c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) Today’s first assignment will be work on the new stone wall. Once neighbors are awake, I will cut down small trees damaged during house construction.

Rock hauling goes well, thanks to a tool called a San Angelo bar and an abundance of rocks. But when I turn to tree removal, my chain saw won’t start. Maybe a two-cycle engine cannot sit idle for six months. I probably should have drained the fuel tank after our last ice storm.

Whatever the cause, I am forced to use a hand saw. I miss the roar of a powerful chain saw, but the point is the task, not the tool. If my shiny orange Husqvarna won’t cooperate, my battered hand saw will have to do.

Turn now to the time Jesus completed feeding a multitude _ 5,000 men plus women and children with just a handful of loaves and fish _ and moved on to his next round of ministry.

Why did he force his disciples to go on ahead? Why did he stay behind to say a solo farewell to the crowd? Why did he stop to pray before rejoining his disciples?

Something misfired in feeding the multitude. The miracle happened. The faithful got a story they told for years to come, one of the few stories that all four Gospels have in common. But it ended awkwardly, in Mark’s account, with Jesus telling his disciples to go away while he said farewell to the crowd.

This wasn’t a liturgical nicety, like the deacon’s dismissal ending worship. Mark reveals that the disciples didn’t understand the feeding, because “their hearts were hardened.” Jesus had given this ministry to his friends, but now he took it back. He needed time alone with the crowd to undo something that the disciples had done. He needed time alone with God to steel himself for another day with these friends.

Maybe the disciples erred in collecting leftover fragments of bread. It is an odd detail, when you think about it. Why not just let the people take the bread home? Perhaps the disciples came across as officious, as if the feeding were about their duties and not about the people’s hunger or Jesus’ compassion. The church latched on to details like this, developing rituals and structures that made them the focus and obscured the clarity of direct interaction with Jesus.

Whatever Jesus saw in his disciples’ behavior, he had to get them away from the crowd. I am reminded of an awkward day during my summer as a student chaplain, when I hovered outside a hospital room, determined to make the critical difference, until a nurse shooed me away. The patient deserved care, not an anxious student’s need to feel important.

From time to time, I think God sends disciples away and deals directly with the people. It happens when followers get full of themselves and lose sight of God’s purposes.

This is probably the primary reason why denominations lose members and congregations go out of business. The people are still hungry, and God is still compassionate, but in their fighting over doctrine and procedure, in their self-serving attachment to beloved ways, churchgoers stop serving and begin collecting.

In-fighters always blame their opponents for declining numbers. They poison the well with their own insistence on winning at any cost, and then profess dismay at water that no longer quenches thirst. They clutch the baskets containing bread and remember serving more, but they rarely examine their own tightened grip.

Hungry people, however, don’t draw sustenance from the proprietors’ bickering over menu, staff or decor. They are looking for food. They are looking for God. If this banquet is depleted or that door is closed, they will try another.

God will try another way, too. We church folk need to lose the conviction that God cannot manage without us. We might well be the ornamented equivalent of a shiny Husqvarna chain saw, but if our fuel line is clogged by idleness, God will drain the tank. God might send us out for repair. But if we simply refuse to start, God will turn to other tools.

The point is the task, not the tool.

DEA END EHRICH