Reverend
Debbie Cato
John 6:1-21
Fairfield
Community Church
July
28 2024
Let us pray: Holy God, open our minds and hearts so that we can hear
you speak to us through the preached word.
Help us to apply what you teach us to our lives. In Jesus name, Amen.
We have
talked about Jesus feeding the five thousand and Jesus walking on water for the
last few weeks. Today, the lectionary
has us focusing on these stories again – but from John’s perspective. Remember, each of the Gospel’s was written by
someone different, for a different audience and a different perspective.
Today’s Gospel readings from John are perhaps two of the better-known miracle stories of Jesus: his feeding of the five thousand and his walking on water. These stories were important for the early church. The feeding narrative is the only miracle story that is included in all four Gospels and accounts of Jesus walking on the sea are in all the Gospels except Luke.
Many people are following Jesus because they want to see more of his miraculous healing power and hear more of his authoritative teaching. People from all over the region are drawn to Jesus. We talked about this – Jesus has compassion, he suffers-with the people and the people are attracted to Jesus. They follow him everywhere.
Jesus looks over this particular crowd, as always it’s very large. He lifts his eyes in prayer and speaks with his disciples. The Gospel doesn’t tell us that Jesus was teaching this crowd. John also does not say that Jesus notices that the crowd is hungry; John doesn’t say anything about Jesus having compassion on the thousands gathered around him that day. This is about the disciples. He asks Philip how they can feed the crowd. (hint: this question is a test).
Philip sees the complete impossibility of the situation. There are thousands of people in the crowd. The Gospels tell us that there were five thousand men in the crowd. But as I said last week there were also women and children in the crowd, so it’s possible that the actual size of the crowd was double that – it’s possible there were as many as 10,000 people in the crowd that day. 10,000 people to feed.
Philip has worked the numbers; he’s a finance guy. It would cost 8 months of wages – thousands of dollars to buy enough food to feed the crowd. They don’t have that much money. They can’t do it. Philip doesn’t see – or maybe he just forgets for a moment that the miracle-working Lord is sitting right in front of him. In fact, Jesus is the one who asked Philip the question. But Philip can’t see Him. Philip is overwhelmed. Technically he’s right. It’s impossible to feed all those people. The need is overwhelming. The feeding ministry is too expensive. Philip loses out in the faith department, like anyone of us would.
By contrast, Andrew sees some hope and even shows a little faith by coming forward with a small boy and his meager provisions – five barley loaves and two fish; the traveling lunch of the poor. Barley was the grain of the poor. It made into decent bread and bread is bread when you’re hungry. The fish were likely sardines or other small, cheap, boney fish. Initially, Andrew was excited – he had found some food in the crowd. For a moment he sees hope; “Look!” he says, “Here is a boy with five small barley loves and two small fish. Here’s some food for the crowd.” But even Andrew’s faith doesn’t last very long. It doesn’t take long before his common sense gets the better of him. “Oh,” he says. “This won’t go far among so many people. What was I thinking?” [1]
Jesus doesn’t directly respond to either Philip or Andrew. He doesn’t chastise them or explain anything to them. Instead, he asks his disciples to have the people sit down and then Jesus takes the barley loaves and the two small fish and thanks God for them – he prays over the small meal they are about to share with this large crowd. And then Jesus takes the loaves and the fish, and he passes them out to the people in the crowd. In the Gospel of John, He doesn’t ask his disciples to do it. Jesus passes out the food himself. And after everyone has enough; after everyone is full; Jesus makes his way back to the disciples and he asks them to clean up. He says, “Gather the pieces that are left over so that nothing goes to waste.” And so the disciples wander throughout the hillside, among the thousands of people sitting around on the grass and they gather the leftovers; twelve baskets to be exact. A basket for each disciple. What had seemed to the disciples to be scarcity – not enough to feed the large crowd of hungry people was actually an over-abundance. Twelve baskets of leftovers!
