Today’s Word: Offering

(Based on John 6:1-15)

I was sent to the market by my mother with very clear instructions: Buy five small barley loaves and two dried and salted fish. Nothing more. And come right back home. I was only 12 at the time, so I never could have imagined how much my life would change that day…

I was walking home from the market along the shore of the Galilee when I saw a crowd gathering, pointing toward a small boat just then coming ashore. As it beached, a couple of the men in the boat jumped out and hauled it the rest of the way in, away from the tide. They were fisherman, and I could smell the fish in their nets and on their clothes. People just kept coming and coming, running along the shore and from the market square, and I kept hearing one name over and over — Jesus. Jesus is here. The rabbi, the healer, the prophet. I had no idea who this man was, had never heard his name before. But here he was standing in front of me, the one that everyone else deferred to, pointed at, sought to get closer to. And I was right there, a pretty exciting thing for a kid from a small fishing village.

Small as I was, I wiggled my way to the center of the crowd, ducking beneath their waving hands and swinging arms. I was standing right in front of him still holding my basket, when I heard him say to some of the others, “Where can we buy enough food for them all to eat?” The others looked out at the growing crowd — hundreds or thousands of people, I couldn’t tell — and then back at him. “200 days’ wages would not be enough to feed this crowd!” one of them said, laughing loudly. Then this Jesus looked right at me — right at me — and winked. He called me by my name (how did he know that?) and mouthed four words to me, which no one else heard: “Can you help me?”

I don’t know why — to this day some 20 years later don’t know why — but I inched forward at that moment and held up my basket. “Here,” I said, “if it will help, you can have these. It’s not much, but it’s all I have.” I handed my basket with five loaves and two small fish inside to one of the other men. A roar of laughter went up from those around us. I thought my mother would likely kill me for giving away our meal for that evening and I was being laughed at, but something deep inside told me I was still making the right decision. And maybe my mother would understand, after all. Maybe.

The man said to Jesus, “This boy has offered us five loaves of barley and two dried fish, but I don’t know what good it will do.” Jesus smiled a crooked smile at the man, a smile with a little frown at the edges, and then he looked at me. “It is exactly enough because he has given all he has,” he said. “Have the people sit down on the grass.”

Jesus held up my basket and the crowd hushed. He prayed loudly so nearly everyone could hear, thanking God for the gift of the grain, for the work of the miller and the baker and the fishermen. As he looked at me again, he said, “And thank you for your gift of yourself, for you have given it for one reason only — because there are those who are hungry. For this, you will be repaid many times over.”

He lowered the basket and told them to pass it among the crowd. I watched as my basket moved among the people, watched as one after another they dipped their hands into the basket and came up full of bread and fish. I lost track after a while. It just kept moving and moving, and I wondered if I would ever get my basket back. I couldn’t begin to understand how it was happening, couldn’t conceive of a power able to do whatever it was that was happening. This went on for an hour, the basket never stopping and the people continuing to come up with full hands. Some asked for seconds. I stood beside Jesus and slyly slipped my hand in his. He squeezed it gently.

Finally, he said, “Gather up what’s left over and bring it here.” His helpers dispersed themselves into the crowd and came back with 12 wicker baskets filled with partial loaves of bread and good-sized pieces of fish, enough to feed my entire extended family for many days. “Help him home with all of this,” he said, “He gets to keep it all because he trusted me with what little he had.”

The people started to press in toward us then, started calling him “king.” And just as quickly he was gone, headed up the mountain with his followers so he could be alone. I was never again the same, never stopped seeking to find him, to feel once again his hand in mine, hear once again him call me by my name. I was just the boy in the story many years later, but I knew who I was because he knew me.

Ask yourself in silence: What do I have to offer Jesus, even if it seems like not enough?