John 6:1-21. (April 26, 2015)
I.
Back before Easter we were looking at chapter 5. At the end of that chapter, Jesus is answering his critics who were complaining about his instructing a lame man whom he healed to get up and carry his mat… on the Sabbath, which they considered to be illegal according to the Law of Moses. Jesus responds that if they really believed Moses they would also believe him, because Moses was writing about him.
Jesus has been making a point of separating himself from the old religious institutions of his people, especially as they were corrupted by self-serving and paranoid leaders. But on the other hand Jesus has also been showing how he is in continuity with the old religion, and fulfills it. He fulfills, rather than rejects or destroys it. He reveals its deepest and truest meaning and purpose.
Jesus does not come to destroy. He comes to integrate, include, and fulfill. Here we will see how he does this with the basics of the old religion, revealing its true essence, and driving it to a higher level. He is showing us that true change and creativity are not about destruction of the tradition, but growing in, through, and out of what has gone before. Like the way a sprout emerges from the seed, thus the faith of Jesus emerges from the former religion in the same way.
In this story, Jesus crosses a sea and goes up a mountain. In this case it is the Sea of Galilee, also called Tiberias. Mentioning this other name is a subtle reminder of the people’s situation. Tiberias was a Roman emperor. Rome’s penchant for renaming features of the local landscape to honor themselves is typical of all empires. This practice is one of many ways it gets shoved in people’s faces who is really in charge. If you rename things the theory is that eventually the indigenous people forget that this ever belonged to them at all.
(New Jersey is an example. Our State is named after a British island by one set of conquerors, which island itself was named by another set of conquerors, the Romans, after Caesar. New Jersey in Latin is Novo Caesarea. Nobody remembers the original name the indigenous people had for this area, or the name the Celts had for that island. By renaming things empires propagate the myth that there was no one and nothing here before their “civilization” arrived.)
The reference to the emperor should remind us of Pharaoh’s oppression, which was the context and inspiration of God’s activity with the Israelites. This whole series of acts undertaken by Jesus here is designed to remind us of Moses, who also crossed a sea — the Red Sea — and went up a mountain — Mt. Sinai — so God could give him the Law. Jesus is the new Moses, the prophesied prophet from Deuteronomy 18:18. Jesus fulfills the Torah.
And, in case we haven’t yet figured it out, the text informs us that this is all happening at “Passover, the festival of the Jews,” when the people commemorated these very events, their ancestors’ liberation from Egypt.
II.
Another thing this story has in common with the Exodus story is the crowd of people. The crowd keeps following Jesus because of his reputation as a healer. Jesus’ ministry is always public and populist in the sense that serving, healing, liberating, teaching, and feeding the people is happening all the time. Indeed, it is significant that the crowd follows Jesus, instead of going to Jerusalem, for Passover. The people are beginning to realize that Jesus is the new Temple, the place where reconciliation, healing, and atonement happen.
Jesus comes to this mountain and sits down at the top with his disciples. And the people start gathering around him on the grassy slope leading down to the lake.
Then Jesus turns to Philip, one of the disciples who was from this locale, and asks what turns out to be a rhetorical question. “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” It is a normal, logistical question that any leader might ask of a staff person in overseeing a large gathering. And it assumes a normal participation in the establishment economy. This is an assumption we all make without thinking. If we want something, especially if we are not at home, we must buy it from someone. Jesus is saying, in effect, “Is there a Panera or something around here? A deli? Where can all these people go to buy some food?”
Philip replies that the disciples do not have enough cash on hand to provide a meal, or even some bagels, for this many people. It would cost, I don’t know, $10,000? To feed 5,000 people?
Overhearing this conversation, Andrew helpfully pipes up that there’s a kid over here whose mom packed a lunch for him, which amounted to 5 barley rolls and two dried fish. “But what are they among so many people?” he asks.
The problem appears to be scarcity. Scarcity of food, and scarcity of money to buy food. Jesus does not declare a lunch break and send everyone off to fend for themselves in the market. He doesn’t say that if you brought something fine, if you have money you can go buy something, but if you did neither of those things, you’re out of luck.
No. First, he has everyone sit down in the grass together. He forms a community, which can only happen when we stop moving around and stay in one place with some other people for a while. You need to look around and see who you are with. You need also to establish some contact with the earth; you need to establish a place, a situatedness. Nothing can happen while people are moving around and talking.
Then Jesus receives the food from the boy, and he thanks him; and presumably he also thanks God from whom all blessings flow to begin with. And he starts to distribute the food to the people. If you do the math this would be one barley roll and less than half a fish for every thousand people.
III.
Now, this story, along with the crucifixion and the resurrection, is the only one that appears in all four gospels. It was an incredibly important and seminal story for the Jesus-movement. It formed part of the basis for our regular sacramental act of the Lord’s Supper.
