Giving to Grow
Jesus asks His disciples to do the impossible. There was no way they could’ve fed all of those people. Jesus had to do it, but He wanted their help and He also wanted to teach them a lesson in giving.
In our worldly way of thinking it is common sense to realize that if you have something and you give it away, then you either have less of it or you have it no longer. However, to walk with God is to put on Christ, to see with the eyes of faith—which in itself is a gift only God can give. And in so doing the eyes of our hearts are opened to a whole new world, a new reality in which things aren’t what we have taken them to be.
“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.”
~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Material things are no longer ends in themselves, but a means to an end. And that end is our sanctification, growing in relationship with God. For example, money—the Baal of our day, the modern world’s golden calf—is not the goal we strive for or the object of our right worship and adoration—although to many a heart it has become just that. Money is however a tool used by us to give glory to God.
Through the sweat of our brow we earn money, not to stockpile it, but to use it, to give it away. We use it to care for our families and those who we are able to help. In so doing, we grow in the virtue of charity—not non-profit organizations, but the theological virtue of charity, the perfect love of God. However, the opposite is also true, to pursue it and grasp on to it above all else is to grow in the sin of greed. You see how this tool, just like any other, is not evil in itself, rather the way we use it determines the effect it will have on our lives, for better or for worse.
There are many such tools that God gives us to utilize on our journey, but they are all ordered to making us grow in perfection—money, marriage, sex, suffering, virtue, holiness, even faith itself. All of these are good, but none of these are God. He is the end, these are the means. And only by properly using these tools and being able to let go of them or give them away when the situation calls for it is the way they help us to achieve our goal, which is growing in relationship God. For to grow in love, you have to give it away.
“Christ says: ‘Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your money, and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.'”
~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
This means to train us to become detached from these things, at least in the sense that you are not grasping on them as you should to God. Your money cannot be your God, but a tool to which you show the love of God to others. Sex cannot be your God, but a tool that brings you into deeper in union with your spouse and also makes you co-creators with God. Faith cannot be your God, but a tool through which you come to know and trust in God. As you see, God is the goal, the ultimate end. From this perspective, everything in your life will begin to lead you to God.
Working Out Our Salvation
In the passage, the disciples tell Jesus to have the people “go to the surrounding farms and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” (Mk 6:36) They weren’t wrong in caring about the physical needs of the people. In fact, it was a very reasonable thing to say. However, Jesus’ methods are usually extraordinary. He responds: “Give them some food yourselves.” (Mk 6:37)
Personally, I see in this a challenge to action, a call to work. For too often we expect God to do everything, to make everything easy for us. But that’s not how God works. How many times Jesus asks others to do something, then only after doing so are they healed or blessed. He sends a leper to wash. He calls Lazarus out of the tomb. He sends apostles out to preach and drive out demons. He tells us to take up our cross and follow Him. He asks the disciples to feed five thousand families with only five loaves and two fish.
It’s about trusting God, but also putting in work. After all, we are co-workers for the kingdom. Of course, He is God and could do without our efforts, since at the snap of His fingers He could immediately bring about the fruits of each of these actions. But that’s not the way it works. He wants us to walk with Him, to trust in Him. Hence the powerfully true statement attributed to St. Augustine:
“Work as if it all depended on you. Pray as if it all depended on God.”
~ St. Augustine
We have hands so that we can work. We earn money so that we can give it away. We have faith, hope, and love so we can share them with others and become more like God, perfected in love. After all, the mission statement of our lives is to become “holy as I am holy” (1 Pt 1:16). God wants to make you into a saint, but it’s a team effort. He will give you all of the tools and opportunities you need to make it happen, but He asks that you trust Him and walk with Him.
It’s not to say that we earn holiness or work our way into Heaven, but it is true that our faith—a gift from God in itself—moves us to act, and these actions or “works” serve to teach us through our lived experience and others through our witness how to live in love and walk with God, which is after all what Heaven is, an eternal walk with God. So thank God He is on our side and giving all of Himself in order that we might be made holy.
“God looks at you as if you were a little Christ. Christ stands beside you to turn you into one.”
~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Walk with God.