In December 2019, the New York Times featured an article on a Brooklyn-based fashion designer named Daniel Silverstein. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Silverstein has pioneered his own line of clothing called Zero Waste Daniel. This “ragpicker of Brooklyn,” as the Times dubbed him, makes clothing in a rather unusual way, using preconsumer and postproduction waste from the garment industry. In other words, he uses scraps of clothing, and scraps of scraps of clothing, that other designers do not want. And from them, he creates art.
Silverstein’s model for clothing production is related to some environmentally-conscious efforts at reducing waste, such as upcycling and even recycling. But Silverstein’s model is more than utilitarian. As he stated in the Times article, “I prefer to think of it as Rumpelstiltskin, spinning straw into gold.”[1] The Zero Waste Daniel line of clothing has made it to the high-end fashion line and has been worn by celebrities. It is proof that, in the right hands, even scraps can become works of art and highly-valued items.
It is not surprising that, in a waste-driven culture, the scraps are not the first place we might look for beauty or aesthetic value. I imagine that very few of us think twice before throwing out a scrap of clothing, much less spinning it into something beautiful. Too often, it seems as if life has handed us only scraps, and there’s no hope. How many of us lack the vision to see that even scraps can have a future, a latent potential within them for something useful and lovely? And, more often than not, the scraps are right under our eyes.
To the pessimistic, uncreative eye, the scraps are simply that—junk worthy of the trash heap, unworthy of our attention. Unlike a clothing designer set on spinning straw into gold, we usually don’t even have to go seeking for the straw or searching through the trash heaps for it. We are walking right on top of it. Our creative material is within our field of vision, if we can see it.
The problem, of course, lies with seeing. We are usually looking immediately for the gold, for the miraculous, and all we see is straw or scraps. When we encounter the account of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, we may find it difficult to move past the miraculous. Make no mistake about it: there is a miracle happening here. But if our eyes are only fixated on the shiny gold—the miracle of multiplying loaves and fish—we easily gloss over one seemingly small detail almost hidden within this extravagant feat performed by Jesus. Did you notice that, when all had been fed, Jesus ordered the leftover scraps to be gathered? Nothing, he says, should be lost. Nothing. This miracle story begins with scraps: a few barley loaves and two fish, which are transformed into a golden abundance. When the meal has ended, scraps remain, but they are no longer scraps. They are precious remnants of a feast.
Jesus’ instruction to gather up the leftovers is far more than a humanitarian impulse that food should not be wasted because so many are starving in the world. Jesus’ simple and yet profound statement is a testament to the untapped potential of these lingering scraps of barley bread and fish. Sure, the remaining food could feed more people, and most likely, that’s what they ended up doing. But salvaging the scraps is much more than a utilitarian gesture. It is a theological statement about what God can do with the fragments of our lives.
It’s no coincidence that Jesus feeds the five thousand around the festival of Passover. Once before, God delivered the Israelites from captivity into freedom and fed them with manna when they grumbled. And he would do it again. Once before, God’s prophet Elisha knew that even twenty barley loaves and a few ears of grain could feed a multitude by the hand of God. God fed others from a scanty supply in the past, and he would do it again. Yes, the scraps remaining after the feeding of the 5,000 demonstrate the abundance of God’s provision, but they also reveal the hidden power of even the smallest of remnants. Countless times before in the story of salvation, God has spun straw into gold for his people, and he would do it again.
But on that mountain near the Sea of Galilee, with a great, hungry crowd pressing upon them, Philip and Andrew can only see straw. We might pity them in hindsight for their short-sightedness, but in all fairness, Jesus does somewhat set them up for failure by testing them. Jesus is like the Socratic teacher, trying to help them learn what is before their eyes.
Jesus intimates that Philip and Andrew need to go somewhere to buy food to feed the multitude. That’s how he sets up the question: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip sees only the numbers in the crowd and the few scraps of barley bread and fish before them. He sees only scarcity. Andrew tries to be a bit more creative by suggesting a possible solution: the boy with five barley loaves and two fish has some food but hardly enough for the thousands of hungry people. Or so he thinks.
Which is why Jesus must take control of the situation and reveal that it’s not about how much is present or about our own creative solutions to the problem. It’s not about numbers, and it’s not about us. It’s about what God will do with the scraps that we have. Because God can spin straw into gold. He’s done it before, and he will do it again.
We don’t know exactly how all those people were fed, but we do know that they were fed. The extravagance of Jesus’ miracle is not that the people had so much food they became gluttonous. It’s that they had enough to eat and what was left over was not relegated to the trash heap but treasured as a sacred reminder that God can always spin straw into gold, and that the hungry will always be fed with his true food.
Which of us is not like Philip or Andrew? Which of us has not woken up on some day and felt that all we’d been handed was a heap of trash? Which of us does not perpetually wrestle with the feeling that we do not have enough? Is there ever enough money to be satisfied? Is there ever enough recognition or approval to love ourselves? Are there ever enough people in the Church to do God’s work, to survive, and to thrive? Or do we have only scraps to work with?
The answer is not to tempt Jesus to perform some miracle for us but to know that Jesus directs our eyes to the miracles present among us. Like the barley loaves and fish, what we need is right before our eyes if we can see it. But too often, we see only scraps and straw.
Our biggest enemies are the quiet but insidious voices haunting us: there is never enough; you are not strong enough; you are not capable enough; you do not have what you need to succeed. And this is how the devil—the Accuser—works, by having us see only straw and scarcity, when there is great potential for gold and abundance, not gold for wealth and shallow prosperity, but for richness of true life in God.
When you look around in this place, do you see only deferred maintenance or small numbers? Do you see too many scraps of the past with no way to piece them together? Or do you see material that can be woven into a new creation? Do you see straw that by God’s gracious provision can be woven into a cloth of gold?
Because if God willingly chooses to feed us with Christ’s Body and Blood in meager portions of Communion bread and small sips of wine, God can choose to satisfy our needs with scraps of any kind. God works among us not to impress us but to ensure that we are filled with his true food.
We may not always be satisfied in the way we want. We may have just enough to eat our fill, but when our spiritual senses become dull and all we see is scraps and straw, know that God has given us and will give us just what we need. And God can spin all the straw of our lives into gold, because he’s done it before, and he will do it again.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 25, 2021
[1] Vanessa Friedman, “The Future Is Trashion,” The New York Times, December 26, 2019.