Encountering Jesus as the Bread of Life
Notes
Transcript
Encountering Jesus as the Bread of Life
Encountering Jesus as the Bread of Life
Sermon Intro
Sermon Intro
Review and peek ahead…
Last week, we left Jesus in Jerusalem. Having just healed the man who had been ill for 38 years, Jesus then speaks quite a lot in the end of chapter 5 - a discourse, we call these in John. After healing on the Sabbath, Jesus speaks at length about the authority of the Son and then call for the Jewish authorities to bear witness to what they are seeing. In essence, if the question is “Who does he think he is?! Healing on the Sabbath! The answer is He is the Son of God. And Jesus then calls on the people to bear witness to what they are seeing, and says that John the Witness has given testimony, and now the works the Father has given him to do also bear witness to his true identity and authority.
Just before our reading:
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.
And just after our reading, there is a long section in which Jesus teaches. A discourse, these are called in the gospel of John. And it is in the discourse that Jesus explains the sign, particularly of the feeding of the 5000, but also of his walking on water, showing up in the midst of a storm. Jesus teaches that he is the Bread of Life.
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away, 38 for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day. 40 This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”
The response? It’s the ultimate small town, tight knit community response - isn’t that Joseph’s boy?
We won’t read the whole 50 verses of the discourse today, but I encourage you to take a look at it. It isn’t a straightforward kind of passage - doesn’t lend itself to simplification and drawing out “three main ideas”… instead, it spirals around, pulling the listener or the reader deeper and deeper into abiding with Jesus, trusting Jesus for daily provision and also into relationship.
Meanwhile, our reading today has four scenes:
We see Jesus and his disciples with a large crowd. There is a scarcity of food. (No bread. And no money to buy bread. And no Door Dash or Pizza Now) But in the midst of this scarcity, there is also abundance - an abundance of grass. Which is a weird detail, but it both factors into the story AND hints at the image of the Good Shepherd which is just visible over the horizon. In the midst of the scarcity, Jesus gives the instruction: make the people sit down.
In the second scene, Jesus takes bread, gives thanks and gives it to the people. (this should remind us of something else!) Everyone eats as much as they want and there are leftovers.
In the third scene, the people want more. More bread. More power. And Jesus retreats. His disciples get into a boat and find themselves in the midst of a storm. Jesus shows up.
In the fourth scene, the crowd pieces together the events. “We saw the disciples get into the boat. Jesus wasn’t with them. Where did he go? Let’s find him…
As Stephen comes to read, would you prepare your hearts and bodies to listen?
Reading
Reading
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, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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.” 21 Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going. 22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there. They also saw that Jesus had not gotten into the boat with his disciples but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23 But some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
This is the Word of the Lord.
THANKS BE TO GOD.
When you find yourself in a situation that is difficult, I think it’s natural that we ask three main questions:
Can God do anything about this? Does God know what is best? And does God care?
Is God powerful? Is God wise? Is God loving?
And, what we discover along the way, is that the character of God do not stand separate from one another.
Or at least, we do better when they’re connected.
Otherwise, we end up reducing God to something far less than God is.
Only powerful - God becomes a genie so that my life can be more comfortable or successful. A lucky rabbit’s foot.
Only wise - God is a distant jerk who is more committed to sticking to the plan
Only loving - God is near, soft and cuddly but naive and impotent. Completely unable to actually do anything.
But when we hold the characteristics of God together - when they’re anchor points in a web (as Meredith Miller discusses in her book Woven) … well, now when we think about the power of God, it’s linked to the wisdom of God and both of those are linked to the love of God. And we see a God who cares. A God who knows, understands and sees what is best. A God can act, even in the face of something that renders us powerless.
This is the kind of God we see revealed by Jesus. A God who can do something. Who knows what is best. And who cares deeply.
This way of keeping the characteristics of God in tension or in connection with one another becomes really important when we tell the stories like those in our reading today.
What characteristic of God is most evident in these encounters or signs? Power.
Sometimes the way we might tell such a story is somewhat circular: Jesus uses power to perform a miracle which is a sign. The sign points us to how powerful Jesus is. Or to how Jesus is God and God is powerful.
Result: God is someone we petition like a genie for a magic trick to fix a problem we have.
But what if we follow the sign towards the Person?
Power points to a Person who invites relationship, participation, and presence.
What if the power on display - both in the feeding of the 5000 and in Jesus showing up on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of a storm - what if seeing the power Jesus possesses is meant to point towards something else?
What if the display or the sign points us towards JESUS himself.
