Taking a long walk by myself through the lush green northern Indiana countryside a couple of weeks ago where the distance between houses is measured in miles I was reminded of why Jesus often found a need to get alone.  There are just some voices you can’t hear until the only other noise in your life is the sound of the gravel crunching under your feet.  Like the voice of conscience.  Or, the voice of God.  There are so many noises in our lives that deafen us to the ones that matter most. 

A very good friend of mine who works with youth has a rule that, when they get on the bus to go on a church trip, a retreat or mission trip or to youth camp, the youth cannot take along anything electronic.  No CD players.  No radios.  Nothing.  His rule is simple.  If they bring it he confiscates it, permanently.  It took the kids a few years to learn that he meant business.  Until then, he tells me, his daughters routinely got CD players and stereos for Christmas every year that he confiscated on youth trips until the youth figured out that, when they went on those trips, he wanted them to learn something about living without the distractions.  He knew there were voices they wouldn’t hear unless the decibels of distraction were minimized. 

Maybe that is the reason Jesus said to the disciples, “’Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’”  The disciples had been busy doing good things.  Taking care of people and teaching them.  They were preaching the gospel and even casting out demons and healing sick people.       (Mark 6:12-13)  In fact, they were doing such a good job of meeting peoples’ needs that too many people needed them.  It’s true, if word gets out that you really care and you are willing to help, your calendar will get overloaded overnight.  So many people were “coming and going” in the disciples’ lives that they didn’t even have time to stop for dinner.  Jesus knew what we so easily forget.  What is going out has to be balanced by what is coming in or things can get dangerously out of balance.  You cannot give to others what you do not have.  And, you’ll have nothing to give unless you learn at least as much about receiving as you do giving. 

There is a time to give and a time to share and a time to be busy with the needs of others.  But, that kind of time in our lives must be balanced by time alone.  To rest.  To sleep.  To eat.  To listen to the voices you can only hear when you turn the decibels of distraction down low and long enough.  I’ll never forget the advice Daniel Vestal gave me years ago.  “Sometimes,” he said, “the most spiritual thing you can do is get a good night’s rest. ”  Sometimes when I am lying in bed at night feeling guilty about how grumpy or irritable I’ve been with people that day his advice haunts me.  All that we are, physically, spiritually and emotionally, is bound up together.  It is true that we are what we eat, or don’t eat.  We are what we think, or don’t think.  We are what we pray, or don’t pray.  And, when people come to us for help, it is into that bag of stuff they will reach.  How well we’ve kept things in balance will determine whether they pull back a hand full of help or simply draw back a bloody nub.  Jesus knew that it was time for some time alone. 

So, what really puzzles me is what happens next.  They get into a boat so that they can really get away but the people follow them by the thousands.  It seems to me that the disciples were just taking Jesus seriously when they asked him to “send them away.”  The people were hungry and they needed more than the disciples had to give.  It all makes perfect sense to me that the disciples would want Jesus to get rid of the people.  That way they could find something to eat and the disciples would get their quiet time.  But, instead, Jesus says to the disciples, “’you give them something to eat.’” 

How do you do that?  How do you keep giving when you’re given out?  How do you keep giving when what you have is less than what people need?  Well, what happens next is something none of us have ever witnessed.  Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish and multiplied it into enough so that thousands had enough to eat and when the disciples made doggie bags of the leftovers they had enough to fill “twelve baskets.”  It’s a miracle.  A true miracle.  A time when God set aside the natural order to achieve a supernatural purpose.  But, what is really going on is Jesus teaching the disciples, and us, a lesson. 

Real life doesn’t happen according to our schedule.  People don’t hurt nine to five.  People need us when we least need to be needed.  Their needs will always be greater than our resources.  True compassion, like the kind Jesus felt for those he saw as “sheep without a shepherd,” always tries to find some way when there doesn’t seem to be a way.  Jesus wanted the disciples, wants us, to learn something about living out of the center.

So, I revisit a theme I discussed with you the first day I stood in this pulpit.  The fact that it is always tempting to measure our situation by the size of the need rather than by the size of our resources.  To do exactly what the disciples did that day.  To let the needs before us serve as the measuring stick of our response rather than the resources of Christ among and within us.  Two fish and five loaves over against uncounted thousands of hungry people.  That kind of math just doesn’t work.  Unless you learn something about living from the inside out, living out of the center.

About two or three months before I first heard from Cliff Temple’s pastor search committee Nancy and I were out walking one night and I was feeling pretty low.  I knew I desperately wanted back in the ministry.  But, I also knew what I was up against.  Nothing that had happened in my life that previous five years, in my mind, qualified me to stand in anyone’s pulpit ever again.  As we were walking along, I spelled out for Nancy all the reasons why no one would ever be interested in calling me as pastor.  It was a pretty long list.  An impressive yardstick, as I recall, with which to measure my life’s possibilities. 

