NEVER ENOUGH
Genesis 33:1-11
Matthew 14:13-21

How often do you sense there are at least two forces at work in your life vying for your attention, energy, and resources?  These two forces that vie for our attention are the urge to get and the urge to give. Working under the surface of our lives is the urge to be generous and the fear of scarcity. These are what motivate us to action.  Occasionally, something occurs that exposes the forces.  It may be a crisis of some type.  It may be the result of a conversation with a friend.  Something may occur that results in an “Aha” moment for us.  Sometimes it’s a gathering with family and friends or a holiday that causes us to look at life a bit differently than is typical of our normal, daily routines.  Thanksgiving does that for me.  It happens partly because I feel compelled to have something to say about Thanksgiving rather than just saying something.  It happens because as I read, research, collect my thoughts, and begin to write a sermon about thanksgiving, I find I’m exploring what my motives and motivation are for being who I am and living as I do.  As I was going through this process in preparing this sermon I became aware of how driven our culture is to grab for more and more, more things and more stuff. 
           
George Carlin made this clever observation about our stuff: “A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that stuff you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!
Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore.”
           
We have large houses with storage areas so we can keep our stuff because we feel very anxious without our security blankets to touch if not wrap around us.  It seems that we can never have enough.  Why is this?  What is motivating us to want more and more?
           
Which attitude is going to win out in our lives and produce actions?  Will it be scarcity or generosity?  Are we motivated by scarcity or generosity?   We confuse our wants with our needs and easily turn our wants into needs.  We need food every day.  We don’t need to mask our fear and insecurity by stuffing ourselves with comfort food-the term used by many to rationalize overeating.  This illustrates how we mistakenly confuse and transpose a want into a need and leads too many of us to count our blessings on our fingers and our troubles on our calculators. Whenever we do that, there is never enough.  There is never enough food to meet our wants.  There always is enough food to meet our needs.  When we worry about having enough we are frightened by scarcity.  When we worry about having enough, it is impossible for us ever to have enough. 
           
The fear of scarcity can cause us to do some strange things and take some bazaar actions.  My maternal grandparents were extremely frugal people.  The frugality was influenced by their childhood experiences.  They came from families of very modest means. However, I think the Great Depression had more of an impact on them than anything else.  They lived through a time when all kinds of supplies were extremely limited.  They probably survived better then most because they owned a farm and produced nearly all of their own food. 
           
I recall my family giving my grandparents Christmas gifts.  It seemed difficult to know what to give them.  However, because my grandfather was a farmer and worked outside, we often gave him good work clothes--shirts, pants, gloves.  My grandmother spent endless hours patching my grandfather’s work clothes.  I can still see those work pants and shirts he wore.  I cannot recall ever seeing him wearing a new one or wearing one that did not have at least one patch on it.  After my grandfather died, we were going through his things.  He had two dresser drawers full of new shirts still in their original wrappers that we and other family members had given him through the years.  His fear of scarcity infused his life.  He could never have enough.
           
What a contrast his reaction was to the reaction of Esau and the result of the feeding of the 5000 in our Scripture lessons today.  I find myself returning over and over to the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau had been estranged for twenty years because Jacob had stolen Esau’s birthright and run away.  Esau had been furious and probably would have killed Jacob if he had not run away.  Twenty years later the opportunity came for them to see each other again.  Lots of things had happened in both of their lives as is natural in course of twenty years.  Jacob was convinced that he had to shower Esau with gifts, all kinds of expensive gifts to at least keep Esau from killing him.  For me, this scene and Esau’s statement is one of the most powerful in all of Scripture.  Jacob brings goats, sheep, camels, and donkeys as well as servants to give to Esau.  But Esau will not accept the gifts.  The gifts seem like bribes or restitution on Jacob’s part.  He refuses the gifts and says, “I have enough.”  Who ever says, “I have enough”?
           
A similar note is sounded in the story of feeding the 5000. The story begins with sense of excitement by the disciples.  They have done what Jesus asked them to do, have been successful and buoyed by it and eager to tell Jesus about it.  Jesus invites them to come away to a lonely place and rest awhile.  The disciples had seen many people coming and going, taking Jesus’ time and they thought they were going to have his undivided attention. Perhaps Jesus is going to give out the latest ministry achievement awards.
           
They got in a boat to travel across the lake.  As they were sailing they saw people on the shore moving toward where they were going to dock. They wished for one of those storms to take the boat away from where the people were traveling.  Who was captain of the ship?  Why didn’t he guide the boat away from all those people?  With all those people came needs, demands, and expectations. 

