Passover in Galilee.

John 6:1-21

July 29, 2018

I.

In the gospel readings for these past few weeks Jesus has been spending a lot of time in boats, going up and down the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Here the gospel makes the point of reminding us that the Romans had renamed this body of water the Sea of Tiberias.  Tiberias was a Roman Emperor, and all such lakes and seas were claimed by the Emperor.  So Jesus is basically trespassing on the Emperor’s lake while he is in the business of preaching, teaching, healing, and otherwise setting up an alternative to the Emperor’s regime.

Neither he nor, later, the Apostle Paul, appears to think that the practice of using Roman property and privilege to undermine Roman rule is at all contradictory or hypocritical.  They are both proceeding under the assumption that, according to Psalm 24, the whole Earth belongs to God in the first place, and if the Emperor thinks he has stolen something from God and declared it to be his own, he is mistaken, even if he can force people to pay him for what they catch in “his” lake.  So Jesus has no qualms about “stealing” back for God something that has always belonged to God anyway.

This point is underscored first by the fact that it is Passover; it is actually the second Passover of Jesus’ ministry.  The previous Passover, a year before, we may recall, Jesus instigates a riot in Jerusalem over the invasion of commercial interests into the Temple.  “Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!” he yells, as he is overturning money boxes and using a whip to drive out of the Temple the livestock earmarked for sacrifice.

Originally a barley harvest festival, Passover had been for at least a thousand years the annual celebration of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  It’s an extremely political holiday, like Israelite Independence Day.  Only the nation is not independent, which means that celebrating Passover is not just a religious observance but a deliberate, in-your-face statement aimed at the conquering, colonizing Romans.  The Romans always sent extra troops to Jerusalem for Passover, just in case the people got out of hand with this “independence” stuff.  (Perhaps the Romans wished they would just make Passover it a religious holiday.  Maybe the Romans would have preferred that they keep religion and politics separate.)

This Passover, though, Jesus is not in Jerusalem.  After last year he may not be allowed to go to Jerusalem.  Certainly the police would be watching for him.  So he celebrates this Passover up in Galilee.  That is the context of his sitting on the hillside with his disciples and attracting a crowd of 5000 people.  Instead of going to Jerusalem for the holiday, which is the tradition, these people decide to spend Passover with Jesus.  They come to Jesus as the new Temple instead of the old one.  

They know what he has been doing for the sick, that is, those in bondage to disease.  They know what he has been preaching about the Kingdom of God.  Maybe they want a piece of this liberating action.  What will he do this Passover? 

The next Passover, by the way, in a year, he will be back in Jerusalem where he will give his life for the life of the whole world on a Roman cross.  

II.  

So Jesus, his disciples, and 5000 people are all on this hillside together.  and when it gets late in the day, Jesus asks one of the disciples, Philip, a rhetorical question, to test him.  He says, “Gee, Phil, wherever are we going to buy enough bread for all these people to have dinner?  Didn’t we see a Panera in the last village?”

To which Philip replies, “Jesus, even at only 4 bucks a head it would take about 20 grand to buy food for this many people.  That’s like half a year’s pay back when we were fishers, before taxes.  We don’t have that much scratch.  If we had that much in the money box, Judas wouldn’t even be able to pick it up, because this is the first century and money is pieces of metal.”

Another disciple, Andrew, is listening in.  He helpfully pipes up that there is one kid here with enough foresight to bring a bag lunch for himself, consisting of five cheap tiles of matzoh and two dried fish.  But of course, that is not nearly enough for so many people.  Imagine a thousand people each getting a crumb from sheet of matzoh.

But Jesus has other plans.  If the previous year’s Passover demonstration is about not making the Temple a market-place, this year the point is that we’re not going to make the Earth a market-place either.  In Mark’s version of this story, the disciples advise that Jesus send the people to the market to buy food.  Jesus, however, rejects the market-based solution to this or any problem.  He says, in effect, “This is Passover; we’re done with Pharaoh’s economic system of buying and selling, because we remember when we were the ones being bought and sold.”

No.  Jesus does not send the people to go get on lines at foodtrucks.  He does not have them fend for themselves at the market where the people with money are satisfied and those with no money go hungry, and where the prices are jacked up due to self-serving mythologies like “supply and demand,” and so forth.  

He has the people sit down.  He takes up the pieces of bread from the boy.  He gives thanks to God, possibly according to the traditional Jewish blessing recognizing that God is the One who “gives us bread from the earth.”  Then the distributes the bread and the fish to the 5000 people.

None of the gospels explain or adequately even describe how the people are fed.  But they are.  And that is the point.  Jesus comes into a situation of scarcity and lack, and somehow turns it into abundance.  Everyone is fed.  They even collect 12 baskets of leftovers.  

It is probably, aside from the resurrection, the most spectacular and characteristic thing Jesus ever does.  He feeds people, starting with almost nothing.  It becomes the one thing the church would continue regularly to do, both in terms of the ritual by which those who follow Jesus are identified and constituted — the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper — and in terms of a continuing mission of generosity and service in the world to those in need.

From that Passover on, everything the church does it does “eucharistically,” that is, as an expression of heartfelt thanks to God for amazing, astounding, miraculous abundance.  It is the one thing that Jesus specifically commands us to do regularly and frequently to remember him: taking, blessing, breaking, and sharing bread together.

III.

A normal politician who could do such things would immediately have lawn signs printed up and bring this trick on the road.  Once the people realize what has happened, they go bonkers for Jesus.  “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!” they exclaim, quoting Deuteronomy 18.  They are ready to take him on their shoulders, carry him to Jerusalem, and make him king by force.

A politician who can produce bread is golden.  The Emperor in Rome kept the support of ordinary Romans by distributing free bread.  Leaders will always tout and grab the credit for a booming economy.  If Jesus could do this bread thing on a regular basis, he could walk into Jerusalem as king tomorrow.

Instead, as night starts to fall, Jesus leaves the crowd and withdraws further into the hills by himself, until they can’t find him.  The disciples get into the boat to sail back home to Capernaum without him.  A strong wind kicks up, and the sails are not effective, so they have to resort to rowing.  After three or four miles of this hard work, they see in the darkness, Jesus, walking towards them.  On the water.  And they are terrified.

Jesus says, “I Am.  Do not be afraid.”  And immediately they find themselves inexplicably floating onto the beach at their destination, Capernaum.

The people wanted to bring Jesus up to Jerusalem and make him their king.  What they didn’t realize is that he is already the King.  Not just of this cranky little country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.  He’s King of the whole place!  All people.  All creation.  Time and space itself.  Being crowned king in Jerusalem, or even Emperor in Rome, would be a nearly infinite step down for him.  

He has not come to show us one way among many.  His is not a new, trendy political or economic philosophy.  His way is The Way.  He has come to connect us to what is Good, True, and Beautiful.  He plugs us into the Love, Peace, and Justice at the heart of all that is.  He connects us to God.

We will see now that Jesus does not come to grow the economy, a metaphor for which is this provision of bread for everyone.  As we will see in his subsequent teaching, he comes to overturn and replace not just the economy but the limitations and shortcomings of human life generally.  He is not about winning at the same old game; he is about a different game altogether.

IV.

He is the Way.  He is the Truth.  And he is the Life.  By following him in his Way, by trusting him and obeying him, we participate in the divine nature itself.  We become real and alive.  We live forever in the form he reveals to us, not subject even to waves or wind or gravity or time, not jerked around by circumstance, or the petty disturbances and turbulence of mortal existence.  

Following Jesus is not just some helpful hints for coping or even thriving in this existence.  It’s not about being rich, or popular, or powerful.  It is so much bigger than this that people don’t get it, as we will see.  They want a king who will merely provide bread for their bodies. 

Jesus is offering something beyond all that.  It includes healing and nourishment, it includes community and affection, but these are by-products of who we really are, which we discover in him.

He is asking us to move out of our fear and set our sights far higher than just survival or even worldly success.  He is bringing us home and calling us into our true nature as children of the living God.     

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