Nancy listened patiently.  And, when I had finished, all she said was, “your God is too small.”  I was measuring the situation in terms of my puny resources.  Nancy was simply choosing another way of measuring things.  And, three months later, you proved her right and me wrong.  And, what I have never forgotten from that lesson is that, while there might not always be a logical solution to every dilemma, there is always grace.  When you learn to measure your situation by the size of God’s grace rather than by the size of the dilemma whole new vistas of possibility spring to life right before your eyes.

That’s all Jesus wanted the disciples to see.  The miracle is backdrop.  Those folks just got a free dinner because Jesus had to show the disciples something about how to measure dilemmas.  To see things from the inside out rather than the outside in.  To learn to start living out of the center of their being, where, because of the presence of Christ, God’s resources are always greater than our needs.

How our resources measure up to the situation in which we find ourselves is one of the greatest distractions to faith.  And, there are always plenty of people around to remind us of how we don’t measure up.  I heard the story recently of a little boy whose dad was trying to get him to make better grades in school.  His dad used the old Abraham Lincoln ploy, “Son,” he said, “when Abraham Lincoln was your age he had to walk several miles to and from school every day.  And, when he got home he had to do his chores and then do his homework.  So, there’s no reason why, since you have things so much better, you shouldn’t make better grades.”  The boy then said to his dad, “Dad, when Abraham Lincoln was your age he was already President of the United States.”

You can’t help but admire the little boy who knew better than his father that you need to be careful which standard you use to measure your possibilities.  That is all Jesus is trying to get the disciples to see.  What was most apparent to the disciples was the thousands of hungry people over against their five loaves and two fish.  Jesus wanted them to remeasure their situation in terms of his presence among them.  The theme of all that we do in this place should be nothing less than the promise of God to us that, our God shall supply all our needs “according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 4:19)  But, we would never know that unless God let us face situations, from time to time, that outstrip our natural abilities.  Until we face something that is impossible for us we’ll never know what the possibilities are with Christ. 

Our church, next Sunday, will consider the possibility of rebirthing.  It’s a natural enough question to ask where we’ll get the resources to do all we must to help our church start over again in this place.  But, please do not dismiss what I am saying this morning as nothing more than a pep talk meant to simply reverse potentially negative thinking.  I know what a pep talk sounds like.  My sophomore year in high school our football team had lost every single game we played that season.  Just before the last game, the coach came into the locker room to give us a “pep talk.”  He told us that, even though we’d lost every game we’d played that season, we could redeem the whole season by winning that last game.  We all knew he was lying.  We knew there was no hope.  No matter how well we played that night we knew that our team would always be remembered for its terrible losses that season.  So, as you might well guess, we lost the last game, too.  People always play like losers when they have no hope.  Pep talks are often meant to give people hope when they don’t already have anyway.

This isn’t a pep talk.  It’s a faith talk.  It’s a call to remember that our resources are not our hope.  Jesus is our hope.  The walking-on-water-demon-exorcising-feeding-five-thousand-walking-out-of-a-grave-alive Jesus.  He is our hope.  And, when we measure our situation by his grace and not by the size of the dilemma or our meager resources we’ll serve and work and live and die like the winners we already are.  I like the way my good friend, George Mason, defines hope.  “Hope,” he says, “is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but that you will turn out well, regardless of how it turns out.  Our lives, especially our suffering, are not tragedies to be fixed but mysteries to be lived with hope in a God who loves us enough to suffer for us, in our place, even though we don’t deserve it.”  (George Mason, This Hope Floats, The Wilshire Pulpit, August 8, 1999)

On another occasion the disciples faced what was, to them, an impossible situation.  A young boy apparently suffering from epilepsy was brought to them and they couldn’t heal him.  So the father of the child took him to Jesus who did heal him.  The disciples wanted to know why they couldn’t do what Jesus did with so little effort.  And, in response, Jesus said, “’if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’”  (Matthew 17:14-21)  Jesus was saying that what counts in any given situation is not the size of your faith but where you’ve chosen to put your faith.  God can work with even microscopic faith as long as that faith is in him.When we measure our response to any situation by how big it is compared to our natural abilities we are living from the outside in.  We’re letting our situation shape our faith.  When we measure the situation by how big our God is then we are living from the inside out. 

You heard me tell the children about seeing a little chicken born.  If that little chick had known just how terribly difficult life can be it might have just stayed inside his shell.  But, had it stayed it would have died for sure.  Life, by its nature, never stays put.  It always moves from the inside out.  Just like it did when Jesus was born of a virgin and reborn from a sealed tomb.   And, just like we’ll do when we turn down all the other noise of unfaith that distracts and listen for that still small voice that is calling us, just like it did Lazarus, “’come out!’”  (John 11:43)

It’s really this simple.  All kinds of voices call us every day.  The voices of temptation and sin and evil.  The voice of hopelessness and despair and impossibility.  And, the voice that calls out hope where there is none and life where there is only death.  What we will do with the rest of our lives has a great deal to do with what voice we choose to follow.  So, here’s the question we must all answer.  Would you want to live forever following the voice you’re listening to this very moment? 

Well?