Walter Bruggemann, a well known theologian once argued that we believe more in a myth of scarcity than in the reality of abundance. We believe, Bruggemann says, that there is not enough for everybody so we have to get more. Political tyranny, Bruggemann says, begins in the Bible when, in times of famine, Pharaoh says “let’s get it all.” When you believe in scarcity, you can never have enough.
The people of Israel, in the book of Exodus, find themselves in the wilderness and worrying about scarcity, there was no food, no water and in God’s goodness he provided an abundance of manna.
In the New Testament, the crowd that has been following Jesus all day finds itself in a situation of scarcity as well. It is sundown and they are hungry . With a loaf of bread and fish , Jesus turns their scarcity into abundance .
While the exodus story teaches that life is God’s abundance that can’t be hoard or save for another day , the story of Jesus feeding the crowd conveys the ultimate truth that it is only when we bring to Jesus our skills, talents, resources that we move from scarcity to abundance.
Jesus transformed his follower’s focus on scarcity into an experience of God’s abundance and the adequacy of what they had, when they offered it and used it and shared it.
We worry so much about scarcity. The scarcity thinking overrides God’s abundance. As result , we are tempted to hoard God’s abundance but it shouldn’t be.
When Jesus shifted the focus from looking at those loaves and fishes as a scarce resource to be saved, conserved, hoarded, to looking at them as a precious gift from God, a resource to be used and shared, he moved from fear to love, from death to life, from the kingdom of this world to the Kingdom of God.