I’d like to suggest that the signs (while displays of power) aren’t about power in and of themselves. The power on display is to direct our attention to Jesus… who then invites relationship, invites participation, offers presence.
Think about it, whenever God does a miracle - uses divine POWER to do something incredible, is it just to display that power, to show off? Or is it to reveal something about who the Yahweh God is and what it means to be God’s people?
Meredith Miller says this:
“Every miracle God did has both a what and a why.
Plagues don’t just show power, they show Yahweh God’s unique power that extends over the gods of Egypt? You have a river God? Watch what Yahweh can do to the Nile!
Parting the sea doesn’t just usher the people to freedom, it calls back to the creation story, where God’s Spirit hovers over the waters. God had power over the waters then, and still does. Waters, by the way, were a symbol of chaos in the ancient Near East… so, when we see God as having authority over water, it points to God’s ability to create order and goodness, even over the most unruly areas of creation.
Providing manna and quail doesn’t just fill the Israelites bellies, it helps them learn to trust God alone to provide for them. Yahweh is a God of life and abundance, even in the wilderness…
The same is true when we turn to the story of Jesus walking on water. There’s the what of the miracle, showing power over the chaotic and frightening sea (again). But the what points to the why: This Jesus possesses the same power as Yahweh God, Creator of all things, who tames the waters — of the deep, of the Red Sea, and now of the Sea of Galilee. When Jesus comforts his frightened friends by calling out “It is I.” the words he uses, ego eimi, are exactly the same as in the Greek version of the book of Exodus, when God speaks God’s own name, “I AM, Yahweh.” Jesus isn’t just showing his power over nature, but his power over all.”
So, as we look at Jesus feeding the 5000 and walking on the water, we must ask “What did he do?” but we also want to engage in the why… what does the sign point to?
Karoline Lewis: “The manna in the wilderness as the story that helps make sense of the feeding of the five thousand then emphasizes several key points at once: Jesus’ origin, Jesus’ identity, and what a relationship with Jesus looks like and mean, all three themes having been laid out in the first verse of the Gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.’
So if the demonstrations of power point to a Person - and in this we see Jesus revealed as the same God as Yahweh who delivered the people from slavery in Egypt, sustained them through the wilderness, and shows up in the midst of the chaos and uncontrollable seas…
Jesus invites RELATIONSHIP with God. “The power invites us to know the person.” Meredith Miller
Meredith Miller: “God’s power was a tool by which we could grow in trusting God. The power demonstrated in creation culminates in wanting a relationship with humanity. The power demonstrated in the exodus culminates in wanting a relationships with Israel. The power demonstrated on the hillside culminates in wanting a relationship with the people who have returned for bread. The power invites us to know the person.”
Relationship invites PARTICIPATION. (enter the boy’s lunch, not to mention Phillip even with all his doubt. And doesn’t he use the boy’s lunch as an example of how bad the scarcity problem is?) - we sometimes would prefer a contract. You provide X and we’ll do Y. (Spoiler: we never manage to do Y for long.) But also, God has never been about contracts like this.
Meredith Miller: “God’s power was a tool by which we could grow in trusting God. The power demonstrated in creation culminates in wanting a relationship with humanity. The power demonstrated in the exodus culminates in wanting a relationships with Israel. The power demonstrated on the hillside culminates in wanting a relationship with the people who have returned for bread. The power invites us to know the person.”
And, no matter what it looks - however chaotic, stormy, out of control - the person these signs point to is also offering us PRESENCE.
What will we do with the signs? We can stick with just being wow-ed. Just saying, “Cool!” and moving along.
Or, we can see where they point. Follow the signs toward the God they reveal. The Person of Jesus. The Word made flesh. The revelation of who God is and what God is like. Not a new God. The same God who offered relationship and participation and presence to the children of Israel. The same God who is not just a genie or a superhero, but who seeks to offer us God’s very self. Who is the Bread of life. The regular stuff of life. Because God is inviting us into relationship where we don’t live some super special life, but our regular lives, our daily get up and go do the things lives.
Meanwhile, our reading today has four scenes:
scarcity/abundance - Psalm 23 - he makes me lie down in green pastures… are the sheep the ones who keep track of their needs or is that up to the shepherd to make sure they have what they need?
Jesus takes bread, gives thanks and gives it to the people. (this should remind us of something else!)
Even when they misunderstand, or want the wrong things, even when Jesus won’t cooperate with their misguided desires, He does not abandon them. Jesus shows up.
Finally, they went looking for Jesus… at the end of our text, the people go to find Jesus. But his discourse is difficult, and after all that Jesus says in the second half of the chapter, we read these words…
66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. 67 So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. You are the Holy One of God.
