SPEAKER_00: Our epistle reading for this morning comes from Ephesians 3:20 through 21.
SPEAKER_00: Let's listen together for God's word to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Now to him who, by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.
SPEAKER_00: To him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ to all generations, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This is God's word for God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_01: And our gospel reading this week is a well-known one, the feeding of the five thousand.
SPEAKER_01: But if you ask me, I would say that sometimes the more well-known stories can be more difficult to teach.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we've heard it a bunch, sometimes we bring a lot of assumptions to them.
SPEAKER_01: We may feel like we already know what they're about.
SPEAKER_01: But maybe this is actually the first time you've ever heard this story.
SPEAKER_01: And even if it's the thousandth time you've heard it, I'd love for us to try and hear it with new ears today.
SPEAKER_01: What details are present?
SPEAKER_01: And what details were you expecting to hear, but you didn't hear?
SPEAKER_01: Every line of the story is so rich, and so I hope that together we can hear the good news freshly today from Mark chapter six, verses thirty four through forty-four.
SPEAKER_01: Let's listen to God's word for us today.
SPEAKER_01: As Jesus 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.
SPEAKER_01: And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late.
SPEAKER_01: Send them away, so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus answered them, You give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: They said to him, Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?
SPEAKER_01: And he said to them, How many loaves have you?
SPEAKER_01: Go and see.
SPEAKER_01: And when they had found out, they said, Five and two fish.
SPEAKER_01: Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass.
SPEAKER_01: So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties.
SPEAKER_01: And taking the five loaves and two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people.
SPEAKER_01: And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces, and of the fish.
SPEAKER_01: Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_01: I learned a fun fact about the internet recently.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that we are all able to visit the same websites at the same time because of bees?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, bees.
SPEAKER_01: Or at least what we learned by observing them.
SPEAKER_01: I was listening to Radio Lab not too long ago when I came across their February 13th episode titled Time is Honey.
SPEAKER_01: And in that episode, they explained that in the early 2000s the internet faced a problem.
SPEAKER_01: Every website had its own individual server.
SPEAKER_01: And if too many people tried to visit a website, it would crash because there weren't enough servers dedicated to that site.
SPEAKER_01: And in those days, a computer scientist named Soudil Nakrani began searching for solutions.
SPEAKER_01: And after nearly giving up, he decided to just send a blanket batch of emails to all of the engineering professors at nearby Georgia Tech just to see if any of them would help him talk through this problem.
SPEAKER_01: And shortly thereafter, one of those conversations led him to come across the research on how honey bees organize themselves when they're looking for food in a new environment.
SPEAKER_01: You see, when a hive lands in a new place and begins searching for food, no single bee is in charge.
SPEAKER_01: There's no master planner, no one's giving out directions.
SPEAKER_01: Bees just go out and they start looking for flowers.
SPEAKER_01: And when they come back, they don't come back with a long report, they simply share a small signal.
SPEAKER_01: A little flight pattern that they call a waggle dance.
SPEAKER_01: Sort of wiggle back and forth in the air like this.
SPEAKER_01: And what that waggle dance is saying is, um, there's something over there about five minutes away.
SPEAKER_01: It might be good.
SPEAKER_01: And that's it.
SPEAKER_01: Just one tiny piece of information from one bee coming back to one bee headed out.
SPEAKER_01: But then another bee shares its signal, and another, and another, and each bee contributes just its little bit of what it knows, and somehow through all those small signals the hive begins to act almost like a single mind.
SPEAKER_01: The colony collectively finds the best places for food.
SPEAKER_01: The ones that are closest, and when those run out where the next one is, the whole system becomes wiser than any individual bee.
SPEAKER_01: And believe it or not, this interaction, this little one-to-one interaction over and over and over and over and over again, is kind of like an algorithm.
SPEAKER_01: A bio algorithm, if you will, that helped Sumil and his colleagues at IBM solve the traffic problems on the early internet by directing servers energy where it was needed the most.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you.
SPEAKER_01: You may have fallen asleep the moment I said bees or the moment I said internet, but for me, I find these sorts of stories so fascinating.
SPEAKER_01: Where it seems like it's a problem that has no solution, but but a random connection, a random conversation and some generosity reveal surprising abundance.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, bees.
SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes in the face of what looks like an impossible problem, because of the scale or the severity or the complexity, we can become overwhelmed and defeated.
SPEAKER_01: And moving from that place of scarcity, we are less likely to see the simple solutions woven into the connections around us.
SPEAKER_01: If we're too focused on what we don't have or what isn't working, and on the size of the problem, we might miss a very elegant and flexible solution.
SPEAKER_01: It might be right around the corner.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the first faithful step is simply to take stock of what we already have and talk to the people we know.
SPEAKER_01: One detail that I find challenging about our passage for today is that in the verses of this chapter that precede our story, Jesus has been rejected in his hometown, and he has learned about the death of John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_01: And he's tired, and he's sad, and he's grieving.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has just said to his disciples, Come away with me to a deserted place, so we can rest awhile.
SPEAKER_01: For many were coming are going, it says, and they had no leisure even to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Jesus is trying to rest, he's trying to get away, he's trying to grieve, he's trying to set some boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: These are important things, but the hard part is that sometimes big problems confront us when we're already grieving and tired.
SPEAKER_01: It's one thing to look out at the crowd of five thousand people and feel overwhelmed and inadequate.
SPEAKER_01: But to know that underneath that overwhelm is also grief and exhaustion, and that Jesus was trying to do the sensible thing.
SPEAKER_01: He was trying to take some time away for prayer and rest and restoration.
SPEAKER_01: But then the scripture says that he saw the crowds, and he had compassion on them, compassion.
SPEAKER_01: He felt their pain in his gut.
SPEAKER_01: His hunger was their hunger.
SPEAKER_01: For they were like sheep without a shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: You know, compassion and empathy, they can help us discern faithful ways to use our little time and our little energy.
SPEAKER_01: And it is good to seek rest and prayer and solitude when we can.
SPEAKER_01: And also not all the time, but sometimes the faithful move is to change our plans and to be present with the ones who are right in front of us.
SPEAKER_01: And then the disciples, knowing how spent Jesus is and how much time has passed, the disciples do a very caring, they do a very caring thing.
SPEAKER_01: They say, Look, Lord, it's getting late.
SPEAKER_01: We're sure you're hungry, we're tired, and these folks must be as well.
SPEAKER_01: Let's dismiss them to go into the surrounding towns so that they can find places to rest and get something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus sees the crowd and hears something from the spirit that gives him the wildest idea.
SPEAKER_01: He says simply and clearly to his disciples, actually, y'all give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And his disciples, to their credit, they're like, Oh okay, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
SPEAKER_01: Um should we head into town and drop ten K at the nearest bakery?
SPEAKER_01: You know, if I'm honest, too many times in my own life I'm tempted to just purchase the solution to my problem.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than spending a few minutes looking around our house to see if the solution might already be in the back of the junk drawer or out in the shed.
SPEAKER_01: But at least it's an attempt to address the issue from the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: But no, Jesus says, No, I want you to take stock of what you already have.
SPEAKER_01: What do you already have at hand to feed these folks?
SPEAKER_01: And the disciples huddle up, and they turn their pockets inside out, and I'm sure they put it all out on a blanket before them, and what they find is five loaves of bread and two fish for some reason.
SPEAKER_01: Personally, I wouldn't be walking around the countryside with fish in a bag, but these were different times.
SPEAKER_01: And here we are.
SPEAKER_01: A small group of committed people who had brought together what they had to give, and it didn't look like much, and the problem still looked too big.
SPEAKER_01: But then Jesus does something really interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Before a single crumb is consumed, he tells the disciples to get organized.
SPEAKER_01: He has them organize the people into groups to have them sit down together on the green grass in hundreds and fifties.
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly, this massive, overwhelming crowd becomes smaller, more bite-sized chunks.
SPEAKER_01: It becomes little communities within the bigger community, an order begins to emerge, and the disciples start moving among the people.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus takes the little they have and places it back into their hands to distribute after blessing it and breaking it.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all feed them.
