As people of faith, you and I live within a song. It is a song that begins with the account of creation in Genesis 1, where God creates every interwoven part of the world and calls declares it “good.” The People of Israel sang this creation story in the form of what we call the 104^th Psalm. This song was a part the community’s liturgy, something that they would sing together – young, old, literate, illiterate, rich, poor, liberal, conservative alike – as they worshipped God. The 104^th Psalm celebrates the richness and variety of creation, including these words: You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart. Long before there were written Scriptures, there was the worship-filled experience of God’s song, praising God for the abundance and wonder of creation. That’s part of the song that you and I are invited to sing, to celebrate, to live and breathe as our way of life.

But, of course, the life of God’s people has ever been fraught with trouble. And that is because there is a different song that is often being sung around us. It is a catchy tune, an inviting tune, because it appeals to our fear. We fear that, perhaps, the creation is good, but not sufficient in itself. We fear that, perhaps, there is not abundance, but scarcity. This song says that abundance is only for those who strive to gather enough for today and store up enough for the future. So, the people of Israel learned to sing their song, not simply as a declaration of praise, but also as a counter-story. When the Egyptian Empire began enslaving the people of Israel, and when they began to take extreme measures to control the population of Israel, to treat them harshly, to subdue them into their song that creation is not sufficient, that there is not abundance for all – then, the people of Israel’s song took on the tone of revolution. They began singing about a “Promised Land,” where they were no longer enslaved to the song of scarcity. And when God brought them out of Egypt, when they were traveling for 40 years, homeless and vulnerable, they added a new verse to the song. They began singing about how, in their time of need, God rained down strange bread from heaven called “Manna,” and how each one of them had enough. They had enough, not because they were savvy or industrious, or wiling to take risks, but because the God of Creation is an abundant God.

But, people are people. And the song of scarcity is appealing. It manages to find its way into our fears, even in times of abundance. So, as they prepared to enter the Promised Land, the leaders had to sing new line, a prophetic descant. It warned the people of Israel that when they reached the Promised Land, when they had abundant crops and wells and store houses, when they tasted prosperity, they were not to forget the Lord their God and to begin singing the song of scarcity. The prophets, in their harsh and unyielding voices, continued to sing the descant, “Do not forget! Do not forget the Lord your God.

That song of the abundance of God’s creation continues in the New Testament, where we see in Jesus the fullness of who God is and how God stands before us as we live before God. John probably sings it best, because he begins his gospel with the song of creation, introducing Jesus to us as the Word, through whom “all things came into being.” When we read the story of Jesus, we are hearing this song, the song of God’s abundance, living among us and sharing the trials of our human story.

I invite you to hear that song as the soundtrack of the story that we have read today from Matthew’s gospel. Indeed, some version of this story is found in each of the four gospels, which is a rare gift, pointing to the importance of our story in the larger story of Jesus. Our story is more than simply a “Wow, would you look at that” story. It is more than simply a “Hey, that Jesus is pretty impressive, eh?” story. It is continuation of the story that began at the dawning of creation and endured through times of thick and thin for God’s people. It is part of the song of creation. In particular, it is a riff on the story of the Manna from heaven, where hungry people are gathered in a deserted area and they receive bread. Only, this time, the story takes a slightly different direction. It is not the added ‘fish.’ That speaks to how this story is located, not in the inland wilderness, but here on the lake where fish is part of the local dialect. The new direction lies in the conversation between Jesus and the disciples. It is here that you and I gain a new way of singing this song.

The disciples, although they had been well-versed in singing the song of God’s abundance, have also been listening to the song of scarcity on their radios throughout the day and they know it by heart. So, they come to Jesus and say, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” It sounds perfectly reasonable, of course, especially to those of us who listen to this song on our own radios over and over. “The market is there and it promises provision, let’s send them from the presence of the one who is “God with us,” to the market.” Matthew will repeat this story later in his gospel, and there the disciples will ask, “Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” What they are saying is that they’ve been singing the song, but haven’t begun to appreciate the third verse, when God rained down bread from heaven to a great crowd in the desert. To these disciples – who are better at singing the song of scarcity than the song of abundance – Jesus gives a startling reply: “You give them something to eat.”

That’s new. Jesus has taken the familiar chord progression and added some diminished fourths and a couple of flatted sevenths, making this old tune a new song. Jesus has taken the familiar lyrics – all about the third person named “God” as the provider and the first person named “Us” as the recipients – and has added the second person “You” to it. “You give them something to eat” takes the familiar song of abundance into an entirely new direction.

“You give them something to eat.” That’s a tough verse to sing. The disciples can’t do it. Their response is exactly what we might expect from someone who has learned the song of abundance, but is more convinced by the song of scarcity: “We have nothing here except five loaves and two fish.” It’s not the dependent clause, which begins with the word “except,” but the primary verb, that shows the disciples’ reaction: “We have nothing here.” They do have something and we all know how this is going to work out, but their inclination is to say, “We have nothing here.” They looked right into the eyes of the one who was sent from God and said, “We have nothing here.” They looked at Jesus and sang to him the song of scarcity. But, Jesus sang back to them the song of God’s abundance. Ordering the people to sit, he took the ‘nothing’ bread and fish and blessed them. Then, in case we are missing the point that this is the Manna story re-sung, Matthew drops the fish reference and says that Jesus “blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.”

And the song that began at the dawn of creation; the counter-song that was sung while laboring in slavery; the song that took on new meaning when Manna from heaven fed the people for years; became the song of the hungry crowds in the deserted place, whom Jesus and the disciples fed.

As people of faith, you and I live within a song. The challenge that faces us – just as it faced the disciples that day in the wilderness – is whether the song of God’s abundance, or the counter-song of scarcity, will be our song. Oh, afterwards, everyone is singing loudly – “We have 12 baskets full left over! One for each tribe of Israel! Woo!” But, when we’re hungry, when we know that there are only five loaves and two fish and twelve of us plus Jesus, what is our song then? It is, “We have nothing”? Or, is it, “You call us to give them something to eat”? We know how strong the contention is between these two songs. We know that when we about deficits and bond ratings and market plunges and the value of the dollar; and then we hear about starvation in the horn of Africa or poverty in the inner city of Des Moines, our instinctual reaction is to sing, “We have nothing.” We know that when we have a stewardship drive or a building program or when we set the church’s budget, we have an instinctual reaction to sing, “We have nothing.” But, our song is the song of abundance, where God in Christ bids us to look at the hungry crowd, to gather our resources, and to sing anew the song of abundance. May God give us good voice as we sing. Amen.