THE BREAD OF LIFE—Part 1
John 6:1-29
August 19, 2018
Mike Fargo
You’ve probably noticed that the lectionary gospel readings this summer have been mostly from Mark’s gospel. But for reasons unknown to me, during the month of August all the gospel readings are from the 6th chapter of John, which is not only the longest chapter in the whole New Testament but also an extremely important text and a difficult one in many respects. So I thought I would use the two weeks I have with you to gather all of John 6 together and preach on it in two parts. So let’s take our time and listen carefully to what our Lord is trying to tell us.
The chapter begins with a significant miracle. Indeed, it’s the only miracle recorded in all four of our gospels—the feeding of the 5,000. The fact that it’s in all four gospels makes great sense, of course, since if it was witnessed by thousands of people, it would certainly have been embedded in the public memory for quite some time. And so John begins in verse 1:
[1-4] Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover was near.
At this point in his ministry, Jesus had gained wide acclaim has the great healer of the sick, causing throngs of people to follow him wherever he went. Periodically he would move into more remote areas in order to be alone with his disciples, but invariably the crowds would find him. And such is the case here. He has moved to the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee where there are few towns (even today) and low rolling hills that offer a pleasant place to rest. But as usually happened, this didn’t keep people away, as we read next in verse 5:
[5-6] When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.
Now it’s important to note that Jesus had come to this remote spot to be with his disciples—to minister to them and not the crowds. And even as he sees the crowds approaching, he sees a teaching opportunity for these twelve men. The crowd that is following Jesus has unwisely overextended itself. It’s getting late and in such a remote place there are no immediate sources of food. On the surface it seems like an impossible situation, but Jesus has a plan. But before he makes his move he throws the situation back into the disciples’ lap by announcing that they—the apostolic band—need to feed this huge crowd.
What I love about this passage is that it addresses a problem that has bothered people for centuries. In the Old Testament, in particular, we have all these encounters between God and various people—Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and so forth. And the descriptions of these encounters sometimes make it sound like God is at a loss for what to do, or that he changes his mind based on the intercession of mere humans.
The classic example, of course, is when Moses has been on Mt. Sinai for forty days and the people think he’s disappeared and so commit the gravest of all sin by forsaking God and building the golden calf to worship. In reaction God says to Moses, “Stand aside, for I am going to destroy these people and start all over again through you, Moses.” Now Moses is appalled by such a thought and pleads with God not to destroy the people, even giving God several insightful reasons for why destruction would be a very bad idea. In the end, God relents.
Now a naïve reading of that text in Exodus certainly makes Moses out to be the hero and God something of a temperamental and equivocating deity. But when we bring to the text all the other insights we have about God from scripture, we quickly realize there’s more going on. We could even borrow the very words of Jesus from John 6:6 and insert them into that text in Exodus. Like Jesus, God knew what he was going to do, but he said those things to test Moses. Was Moses a true leader? Would he be tempted at the thought that God would start over with just him? Did he possess the redemptive compassion of God?
In other words, God doesn’t need us to accomplish his purposes, but he longs to involve us in it nonetheless. And so returning to the situation in John 6, we read in verse 7:
[7-10] Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there).
The disciples clearly don’t know what to do. It’s somewhat ironic that the only person who has anything to offer is a small boy. The fact that he’s mentioned at all suggests that he came forward on his own and offered them what he had, meager as it was. Jesus seizes on the offer and has everyone sit down. By the way, the other gospels make it clear that in addition to 5,000 men, there were also women and children, so the total crowd could probably have filled a small stadium, making the idea of feeding everyone seem absurd. But let’s read on:
[10-13] Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.
Please note that last phrase. The remnants left over, the text tells us, were from the original five barely loaves. In recent years some commentators have suggested that this whole event was not a miracle at all, but that the crowd, seeing the generosity of the little boy, dug deep into their own resources and shared with each other. John makes it explicit that this was not the case, but that Jesus had truly multiplied what had originally been a small and inadequate resource.
Now in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the story ends here. A powerful miracle has taken place and we are left to get out of the story what we can. And so for centuries people have culled many valid and important lessons from it, such as:
- Jesus can make much out what little we offer him. We are reminded of his teaching that if we have even the faith of a tiny mustard seed, we can say to this mountain, “Be thrown into the sea,” and it will. In other words, we need to trust Jesus and use what we’ve got. We shouldn’t give in to our common feelings of inadequacy, but rather step out of the boat if that’s where he is leading us.
- Related to this basic insight, of course, is the lesson that Jesus knows what we need and is more than able to provide for us. Yes, sometimes we think our needs are not being met, but if Jesus can provide for so many with so little, then he can surely provide what we need. And if a particular felt need is not met, then we need to trust that he good reasons for refusing us.