SPEAKER_01: Which means the miracle didn't happen far away from the crowd.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't happen in the sky and rained down on them like manna.
SPEAKER_01: It happened among the people, among the many, and the movement of bread from hand to hand, group to group, person to person.
SPEAKER_01: What looked like not enough in isolation becomes more than enough in community.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know any stories like that?
SPEAKER_01: Where has the gospel of abundance shown up in your life?
SPEAKER_01: A friend of ours worships at a church in the mountains of North Carolina, Black Mountain Presbyterian Church.
SPEAKER_01: And a couple of years ago their congregation was doing something many churches try to do.
SPEAKER_01: They were trying to write a new mission statement.
SPEAKER_01: One that better reflected the folks who were there then, and you know how these processes go, lots of meetings, lots of drafts, lots of carefully chosen words that sometimes can end up feeling a little abstract.
SPEAKER_01: For months their committee struggled to find language that felt honest.
SPEAKER_01: Something that people wouldn't just frame and hang on the wall, but would actually live.
SPEAKER_01: And then one day someone pointed to a question that was already carved into their communion table.
SPEAKER_01: Just four words Has everyone been fed?
SPEAKER_01: The committee sat with the question for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Could a question be a mission statement?
SPEAKER_01: The more they thought about it, the more it made sense because feeding people wasn't just one of the programs at the church.
SPEAKER_01: It was happening everywhere, through meals, through worship, through friendship, through care for neighbors in need.
SPEAKER_01: And perhaps the most important part was that a question like that can never really be finished.
SPEAKER_01: That question keeps calling us forward.
SPEAKER_01: So like good Presbyterians, they slowly brought the idea through the proper channels and committees, and eventually the session approved it, and in September of twenty twenty four, their pastor, the Reverend Mary Catherine Robinson, preached a sermon, introducing the congregation's new mission statement.
SPEAKER_01: Has everyone been fed?
SPEAKER_01: And then a few days later something happened that no strategic planning committee could have predicted.
SPEAKER_01: Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina.
SPEAKER_01: Flooding destroyed homes and businesses across the region, and roads were washed out.
SPEAKER_01: Power, water, cell service all gone.
SPEAKER_01: And in that moment of crisis the people of the church did something very simple.
SPEAKER_01: They opened the doors.
SPEAKER_01: Members began emptying the church food pantry.
SPEAKER_01: Others started cooking whatever they could find in freezers.
SPEAKER_01: Using small gas stoves, words spread quickly through the town.
SPEAKER_01: And before long a line of hungry neighbors began forming in the church parking lot.
SPEAKER_01: The pastor moved through the crowd with a small notepad, asking them questions and jotting down whatever people said they needed water, blankets, baby formula, propane.
SPEAKER_01: At one point someone looked around the kitchen and said, Wait, the water's out.
SPEAKER_01: How are we going to wash all these dishes?
SPEAKER_01: And Reverend Mary shrugged and looked into a nearby trash can that had been left outside that was a little bit filled with rainwater and said something like, Well, there's a little water in here.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't much, but it was enough to start.
SPEAKER_01: And in the days and weeks that followed, something remarkable happened.
SPEAKER_01: Volunteers kept showing up.
SPEAKER_01: When people needed something, they knew where they could go to find other people who also needed stuff.
SPEAKER_01: This sharing opened up among the neighbors and supplies began slowly arriving, and within a few days that little church was feeding nearly a thousand people a day.
SPEAKER_01: And before long, the building was filled with donated food and supplies.
SPEAKER_01: Local businesses began offering warehouse space and restaurants partnered with the church to cook larger meals.
SPEAKER_01: Over time, donations poured in to support long-term recovery, eventually totaling more than two million dollars, were distributed to organizations helping rebuild homes and care for the community.
SPEAKER_01: It all grew into something quite extraordinary.
SPEAKER_01: But it started in the same way the Mark story starts.
SPEAKER_01: With a simple question.
SPEAKER_01: And with people taking stock of what they had right in front of them and deciding to share it.
SPEAKER_01: Our church finds itself in a much less physically precarious position today.
SPEAKER_01: We're not recovering from a hurricane, but we have been recovering.
SPEAKER_01: We've been grieving.
SPEAKER_01: We've been through a lot of change that we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We're recovering from breaks of trust, from having found uh we're having to recover trust over the last decade or so in hopes of finding some stability and patience and trust one another.
SPEAKER_01: But we are also in a place that requires of us that same kind of faithful response.
SPEAKER_01: Our community needs us.
SPEAKER_01: And yet our budget doesn't always reflect our vitality, the connection and love we share with one another, or our values in the way that we would like for it too.
SPEAKER_01: And so we've been quietly doing work on our own missional understanding with the Three Rivers Collaborative.
SPEAKER_01: And our Good Futures Committee has been taking stock of what we do have at our disposal, taking an asset-focused approach to stewardship of our resources and our buildings and our connections.
SPEAKER_01: And our friends at Justice Knox are offering us opportunities to get organized with our neighbors for the common good.
SPEAKER_01: And here we sit, in 2026, beloved disciples seeking to follow our risen Lord who still calls to us in community to feed the people, physically and spiritually, and emotionally.
SPEAKER_01: God still looks at us with loving eyes and says, Y'all give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And friends, if we're honest, the world we inhabit runs on a very different story.
SPEAKER_01: The world tells us that there's never enough.
SPEAKER_01: There's not enough time, there's not enough money, there's not enough energy, not enough security to risk our generosity.
SPEAKER_01: The world teaches us to hold tight to what we have, to protect it, to ration it out carefully.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we don't, someone else might take it.
SPEAKER_01: Scarcity is a powerful story.
SPEAKER_01: But it is not the story Jesus tells.
SPEAKER_01: Because in Mark 6, standing in the middle of a tired and hungry group of disciples, and a crowd of hungry strangers, Jesus refuses the logic of scarcity.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say, protect what little you have.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say, well, wait until you have more.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say send them away.
SPEAKER_01: He says something much more dangerous than that.
SPEAKER_01: You give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And the truth is the disciples were right about one thing.
SPEAKER_01: What they had wasn't enough by itself.
SPEAKER_01: Not enough bread, not enough fish, not enough strength.
SPEAKER_01: But in the hands of Jesus, and in the life of a community willing to share, it became more than enough.
SPEAKER_01: Twelve baskets more than enough.
SPEAKER_01: Which means to me that the miracle of this story is not simply that bread multiplied.
SPEAKER_01: The miracle is that a frightened and tired group of disciples trusted Jesus enough to place their small lives of offering into a larger story.
SPEAKER_01: And once they did, abundance began to move hand to hand, group to group, person to person.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom of God moves that way, quietly, communally, through ordinary people who decide to share what they have, and so the question before us today is not whether we have enough.
SPEAKER_01: We have enough to do what God has called us to do, we already do.
SPEAKER_01: The question is the one carved into that communion table in North Carolina.
SPEAKER_01: Has everyone been fed?
SPEAKER_01: In body, in spirit, in relationships where loneliness reigns, in hope where hopelessness shows up in people's lives?
SPEAKER_01: Because if the answer is not yet, then the good news is the call of Christ still stands, and not for us, not for or not for someone else, not for just disciples back then, but for you and for me, and for this church and for South Knoxville in this moment in time.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus still looks at his disciples with compassion in his eyes and says, Y'all give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And the good news, dear friends, is that this first step of faith is simply this to take stock of what we have, to trust that it's enough to do what Jesus has asked us to do, and to place it in his hands, because when we bring what we have, our time, our gifts, our resources, our courage, our love, and we place them in the hands of Christ, what looked like not enough in isolation becomes more than enough in community.
SPEAKER_01: So friends, remember the bees.
SPEAKER_01: What little bit of information you have, be open and honest about it.
SPEAKER_01: Share what's yours with others, and remember that the blessing of the bread broken and shared, and that the miracle is that enough is abundance.
SPEAKER_01: So then when we go from this place, we go with open hands, sharing what we have, trusting the abundance of God and feeding the world one table, one neighbor, one act of generosity at a time.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.