We don’t know how these small loaves of barley bread and two small fish were enough food to feed this huge crowd. We know Jesus’ miracles weren’t magic. Jesus didn’t wave a magic wand and pull a bunch of bread and fish out of a hat. But exactly how such a meager lunch fed so many people, we don’t know. Since none of the Gospel writers tell us, it must not matter; the how isn’t important. What we know is that Jesus wanted his disciples to know that God is a God of abundance, not a God of scarcity. Jesus wanted his disciples to know that there was enough for them to do what needed to be done.
Afterward, Jesus withdraws to a mountain by himself like he so often does and so when evening comes, his disciples go down to the lake, get into a boat and begin to cross the lake for Capernaum without Jesus. It’s dark and a storm blows in. The wind gets pretty wicked on the Sea of Galilee and the waters get rough and before they know it the boat is being tossed around on the high waves, threatening to throw them all overboard and drown them. The miracle of feeding the large crowd gets forgotten as fear grips them. Suddenly they see the shadows of a man approaching the boat, walking on water and they are terrified. But Jesus says to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” It is I.
It is only then that they are willing to take Jesus into the boat with them. And the moment Jesus gets in the boat, it immediately reaches the shore where they were headed. When the disciples believe it is Jesus, they reach their destination.
Sounds like two miracles, doesn’t it? Jesus walks on water and after getting into the boat they immediately reach the shore.
Do these miracles about scarcity and abundance; does letting fear block our view of Jesus, mean anything to us today? I think they do.
Just like Philip and Andrew, sometimes we are filled with doubt because we live out of fear and see only what we don’t have. We live out of scarcity. We are too old, we say. We are too small. We don’t have the money to do that. We can’t do that. No one will come. It won’t work. And so, we don’t do anything; we don’t try. Even when we decide we are going to do something; we may not really believe it will work. We don’t really put much effort into it. We don’t get involved. We wait for it to fail.
How might things be different if we worshipped and prayed and ministered out of Christ’s abundance? If we believed big? If we believed in Jesus’ goal of revealing God’s power through each act of our ministry? If we believed in God’s abundant provision? Would we be more willing to share what we have like the small boy was willing to share his small lunch of loaves and fishes and then watch Jesus multiply our gifts to meet the needs? If we acted out of a mentality of abundance would we be more willing to provide opportunities for God to surprise us and transform our expectations?
The “Jesus walking on water” story shows us that the disciples’ problem wasn’t their desire to have Jesus join them on their journey, but in their ability to recognize Jesus as he approached them. Is that our problem too?
Do we take the time to look and listen for where God has come to meet us? Or have you already decided that He has withdrawn to a distant place and left you – and this church? Only by opening your hearts and minds through prayer and time in the God’s Word will you be able to recognize salvation and spiritual guidance when it enters your life and the life of this church.[2] Jesus performs the miracles. But for each miracle he performs, he asks something of his disciples. We cannot expect to just sit back and do nothing. What is He calling you to do?
Surveying the great crowd, Jesus asks a question that tests the limits of the disciples’ knowledge: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Clearly, whatever we have is not enough. Yet, as this text points out, the “not enough” is not the final answer. When placed in the hands of Jesus, what we have becomes more than enough. With Jesus, little can become much, the few can become the many, and the weak can become strong.[3]
Both Philip and Andrew – and I would imagine the other disciples functioned out of a mentality of scarcity – we don’t have enough for all these people. Jesus functioned out of abundance. Look at the difference in results.
From all the Gospel reports, it’s just a “little faith” that Jesus ever expects from anyone. It’s all he ever minimally seeks from even his very-human disciples. “If you have faith the size of just a little mustard seed, you can say to this mountain here, ‘Move over!’ and it will move over, and there will be nothing impossible for you,” Jesus told his disciples.
I wonder what we might be able to accomplish through Him with just a little faith? How courageous can we be? Amen.
[1] Bruner, Frederick Dale. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2012.
John 6:1-24. P357-362. Key ideas
and thought fragments.
[2]
Feasting on the Word,
Year B: Volume 3. Karen Marie Yust. p288.
[3] Feasting on the Word, Year
B: Volume 3. Cheryl Bridges Johns. P287 & 289.