Now if this were all we get out of the feeding of the 5,000, we’ve gotten a lot. But we would still miss the far bigger message that John’s gospel alone articulates. And to understand what this bigger message is, we have to ask ourselves, “So how did the crowd react to this incredible event?” John captures this next:
[14-15] After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
It’s well known that Galilean Palestine, where this event took place, was a hotbed of political resistance to Rome. In Jesus own lifetime several revolts had already originated from Galilee. Jerusalem, on the other hand, was much more anxious to maintain the status quo with Rome. Consequently, when the crowd witnessed this amazing miracle, they thought they had “seen” something, but it wasn’t what Jesus intended them to see. What they saw was Jesus as a political Messiah who would free them from Rome and usher in an age of great power and prosperity—a vision completely opposite how Jesus saw his own mission. Consequently, he quickly slipped away to an unknown spot, leaving his disciples behind with instructions to sail back to Capernaum, their home base, as we read next:
[16-21] When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum. By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them. A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were frightened. But he said to them, “It is I; don’t be afraid.” Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and presently the boat reached the shore where they were heading.
Now in Matthew, Mark and John, this event on the water immediately follows the feeding of the 5,000, so these two events are clearly related. In particular, Mark’s gospel makes an important observation, when he writes that after walking to them on the water and climbing into the boat [and I quote], “They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hard.” In other words, they had failed to grasp what happened at the feeding of the 5,000 and consequently they were unprepared for what happened on the water. There was some internal attitude of the heart that prevented them from understanding the bigger, more important lesson that wasn’t about the loaves and fishes at all, but was all about Jesus himself. But the disciples were not alone in this failure, as we read next in John:
[22-24] The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.
The crowd seems intensely focused on finding Jesus, right? It would seem their zeal and determination is praiseworthy, right? No, it is not, for they are actually not after Jesus at all, as we learn next:
[25-27] When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Verse 59 of this chapter tells us that Jesus has now returned to Capernaum and is teaching in the local synagogue when they find him. His immediate reaction to all their efforts is a rebuke. There is a play on words here that John makes fairly explicit. In verses 1 and 14 that I’ve just read, twice we are told that the people “saw” the “signs” that Jesus did, referring first to his healing miracles and then later to his feeding the 5,000. Jesus now claims that they indeed “saw” something, but they did not actually see the sign that Jesus intended them to see.
Indeed, what they were after was a steady and reliable source of food. And in one sense, what’s wrong with that? After all, we are embodied, physical creatures. Without food, we die. Without clothing and shelter, we die. And so a vast amount of our energy and attention revolves around such things, including our prayers. We pray, “Lord, I need a job.” “Lord, heal my sickness.” “Lord, I need a place to live that I can afford.” Doesn’t Psalm 23 promise us that because God is my shepherd, I will therefore not lack any good thing? Isn’t this how God would have us pray? Doesn’t the Lord’s Prayer tell us to pray for our daily bread?
And the answer is yes, these are all legitimate prayers. But the feeding of the 5,000 is a “sign” intended to jolt us into realizing that Jesus has our physical needs under control, and therefore we no longer have to anxiously make such things the all-consuming focus of our lives. As Jesus put it in the Sermon on the Mount, shortly after giving us the Lord’s Prayer, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”
Think about that last phrase, in particular, “is not life more than food?” None of us would be in this place this morning if at some point in our lives we hadn’t become convinced that physical life, by itself, is actually superficial compared to a life lived in union with God. The intended “sign” in the feeding of the 5,000 is not the free lunch but Christ himself, the one who longs to give us a kind of life that endures right into eternity.
Unfortunately, the crowd heard none of this. What they heard was verse 27, when Jesus said, “Don’t work for the food that spoils, but for the food that lasts…” Because they are still focused on food and not on Christ, we get verse 28:
[28] Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
In other words, they’re saying, “Okay, Jesus, okay. We’re apparently doing something wrong and so you don’t want to feed us anymore. Okay, so what is it that God wants us to do?” They are still looking at Jesus as simply a means to some higher end they want, and so once more he tries to turn them around in verse 29:
[29] Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
And it’s right at this point that this whole conversation between Jesus and the crowds takes a radical turn in a whole new direction, a much deeper and more profound direction that we will have to wait until next week to look at. But for today, realize this—Jesus is not a means to some higher good. Christianity is not a means to a happier life, a better marriage, more well-adjusted kids. The Christian faith is about finding God, who becomes for us life itself.
What that means, what that looks like in our lived experience, will be the content of what Jesus describes next. May God help us all to “see” what the Lord has for us.
Amen