First Things First and Each Thing in Its Own Time

By

Reverend Litton Logan

July 23, 2006

Scriptures:

Mark 6:30--39 (TMNT) (The Message: New Testament)

The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on all that they had done and taught. Jesus said, “Come off by yourselves; let’s take a break and get a little rest.” For there was constant coming and going. They didn’t even have time to eat.

So they got in the boat and went off to a remote place by themselves. Someone saw them going and the word got around. From the surrounding towns people went out on foot, running, and got there ahead of them. When Jesus arrived, he saw this huge crowd. At the sight of them, his heart broke—like sheep with no shepherd they were. He went right to work teaching them.

When his disciples thought this had gone on long enough—it was now quite late in the day—they interrupted: “We are a long way out in the country, and it’s very late. Pronounce a benediction and send these folks off so they can get some supper.”

Jesus said, “You do it. Fix supper for them.”

They replied, “Are you serious? You want us to go spend a fortune on food for their supper?”

But he was quite serious. “How many loaves of bread do you have? Take an inventory.”

That didn’t take long. “Five,” they said, “plus two fish.”

Jesus got them all to sit down in groups of fifty or a hundred—they looked like a patchwork quilt of wildflowers spread out on the green grass! He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to the disciples, and the disciples in turn gave it to the people. He did the same with the fish. They all ate their fill. The disciples gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. More than five thousand were at the supper.

Mark 6:30--44 (NRSV) (The New Revised Standard)

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. ³⁵When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; ³⁶send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” ³⁷But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” ³⁸ And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” ³⁹ Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. ⁴⁰ So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. ⁴¹ Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. ⁴² And all ate and were filled; ⁴³ and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. ⁴⁴ Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

Sermon:

          There is a story told about an old hard-nosed preacher and a hobo.  This old hobo stopped by a church one Sunday morning looking for a handout.  He told the preacher how hungry he was and how he hadn’t eaten in days.  The pious preacher remarked, “… man can’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Therefore, the preacher said he would set the man to a meal but he had to stay for the service first.  The hobo reluctantly sat down and endured the service.   After the service, true to his word, the preacher took the hobo to a local restaurant and bought him a meal.   While he was eating, the preacher asked him if he had heard the word of God and was ready to repent, mend his ways, and become a responsible member of society.  The hobo looked shame faced in between wolfing down bites of his food.  Finally, he said, “No, preacher, I didn’t hear the word of God this morning, my stomach was talking to me louder than you sermon.” 

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The moral of this story is, “First things first and then each thing in its own time.”

          As one reads the Gospels, it becomes very evident that Jesus had a real knack for determining first-things-first and knowing each thing in its own time.  Jesus’ ministry is marked by his prioritizing and balancing preaching, teaching, and tending to the physical needs of people.

          In our scriptures today, the disciples have just returned from their missionary journey.  They are tired and Jesus is anxious to hear about their trip and their work.  Nevertheless, first things first, they must get some food and rest and then they can share their spiritual work.  Jesus and his disciples try to find a quiet place to get away from the crowds so they can eat, rest, and share but they cannot.

          Mark indicates that the crowd is hungry also—hungry for more of Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus looks upon the insistent and needy crowd with a deep compassion.  He must have thought--these are God’s people, the people of the promise, who have become spiritually disenfranchised by the prevailing religious establishment.  These people are eager for any scrap of hope, any crumb of good news from God.  Jesus sensed the people’s acute and chronic spiritual despair.  These people were starving to know that they were significant and cared for by God.  They needed to know that they had meaning and purpose with God even though they could not or would not conform to the religious conventions of their day

          Jesus puts aside his and his disciples’ retreat and begins to teach the people many things—in short; the first-things-first for he and his disciples gives ways to the higher priority of first-things-first for the crowd. The disciples’ and Jesus’ needs became a thing to be addressed in its own time later.

          The day wears on as Jesus fills the minds and souls of the people that have gathered to hear him.  However, evening arrives and the first- things-first of hearing the Gospel gives way to the crowd’s necessity for food. Their stomachs start to talk louder than Jesus does.  The exhausted and hungry disciples encourage Jesus to send the people away so that they can either go and buy food or return to their homes to eat.  Instead, Jesus tells the disciples that they are to feed the people. 

          Here again, you have to love these amazing disciples in Mark’s gospel.  They have seen people healed, people raised from the dead, experienced the transfer of Jesus’ power to themselves so they can exorcise unclean spirits, and they asked this dumb question:

They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?”

They asked if Jesus wanted them to spend a small fortune, if they had it, to feed these people.

³⁸ And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.”

        The remainder of the story is Mark’s version of the supernatural loaves-and-fish story.

        Again, I ask that we look beyond the supernatural and see the miraculous.  In addition, I believe we are so caught up in the supernatural aspects of this story that we also miss a crucial point, which is the mandate of “first things first and then each thing in its own time.”

        In other places in scripture, we see Jesus healing sick and diseased bodies before he teaches.  Like the hobo sometimes, people’s physical condition preempts their ability to hear and internalize Jesus’ teachings.  In today’s scriptures, however, we see Jesus teaching before he tends to peoples physical needs.  He does so because he recognized the first-things-first in their lives was their critical need to hear God’s word. Their physical bodies were okay at this time, but their souls were starving for words of hope and salvation.

Let us think a moment about both sides of this story today—the physical and the spiritual.

        I know many Christians and Christian organizations that seem to neglect the balance between the physical and the spiritual.  Many churches and religious organizations do many good things, but I fear they do not question their work periodically against the dictum “first things first and then each thing in its time.” It seems that the Outreach Committees and the Evangelism Committees in Christian churches across the world operate in isolation from one another.

        I have known people who would give sacrificially financially to insure that the gospel is preached around the world. These soul-saving people are eager to see people saved, but they would not lift a finger to heal sick bodies, defeated spirits, free ignorant minds, or lift the yokes of oppression from those they would seek to save.  The unequal distribution of medical care, educational opportunities, and political oppression are their problems and their government’s problems.

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        I once asked my Sunday school teacher some questions along these lines that got me into big trouble.  The impetuses for these questions stemmed from my having helped my grandmother Lottie make a collage of pictures on poster board to promote an upcoming Lottie Moon Christmas offering.  I asked my Sunday School teacher how it was that our church gave so much money to foreign missions to save and to care for people in Africa while we treated black people so badly in Mississippi. 

I told my teacher I couldn’t make sense out of “…Jesus loves the little children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his site …” except in Mississippi.  Wasn’t Mississippi a part of the world? (This last question gave my Sunday school teacher a perfect out, which he missed. He could have said, “No, Mississippi is not part of the world.” Mississippi is a world unto itself.” He would have had a lot of support on this position and it would have satisfied me for a little while.)

        I was told to shut up, don’t think so much, and do what I was told. My response, “That’s stupid!”  Dad was again waiting on me when I got home. I say again because I frequently got into trouble at church.  As I walked in the door at home, dad was setting in his recliner, a belt across his lap, with this woeful and hopeless look on his face.  It was a deep, sad look of bewilderment.  Dad looked at me as I entered the house and said, “What did I do so bad to deserve a kid like you.” This is not an uncommon question for parents of Attention Deficit Disorder kids. Although at the time, we didn’t know about ADD. I was just one of those problem children, who made their parents pay for their raising. Dad’s look of bewilderment soon turned to an angry scarlet. Again, I went to the theological school of do-what-I-tell-you-to-do, not-what-I-do.

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        My friends, on the physical side, it is very difficult for a person to be concerned about their spiritual growth and development when they are diseased, hungry, or terrified.  Offering spiritual salvation to a person when their families are hungry, disease ridden, and consumed with fear is not only stupid, it’s blasphemous.

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        This reminds me of the story about the three sons who gave something special to their aged mother.

Three sons left home, went out on their own, and prospered.  They discussed the gifts they were able to give their elderly mother. 

The first said, "I built a big house for our mother."

The second said: "I sent her a Mercedes with a driver."

The third said: "You remember how our mother enjoys reading the Bible. Now she can't see very well.  Therefore, I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire Bible.  It took elders in the church 12 years to teach him.  Mama just has to name the chapter and verse and the parrot recites it."

Soon thereafter, their mother sent out her letters of thanks.  “

“Milton," she said, "the house you built is so huge.  I only live in one room, but I have to clean the whole house.

"Gerald," she said, "I am too old to travel.  I stay at home mostly, so I rarely use the Mercedes.  And, that driver is so rude!  He's a pain!"

"But Donald," she said, "the little chicken you sent was delicious!"

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        Being well intended is nice, but it needs to be reality checked doesn’t it?

        For the same reason, on the spiritual side, it is stupid and blasphemous to neglect the needs of the healthy, wealthy, and so-called wise of this world. 

        I know of affluent Christian people who will work in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other relief organizations but will not ask one of the people they are helping about their relationship to God.  They will travel in to terrible and dangerous parts of town and risk much but will not share their faith with their prosperous and healthy friends and family.  Why not?  Well one’s relationship to God is personal.  They don’t want the people they help, their families, and their friends to think they are some kind of religious nuts.

        We are called upon by God to witness and serve the whole person, which is determined by the apparent urgency of people’s physical and spiritual needs in any given moment regardless of who they are—rich or poor, sick or well.  To help us to determine the first-things-first is the work of a disciplined, spiritual discernment process that begins with our openness to the Holy Spirit’s leadership and ends with us taking care of first-things-first in the lives of people we are called to ministry to and with.

        The true miracle of this story we heard read today is that Jesus even cared about those who had been, discounted and marginalized enough to meet with them and to teach them at all, regardless of their religious and socio-economic status.  Yes, I imagine there were some relatively healthy and prosperous people in that crowd that day, who were excluded and ostracized from main stream religious and community life because they were either tanners, tax collectors, or had some other profession or vocation that made them ceremonially and socially unacceptable.

        So often in our Christian endeavors, institutionally and individually, our creativity distracts us.  We bask in the self-satisfied glow of our programs, institutional imperatives, accomplishments, and fail to ask a crucial question.  That question being: Are people, the whole person, be they rich or poor, sick or healthy, really better off because of our institutions, our churches, our work, and witness?   If not, why not?  Are we doing our charitable, religious thing primarily because it makes us feel good about ourselves not whether there are lasting and wholesome changes in those we help?  

        Frequently our Christian service distinguishes us as either “do-gooders” or “well-doers”.  The “do good-er” does good for others out of his or her needs and the “well-doers” does good to benefit others.

The old hard-nosed preacher was s right, “…man can not live by bread alone ….” The old hard-nosed preacher just had his priorities wrong at that time. He was a “do-good-er” not a “well-doer” in our story.

        First things first, are there those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, or oppressed in body, mind, and spirit. As Christians, we are called to feed the hungry, the thirsty; heal the sick, set the oppressed free.  Then share with them where our power to heal, feed, and release came from--God.  Meet their most pressing needs first, and then the next things may well become obvious.

        First-things-first--are there people who languish in the abyss of hopeless affluence, prosperity, good health, unlimited freedom, and conspicuous consumption without a personal relationship to Christ?  Feed the poor, rich people with the word of God so they may find meaning, purpose, spiritual peace, and opportunity beyond their selfishness.  Never assume the healthy, wealthy, and so-called wise of this world have heard of God’s love for them and have simply turned their backs upon God’s call and claim.

Feed the rich and poor, the hopeful hungry and satiated.  Heal the sick of body, mind, and soul.  Comfort the hopeless hopefuls of this world.  Tell them, feed them, touch them, heal them all, whatever their needs, in the name and the power of God’s Christ in you. 

However, first things first: “How many loaves of bread do you have?  Take an inventory.”  (The Message: New Testament, Mark 6:38)

Holy Spirit, go out among us; take an inventory.  Holy Spirit how many of us are available to answer the call and go into the fields of suffering, disillusioned, hopeless, despairing, and decadent humanity. Holy Spirit, how much do we have?  How much are we willing to share? How many are willing to become bread, broken for the world?  What, only five loaves of bread and two small fish.  Well, God, bless us, break us, and distribute us according to your will. Amen.