And yet here, at this moment, none of the gospels tells us what we most want to know. Which is, what exactly happens here? It’s like we’re missing a page of text or something. We want details! How does he do this? One second we have a few rolls and pieces of dried fish, and 5,000 hungry people, the few seconds later we have 5,000 satisfied people and twelve baskets of leftovers. How does this happen? The gospels don’t tell us.
On the one hand, some interpreters have tried to explain it rationally. They say that everyone really had food with them and that Jesus’ example was that they should share with each other. I get that. It’s not what the text says; but it preaches, sort of. Others maintain that Jesus simply and miraculously caused bread and fish to materialize out of thin air. That has been the traditional explanation. But the text doesn’t say this explicitly either, probably because we are not to get lost in the magic of the action itself. Like the water that became wine, all we get is a report of what it was, and a report of what it became. It doesn’t go behind the curtain of how.
This action connects Jesus to several events in the Hebrew Scriptures. First, God provides miraculous food for the Israelites in the wilderness in the form of manna, this bread-like substance that falls from the sky. And second there are these cases with the early prophets, Elijah and Elisha, including the one we heard earlier. In these stories we also do not get a picture of the physics of it. We just know that the food, or in one case a bottle of olive oil, does not run out. There is more than enough. It looks entirely inadequate to us, but God makes it last and last.
So also here on the mountainside. The food is distributed. The people receive as much as they want, until they are satisfied. And they collect 12 baskets full of leftovers. The 12 baskets symbolically mean there is enough to feed not just the 12 tribes of Israel, but the whole world. 12 indicates fullness and completion and wholeness. The baskets of fragments from this meal are themselves a sign that we are to take this message and this food to a hungry world.
This sign forms a pair with Jesus’ first sign, the turning of water to wine at Cana, back in chapter 2. Then he provides wine; here he provides bread. Thus we have the two elements of the Sacrament he gives us to remember and participate in him.
IV.
Once the people realize what has happened, they want to make Jesus king. This is what a king is supposed to do: provide for the people. But Jesus rejects this as the temptation that it is. He will not be reduced to a super bread man. So he disengages from the crowd and goes further into the mountain by himself. In effect he is saying what he said when the devil tempted him in the other gospels: “People do not live by bread alone.” It’s not just about the bread; what he has done is about more than that.
Jesus does not want to be made king by the people. His supreme kingly act will not be the wielding of secular, coercive power. It will be when he is lifted up on the cross, under the inscription, “The King of the Jews.” It is not by giving physical bread to the people that he will demonstrate his monarchy. That was what the Roman emperor did. That was the whole basis of empires in the first place, the conquest by war of more and more land for the cultivation of grain to feed a burgeoning population.
Jesus Christ gives us more than that. He gives us his — that is, God’s — life, and he gives it by means of absorbing and suffering violence, not by inflicting it. He gives it by service, not by bullying. Indeed, Jesus is allergic to the kind of behavior that passes for “leadership” among us. Just when he has, by the world’s standards, won; just when he has gained the highest approval rating; just when he is poised to be given power by the people… Jesus disappears. He practically runs into the hills to pray.
Since it’s getting dark, the disciples decide to return to their base up the shoreline in Capernaum without Jesus. So they get in their boat and shove off. On the way the wind kicks up so they have to row rather than try to sail against the wind. And they see someone coming to them, apparently walking on the water. They are terrified.
But then the person coming on the water speaks to them. It is Jesus. And he simply says “I am.” In English this comes across as “It is I” (or in some translations, “It’s me!” which I still can’t stand), which loses the impact of the words “I am.” Those words are from an experience that Moses had with God at the burning bush, where God self-identifies with those very words: “I am.” When you said “I am” in those days people understood you to be saying “I am God.”
In other words, the Lord is saying: “I am not just a magician who can conjure wine and bread; neither am I just a king wielding earthly political power. I am the Word of God by whom the whole world was created. I am the Lord of creation. Therefore, do not be afraid.” Jesus Christ is the God of love, and perfect love casts out all fear.
They receive him into their boat, and they turn into the shore at Capernaum, finally home.
V.
The first thing to realize about this story is the way Jesus rejects any market-based approach to feeding people. He knows that the market is what creates scarcity and unfair distribution. The market is not what God intends. Instead, the people gathered together around the Word, sitting on the grass, in expectation; that is what sets the table for a miracle.
When we gather around the Word and reflect and express his generosity, his sharing, his openness to God, his trust in the Spirit, and especially his gratitude for what little does emerge… this is what allows something new and unprecedented to happen.
For the good news is that God the Creator is in charge of heaven and earth, sky and sea. A strong wind, a strong Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is blowing. This may make our seas rough and difficult. But the One who created all things remains strong and stable, appearing with a message of good news that casts out our fear, and carries us home.
That’s the second thing to remember here. God in Jesus Christ may be trusted. God is love and love is at the heart of all things, including us. It is love that feeds us, as we are gathered together, when we are open to the miracle and expecting the amazing. And it is love that keeps us safe and delivers us to the harbor. We are fed, and we are led, by the love of God in Jesus Christ.
+++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment