Speaker: Chip Bender
Over the past couple of years, I have had numerous conversations with young men
seeking direction.
They were completing high school and trying to decide on a post-secondary program.
Or working in unsatisfactory work.
Or unemployed and seeking meaningful employment.
The one thing they all had in common was they were looking for their purpose.
It’s not surprising.
I was a young man once.
I went through a similar phase of trying to chart my path forward.
From the time I was in grade 6, I had wanted to be an accountant.
Mostly because I was good at math.
The fact that accountants made good money made it even more attractive.
But halfway through my final year of high school something happened.
It was nothing extraordinary.
I can’t even remember when or how it happened.
It was a gradual process I finally awoke to.
I gradually became so disinterested in school I decided I could not bear to sit in a
classroom for several more years, even for math.
And decided to shelve my dream of becoming an accountant.
Over the next few years, I was mostly directionless, with no real plan in mind.
After graduation, I had some full-time jobs in my hometown, but nothing I stuck at.
I did a six-month term of MDS split between South Carolina and the Virgin Islands.
After I returned home, the job I had lined up fell through, so I decided to join a friend of
mine who was moving out to Calgary to live and work.
Inspired by a sermon series I heard while in Calgary, I decided to sign up for another
long-term MDS assignment, this time in California.
And then a one-year service assignment with MCC working in Taiwan.
While there I received an invitation to consider attending CMBC.
I knew if I wanted to work longer-term with MCC, I would need some kind of skill.
But I did not yet know what field I wanted to get into.
Going to a school like CMBC I could start to get some university credit without needing
to determine a major.
It seemed like as good a place as any to start. It felt like I had a bit more direction,
though not much.
I soon discovered this directionless stage was not unique to me.
The summer between getting back from Taiwan and before going to CMBC, a high
school friend of mine hosted a campfire to reunite the old gang.
This was 3 years after we had all graduated from high school.
Many of my high school friends went straight into university.
That evening around the campfire many reported they didn’t know why they had chosen
their major.
Furthermore, they had no idea what they were going to do with their degree.
Struggling to find a sense of direction is not just a 21 st century phenomenon.
It dates back to at least the 1990’s and probably much further.
Finding direction and purpose is also not just a problem for youth and young adults.
When I was doing my masters in theological studies, I needed to do an assignment on
older people.
I decided to interview a bunch of retired people about their experience of retirement.
What I discovered is retirement was not always what it’s cracked up to be.
It turns out, the North American idea of retirement being all about travel, golfing, and
leisure pursuits leaves one wanting something more.
I concluded that even retired people still need some sort of purpose.
a reason to get out of bed.
The strange thing is we spend lots of time planning for the financial needs of our
retirement, but often very little thought is given to plan for our need for something
purposeful to do.
Surely there’s something more to the purpose of work than to earn enough money to
survive.
Surely there’s something more to the purpose of life than sustaining ourselves.
I have several friends in their early 60’s who have begun to retire from their regular paid
work.
Instead of the term retirement, they have begun to use the term rewirement.
They are not hanging up the skills, the knowledge, and the experience they have
acquired over the course of their lives.
Instead, they are learning how to use those things in a way they couldn’t when they were
constrained by the responsibilities and commitments of full-time work.
They are rewiring.
It turns out, they might be on to something.
Recently, I was reading an article about the blue zones on earth.
Blue zones are the places where a higher percentage of people live to be over 100.
Researchers have studied these people to try to discover the secret to longer life.
As you would expect, diet and exercise play a part in people’s longevity.
Another important aspect was something called Ikigai.
Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means your ‘reason for being.
‘Iki’ in Japanese means ‘life,’ and ‘gai’ describes value or worth.
Your ikigai is your life purpose or your bliss.
People who have a life purpose tend to live longer.
Last Sunday, I had a brief conversation with Aki about Ikigai.
He knew the term well.
He said people will ask each other about their Ikigai, their life purpose.
And he was able to quickly identify simple activities he and Marci each do as part of
their own purpose in retirement.
Now you may be asking yourself what does finding purpose as a youth or young adult or
even a retired person have to do with the story of feeding the 5,000.
Keep following the breadcrumbs and hopefully we can get there.
The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle performed by Jesus that appears in all 4
gospels.
As I compared all the versions, the one thing I discovered is how John’s telling of the
story differs from the 3 synoptic gospels.
John is the only gospel reporting Jesus as the one who identified the potential lack of
food problem.
Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’
Apparently, Jesus was only testing or toying with him.
In the other 3 gospels the disciples are named as the ones who point out the lack of food
problem.
John is the only gospel that mentions the boy who provides the meagre lunch.
In the other gospels it appears as if the disciples obtain the food from an unknown
source or from their own food supplies.
John is the only gospel that mentions any specific individuals at all.
Philip who is questioned by Jesus about buying bread for the crowd.
Andrew who locates someone who is willing to share.
And the boy who shares his lunch.
Each one of these characters had a part to play in this story.
At first reading, it may appear the boy is the only important character in the story apart
from Jesus. He is, after all, the one who provides the elements for multiplication.
However, as I reflected further it struck me the two disciples named have important
parts to play as well.
Philip was asked the skill-testing question about where to buy bread for everyone to eat.
The question likely appeals to our western mindset.
When we need something, we immediately ask where can we buy it.
The cost of the item is usually not an issue. We generally have room on our credit cards,
line of credit, and, if that fails, we can crowdfund.
Many of the problems we face can be solved with money.
The downside of our reliance on financial solutions to solve our issues is we fail to see
the miraculous ways God can intervene.
We think we can take care of things ourselves and don’t have to rely on God.
It’s hard to genuinely pray, “give us today our daily bread” when we have 5 loaves of
bread in the freezer and enough money to go to the closest grocery store or bakery to
buy a whole year’s worth of bread.
Unlike Philip, Andrew’s part was not a passive player in a moral lesson.
Andrew took an active role in locating a boy who had some food to offer.
Neither the boy, nor Andrew did anything monumental on the day 5,000 were fed.
Sharing your lunch one day, or locating a generous boy in a large crowd are not heroic
acts. Both simply acted in the moment and let Jesus take care of the rest.
The boy probably had not dreamed about sharing his lunch one day.
Andrew did not likely wake up one day thinking he’d like to be the food procurement
guy for a large gathering.
Maybe purpose is not only about what you want to be when you grow up.
Maybe it’s also about being open to the possibility of how you can contribute to the
presence of God’s love in the world each day.
Maybe Andrew and the anonymous boy had a practice of waking up each day and asking
God to use them in some way, even in a small way.
Andrew and the boy were likely familiar with all the accounts in their holy scriptures of
individuals doing their daily tasks when God invited them to participate in God’s work
in the world.
Like Moses tending sheep when he was invited to lead God’s people out of slavery.
Or Esther enjoying royal life when she was invited to risk her life to plead for the life of
Jewish people living in Persia.
Or David out in the pasture playing with his slingshot when he was invited to be the next
king of Israel.
Or the widow of Zarapheth preparing what she suspected would be her last meal for her
and her son when she was invited to share a portion of her remaining flour with Elijah.
All of them were called out of their comfort and accepted the invitation to partner with
what God was doing at the time, though sometimes begrudgingly.
Not all of them were monumental tasks.
Sometimes the small things we do have big impacts once God has multiplied them.
Several years ago, I had the experience of witnessing how someone’s small act can be
multiplied.
At the time, I was employed by the Working Centre to walk alongside people who were
persistently homeless.
One morning I went into work early and decided to start my day at St. John’s Kitchen.
St. John’s Kitchen is a gathering hub for community members, including the
persistently homeless population.
They offer a noon hour meal 5 days week.
You can also always find coffee brewing, laundry facilities, showers, bathrooms, a
medical clinic, a needle exchange, and a collection of people who struggle with mental
health and addiction issues.
Due to the physical, mental, and emotional state of some of the regulars it can be a
rowdy and volatile space.
When I arrived, there was a community member who caught my attention.
This individual was not unlike many who frequented St. John’s.
He didn’t have stable housing, he didn’t have a job, he didn’t have much of anything.
By society’s standards this guy did not have much at all to offer.
That didn’t stop him from freely offering what he did have on that day.
He had the ability to play the guitar. And that’s exactly what he was doing.
He borrowed the St. John’s guitar and provided an impromptu concert for all present.
Those gathered sat in reverent silence.
They clapped after each tune.
Several people thanked him as they walked by on their way for another coffee.
I even saw one community member pass him a $5 bill out of appreciation.
His gift of guitar-playing was multiplied.
The mood of everyone who heard him play was lifted.
As for me, witnessing the delight he brought positively impacted the rest of my day.
The ripples he began spread outward to everyone I encountered.
His musical offering was multiplied.
We all have talents to offer.
Whether it’s making music, making food, or art, or prayer shawls, offering words of
encouragement, or a prayer, or a smile.
Our gifts could be related to planning, or leading, or fixing, or caring, or sharing, or
creating.
Using our heads, or our hands, or our hearts, or a combination of all of them.
We were all created with different gifts.
Richard Rohr claims:
“I believe God gives us our soul, our deepest identity, our True Self, our unique
blueprint, at our own conception…All we can give back and all God wants from any of us
is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given—which is
ourselves… Holding our inner blueprint, which is a good description of our soul, and
returning it humbly to the world and to God by love and service is indeed of ultimate
concern.”
Each of us have been given a unique identity and unique gifts we have been called to
offer back to God.
Instead of bread, maybe we need to ask God to Give us today our daily task.
The opportunities will present themselves.
We are invited to lay one brick at a time; take one step at a time;
We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.
But we know God will take them and multiply them as Jesus multiplied the loaves.