John 6.16-27

16 That evening Jesus’ disciples went down to the shore to wait for him. 17 But as darkness fell and Jesus still hadn’t come back, they got into the boat and headed across the lake toward Capernaum. 18 Soon a gale swept down upon them, and the sea grew very rough. 19 They had rowed three or four miles when suddenly they saw Jesus walking on the water toward the boat. They were terrified, 20 but he called out to them, “Don’t be afraid. I am here!” 21 Then they were eager to let him in the boat, and immediately they arrived at their destination!

22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the far shore saw that the disciples had taken the only boat, and they realized Jesus had not gone with them. 23 Several boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the Lord had blessed the bread and the people had eaten. 24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went across to Capernaum to look for him. 25 They found him on the other side of the lake and asked, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

26 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. 27 But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.”

Comments

There was one thing at the end of yesterday’s reading that I want to bring up because it relates to today’s passage. After the miracle meal, the crowd wanted to make Jesus king by force. Think about that for a minute. How could a crowd force someone to become king? If they managed to somehow invest absolute authority in a person, couldn’t that person then use that new power to undo what the mob had just done? This whole thing makes no sense because the rule of a king and the rule of a mob are mutually exclusive. A group of people could only convince someone to be their leader if that person were willing to take on the responsibility and then, having been made king, the group immediately would become subject to what the king said, losing their power in the process. Right?

Well, not really. It is always the case that people are governed by consent. What about dictators? There hasn’t been a single regime, however brutal, that could literally coerce compliance from its entire populace. The numbers would never add up. Every human government, however bad, has some number of people who actively participate in maintaining its power, and some other (much larger group) who go along without offering any meaningful resistance. They may not like their government, but their failure to resist is its own vote of complicity with the given regime. Government is always by consent. This is the logic behind the old adage, “people always get the government they deserve.” I don’t know how completely true that sentiment is, but it has some truth to it because of the consent required for any government to remain in power.

So what does this have to do with Jesus? The crowd wanted to make Jesus king on their own terms, based on their ideas of who he was and what he was about. The king they would have made Jesus would have been a reflection of the sort of government they deserved, one focused on free food and violent resistance to Rome. Jesus refused to be defined on their terms or have his mission coopted by them, do he disappeared and walked across the lake to get away from them. When they find him, Jesus warns them about being too focused on perishable things and tells them they failed to understand the meaning of the miracle meal.

And we still do this same sort of thing. We tend to think of Jesus as being on our side, supporting our cause, lending his divine power to all our wants and schemes. But Jesus does the same thing with us as he did with them – he runs and hides. Jesus won’t be king on our terms. He will only be king on his own terms. The question is whether we are willing to be subjects under such a rule.

 

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

John 6.1-15

1 After this, Jesus crossed over to the far side of the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A huge crowd kept following him wherever he went, because they saw his miraculous signs as he healed the sick. 3 Then Jesus climbed a hill and sat down with his disciples around him. 4 (It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration.) 5 Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him. Turning to Philip, he asked, “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” 6 He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.

7 Philip replied, “Even if we worked for months, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed them!”

8 Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. 9 “There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?”

10 “Tell everyone to sit down,” Jesus said. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. (The men alone numbered about 5,000.) 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people. Afterward he did the same with the fish. And they all ate as much as they wanted.12 After everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, “Now gather the leftovers, so that nothing is wasted.” 13 So they picked up the pieces and filled twelve baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten from the five barley loaves.

14 When the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, “Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!” 15 When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself.

Comments

John makes two significant changes in telling the story of Jesus feeding such a large crowd with such a small snack. The first change is adding the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples where Jesus is specifically testing them, trying to coax a trust-response from them. We almost expect one of them to say, “I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but after the wine incident, I know you will do something.” Andrew comes closest to saying this, offering the little bit of food he was able to find (even looking was an act of trust). But then Andrew almost apologizes for the bit of trust he has shown. Still, like the Samaritan woman, Andrew showed a tad bit of trust and that seems to have been enough for Jesus.

The other change is that in John’s account Jesus distributes the food directly to the people (in the other Gospels Jesus hands the food to the disciples who pass it out to the people). The disciples still assist here, but only in organizing the people and in picking up the leftovers. Jesus gives the food directly to the people. John wanted to accentuate the immediacy of Jesus to each follower. We will see this more fully with the promises regarding the coming of the Holy Spirit as another Counselor (Greek: Paraclete) who will continue Jesus’ work of teaching and leading his followers, but this scene serves as a nice foreshadowing of that, downplaying the mediating role of the initial followers and accentuating the immediacy of the cosmic Christ with all followers by his Spirit.

Which brings us back to the point of the first change. There are still hungry people to be fed, still a harvest to be gathered, still innumerable impossible kingdom work to be done. The Spirit still asks us these questions: “How are we going to do this?” And then the Spirit waits for any shred of a trust response from us to latch onto and carry forward the great and miraculous work of God in this world. We don’t bring the power or make the miracles happen. We just organize people and clean up afterward. But, wow, is that enough. The more often we offer our snack, the more often Jesus can feed thousands. What in the world are we waiting for?

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.