Sermon 7/28/24
John 6:1-21
Picnic and a Boat Ride
Our gospel lesson today is a text that’s probably familiar to most of you, at least somewhat. And it is one of the rare events that appear in all four gospels outside of Jesus’s death and resurrection. So we get the sense that this story is important. Of course, each gospel writer gives it their own spin, and John, whose gospel is the most different from the other three, also has the most variations in his account of this event. So let’s make sure we read carefully.
Jesus has been teaching and healing. He crosses the Sea of Galilee with his disciples, and the crowds follow him, because of the healing work he’s been doing - they see it as a sign from God, and also, of course - they want to be healed! When Jesus sees the crowds coming, he turns to Philip, one of the Twelve, and asks, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” In other gospels, it is the disciples who raise this question. But John says that Jesus poses this question in order to test Philip, because Jesus already has a plan of action.
Philip and the other disciples seem a bit overwhelmed by Jesus’ question. Philip notes that even a large sum of money wouldn’t feed such a huge crowd - and Jesus and the disciples evidently don’t have a large sum of money. Andrew has noticed a boy with five loaves of bread and two fish, but what could that amount of food - plenty for a few - do for a crowd of 5000 people? But Jesus simply has them all sit down, and then he gives thanks over the food, and starts passing it out. Everyone somehow eats all that they want, and now there is even food left over. The leftovers gathered, and there are now 12 baskets of leftover food where there was once only 5 loaves and 2 fish. A miracle.
When the people see the miracle, they call Jesus a prophet, and they want to force Jesus to be their king. They want him to be their leader, their ruler. This isn’t what Jesus is about, though, not in the way they want. And so he withdraws from the crowds on his own. The next verse I’ve never really noticed before, but it caught my eye this time thanks to a commentary by Alicia D. Meyers that I was reading. We read, ‘When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.” The disciples just…leave. I’m not sure where they were going. Maybe they had plans already, and knew Jesus would meet up with them. But they don’t go looking for Jesus, as far as we’re told, anyway. They don’t ask him what they should do next. They don’t check in. They just get back on the boat and leave town.
And then the sea becomes rough and a strong wind is blowing over the water. It’s a dark and stormy night - but suddenly they see Jesus, walking along on the water, coming to them in the boat. They’re terrified. We’re not sure why; they’ve seen Jesus do miracles, after all. But maybe walking on water was just a next-level kind of thing. But Jesus says to them something he says many times, particularly in John’s gospel: “Do not be afraid.” And then suddenly, they’ve reached their destination safely.
It can be interesting to use this text to consider what we think about miracles, particularly the supernatural kind, the bend-the-laws-of-the-universe kind. Did Jesus miraculously make the food multiply? Or did something else happen? Did Jesus really walk on water? How? Why don’t we see miracles like that today? Or were they reserved for Jesus, never to be repeated? But although these questions can make for an interesting conversation (or sermon), I want to push us in a somewhat different direction today. I think we learn in this passage both something about what we might expect (or not expect) from Jesus, and what Jesus expects from us.
That’s right: Jesus has some expectations for us, his disciples. In our text, John tells us that Jesus wanted to test the disciples, and see what solutions they would come up with to address the hungry crowds, even though he already knew what he planned to do. How do we feel about that - the idea of Jesus testing us? The other gospel authors don’t mention anything like this, and this idea of the disciples being tested is more consistent with John’s style of writing and his understanding of how Jesus was at work in the world. But still, it’s here for us to wrestle with. I will admit that the idea of God testing us doesn’t really jive with my theology most of the time. It makes God seem too manipulative to me, like we’re being set up, guinea pigs in some divine experiment. I don’t think God is like that.
But I have to remind myself, and maybe you do too, not to conflate “test” with “trick” or “trap.” Sometimes tests can be designed to be tricks or traps, but they aren’t necessarily the same. Sometimes being tested is a good thing, a necessary thing. We use tests all the time, so that we can assess what people know and what they don’t and whether they’re ready for the next thing. Right now, believe it or not, my nephew Sam is 17 years old, and he’s just about ready to take his road test for his driver’s license. We have to test young drivers to see if they’re ready to be on the road by themselves, for their safety and the safety of other drivers. A road test isn’t a trap or a trick. It’s an assessment. Sometimes a test reveals areas where we’re not prepared. Even failing a test isn’t always the worst thing that can happen. I think of my best friend in high school - it took her three failed road tests before she finally got her license. Now she’s an adult and a mother and a nurse and a more grounded and careful person than she was at 16. She failed a test - and it helped her mature as a driver and a person, and now I feel very safe being her passenger! We might know some things very well, but a test might reveal that we’ve overlooked a particular topic or have an area of misunderstanding. It might reveal that we’ve made progress, but we’re not ready yet to move on to the next thing. Tests can be hard. They can give us some anxiety. But they don’t have to be tricks or traps.
So when I read here that Jesus is testing the disciples, I ask myself what he was looking for in his disciples. I think he wondered what they had learned so far in their time with him, as they’d accompanied him in his teaching and preaching and healing. And I think he wondered what they were ready for. How far would they follow him? How would they be as leaders themselves? Well: neither the crowds nor the disciples make a good showing, I’m afraid. Because the crowds are too focused on what they want from Jesus: signs and magic and a king. And the disciples are busy fleeing to the other side of the sea without Jesus. A consistent theme in John, and in John 6 in particular, is that the crowds want to know what Jesus can do for them tangibly: they want food, they want physical healing, and they want him to be a king, maybe one who can overthrow the oppressive Roman government. I sympathize with their longings - who wouldn’t want someone to lead who could do those things? Why wouldn’t we want to follow someone who can keep us fed and keep us healthy? But it seems like that’s all they want from Jesus. The crowds seem far less engaged in what Jesus is teaching, less interested in letting their lives be transformed by God.
And then there’s the disciples, those closest to Jesus. First, even those they’ve already seen Jesus do amazing, unexplainable things, they can’t imagine a solution to his question: “How will we get these people something to eat?” Maybe they’re content to let Jesus figure out the answers. How could they be expected to come up with a solution - they’re not Jesus, after all. Maybe they’re not sure they can trust him yet. Is it all too good to be true? And then, again, when Jesus has withdrawn from the crowds anxious to make him a king, we hear nothing of the disciples. What are they doing? Are they, too, trying to force Jesus into a role? Are they helping manage the crowds? Or standing off to the side, waiting for Jesus to tell them what’s next? I wonder what they’re thinking when they decide, in fact, to leave, to go back across the water to where they came from. Are they ready to ditch Jesus altogether? Are they anxious to be away from the unexplainable events of the day? Just go back to their normal routines? We just know that when Jesus shows up, walking on the water, they’re afraid. Maybe afraid of what this means for them. How can they be good enough to follow Jesus? Yet, how can they do anything but try to keep following? No wonder they’re afraid: awed and dazzled by Jesus, feeling confused, unworthy, incompetent, and yet feeling like what choice do they have but to keep trying to follow him anyway.
It’s easy to look at the disciples in the gospels and see all the mistakes they make, and convince ourselves we’d do better. But I think they’re portrayed as they are so that we can take comfort, actually, in knowing that we’re not the first to struggle with fears and doubts in our discipleship. We’re not the first to wonder if we can trust Jesus, and yet also want Jesus to fix all of our problems. We’re not the first to feel incompetent at discipleship, and yet keep coming back to try again. The disciples get it wrong, a lot, and even worse than this. But they keep going. Jesus keeps teaching them. I don’t think they ever feel quite ready. But somehow, they’ve changed our lives, changed the world, millennia later.
Jesus does test us, I think: checking in on where we are in our discipleship. But I’m reminded of the grades I used to get in elementary school. Not the grades for how well I was performing academically. Instead, there was a whole section on how we were performing socially. Were we learning to be thoughtful, well-adjusted classroom citizens? You couldn’t fail in that section. You could get an “unsatisfactory.” But teachers tended to opt for the more hopeful “needs improving.” Or the encouraging “improving” that might come on the way to “satisfactory” or “excellent.” I think when Jesus tests us, the scale is a little bit more like that. Ready to challenge us where we need improving. But always ready to affirm us, build us up, teach us some more, lead the way, and tell us: Do not be afraid. So, take heart, friends. Jesus wants to know what we’re going to do about the broken-hearted world around us. Probably, we’re going to mess it up. But instead of demanding that Jesus fix it for us, or running away altogether, let’s stay and learn from the teacher, and then practice, practice, until we’re improving, until we’re thriving, until we’re ready for whatever Jesus calls us to next. Amen.
Thanks to Alicia D. Meyers, at The Working Preacher for sparking this line of thought. “Commentary on John 6:1-21.”
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-17-2/commentary-on-john-61-21-6
Image: JESUS MAFA. Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48287 [retrieved July 29, 2024]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).
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