John 6:24-35
When we look at the bigger context of today’s gospel reading
we see it as follows: Jesus has been healing the sick. Then he performs the miracle of feeding the
5000. Then Jesus walks across the water
towards the disciples. All of that
directly precedes today’s story. What happened in the passage we read for
today? The disciples, and the people,
literally “the crowd” are looking for Jesus.
When they find him he says that they are looking for him, following him,
not because of what he has said and not even because of the “signs” he has
given, but because he has fed them and they are filled, they are satisfied. Jesus acknowledges that being filled is very
important. It is so important that people work hard for it. They are also willing to follow and want to
be led by someone who will fill them, who will feed them. But, he says, they are focused on having
their bodies fed. They are not focusing
on what will really satisfy them, really bring them peace and wholeness, which
is seeking after spiritual bread, after truth, after relationship with God,
after following in the way, which is
Jesus himself. That is what will really
fill them, but they can’t seem to change their focus from that of getting basic
physical needs met.
That is the central focus on today’s text. But as I sat with
this text there was a sub story, related but not the focus, that really stood
out for me. And that has to do with the
next part of the story.
After all of this: after hearing what Jesus says to them,
after being told what they really want is to be satisfied and not with just
physical bread but the bread of life: after they have been miraculously fed and
after Jesus has walked on the water and after all of the healings he has
performed, then this outrageous thing happens and they then ask Jesus for a
sign! Apparently, they’ve forgotten all
the signs he has just produced. Or
perhaps they simply weren’t satisfied with the healings, they weren’t satisfied
with the feeding of the thousands, they weren’t satisfied with him walking on
the water. They don’t want to have to do
anything except be fed, be healed, be attended to. And so, when Jesus asks them to do something
in return, when Jesus asks them to follow him, they want proof, more proof, that this effort on their
part will lead to them continuing to be fed, to be healed to be attended
to. They ask for another sign. They point to
Moses saying, “well, he fed us manna, so give us a sign so we can believe.” (again, obviously what they are really asking
for is a very specific sign: they want Jesus to feed them again). But Jesus corrects them saying that Moses
didn’t do that, God did that. And that
Jesus is there to feed them, is
feeding them, has been feeding them: but at this moment, not in the way that
they want to be fed, are demanding being fed.
I think this is the key point here, actually. They want to never be hungry again,
physically. They want to be fed in a way
that makes them feel safe, physically.
They want to be shown that they will never suffer again, never hunger
again, never be in need again. And when
Jesus says, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never hunger
again,” they are still thinking in terms of physical hunger, physical bread,
physical needs being met.
We still do this. We
all want life to be physically easier, to be smoother. We don’t like to suffer, and we don’t like to
see others suffer, especially people we love.
So we, too, beg and plead for something different, for a bread that will
satisfy us always, without us needing to do anything. We want to be children, taken care of. More, we want a Santa Claus God whose job and
role is that of answering our every need, but also our every wish.
And what this shows me, what this says to me, what should be
obvious looking at today’s culture and at the world and into our own hearts as
well, is that people have a hard time believing. They have an even harder time
committing to their faith and to living that out. They have a hard time trusting in their
faith, trusting in God, trusting in what they’ve even been experiencing through
these miracles. They’ve been given
signs. They’ve been fed. They’ve heard the Word of God spoken again
and again, and yet they still ask for more proof, more feeding, more signs.
They still struggle to believe in a God who loves us beyond our imagining but
also calls us into action. They want to
believe in a God who will feed them constantly like a mother bird, without them
needing to do anything. But they struggle to do so. They need constant reassurance. And because
of that, no matter what Jesus did, they would ask for more: more signs, more feeding,
more proof.
Frederick Buechner, in his book “Wishful Thinking” speaks eloquently
for us in his essay on faith when he says, “I can’t prove the friendship of my
friend. When I experience it, I don’t
need to prove it. When I don’t
experience it, no proof will do. If I
tried to put his friendship to the test somehow, the test itself would queer
the friendship I was testing. So it is
with the Godness of God.”
He continues, “The five so-called proofs for the existence of
God will never prove to unfaith that God exists. They are merely five ways of describing the
existence of the God you have faith in already. Almost nothing that makes any
real difference can be proved. I can
prove the law of gravity by dropping a shoe out the window. I can prove that the world is round if I’m
clever at that sort of thing - that the radio works, that light travels faster
than sound. I cannot prove that life is
better than death or love better than hate.
I cannot prove the greatness of the great or the beauty of the
beautiful. I cannot even prove my own
free will; maybe my most heroic act, my truest love, my deepest thought, are
all just subtler versions of what happens when the doctor taps my knee with his
little rubber hammer and my foot jumps.
“Faith can’t prove a ...(darned) thing. Or a blessed thing either.”
There is something very human in a desire for some kind of
“proof” at times of God’s presence.
There is something very human in a desire to know for sure that Jesus is
God’s son. There is something deep within
us that wants God to shout out in clear and concrete terms what we are supposed
to do and be with our lives, what God wants for us in each moment. There is something very human in this deep
desire to be fed, cared for, taken care of, without needing to give and serve
and trust in order to experience that satisfaction and fullness. And some of the time, at least, we probably
feel that the signs God does give just aren’t clear enough.
In reflecting on the nature of signs and presence and feeding
in our lives, I was reminded of the movie “Bruce Almighty.” He’s driving down the road demanding,
insisting on a sign from God. He passes
a sign that says “caution ahead” which he ignores. He prays more and begs with even more
insistence for a sign. He sees another
sign, “turn back!” which he also
ignores. He crashes into a pole and gets
out of the car cursing and yelling at God to answer him! To respond to him! And then his pager goes off. We know the person paging Bruce is God, but
Bruce doesn’t know that. Instead, he
takes the pager and yells at it, “Don’t know you. Wouldn’t call you if I did.” And we are left both laughing but also
reflecting seriously on the truth of that.
He didn’t see God when God was right there, answering his prayers, responding
to his pleas, even calling him and asking him to listen. He didn’t know God. He didn’t call the God who is real, who
exists, who is not Santa Claus, just there to dole out what we believe we need
at any moment. And if he had known this
God, Bruce probably would not have called on that God. “Don’t know ya. Wouldn’t call you if I did” was all too
accurate a statement from this man begging for a sign.
But while it is entertaining for those of us watching the
movie to see how blind and unaware Bruce is to God’s presence and direction for
his life, we have signs in our own life as well. For us too, these signs are not always so
easy to discern. We are each given and
we each use eyes that are sometimes foggy as we look for God in our world. These visions and insights into God’s will
for us change depending on our gifts, our moods, our circumstances. What you and I fail to see may be obvious to
those around us. What you and I do see
as signs of God’s presence may completely elude others.
There is a person in
my life whom I am very close to. We’ve
known each other forever, and have been close for a long time. In our adult lives, we share a dedication to
education, we both have a love and interest in psychology (one of my majors was
psychology, she has a PhD in psych). Our
children are near the same age and we share a similar parenting style. Politically we are in a similar place and we
tend to agree on almost every issue of real importance. But this person is also different from me and
especially so in one area. This person I
will call Jane is an atheist, as devout an atheist, I believe, as I am a
Christian. She cannot understand why I
believe in God when to her, science, chance, luck can explain the Universe and
everything within it. To her my faith is
nothing more than superstition, and, I believe she would say, an unhealthy
superstition at that. In answer to her
questions about how I can possibly believe in a God, I really have only my
experience as an answer. There is no
book and there are no signs which I can offer her which she cannot answer with
some historical, scientific or rational explanation. And yet, there are no experiences that I can
recall in which I do not see God’s presence, see God’s hand, see God’s
sign. I experience God’s presence in the
extraordinary, but perhaps even more so in the ordinary. I experience signs of God’s presence and love
in the very things which she experiences as scientific and mundane.
What signs would make her believe? If the world were to crumble tomorrow and
angels and devils jump out of the earth, I doubt that these would be signs
enough for her of God’s existence. While
for me, if I never were to experience a “miracle” again in my life, I would
still see the signs of God’s presence and care all around me. We see the world and God’s signs
differently. That doesn’t mean though
that there aren’t times when I too find myself wanting, needing, even asking
for a sign of God’s will for my life.
God understands us and accepts us as we are in all our
humanity. God knows that we are people
who are unsure. God knows that even the
most blatant signs are sometimes hard for us to see, and that we cannot help
but ask for them once in a while. And
so, while Jesus seems to scold those who could not simply trust and believe,
Jesus also gave the signs that were asked for.
And Jesus did feed them. I want
to say that again because all of us need to hear it. God does not reject our need for signs, or
our need to be fed, but gives them in spite of the fact that what God wants for
us is for us to focus on spiritual hunger, on our need to eat more fully of
things beyond food. In today’s passage,
Jesus does remind the disciples of his feeding miracles. Jesus did appear to Thomas and encouraged
him, not only to see, but to hear, to touch, to experience the risen Christ to
ease his doubt.
In light of this what are we to do? Jesus proclaims himself
to be the bread of life. He also
proclaims himself to be the way and he declares that any who would come, who
would seek out this bread of life, must be willing to take up his/her own cross
to follow. We experience this bread of life, we experience the wholeness God
wants for us, we feel what it is to be truly filled when we are communing with
God, when we are doing what God asks us to do, when we are following on the way. And while there are many ways to do that –
sitting in beautiful settings such as this one, meeting with others who are
faithful, experiencing an incredible sunset, I think we need to take what Jesus
says about this very seriously. He invites
us to be fed by following him in his actions.
And those actions, that WAY, is one of loving one another, especially
the oppressed, the displaced, those without justice, those without compassion,
those without food. We are not called to
be people who simply sit at Jesus’ feet and beg for more signs and more
bread. We are called to be disciples and
it is in being disciples that we will find ourselves fed to the core of our
beings.
One of the many mission trips my congregation took was to
replace the flooring in a mobile home that after one of the storms that hit the
Eastern seaboard, had destroyed the roof which then meant the rain and other
elements had destroyed the flooring of this woman’s house. She was extremely poor. She was extremely bitter. For the first day that we were there, she watched
us work while she sat on her porch smoking and complaining. She complained about her neighbors, she
complained about how unfairly life had treated her, she complained about what
we were doing – (that doesn’t look perfectly matched, I don’t like that color,
I’m sure I’d picked something a darker shade of brown). We encouraged everyone to listen because we
felt sure that the most important part of our mission work was not just the
flooring, but seeing people, hearing people, treating them as the children of
God they really were. The listening
opened a door, but it was a small crack.
The change came, though, when she offered us something to drink and made
us all some lemonade. I know that sounds
strange, it sounds odd, it sounds tiny.
One of our folk didn’t want to take the lemonade from her because “we
were there to serve her” but we just emphasized that accepting hospitality was
as important as giving it. And what we
saw was nothing less than amazing. In
allowing her to serve us, we did several things. First we equalized the playing fields. We became people who were serving each another. Second, it gave us a pause in our work to sit
and really talk with her – an equal exchange of stories, in which we all saw
that there are blessings and challenges for every life. That act of drinking together, which
eventually became eating together, sharing a meal of care, of service, of faith
became an opportunity to see the face of God in one another.
Jesus fed people. He
also allowed others to feed him: giving the woman at the well the opportunity
to give him water, allowing the sinful woman to wash his feet with her tears
and hair, (Luke 7:36-50). Those who were
most in need were not just cared for, but were allowed to give care as well.
When we want to be fed, it might be well to ask ourselves how
we might feed others. It is in this
exchange – in this communing with God, that we are truly fed. And it is in truly being fed, that we find
our proof of God. Einstein said, “There
are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as
though everything is a miracle.” God is
all around us, just waiting to be seen.
The best way to see God is to serve and love God’s people. Amen.
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