Proper 12

So, I’m guessing you all have heard this story before.

Even someone who’s never stepped foot in church knows about Jesus multiplying loaves and fish.

But John gives us this story, and others, for a reason. He actually tells us that reason in John 20:31

He says he wrote his gospel so that you “may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

We’re supposed to learn something about Jesus and learn what it means to follow him into new life.

And so we ask, what does this passage reveal to us about Jesus and what it means to follow him?

John packages these two stories together in a way that makes the miracles stand out.

The miracles themselves affirm that Jesus is the Messiah who has the power to open new life.

He is unique, not just another prophet.

It’s hard to know how the stories or miracles would have been received by John’s original audience, but to us modern thinkers, miracles are often viewed with skepticism.

Perhaps you wrestle with them yourself.

And skepticism about miracles doesn’t necessarily cause people to have animosity toward Jesus.

It just leads them to see Jesus primarily as a teacher of ethics.

As I was working on this sermon I overheard a man at the table next to me say, “I think GOD really just boils down to ‘treat others like you want to be treated’. I don’t care what God you follow, just don’t steal from me or do things that hurt people.”

It’s not an uncommon view.

The idea that all religions are really just about a common ETHIC that should drive humankind.

Famously Thomas Jefferson edited his own Bible by keeping the ethical parts of scripture and literally cutting out the miracles.

One might say he didn’t quite grasp the ethics either, but that’s another sermon

Most don’t go that far, and simply see miracles as exaggerated stories and myths they don’t have to take literally.

Still others come up with ways that the story can be true in a more “rational” way.

For example, with THIS passage, people have sought to explain what really happened here in non miraculous terms

And one theory is that the faith of the boy who is willing to give up what he has leads to everyone else in the crowd being moved to take out their own secret stashes and when that happened there turned out to be enough for everyone

So basically they would say Jesus triggers the ethic of sharing resources to meet everyone’s needs.

Or, one might say, it’s not really Jesus at all. It’s the little boy whose actions end up shaming everyone else to do what they should have done to begin with.

Now, let’s not through the baby out with the bath water.

Jesus is ABSOLUTELY concerned with ethics.

He is VERY clear that he cares for the poor and that things like feeding the hungry are central to the heart of the kingdom.

It would not be out of character for Jesus to simply teach that we should have compassion for one another and share our resources.

So let’s not the ethical aspect of this.

But we lose something if Jesus was ONLY a teacher of ethics and we lose something is that’s all that was happening here.

One commentator put it this way.

Instead of fostering an exploration of God’s ability to act in surprising ways and transform human expectations, the shame-based version of the story focuses on the ability of persons to solve their own problems and justifies shaming as a means of motivating proper human behavior. God is no longer a miracle-worker unbounded by human laws, but a social manipulator who reminds people to share. Behavioral modification replaces amazing grace as the core of the story, and God is reduced to a divine therapist counseling charity among a greedy people who already know better. Can God not be much more in our lives than an omnipresent social worker reminding us of our duties?

So let’s go back to the original question: What does this passage reveal to us about Jesus and what it means to follow him?

I’m not Thomas Jefferson but I do tend to emphasize the ethical a lot.

Because I find that many modern churchgoers don’t want Jesus to disrupt their politics or their lifestyle and so we talk a lot about how Jesus calls us to live now in a way that aligns with the kingdom.

He wants us to care for the poor.

He wants us to are about racial injustices.

That’s a big part of what it means to follow him.

You can’t read the sermon on the mount and think otherwise.

But the question that hits me this morning is whether we still believe that God can act in surprising ways beyond our expectations?

The stories of miracles are meant to open us up to hopeful expectation and wonder.

Even as we strive to live the ethics of the kingdom.

Are we open to a God who can still do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” as it says in Ephesians 3:20?

Yes we want to live faithfully, but do we also believe he can multiply the meager things we bring to him?

Do we believe that something more powerful than what we can manufacture is possible in our midst because he is with us?

If youre gathered with others maybe talk about this

Are you comfortable with ethics of Jesus but not his spiritual power?

Maybe it’s the other way around?