Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
“Gather Up the Fragments”
Thousands must eat, but what’s available cannot feed them. Six months’ wages couldn’t buy enough bread. They do have a little food, but “what are five loaves and two fish among so many?”
The theme of the 1975 Moravian Youth Convocation was “We Are Five Loaves and Two Fish.” More than 300 participants, ages 16–25, grew in how to minister to the world. They served the ill, the elderly, the homebound. They learned about speaking for justice and the environment. They pledged to bring Christ’s love to people suffering in prisons, in hospitals, and in their own families.
Their numbers didn’t compare to the need. And yet, at the end of Convo, they said things like, “I understand the need to be five loaves and two fish. There are so many people who need what I, through Christ, can give them.”
Those “Convo-ers” learned that while they might never buy the bread, they could be the bread. They grew up with a sense of mission. Many have spent decades in service.
Still, life and work take their toll. Among those who serve, burnout is high. Those who commit to being bread may someday feel like fragments fallen to the ground.
But Jesus tells the disciples to “gather up the fragments.” There is no bread so broken that it cannot nourish someone.
Every church is full of loaves and fishes—Christians committed to service—but feeding the world can leave us in fragments. The disciples must pick up the broken pieces “so that nothing may be lost” (John 6:12).
When people feel broken, what restores wholeness? Things the church can provide: relationships, personal growth, Sabbath rest.
The church that sends its members into service must also be the place where “Convo-ers” and others return to find wholeness. The whole world depends on it.
Ginny Tobiassen, pastor, Home Moravian Church
Winston-Salem, North Carolina