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As a City Year Corps member, I found that even with all the sponsors and fund raising City Year did, our leadership still wanted us to ask around at local businesses for in-kind donations. In fact, we were encouraged to try and get in-kind donations whenever we got the chance, and we did for everything ranging from bagels for faculty breakfast with the teachers to supplies and decorations for after school events. Particularly when it came to food, there were a few times that our team managed to get enough that we not only had fed those at the event, but we still had more to feed many of the rest of us for at least a week.
These memories call to mind the feeding miracles we hear about today, not only because they involve copious amounts of food coming from nowhere, but because of the other lessons gleaned from events.
The City Year mantra is basically “It’s all for the kids.” Even for events like faculty breakfast, the focus was on the students we served because by helping the teachers, we were helping them. With the vast majority of us in City Year on food stamps, it would be easy to just focus on getting sustenance for ourselves over others.
But the mentality of “it’s all for the kids” isn’t just present in City Year. It is also what we see both with Elisha in 2 Kings and Jesus in the Gospel. The food the man brought for Elisha was specifically set aside for priests and servants of God. In other words, this food was Elisha’s due. Yet he made sure that others were fed first with it. That is almost more of the miracle here than the miraculous feeding.
Jesus finds Himself once again, as we’ve seen these past few weeks, being hounded by the crowds, and it would have been perfectly understandable for Him to only worry about what He and His Disciples would eat. No one, including us, would or could blame Him. Instead, He chooses this moment to demonstrate a lesson both on hospitality and on faith.
With all these stories, with in-kind donations in City Year, Elisha feeding others from the first fruits, and the loaves and fishes with Jesus, we see a tiny amount being used to help and feed a large amount of others. This is an important lesson for us as well. This demonstrates that we can do a lot with just a little. Whether it is finding resources that you didn’t have before or feeding a bunch of people with a small amount of food and still somehow having tons of leftovers, we can do amazing things with just a little of what God has given us.
We’ve seen this more fully during this time of pandemic. In the church, we had to scramble to make our services available to all when all could not be here. This has often been done with as little as a cellphone, yet the result is that anyone can see these services from anywhere at anytime.
We’ve seen what we can do to spread the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ with just a little. What, then, can we do when we have a lot?
Like all parishes, we have many resources: you. Each of you has different gifts to offer. The question is what can you do with a little in the name of our Lord, because when we add all those littles together, we will get a lot.
Take this time during the summer to reflect on this. What can you do with your little to serve Christ Jesus our Lord? If we all ask ourselves that question and find an answer, then we can come back this Fall, this coming Advent Season, and this coming year and, with each of us doing a little to serve our Lord, end up with a lot as a parish to further the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ in word and deed. That will be another venerable miracle, and another sign of God’s working in the world.