(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Two Big Stories” originally shared on July 24, 2024. It was the 321st video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Two big stories will dominate our
consciousness this week, and they happened almost back-to-back. Two thousand
years ago. Today, we’ll find out what they are.
The daily news has been dominated by two
stories this week. First, the attempted assassination of former president
Donald Trump just 11 days ago, and second, President Joe Biden’s decision to
withdraw as a candidate for a second term as president, paving the way for
Vice-president Kamala Harris to run for President, just 3 days ago.
Two other stories
will be on the minds of hundreds of millions of Christians all over the world
this coming Sunday. They are well known in popular culture outside the Church
as well, and people have been talking about them for over 2,000 years.
The first begins
with a riddle: “How many people did Jesus
feed at the ‘Feeding of the 5,000’”?
That meal that starts
with a little boy’s lunch and has lots of leftovers, is the only miracle of
Jesus that is found in all four of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and in
today’s passage from John.
I think that one of
the reasons for this is that it centers on a universal human need for food.
Most of us could
complete the saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his…”
And many of us
could complete quote from Napolean, “An army marches on its…”
But I think that we
miss much of the impact of this miraculous provision of food by Jesus because food
scarcity of the kind that was commonplace at the time of Jesus is so rare for
most of us in Southern California.
In fact, the food
in our diet is fresher and more varied than that of most royalty
throughout human history.
Just take a mental
trip down any main thoroughfare around you and you will find that food
dominates the landscape. It’s everywhere, in every form you can imagine, and it
comes from all over the world.
You’ll see fresh
food, fast food, fine food, junk food, fun food, organic food, decorative food,
food that is locally sourced and food from far away, cuisines from many
countries, survival food, and food that is given away for people who are
experiencing basic food insecurity.
Walk into a grocery
store and you’ll find one of the main reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Lines to buy basic food necessities are almost unheard of anywhere in the
United States. And when the communist people found out what life was like for
the average person in the United States during the late Cold War, their
dissatisfaction boiled over and their empire fell.
Shortages were rare
even during the worst of our recent pandemic when we had major supply chain
issues.
In fact, there
is enough food in the world to feed everybody, several times over. Our
main problem is that it’s not evenly available, and there are major issues of
distribution and of human will in getting it to the people who need it.
Scientists all
over the world continue to develop methods of sustainable agriculture in every
corner of our planet to help people eat. The famines that were commonplace just
decades ago are rare today.
But Jesus
lived in a time where nobody ate like we do. As a skilled worker who had now
become an itinerant, Jesus was probably muscular. And thin.
Jesus had been
in Jerusalem for a Jewish festival, where he healed and taught. We pick up the
story at John 6, verse 1:
After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also
called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept
following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus
went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now
the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.
The Sea of
Galilee had been renamed the Sea of Tiberias by Herod Antipas (a petty and
ruthless tyrant who had recently killed John the Baptist; we heard about him
last week) to curry favor (I guess that’s a nice way to put it) with the emperor,
Emperor Tiberias, in 29 A.D.
The crowd
walked around to the northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was
taking his disciples for a retreat by boat. The Sea was ringed with villages,
so they would have had to walk way up the hills to find room for them all on
the green grassy fields of the Spring. The crowds were excited to do this
because they had seen the healing miracles that Jesus had done, and medical
care in those days was almost non-existent. They were poor.
Then John
drops a little detail into the story that the Passover was near. Why was that
important? We see, as the story continues with verse 5:
5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd
coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these
people to eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he
himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip
answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of
them to get a little.”
Hospitality was a major social obligation in
the honor and shame culture of Jesus time. Jesus wanted he and the disciples to
be good hosts. Everyone was to be treated as close family.
Phillip stated the obvious that their
resources were so small in light of their needs. It’s a a situation that almost
every church in the Western world can relate to.
So, suppose
you were hosting a family meal. How would you prepare?
Suppose you
were hosting a large family reunion? It would be difficult, but you could do
it.
Suppose 5,000
people just showed up and you were responsible for feeding them? Here’s what
happened, continuing in John 6: verse 8:
8One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There
is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among
so many people?” 10 Jesus said, “Make the people
sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat
down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus
took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who
were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.
It’s a sign of
our relative affluence that many of us hear the part about the bread and think,
“Woah, that’s a lot of carbs! Of course, now some dietitians are saying that
carbohydrates are good for you. <sigh>.
But for people
who didn’t regularly get enough to eat, except at weddings and festivals, to be
allowed to eat as much as they wanted was a huge deal.
And there were
leftovers (!), another rare event. Jesus knew the needs of the people, and he
didn’t want anything to go to waste. We pick up the story in verse 12:
12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the
fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13 So
they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left
by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When
the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed
the prophet who is to come into the world.”
I just want to
mention here the naturalistic explanation for this miracle. Some have given the
plausible explanation that people of Jesus time would not have gone anywhere
without taking some food with them. The miracle here is not the multiplication
of loaves and fishes, but that there was something about Jesus that inspired
people to share, and when they shared there was more than enough. It’s
plausible, but I don’t think that that’s the story here.
It doesn’t
seem to me that such an event would have made the cut for all four gospels. Nor
does it seem likely that people would be able to hide that much food in their
clothes.
Plus, look at
how the people reacted. They declared Jesus to be a prophet and wanted to make
him King. I don’t think that that would happen if Jesus had merely drawn a
spirit of sharing out of them.
John the
Baptist’s execution was fresh in their minds. Things were happening. They just
didn’t understand what they were.
Then things took
a turn for the worse for Jesus, in the concluding verse of this story, verse
15,
15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force
to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Jesus had
already rejected the offer of the devil to gain political power, to rule as an
earthly king, and he rejected all the efforts to politicize him and all the
efforts to make him chose a different path than that to the cross.
Jesus is
shown in this story to be like a prophet, but as in the prophetic ministry of
Moses, a deliverer of another kind.
Like Moses, he
crosses the water, the people follow him, he goes to the mountain, and food is
miraculously provided in the middle of nowhere. Twelve baskets of leftovers
were collected, which is the same number as the number of tribes of the
children of Israel. And remember that little detail that John added at the
beginning of the story? “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.”
(v. 4)?
The night
before he was betrayed, Jesus recast the Passover with himself as the
sacrificial lamb. His death on the cross would set God’s people free from sin,
death, and all the forces that defy God. The feeding of the 5,000 points to
God’s generous and extravagant provision.
The free food
given in the feeding of the 5,000 was Jesus. It points to God’s redemption of
all who believe and are baptized, including you, and me.
Miracles like
this are not suspensions of the laws of nature but acts that point to God’s
intention for the world at Creation, and to God’s coming redemption
of the world in the new heaven and the new earth. In fact, in the gospel of
John, as in today’s reading, “miracles” are often called “signs”, and signs
point to something else.
The cross lies
at the center of human history, providing the means by which our sin, our
separation from God, is overcome by Jesus, fully God and fully human being, in his
sacrificial death on the cross.
But that’s not
what the people wanted from Jesus. We see in the gospels that once Jesus scales
back on the free healing and the free food, and points to his coming death on
the cross, his popularity sinks like a stone.
The greatest
miracle was yet to come, but the people couldn’t see it and, I suppose, most
people can’t see it even today.
The greatest
miracle is the cross.
How many
people were at the feeding of the 5,000? We don’t know. The Greek word used in
the Bible could mean 5,000 men in the specific gender sense of the word, or
5,000 men in the generic sense that includes women and children, or 5,000 men plus
women and children.
What we do
know is that Jesus is the bread of life, and that that food is given for free
for all people to receive. Jesus is the bread of the world!
The second
story is about another miracle. Jesus walked on water.
Have you ever walked on water? I have. Many times.
I used to walk
across frozen lakes and rivers all the time. I walked on the frozen pond we
made with the garden hose on our back yard, and on the delicate ice sheets in
the streets and on the sidewalks. Well, ice is water too, right? It’s just in
its solid form.
Walking on water in
its liquid form? That’s something else. That’s an attention getter. That
creates an impression.
We can’t do it. It
wouldn’t even occur to us to try.
Jesus walked on
water in its liquid form. Several times. We see it one time in John 6:16-21.
It was a dark and stormy night.
It was the night
after the feeding of the 5,000.
Jesus had withdrawn
to the mountain to pray after people were about to come and take him by force
to make him king.
The disciples had
left the venue without Jesus and were heading back to Capernaum, their home
base in Galilee. It was the location of Peter’s mother-in law’s-house and
they often stayed there. This is how the story begins, in John 6:16-17:
16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got
into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and
Jesus had not yet come to them.
Jesus had not yet
come to them.
Well, how was he
going to come to them? He was in the hills above the northeast corner of the
Sea of Galilee. They were out at sea. And then one of those sudden Sea of
Galilee storms came up. They were commonplace when the cold mountain air
circulated with the warmer below-sea-level sea air.
The wind was
heaving in from a direction that made their sail useless. They had to get out
the oars and row, in a storm, at night. They rowed for a mile, then for two
miles, then three, maybe four. And that’s where we pick up the story in verse
18:
18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When
they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and
they were terrified. 20 But he said to them, “It is
I; do not be afraid.”
The disciples saw Jesus, but they didn’t
know it was Jesus.
They were in a storm. They were scared. Then
they saw someone walking on water. People don’t walk on water, so what was
coming at them? Was it a demon? Was it a ghost? It was getting closer. It was
coming directly at them. They were terrified!
Then Jesus, says “It is I; do not be
afraid.” There are those words again.
I don’t know if that calmed them down much,
at least not right away. What was he doing there? Who walks on water, in a
storm, on the water?
And then they knew.
The story concludes with verse 21:
21 Then they wanted to take him into the
boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
I’m not sure what
“immediately” means here, as the disciples and Jesus were about half-way to
their destination at this point.
John is highly
symbolic, though. There are layers upon layers of meaning in the gospel of
John.
Perhaps it means
that when they saw it was Jesus, they knew they were OK.
Jesus is
life’s destination. Jesus will calm us in our life’s storms when we recognize
him for who Jesus is. Our Savior. When Jesus is within us, we’re all in
the same boat, and that means that we’re all going to make it home.
The pivot point of
human history and of our histories, between the beginning and the end, is the
cross. Jesus is the beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega.
The disciples saw
Jesus, but they didn’t know who he was.
He was revealed to
them in the midst of a storm.
I don’t suppose
that the storms in our lives are the first place many of us would look
for Jesus. In fact, for many people, it’s the last place. But among we who are
being saved, that’s where Jesus is. He is with us in our suffering. That’s what
Emmanuel means. God with us.
And so it is with our
sharing that faith that has been given to us, that has connected us to Jesus,
with our friends and our relatives. Faith is like a beard. If you let it grow,
it becomes the first thing people notice about you.
Faith is a living
relationship with the one true living God. It transforms us. We are made new. We
are made a new creation; we are born again because of the indwelling power of
God pointing us to the cross. We live in Christ because Christ died for us.
That is a countercultural life. And people notice.
Jesus is the
destination and Jesus will calm us in all of life’s circumstances,
including in our life’s storms, when we recognize him for who Jesus is. He is
there with us. Our Savior. Our Redeemer. The Prince of Peace.
Whatever is at the
top of the news, whatever twists and turns the coming months may take, however
hard we have to row against the wind, we know that Jesus is with us, and will
be with us forever. The two big stories we have read today show us the
way, and it’s Jesus.
We don’t know what
the future holds. But we know who holds the future.
And that means that,
with Jesus, we’re going to make it home.
