YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH JESUS

I was at Target the other morning (and if you think a good number of my Morning Prayer reflections seem to begin with a trip to Target—you are right—the life lessons a trip to Target provides).  I had a cart and a list and on that list was hand soap.  Found the aisle, found the shelves and there greeting me was empty shelf after empty shelf after empty shelf.

I stared at it for a minute.  Then I took a picture and sent it to a friend.  “Is there a pandemic going on that I’m not aware of?”

We all remember those first weeks of the Covid lockdown, when people everywhere suddenly realized that hand washing was important, and the shelves were empty.  My local Target brought all the bottled water and whatever Clorox wipes they had to the front of the store so that no one would fall and break their neck trying to outsprint their neighbors to the back of the store.

Those were crazy times.  Toilet paper shortages meant that bidet sales were suddenly through the roof.

As someone who lived in Florida for twenty-five years, I can tell you that the Covid shortages were not unlike the shortages we faced with hurricanes.

Scarcity happens when people are afraid and they hoard whatever they have.

This past Sunday, our gospel reading from Matthew told the story of the Canaanite woman who is desperate for Jesus to heal her daughter who is stricken with a demon. 

As Rev. Greg pointed out in his sermon, first Jesus ignores the woman, then He tells her He’s not there for her and then He says something which should make anyone who loves Jesus feel extremely uncomfortable.  He compares the woman to a dog saying it’s not fair to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.

But the woman is persistent and tells Him that even the dogs are free to eat the crumbs that fall from the table.

At that, Jesus tells the woman He will help her.  “How great is your faith,” He says to her, and instantly her daughter is healed.  You see, when He ignored her, when He rebuffed her, He was purposely echoing what the woman had been told her whole life to set up the contrast with what He was offering.

Rev. Greg’s sermon made me think about scarcity in our world today.  How the idea that something is rare, or exclusive or scarce makes us want to hoard whatever we have and once we’ve done that, race into the world to gather up what we don’t have out of fear of missing out.

We are driven and manipulated by the idea of scarcity.

In today’s reading from John, we see Jesus feeding the five thousand.  Now, people generally view this story in one of two ways.  Either Jesus supernaturally created the food to feed the crowd, or people were motivated to put whatever they had with them in the baskets, and their goodwill and generosity is what fed the people.

I can tell you I am in the camp of this being a supernatural miracle.

But in the end, whatever you believe, the message turns out to be the same.

With Jesus there is abundance.  In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

There is no scarcity with Jesus.

There is no reason to fear, no reason to hoard.  God provides and He provides it abundantly.

With the Canaanite woman, why would Jesus ever withhold His love and grace and healing from anyone?  He’s never going to run out of miracles.  He doesn’t have a limit.  There are no bounced checks with Jesus.  Jesus is the one who pays our debts.  He doesn’t go into debt.

He is the one in Ephesians 3:20 who can provide us with more than we can ever ask for or even imagine.

I keep thinking about my old church, when I made the decision to attend both Sunday services, but asked the pastor if it was okay to get communion twice and her response was, “You can never have too much Jesus.”

She said it again some years later, when a little boy loved the communion bread we used on Christmas Eve so much that he came back around so he could get seconds.

“You can never have too much Jesus,” Pastor Debbie said.

Jesus is abundance.

The first can be made last and the last made first because in the end everyone eats.

The shelves at Target the other day weren’t completely empty.  There were two bottles left.  I needed one, so I took one.  I left the other one there. 

Where in your life can you see God’s abundance?

Where in your life have you been tricked into believing in scarcity?

How might you live your life abundantly in the love of Jesus today?

Amen.