and with their loving patient help, what the child has is turned into something beautiful.

The disciples saw an impossibly hopeless situation, and yet the Lord took the few resources that they had and turned things around.
More than 5000 were fed that day, with an abundance left over.
And the disciples were part of this!
In making them a part of the miracle, by using the tiny amount that they could offer, the Lord drew them into a life giving partnership with himself.

7. He is making all things new…
In your difficult situation Jesus is still lovingly present.
He is saying to you, just what he said to the disciples: ‘bring it here to me!’
Perhaps your situation isn’t going to go away over night.
Perhaps it is something that you’re going to have to live with long term.

But the promise you have as a Christian is that the Lord will not leave you to handle it alone.
He is working in that situation, in his time, with the aim of bringing something good out of it.
Something good for you, something good in you. Something good for the person you love.

Last week we heard this marvellous promise from St Paul:
8:28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

The circumstances that just won’t go away are truly the one’s where the Lord is profoundly already shaping us, changing us, causing us to lean into him more securely.
He is challenging our faith, stretching it, so that it matures and deepens.
He is forming us into the image of himself – the one who patiently endured even the cross for the sake of love.

8. An abundance left over
Remember how extraordinary was the results of ‘bringing it to Jesus’.
There were 12 basketfuls of food left over!
Biblical scholars have debated long and hard and about the possible deeper significance of this number. I think it was simply that there were 12 disciples, and they all had some kind of container and they helped distribute the meal and they got to help clean up afterward too! Each of them was able to bring a basket back to the Lord. He was reinforcing to them the message of his ability to take the little they thought they had and turn it into something extraordinary.

Jesus, through this miracle was teaching them, and he’s teaching us, that as we offer up just what we have to our Lord, he takes it and makes it into something far far beyond what we could ever have imagined.

He was teaching them, and he’s teaching us, to keep our gaze fixed on him rather than on our own resources and circumstances.

Keep on offering up that situation that you’re struggling with to the Lord.
It feels frustrating when the ‘ball keeps coming back at you…’, and I can’t promise you that your troubles will soon be over.But our loving Lord’s final answer is always one of forgiveness, acceptance, faithfulness and grace as he says to you lovingly: “Bring it here to me! Let me help you carry it. Let me help you in it.”

And may he lead you to confess, with St Paul, “to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)
Amen.