Now, they were gathered with a throng of people and as lunch time approached, the disciples were concerned about food for the people.  What caused the disciples to have concern?  Perhaps it was compassion on their part.  They realized the day was getting away and the people were going to be hungry.  Jesus commanded his disciples to give them something to eat. It seems their job description as followers of Jesus kept changing from apostles to disciples to waiters and now to busboys.  The disciples seem exasperated and overwhelmed when they say, “All we have here are five loaves and two fish.” Implied is the question, “What good will so little do when there are so many who are hungry?”
           
As a leader Jesus is willing to be vulnerable to the point of looking like a fool.  Jesus does not solve the problem and serve as the answer man.  Jesus continues to believe in people who do not believe in themselves.  This story is relevant today because we have abundance rather than scarcity and we are to believe in people who do not believe in themselves.  In the story of the feeding of the 5000, Matthew says that Jesus asked the disciples to bring the food to him. Jesus received the food as a gift, he gave thanks for the gift, and he gave the gift away.  “Everyone ate and had enough.”  There’s that would again, enough. Not only did everyone have enough, but also there was food left over. What an illustration of sufficiency!
           
When we are driven by the fear of scarcity, we can never have enough.  We collect stuff and keep it long beyond its usefulness or value to us.  Elizabeth Ciccolini did a neat thing with the youth a couple of years ago.  Elizabeth invited the members of PYF to de-stuff themselves.  They were invited to go through their stuff at home and bring to PYF items they no longer needed, used, or wanted.  It was quite a collection of stuff.  This could be a valuable approach for each of us to do periodically, de-stuff ourselves.  Maybe it is a good thing to think about before we sit down to a Thanksgiving dinner and stuff ourselves.  Perhaps we also eventually will be able to say as Esau did, “I have enough.”
           
An interesting phenomenon is at work in our culture.  More people travel during the weekend of Thanksgiving than any other time of the year.  Many have a four day weekend and that contributes to the decision to travel.  I wonder, maybe I want to believe, if much of the reason really is a sense of gratitude under the surface of our lives.  We want to be with friends and family with no other real agenda than just to be together and share a meal because in some sense those who eat together stay together.  Someone has quipped, “He who forgets the language of gratitude is not likely to be on speaking terms with God.” (Zingers by Croft M. Pentz, p. 310)
           
A doctor who used to see a lot of depressed and unhappy patients began prescribing a thank-you cure. He told his patients that for six weeks they had to say, “Thank you,” for every good thing that happened to them and keep a journal of the incidents. The cure rate was remarkable.
           
This is not surprising since the world seems to consist of two groups of people: those who are grateful and those who are not. Thanksgiving is a time of the year that retail America almost ignores. It's like they know that the important holiday is right after Thanksgiving - when the stores open for Christmas shoppers. Thanksgiving is that little holiday between Halloween and Christmas. If the Christmas decorations are out, can Halloween be far behind? Thanksgiving just happens to fall in between Halloween and Christmas.
           
Retailers really don't want to emphasize Thanksgiving. If we are thankful for what we have, we're not likely to be rushing out to buy stuff. And that is bad for corporate America. (Based on an article by Rurel Ausley Jr., Give thanks in all circumstances, Northwest Florida Daily News, November 6, 1999, C1.
           
Henry Nouwen once suggested that the purest, simplest holiday may be Thanksgiving. Christmas is distorted by a society that promotes consumer madness and ritual perfectionism. Even Easter is overshadowed by chocolate bunnies and new finery.
           
It has been said that gratefulness is the very heart of prayer, and so to truly observe Thanksgiving is to engage in fervent prayer. Gratefulness, however, cannot be manufactured. It is grace, a gift that God bestows and not anything we can create in our own lives. True gratitude bears little resemblance to the forced optimism underlying the admonition to count your blessings. Gratitude is not a denial of real pain and loss. It is not a stoic effort to concentrate on the good things in life. It isn't the power of positive thinking. ...
           
We cannot attain a state of gratitude by presenting God with a list of things we think we should feel grateful for, but by presenting ourselves God and our desire to know God more closely. (Kris Haig, Grateful Hearts, Presbyterians Today, November 1999, 7.)
           
Which is winning out in our lives, the urge to be generous or the fear of scarcity?  Generosity leads to freedom, freedom from stuff, freedom from the anxiety of never having enough.  Scarcity leads to slavery, enslaved by wants, surrounded by stuff but unfulfilled and dissatisfied asking, “Is this all there is?” Mahatma Gandhi’s phrase comes to mind, “There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
           
I hope the urge to be generous is winning out in my life.  I know that generosity leads to freedom.  I know there can never be enough of anything for our greed but I’m convinced there is enough for our need.  I want to be able to say with Esau, “I have enough.”  How about you?