I AM not really in love with numbers. A mathematician might truly love numbers, what you can do with them, theories and calculus and imaginary numbers and the square root of pi. I’m not thrilled, but I seem to work with numbers a lot. In college, as an architecture student, I calculated the size of structural members for carrying weight loads, the forces that are borne by each leg of trusses, the bend resistance of wide flange columns, and the compressive strength of concrete; dimensions, areas, volumes, decibels, candlepower, and BTUs. In business, for 16 years I calculated square foot areas, mandays needed for sandblasting and priming steel, rental costs of machinery, fuel: numbers, numbers, numbers. I’m a spreadsheet warrior. With Augie’s accounts, church accounts, and now as the Treasurer of both the Diocese and the Province, numbers, numbers. I don’t really love numbers, but they’re useful for telling where you are.
I was challenged along with about 50 other pastors Friday night by Bruce Wilkinson, pastor and author of Walk Through the Bible, Prayer of Jabez, etc. He told us that God is interested not only in quality but in quantity. It sounds like heresy to some. What is the measure of your ministry? I try my best and preach the Word faithfully, praying and ministering to all those God gives me. “Yes,” he answers, “but how many have been added to your church in the last year?” It doesn’t seem a fair question. The town is irreligious; we’re underfunded for outreach; God hasn’t seen fit to grow our church much; our church school director is on leave, etc. etc. Ministers are experts at making excuses when it comes to numbers. But Bruce shared a shocking couple of numbers with us: 70% of the churches in America saw no growth in membership last year at all—not 1 man, woman or child added to their roles. Many shrank in size. But the worst number he reported was that in 50% of the churches of America, no one could think of one person who had actually been added to the Kingdom of God by claiming Christ as Lord, a new Christian. Half of us: no fruit. Zero. Zero is a number, but it had to be invented theoretically. The Roman numeral system never had a zero. Does God believe in zero? I don’t know.
Today’s Gospel is the food multiplication miracle by Jesus for the 5,000. He is very careful to have everyone sit in groups of ten and fifty, so His Apostles can actually count them. Then five loaves of bread are produced from a young kid’s lunch bag along with two small fish. This is a lesson given several times a year, and as a preacher, it becomes almost tiresome to treat this subject again and again, trying to find a new angle on the good news about feeding 5,000. This Sunday, the account is St. John’s. All the Gospels tell of this, and some add an account of feeding 4,000 as well.
St. Matthew gives yet another moment when Jesus and the Apostles had crossed the lake and He warned them against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They took it he was complaining about their not having bread. “O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?” Matt 16:5-12 This is a word problem, but it speaks of numbers. In one case, He fed 5,000 men plus their women and kids with 5 loaves and 2 fish, and they collected 12 baskets over and above. Then He fed 4,000 plus women and kids with 7 loaves, ‘a few fish’, and then gathered 7 baskets of uneaten surplus. He actually wants them to remember the numbers. By this time, St. Peter and I are doing long hand calculations: 5,000 divided by 5 is a thousand, but 12 into 5,000… Don’t get out your Texas Instruments or iPhones, please. There isn’t an answer that can be determined by math. But the numbers do count, and all the Gospels report them. What are they saying?...
And this isn’t the only instance of God being about numbers. We remember the sower and his seed. That which fell on good tilled ground sprang up and gave fruit, 30, 60, 100 per each original seed: it multiplied the blessing. In another parable, Jesus tells of a king leaving talents of gold with his servants, then coming back to count the amounts they’d gained. Five talents brought back five more, two brought two, but one was only buried and returned, uninvested to his shame. 99 sheep left behind to search for 1. In Luke’s Gospel a variant on the talents has each servant left with a mina. One turned it into ten and is given ten cities to rule, another five, and similarly one who just gave it back. The numbers tell a spiritual story. God counts. He is interested in numbers. He invented them. He counts the hairs of your head.
So, what is this multiplication and remnant story about, with 5,000 and 4,000 and 5 and 12 and 7? I’m lost. My excel program just froze up. Do I carry the two? No. “How is it you don’t understand,” cries Jesus, and this estimator can’t figure it out. It’s proportion. For a five thousand-sized miracle, with only five loaves, the exponential factor was large. All were fed: that’s a God promise. The means to have all His children receive sufficient for their need is absolute. When it doesn’t happen, somebody stole the truck. But this larger miracle gave 12 baskets of remnants. It was superabundant. The next time only 4,000 were fed, and it started with 7 loaves. You almost expect greater yield, and even get complacent, but while all were fed again, by the promise, the remnant was a mere 7 baskets. The faith required, the size of the need, the beginning balance of loaves: it was a smaller miracle (huge by any standard, but measurably smaller) and thus it yielded a smaller remainder. Do you see that? Big miracle, big residual. Slightly smaller miracle, less leftovers. Faith in proportion to need yields grace in like proportion.
Now, how do we update this sign of Jesus? What is our needed miracle? We might conclude we have no needs. We’re all fed, thank you. Father Hansen’s preaching is just fine, and the funds to keep the church open are sufficient, the heat’s on, Communion is available to all of us, provided by promise of Christ. What more do we need? Fifty percent of churches with not one new convert… Seventy percent of churches with zero or negative growth… Is God interested in numbers? Yes, if it helps illustrate that God is totally in love with souls. And souls are lost in this city, and we sit satisfied with a few loaves. What is the size of our remainder blessing? Sitting in one lonely basket, I’d wonder if you could find it. Case made.
Even the folks who saw the miracle on the grassy hillside that day didn’t get it right, so we have company. They thought they’d make Jesus their king, so He challenged them the next time they saw Him with His Bread from heaven lesson. Most of them couldn’t do the math. He offended them. We are offended too often by His hunger, hunger for more than what we are giving Him. God has blessed this congregation with the most beautiful and historic church in the city, and we sit with more pews vacant than filled, and I am convicted of it, my friends. I feel I have settled for too little. You are my treasure, and don’t mistake me here, you are a treasure. But we can sit here and look at each other until He comes and takes away our lampstand. Do you know what I refer to?
In Revelation, St. John records seven letters to the churches of Asia, and the first one, to Ephesus, commends them somewhat. They have good doctrine, have kept the faith, have resisted falsehood. Just like us. Then Jesus tells them, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.” Rev 2:4-5 I wrote a song about that letter last year. “Everyone who claims to serve you, you will test to see if they are true or not. I’ve worked so hard for your Namesake, and it cost me, I grew tired, and well, I guess that I forgot. Call me back, I give up all that I’m not proud of. Please return me where I left the path, I left my own first love.”
We are a good congregation, love each other, seek the truth, endure my preaching patiently, love good music, beautiful worship, Blessed Sacrament, a fine antique building, excellent location. Can you almost see the For Sale sign out front? PG&E cutting the power, lights darkened? The lawn dead, flowers wilted, people gone? It’s happening all over America. New church plants are all due to church splits. Sideways growth meaning people leaving one church and going to another, but in the aggregate, shrinking. Inside the beltway of Atlanta, Georgia, the largest growing congregation among hundreds of fine, Bible belt Christian palaces is the Mosque.
Is this God’s idea? Are we a success in His eyes? If God wishes an outcome and it doesn’t come to be, is it His failure, or is it someone else’s? He doesn’t get all He wants. But if He wants it, the grace has been supplied, and will be multiplied as big as the miracle requires. When we doubt, when we falter, when we fear, when we seek small outcomes, and when we’re satisfied with status quo, then we’re done for. Nothing remains the same. All living things will either grow or die. That’s survival. There is better motivation, but survival will do if nothing else will.
God’s desire is for all the humans in this city to know Jesus and have Him for their Savior and Lord. Want proof? St. Peter, 2nd Epistle: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9 Not willing that any: that’s a zero; but that all should: that’s 100%. How’re we doing? What’s your desire? I’ve given hundreds of postcards out so you could invite your unchurched friends. I open the doors here at 7:30 Sunday morning, and come in to see people 4 other days in the 7 day week. And I’m not satisfied with my progress. I’m convicted by the outcome. I need help. Can you pray with me for dramatic increase? Overflowing Sunday School; double the attendance on a Sunday morning—there’s plenty of room; and pick a number of souls to be saved here next year. 1? 3? 20? 100? 5,000? Let God know what you believe in your heart just what you think He’s capable of, if we’re first willing to do everything we must do to see His will accomplished. Incarnation means we’re His hands, feet, mouth, appearance in this world for all the others. I’m not sitting still, just satisfied with zero. I’ve got baskets out to catch the remainder. Now who’s got some bread?
PFH+