What Mothers Know That the Rest of Us Forget

There is no need for them to go away;
give them some food yourselves.

Last year, when we were on pilgrimage
to Turkey and Greece, in the footsteps of St. Paul,
we had nearly 50 parishioners.
When you have a group of people like that,
something always goes wrong!
So the first day, somebody cut their foot on something
as we were walking somewhere.
I turned around and I asked,
“Rachel, we need a large bandage.”
Rachel opens up her bag
and out comes this huge bandage.
And I said, “Wow. Okay, that is perfect.”
So we put it over the foot, and it is all good.

And the next day, somebody turned over an ankle.
I said, “Rachel, we need an ace bandage.”
And she opens up the bag.
There is an ace bandage.
Every day there was something,
whether it was an allergic reaction to something,
or an upset stomach, or a headache.
And every time we went to the bag,
and Rachel opened up her bag,
and there was whatever we needed.

I eventually said, “Rachel, what have you got in that bag?
My Lord, is there everything in there?”
Her answer was perfect.
She says, “This is what us mothers do.
We come prepared for every possibility.”

Of course, I have heard that all my life
with my own mother and my own sisters.
And they always do come prepared, right?
It is not that they are more organized than we are,
although they probably are!
It is that they become prepared for others.
They come prepared for the fact that others will have needs.
And so their bags are, yeah, they are large.
I am sure if we had asked any other woman in that group,
we could have probably sewed up everybody’s injuries
for the entire trip.
But that is what mothers and women have trained themselves to do.
They train themselves to think about others’ needs,
not their own, not what they will need on this trip,
but what others around them might need on this trip.

We here in Silicon Valley are great at calculating the needs.
We are great at scaling.
We solve it and then we scale it.
We calculate it out, if we have enough, then we build.
And if there is not enough for what we could do,
then we walk away.
Okay, it is just that the math does not work.

That is where the disciples are in today’s gospel, right?
Bear in mind what has happened here.
Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, has just been beheaded.
He is grieving, and he wants to go away
to pray on his own.
And so he goes away on his own.
But a crowd finds out where he is going
and they meet him there.
Jesus does not dismiss them then.
He cures the sick.
He says he is moved with pity for them.
And he serves their needs.

But towards the end of the day,
when the evening comes,
he turns around and the disciples have done the math.
They look at the 5,000 plus and they say,
“We cannot feed them. Send them away.”
And Jesus says, “There is no need to send them away.
Feed them yourselves.”

Just hear what the disciples said.
They said, “We only have two fish
and five barley loaves.
What do you want us to do?”
He said, “Have the people sit.”
And what happens is he does exactly
what we are going to do here.
He takes, blesses, breaks, and gives it to them.
And there was enough for all to eat.

Now here is the extraordinary part of this.
It is the second layer.
John’s gospel generally has more than one layer,
so you have to go down deeper to the last line.
It was 5,000, not including the women and children.
See, the women and children were not counted back then.
But let us be honest, the women and the children,
they would have been there.
So there were at least 10+ thousand people gathered.
You just understand, that is more than a village.
That is several villages gathering in a certain area.

Now the women would have done
what Rachel and all the women
and all mothers have ever done.
They come prepared for everyone else.
Back then they would have had wicker baskets, not bags.
They would have had wicker baskets,
and they would have come prepared
for food and water and eventualities.

And what the men had to do was to let go.
What the men had to do was stop calculating.
Jesus told them to stop calculating.
Give them food yourselves.
The miracle was that there was enough food for all.
It just needed to be shared.
The miracle was that the men had to let go
for the women to do what needed to happen.
That is the second layer to this gospel.
It is super important that it is together, the miracle happens.
What Jesus says is, there is enough.
Just do what I have asked you to do.
Take, bless, break, and share.

See, that is what we are called to do in our own life.
We are not called to feed 5,000 people.
We are just called to think of the people around us
and to share what we have with those around us.
And there will be enough for all to have.

You see, the miracle has multiple layers to it.
Jesus makes it very clear.
Now, this is the second of the miracle stories of the feeding.
The first one was at the Sermon on the Mount.
This is the second one in Matthew’s gospel.
And it is to double down on the mystery,
that we are part of God’s miracle.
God did not just throw the food as manna down from heaven.
He had us share what little we have with one another.

This is what the first reading
and the second reading are about.
What else can you do
but focus on what is important?
And the second one is that nothing
will ever separate us from the love of God.
God is always caring for his people,
but he needs you and me
to cooperate with his plan.
You and I have a role to play in the miracle of God.
And our role is to share what little we have
with those around us.

Now we might ask, “Well, what do we have?”
Well, we all have time.
That is the one thing that we have.
Now you might say, well, we are all pinched for time.
I get that but we all get the same 24 hours in every day.
It is how we spend our time that is so critical.
Are we willing to share a little of our time
with those who are in need?
Are we willing to share our energy
with those who are in need?

Can we think of the one person,
maybe somebody who has lost their spouse
earlier in March or May, or maybe last year?
Can you pick up the phone,
spend a little time and check in with them
to see how they are?

Or maybe there is somebody in your company right now
who is struggling with the launch of this new product,
and they are falling apart.
Everyone else knows they are falling apart,
but nobody steps in.
Can you pull them aside and say,
“Hey, calm down. Let us talk this through.”
Can you help them out
in this overwhelming pace that we live in Silicon Valley?

Or can we look at how we are struggling in Silicon Valley?
There are so many who are getting wealthier
and there are so many who are getting poorer.
The divide is a microcosm of the whole world.
Is there something that we can do?
Again, I am not asking you to feed the whole 5,000.
I am not asking you to feed the whole Silicon Valley.
But is there somebody around you,
or somebody inside our community,
that we can say we can help,
we can support, we can make a difference?
Can we participate in the backpack program?
Can we help with the Tijuana program?

We are all called to do our little bit,
our two fish, our five loaves,
whatever ours is,
whatever it is that we have.
We are called to share.
And then Jesus makes a miracle.
Jesus makes a miracle out of our willingness to give.
He will take, he will bless,
he will break, and he will share.
And he will come back to us to share.
There is the miracle.
It happens every single time we come to Eucharist.

So let us model ourselves after
so many women in our lives
who have always come prepared
to care and to share,
to be prepared for others
and be willing to make that happen on a large scale.

There is no need for them to go away.
Feed them yourselves.