John 6:1-21
“Enough”
July 29, 2012 - Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

         I can’t help doing food line math. When I’m standing waiting for my turn at a potluck supper table or, like this past week, the hot food counter in the Bethel University cafeteria, I do the math. I look ahead to spy the items I like and measure the quantity available against the number of people ahead of me in line. Will there be any potstickers or fried chicken left when I get up there?

         “Let’s see, there are five pieces and four people ahead of me. So maybe it will work out, but not if that big guy in front of me takes two.” That’s how my calculations go. Friday noon, I hardly had to calculate. I just watched the last of the green beans get dished out while I was still two back, with no more to come.

         Will there be enough? That’s the question we bring to so much of life, not just meal times. It’s a particularly intense question in the present moment as we wonder nationally whether there will be enough jobs, enough health care, enough law enforcement, enough opportunity in general to go around? Close to home, some of us are asking whether we will have enough to pay our rent or mortgage, to make our student loan payments, or even just enough to feed our families? And we doubt the answer.

         In our text, at the scene of the “feeding of the five thousand,” there were people like me making those calculations and asking that question as the bread and fish were passed. Their eyes were measuring the loaves, approximating the average size being torn off and figuring how many people to a loaf, all asking, “Will there be enough?”

         As John 6 begins, we see the movement we saw last week in Mark 6. Jesus and the disciples row back and forth across the Sea of Galilee and the crowds keep following. Because John’s Gospel was written later, he adds the Roman name of the lake. In 20 A.D. Herod built a city on the western shore and named it after the emperor Tiberias. That name gradually became associated with the body of water as well.

         Verse 2 tells us the crowds came because of the “signs,” the miracles that Jesus did for the sick. They heard what Jesus could do and hoped the same for them. As we read in Mark, they brought their sick and got in line, hoping and praying that the power of Jesus would not run out before He got to them.

         In verse 3 we see what we heard in Mark last week. Jesus wanted a little time alone with His disciples. They needed a rest, some time away from the crowd. So they climbed up the mountain and sat down together. Mark told it differently, but John says in verse 5 that, as He sat down, Jesus looked up and saw the crowd following them up the mountain. It’s at this point that we heard last time that He saw them as a flock of sheep without a shepherd.

         Mark told us Jesus began to teach the crowd many things, but John skips to the big miracle that’s about to happen. He immediately jumps to the question Jesus put to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”

         Jesus asked Philip because he was from around there. John 1:44 says Philip was from Bethsaida, on the northeast coast of the lake. Last week on the first day of our class in Minneapolis, as dinner time came we turned to a couple of people who lived in the area, who went to school there, and said, “Where can we find something to eat? Where are the restaurants?” Jesus did the same thing, asked a local guy where to find a meal.

         We were serious about finding places to eat in Minneapolis, but Jesus was just messing with Philip, “testing” him it says. As we see in verse 10, there were thousands of people there. The count was five thousand men, which meant there were many more with women and children along. Estimates range between twelve and twenty thousand for the total crowd. So Jesus is hardly serious about buying food for them all.

         Philip takes him seriously, but responds with doubt. He does the food-line calculation for this giant crowd, starting with the most money he can possibly imagine, two hundred denarii. A denarius was a day’s wage, so it’s over half a year’s salary. Philip did the mental math, thinking how many loaves you could buy for a denarius, multiplying that by 200, then dividing by the number of people. It came up short. The result wouldn’t even be bite or two each. Philip doubted there was any way to feed all those people.

         All along, John is sneaking us clues about what’s going to happen. In verse 4, for no apparent reason, he mentions this is the time of Passover. Mark just tells us the grass on which the crowd sat was green, meaning it was springtime. But John sees a connection between this event and the fact that it was time for the Jewish holiday celebrating Israel’s exodus from Egypt. And in verse 6, after saying Jesus was testing Philip, John says that Jesus, “knew what he was going to do.” Jesus had no doubts, but His disciples did.

         Andrew shows up a little better. He went out and scouted the crowd and found a little food in the form of a boy’s lunch. Mark remembered the five loaves and two fish, but only John recalls the boy and that they were barley loaves, the very cheapest and roughest sort of bread. The fish were small dried, pickled fish like sardines, barely an appetizer to go with the bread. Andrew has his own doubts, “But what are they among so many people?”

         Doubt is how we often respond to whether there will be enough. We are so often disappointed. Getting ready to fly home Friday, I bought a sandwich before. I’ve so often been disappointed by what’s available to buy onboard. Then the flight attendants came on and announced a nice list of food they would be selling. Maybe I didn’t need to buy that sandwich. But sure enough, minutes later, the speakers crackled again and they told us they didn’t have most of those items after all. The food offerings would be very limited.

         We expect scarcity. We doubt there will be enough. We live and work and vote in that doubt. We try to protect ourselves, to guard against the inevitable disappointments when it turns out there’s not enough work, or salary, or financial aid, or whatever it is we need. Like Philip and Andrew, we do the math and it comes up short. We expect to be disappointed.

         Jesus responded to all these doubts, the doubts of His disciples, the doubts of the crowd, and our own doubts, with an act of abundance. That’s the heart of the miracle here. Jesus takes the bread and the fish, gives thanks to God and then distributes it. And there is enough, more than enough.

         This is the only one of Jesus’ miracles that appears in all four Gospels. It made a huge impression on the disciples. When they shared their memories of what Jesus had done and said, they told this one over and over. They remembered how that day by Galilee, when everyone thought they would go hungry, there had been enough, more than enough.

         I don’t know what we each came looking for this morning, but the simple message is, in Jesus Christ there is enough. I’m pretty sure there’s enough snacks for everyone after worship, but that’s just a bit of it. There is enough forgiveness, no matter what your sins are. There is enough love for you to find a friend here. There is enough kindness and generosity for you to receive help here. There’s enough.

         The problem is, when our doubts are put aside and we are not disappointed, and we find there’s enough, our doubts turn into demands. In verses 14 and 15 we read the crowd’s reaction to this miracle. Jesus just fed them a meal where no meal could have been expected. Now they start to do just that, to expect Jesus to keep feeding them.

         Verse 14 shows people putting the theological pieces together. It’s Passover, when Moses led the people out into the desert, where God fed them with manna. Munching barley loaves they remembered what we read from II Kings 4 about Elisha feeding a hundred with twenty barley loaves. Jesus did more. He fed thousands with five loaves.  And in verse 13, the disciples gathered up twelve baskets of leftovers. There were twelve tribes of Israel. There’s enough to feed the whole nation. Jesus, they concluded, must be the Prophet, the prophet Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18:15.

         So they decided to demand more bread, more food. Verse 15 says they were going to take hold of Jesus and make Him their king. Many of us have worked enough with people in need, with people who are hungry, to know how it is. Give someone food, or a bed, or any sort of help and they begin to feel entitled to it. They expect it, demand it. That’s what the crowd did with Jesus. That’s what you and I may end up doing with Jesus.

         We think a sense of entitlement is a problem with public assistance. But you and I often take for granted, feel entitled to all that God has done for us. Whether it’s material blessings like a home and job, or relationships like marriage or children. When we have what we need, we start to feel like we need what we have, that we deserve it.

         Verse 15 tells us in the face of their demands Jesus, “withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” He left the crowd after the physical miracle so they could learn a spiritual lesson. It wasn’t really bread and the fish they needed. We’re going to study this lesson as we read the rest of John 6 in the next few weeks. There is a life and a provision that’s more and deeper than just physical well-being, more than a healthy body and a full stomach.

         Jesus physically separated Himself from the crowd so that they could learn how to depend on Him in a deeper way. If He wasn’t handing them loaves of bread and healing their diseases, they could ponder the things He said, think about who He really is.

         We encounter that same paradox when we get demanding with Jesus. We come to Him, to church, primarily focused on getting whatever we need, whether it’s healing for ourselves or someone else, or a job, or a better character, or forgiveness. But we come like the crowds came, urgent and demanding, expecting Jesus to feed us.

         When we find Jesus a little distant, when our prayers for help or healing are not immediately answered, we may be disappointed. But it’s just then when we discover that what we really need from Jesus is not bread or better health. It’s a relationship with Him.

         My parents were divorced when I was two years. My father was around sporadically. As a boy I used to think that the problem was all the things I didn’t have or didn’t get to do because he was absent. He promised me an allowance, a couple dollars a month. Then he didn’t come around to give it to me. I started to add it up, to figure out how much my dad owed me that he hadn’t paid: $38, then $46, then over $50.

         If I had known and understood, I might have also added up all the court-ordered child support he failed to give my mother, causing our family finances to always be tight and my mom to always worry about money.

         I know now that what I missed because my dad wasn’t around was not the allowance, not the extra stuff I might have had if he had met his obligations. No, what I really needed was not more money, more food on our table, more things. What I needed was him. It was attention and time together with my father that I was missing most.

         Crowds of people still flock to Jesus. It happens at evangelistic crusades and in some big churches. We gather around Him, hoping for miracles, wanting to have our needs met. Yet the very best thing He has to offer, what He wants most to give us, is Himself.

         The church lectionary, to be sure it’s included, tacks one more story onto this text. In verses 16 to 21 the disciples set out yet once more to row across the lake. Jesus stayed behind alone on the mountain. Mark tells us He sent them ahead so He could pray by Himself. Out there on the lake, they were again in rough water, with the wind blowing hard against them. Then they saw Jesus walking toward them on the water.

         John just tells us in verse 19 that they were terrified. Mark explains for us that they were afraid because they thought the figure moving across the water was a ghost. But listen to what Jesus said to them. “It is I; don’t be afraid.” He spoke to their real need. They needed what the crowd needed. They needed what you and I need. They needed to depend completely on the presence and person of Jesus Himself.

         In Mark 6 verses 51 and 52, we hear that the disciples in the boat were astounded. The reason is “they did not understand about the loaves…” Mark didn’t mean they weren’t getting how powerful Jesus was. What they didn’t yet understand was who He was and what that meant. They were still to learn that they could depend solely and completely on Jesus as Lord and Savior and God. That’s why Jesus said, “It is I.”

         That’s our lesson today. There’s enough, because Jesus is enough. Sometimes we’ll see grand miracles of provision and generosity. If we bring Him our little loaves of bread Christ our Lord may multiply them far beyond what we can imagine. But Jesus didn’t come to give us a nice lunch or even to heal our diseases. He came and still comes saying, “It is I.” “I’m what you really want. I’m what you really need.” “Don’t be afraid. Get to know me and that will be enough. More than enough.”

         You may have come here today with needs, because you don’t have enough. You may have come here today with extra. You have what you need and some to share. Whichever it is, there is only one way, only one place where you will always have enough. Don’t depend on health, or a full refrigerator, or a nice bank account. Depend on Jesus. Then and only then, you will have enough.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj