321 Two Big Stories

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Two Big Stories” originally shared on July 24, 2024. It was the 321^st 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.