You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
They
could not figure out where he had gone.
The crowd, I mean. Like a
magician, by some sleight of hand, he (Jesus, I mean) had taken five small
loaves of barley bread and a couple of old fish, there on the hillside, outside
of the city of Tiberius where most of them (the crowd, I mean) had been
forcibly transplanted by King Herod, ripped from their agrarian culture and
thrust into this urban, food insecure, miasma, and he (Jesus, I mean) had fed
them when they had nothing to eat – all five thousand of them.
They
were so taken aback (the crowd, I mean) – so astounded – by the way he had made
food just materialize before their very eyes that they tried to crown him king
right then and there. But he (Jesus, I
mean) and his followers had hightailed it away – his followers to a boat docked
on the shore of the nearby Sea of Galilee and he to the hinterland.
They
did a thorough search in the hills outside of the city (the crowd, I mean) –
sticking their noses into caves and peeking behind rocks. After his (Jesus, I mean) stunt of magic or
whatever it was and who really cares, his stunt of coming up with twelve
baskets of leftovers from just five moldy barley loaves and two meisely fish, they wanted more of the same, and they
would search until they found it. The
crowd, I mean.
And
can you blame them? Who wouldn’t? However, they could not lay their hands – or
even their eyes - on him (Jesus, I mean) – and concluded that he must have
somehow linked up with his followers again far, and by now surely he was on the
other side of the Sea of Galilee.
So
some of them (the crowd, I mean) got into boats and sailed after him (Jesus, I
mean) while others followed the shoreline to the other side because obviously
there were not enough boats for five thousand people, and this in and of itself
was no mean feat because the Sea of Galilee is some thirteen miles long and
eight miles wide. They moved as one –
the misinformed, uneducated, unruly, rabble-rousing crowd, I mean.
And,
lo and behold, they came upon him, as the Gospel writer tells us, on the other
side of the lake. Jesus, I mean.
And
their ever hopeful eyes stared up and down at him and one of the more brazen of
them bluntly asked, “When (and, of course the unspoken corollary was “how”) did
you get here? Such an innocent
question: Gee, Jesus, when did you get
here? You left so quickly that we did not have a
chance to say thank you, we so appreciate your generosity, that was quite a
miracle you worked, so relevant to our situation, we can not thank you enough,
and have a nice day.
But
Jesus saw the hunger in their eyes. The
shallowness and temporal nature of their concerns was obvious. As Episcopal priest Michael Marsh speculated,
“They do not marvel at yesterday’s miracle, give thanks for God’s generosity,
or even wonder who this rabbi is. It sounds to me like they are worried they
might have missed the next meal, that Jesus started without them and they are
too late. They saw no sign, no miracle, in yesterday’s feeding. They saw nothing
more than fish and bread. They either refused or were unable to see beyond the
fish and bread. They are interested only in their own appetites and Jesus knows
it.”
It
was not rocket science. Jesus figured
out pretty easily that what the crowd really wanted to ask about had nothing to
do with generosity and gratitude, much less with the nature of his travel
arrangements. Jesus knew that the
unspoken question was this: How did you get away from us?
We only wanted to crown you king so that
you could always and forever give us this day our daily bread, so that we and
our children would never go hungry again.
Jesus
intuitively understood their perspective and viscerally comprehended their
concerns. However, Jesus also knew that
there is food, and there is food. There
is food to fill the belly, and there is food to fill the soul: A time for one,
and a time for the other.
And
in a style of writing that we find only in the Gospel of John, instead of
moving the action of the story along, the author takes us on a circuitous route
through convoluted explanations and extended metaphors and theological debates
and arguments of one sort or another – 71 verses of them – in order to be
absolutely sure that the second century audience to which he wrote understood
the full significance of this man Jesus, by then was known to be Messiah, the
Anointed One.
And
so it begins. First, Jesus calls the
crowd out. He calls a spade a
spade. “You’ve come looking for me not
because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your
stomachs—and for free.”
And
then, without missing a beat or allowing a rebuttal, he broaches the subject of
that other kind of bread, the stuff that feeds one’s soul. “Don’t waste your energy striving for
perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that
nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides, food that lasts, God
food.”
The
crowd was somewhat taken aback. “Oh,
does this have to do with religion? We
thought it was about where our next meal was coming from.”
But
they played along since food – give us this day our daily bread - hung in the
balance. “So,” they asked. “When it comes to this other kind of food you
are talking about - hypothetically, of course - what would we need to do in
order to do what God wants us to do?’’
And
Jesus patiently answered them. “It’s
easy. Throw your lot in with the One
that God has sent. Make that sort of
deep and profound commitment, and you will never be hungry again, your souls, I
mean.”
That
was when the crowd began to waffle. As
Presbyterian pastor Jeffrey London notes, “….this wasn't exactly what they had
in mind. A relationship with this traveling preacher?
No…they wanted good food and great wonders,
they wanted miracles at their beck and call.”
They certainly were not out to conjure up any more work for
themselves. Life was hard enough already.
So
– to buy a little time perhaps - they started to quiz Jesus on just what – and
how much – he could do for them. And
because yesterday’s loaves and fishes incident was so reminiscent of the manna
and Moses story they had all grown up with, they decided to start there.
Would
he be like Moses and make sure they had food every day – even if it was that
dew-like substance that never seemed like it would be particularly appetizing
that hung on the rocks and branches every morning for 40 years as the erstwhile
Hebrew slaves wandered about in the wilderness hoping to come across the
Promised Land? Would Jesus be like Moses and provide for them every day too? Could he top Moses?
To
which Jesus replied, still as patient as ever.
“It was not Moses who caused the bread to materialize lo those many
years ago. It was God. Just like yesterday with the loaves and
fishes. It was not me. It was God.”
“God,”
they pondered. “God does all this, you
mean. God will provide. Soul food, I mean.” And, just like that, for the moment, that is,
they got it. They understood, and so with
words that would be reminiscent of a nameless Samaritan woman who would one day
sit with Jesus by a well, they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
And
so the gap was bridged – between food for the body and food for the soul, I
mean. Jesus knew the starving mob that
had followed him half way around the lake, an area the size of Washington, DC,
hungered on so many levels. He knew they
needed more than bread for dinner or even manna from heaven. They needed more, and so, as Episcopal priest
Barbara Brown Taylor notes, he gave them himself instead.
“I
am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “Those who come to me will never be
hungry; those who believe in me will never be thirsty.”
There
is food, and there is food. There is bread,
and there is bread. Granted, that
metaphor can be pretty hard for us to relate to nowadays. We have so much food
that many of us put on too many pounds because of it. We do not eat bread – because we are on
gluten-free diets or because we are cutting back on carbs.
However,
for the five thousand folks for whom food riots in the city were commonplace
and for whom Herod set up emergency bread distribution centers when it looked
like things might get out-of-control, bread was indeed the staff of life. Upwards of 75% of the people in the region
lived entirely on bread. Bread and water
were the essentials for survival. If
there were to be no bread, there would be no sustained life either.
So,
when Jesus proclaimed himself to be the “bread of life,” he made a deeply
profound declaration. And it still is
one that ought to touch us – even us – if not in our gut, then in our secret
place, our soul, even today – even with our dietary restrictions.
For
we too are hungry people, no different really than the starving ones from Tiberius. As Michael Marsh writes, “Everyone is looking
for something that will sustain and nourish life, something that will feed and
energize, something that will fill and satisfy. Everyone is looking for bread.”
Bu
there is bread, and there is bread. As so
Marsh continues, “Many of us eat the bread of having to be right and get our
way. We eat the bread of hurt feelings and resentment. Sometimes we eat the
bread of loneliness, fear, and isolation. There are times we eat the bread of
sorrow or guilt. Other times we eat the bread of power and control. Sometimes
we eat the bread of revenge or oneupmanship. We eat all kinds of bread….The
world is full of bread and yet far too many live hungry, empty, and searching.”
And
so we bring our hunger here, to this sacred place, hoping each week that what
we come upon will satisfy us. We hold out our hands and offer to the One we
find here our own bread of affliction – our broken lives, our guilt, all that
is within us in need of healing. We
bring it here – in our tears, in our fears, in our overworked and lonely
lives.
And
on special days, on Communion Sundays, we even set a table to receive it in the
name of he who is the Bread of Life. And
we also place upon that table a loaf of bread – not the bread of affliction but
a different bread - and a cup of wine (or in this place, grape juice) as
well. It is not much really. It is just a symbolic recognition that there
is bread and there is bread. Yet, in
those moments the link between the two becomes secure.
We
take a tiny cube of that bread – or, if we are hungry or simply desire a more
natural experience, we tear a bigger chunk right off the loaf. We take a sip of juice from the smallest wine
glasses in the world. And in the touch
and in the taste and in the smell even, we remember.
We
remember a last supper in an upper room in the Holy City of Jerusalem. But most of all, we remember what that supper
meant. We remember the Bread of Life,
broken and passed from hand to hand, his very life nourishing us, the very act
of sharing recommitting us to his ministry, so that we can go out into the
world and bring bread to the hungry in his name.
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