The latest Sermon

“More Than Enough” 

Matthew 14:13-21 

Rev. Rebecca DePoe 

August 2, 2026 

Have you ever had someone show up at your house right around dinnertime? 

Maybe family stopped by unexpectedly. Maybe a child brought a friend home. Maybe someone stayed longer than you had planned.  

Suddenly, you find yourself doing mental math. 

How many chicken breasts do I have? 

Do I have enough rolls? 

If I leave the skins on the mashed potatoes can they stretch a little bit farther? 

Maybe if I open another can of vegetables, everyone can have enough.  

Before anyone even sits down at the table, we’re counting, we’re calculating, we’re asking, Will there be enough? 

The truth is, we ask that question about more than dinner.  

Will there be enough money to cover the bills this month? 

Will there be enough time to attend to my responsibilities at work, home, and school? 

How do I make enough time to take care of my health so that injury doesn’t waylay my plans for the future? 

For many of us, this will there be enough? Becomes one of the quiet questions running beneath the surface of everyday life. And if that’s true for us, then we have something in common with the disciples.  

Because when the disciples looked out at a hungry crowd of more than five thousand people, they immediately started doing the math.  

Five loaves.  

Two fish.  

One enormous crowd.  

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to feed the crowd. They simply believed that what they had wasn’t enough. And that’s exactly where Jesus begins to teach them- and us- something remarkable about the kingdom of God.  

When the disciples see a crowd gathering in the distance, their first instinct is to care for them. They come to Jesus and say: “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”  

At first glance, that almost sounds selfish. But I don’t think it is: They’re trying to solve a real problem. Thousands of people are hungry. It’s getting late. They’re far from town. The disciples look at the situation and arrive at what seems like the only logical conclusion.  

“Jesus, we simply don’t have enough” 

If we’re honest, we probably would have reached the very same conclusion. Because that is how most of us have learned to think. We assess our resources. We count what we have. We calculate what is possible. Five loaves. Two fish. Five thousand people. The math doesn’t work.  

And here’s the important thing. The disciples aren’t wrong about the numbers. There really are only five loaves. There really are only two fish. There really are thousands of hungry people. Jesus never tells the disciples they’ve counted incorrectly. Instead, he challenges what they’ve concluded from the numbers.  

That distinction matters. Christian faith isn’t denying reality. Or sticking our heads in the sand and saying “Everything will magically work out.” The disciples correctly identify the scarcity. What they cannot yet imagine is what God can do with it.  

It is at this point in the text that Jesus says something astonishing. Jesus looks at this enormous crowd of hungry people and says, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 

I imagine there must have been a moment of silence after that.  

Because what exactly were they supposed to do?  

We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish, the disciples tell Jesus.  

And I think that word but tells us almost everything we need to know.  

We have five loaves and two fish, but look at the size of the crowd.  

What they’re really saying- We have something, but it isn’t enough.  

And that is when Jesus says four words that change everything: 

Bring them here to me. 

This is the turning point in the story. Jesus doesn’t ask the disciples to produce what they don’t have. He asks them to bring what they do have. And that’s where something changes. Jesus takes the bread. He looks toward heaven. He blesses it. He breaks it. And then he gives it back to the disciples.  

Did you notice that? 

Jesus could have fed the crowd himself.  

Matthew could have told us that Jesus multiplied the bread and suddenly baskets of food appeared in front of everyone. But that’s not what happens. Jesus gives the bread back to the disciples, and the disciples give it to the crowds. The very people who had just said, “We don’t have enough,” become the people though whom God’s abundance is distributed.  

I think this story contains a lesson in here for us as well.  

When we hear stories like this, it’s easy to assume that God uses people who already have extraordinary resources. People with extraordinary talent. Extraordinary faith. Extraordinary amount of time. But throughout Scripture, God has a remarkable habit of starting with ordinary people bringing whatever they happen to have.  

Moses has a staff.  

David has a sling. 

A widow has a little oil.  

The disciples have five loaves and two fish.  

None of this looks particularly impressive until it is placed into God’s hands.  

Maybe that’s because God isn’t waiting for us to become extraordinary before God can use us. God simply asks us to bring what we have.  

Our time. Our abilities. Our resources. Our compassion. Our experience. Even the parts of ourselves that don’t seem like very much.  

“Bring them here to me.” 

Because what seems insufficient in our hands can become something entirely different in the hands of Christ.  

Just look at how our Scripture reading for today unfolds. Matthew tells us that everyone eats. Not some of them. Not just the people who arrived first. Not just enough to hold everyone over until they could get home. All ate and were filled. And when the meal was finished, the disciples walked through the crowd collecting what remained.  

One basket.  

Two baskets. 

Three baskets.  

Until there were 12 baskets filled with leftovers.  

What began as an evening panicking over not having enough. Ended up containing more food than a crowd of 5,000 could eat. And maybe that’s the deeper miracle Jesus wanted his disciples to see. They had been looking at five loaves and two fish and asking How can this possibly be enough? Jesus was teaching them to ask a different question. What might God do with what we are willing to place in God’s hands? 

Now before we go any further, I think we need to be careful about what we mean when we say that God provides “more than enough.” 

Because it would be very easy to hear this story and come away with the wrong conclusion. 

We could look at these 12 baskets of leftovers and decide that if we just have enough faith, God will always make sure we have more money than we need.  

More resources than we need.  

More health than we need.  

More time than we need.  

But we know that isn’t how life works.  

Sometimes the diagnosis is still difficult.  

Sometimes the bank account really does run low.  

Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day.  

Sometimes our bodies cannot do what they once did.  

Sometimes organizations and churches really do have to make difficult decisions because the resources that once existed simply aren’t there anymore.  

Jesus never promises that faithful people will never experience scarcity. In fact, remember how this story begins. Matthew tells us that Jesus withdrew to a deserted place after hearing that John the Baptist had been killed.  

Jesus enters this story carrying grief. And yet, even there, in a deserted place, surrounded by hungry people and limited resources, god’s grace is still at work. Maybe that’s what “more than enough” really means. It doesn’t mean that we will always have everything we want. It means that even when what we have feels painfully insufficient, Christ himself remains enough.  

Enough grace for the mistakes we have made.  

Enough mercy for the things we cannot fix.  

Enough strength for the next faithful step.  

Enough hope to carry us through seasons we never would have chosen.  

And when I look again at the end of this story, I notice that Matthew doesn’t end simply by telling us that everybody ate.  

He says, “All ate and were filled.” Everyone eats. Everyone is filled. And there are 12 baskets left over. The story begins with a question “How can there possibly be enough” which Jesus answers with 12 baskets of leftover bread.  

Maybe that’s why Jesus asks the disciples to participate in the miracle. Because he isn’t simply teaching them how to feed a hungry crowd. He’s teaching them how to live in the kingdom of God.  

Maybe that’s the invitation of this story for us. Not to pretend that our resources are unlimited. Not to deny the very real places of scarcity in our lives. But to stop believing that scarcity gets to have the final word. Because five loaves and two fish may not be enough. But five loaves and two fish were never the whole story.  

Jesus was there too.  

And wherever Christ is present, there is grace enough for today, hope enough for tomorrow, and love enough for all of us.  

There is more than enough.  

Thanks be to God, 

In Jesus’ name, 

Amen.