In my late twenties, I was
present for an unforgettable sermon on John 6 by the inimitable Fred Craddock.
He deftly exposed the plot of the whole chapter: starting with next to nothing,
Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 – and they responded with exuberant glee. Happy days are here again! The Messiah has
come! He’ll turn out nickels into dimes, make our gardens grow, find beautiful
wives for our sons, and rout the Romans! But then Jesus shifted the
conversation from bread to bread – as
in You shall not live on bread alone, but
by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. The people draw back a little, wondering why
he’s heading in this direction. And then he turned on them entirely: instead of
bread, as in the Word, he explains that “the bread I give for the life of the
world is my body.” Now he’s talking about suffering, dying – and they flee for
the exits.
From thousands, now there is only a handful
left. Jesus asked the few, Will you also
go away? And as Craddock intoned it, they rather pitifully asked, Where would we go? – as if they didn’t
really have any place else to go. His sermon, we then realized, was actually
about so many leaving the church. Churches in decline – and we clergy all know
those who have abandoned the ministry. Will
you also go away? Craddock’s final line? I think I’ll stay. I know others have left, but I don’t know, I think I’ll
stay. Those of us watching/listening were annihilated, moved – and inclined
to stay.
Why not talk about the decline
of the church? Not to warn, or to demoralize, or to amp up people’s efforts to
evangelize. We note the numbers, which are the perfect reason to ask Why be
here?
My fellow doctoral student and
friend Marianne Meye Thompson reflects wisely on the full 5 weeks of Gospel
lections: “John’s portrait of Jesus in chapter 6 fuses traditional material
about Jesus’ ministry; allusions to the Scripture about manna, word and wisdom;
practice of the Lord’s Supper; and John’s own deep convictions about Jesus. The
events of the chapter are set at Passover. Like the first Passover, there is a
miraculous crossing of the sea, followed by a time during which God provides
manna in the wilderness.” This Passover tie is huge.
And then she slants in Craddock’s
direction: “After eating their fill, the people now want more: more bread, more
miracles, more of what Jesus can offer.” Sounds very American to me! – or reminding
me of Oliver (in the musical).
Thompson again: “They are right to ask for more;
but they do not yet understand what Jesus wants to give them.” I love her depth
of insight, that we are mistaken to think Jesus is only fixated on higher
things: “Jesus does not feed people with bread merely as an object lesson to
show that he can give them food for eternal life. Rather, Jesus can give food
that sustains human life in this world and that provides eternal life because
he is the agent of God’s creation of all life.” Material food still matters –
for us and for those who don’t have it. After all, in the Synoptic versions of the story, when Jesus sees the hungry people he tells the disciples, "You give them something to eat" (Mark 6:37). The preacher's way into the deep spirituality in John 6 could do through a food ministry your church is engaged in - and perhaps you find a story there that leans into what John 6 is about.
Jean Vanier sees chapter 6 (which
he says is “as difficult as a storm”) as a long journey “from the weakness of
the newborn child we once were to the weakness of the old person we will become
– growth from ignorance to wisdom, selfishness to self-giving, fear to trust,
guilt feelings to inner liberation, lack of self-esteem to self-acceptance… The
feeding itself reveals a caring God… Jesus calls his disciples to move from a
faith based on a very visible miracle that fulfilled their needs to a faith
that is total trust in him and in his words, which can appear foolish, absurd,
impossible.”
And finally I find the
evangelical scholar D.A. Carson’s articulation appealing: “At a superficial
level, the signs attest that Jesus has remarkable powers; but the signs must never
be assessed as anything more than attesting portents. This particular miracle
had filled the bellies of the people, and the crowd loved it and were willing
on that basis to sign up immediately.” But there are hidden meanings, and
daunting challenges… “It will shortly become clear that Jesus not only gives the food; he is himself the bread of life.”
I think I might help people see this by explaining how all good gift giving is really a giving of self. My mother-in-law died in November. I am positive that every Christmas, and every year on my birthday, she gave me some carefully chosen, valuable gift, beautifully wrapped. But for the life of me, I can't recall what was in any of the boxes now. What I am sure of is that each one was simply the gift of her self, disguised or embodied in a coat or a clock or something or another. Our people, understandably, and very much like young children just before Christmas, want this or that from God. But maturity is realizing that the gift God gives is... God's own self, Emmanuel, God with us.
And now for just a few remarks
on each section, if you are going week by week.
John 6:1-21/July 29. Four years ago I preached at Duke Chapel
on this and focused on the leftovers. Why so much? No mention of them going to
the poor; those who just ate were the poor. We might think a better miracle
would be for Jesus magically to have produced just enough – but he overdid it…
Was it wasted? So much in the spiritual life is a waste – of time? Sam Wells
speaks often of the superabundance of God’s mercy. There’s plenty, more than
enough.
Dorothy Day once received a
diamond ring as a donation. Instead of selling it, she simply gave it to the
next poor woman who walked in. When criticized, she asked “Are fine things only
for the rich?” It was a waste – a beautiful waste.
The preacher can think of
moments of extravagance. I preached in Haiti at an ordination a while back.
Three of us took suitcases full of oreos for the celebration. Yes, Haitians
need much more than oreos. But the sheer delight at the party mirrored the
extravagance of God’s grace.
John 6:35, 41-51/August 12.
We see the first of Jesus’ “I am” statements. Think Moses, burning bush,
and God’s merciful provision to us of names, identities, revelations of the
character of God. The preacher could seize this occasion to explore all the I ams (bread, vine, water, shepherd,
light, door, way) – and perhaps fuse those marvelous identities to our own,
with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Who
Am I?: “Am
I really that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I myself know of
myself? Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, yearning for colors,
for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, weary
and empty at praying, ready to say farewell to it all. Who am I? This or the
other? Am I one person today and tomorrow another? Who am I? They mock me,
these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!”
If you want to point to a
miracle, it’s not the multiplication of the food. It’s this: Jesus “withdrew to
a mountain by himself.” Solitude, time alone with God, might be more miraculous
for our people (and us!) than any wizardry with bread. And the lunge to crown
Jesus as king: echoes of Gideon’s refusal, and then the people’s foolish
request for a king (and what it cost them – 1 Sam. 8) – and yet how remarkable
of God to accede finally to their request for a king. David and his lineage are
the ones God uses (despite themselves), culminating in Jesus, who was the king
(yes, the same guy who just refused the crown!). We won’t understand his
kingship until the crucifixion.
One more interesting tidbit: as
D.A. Carson reminds us, “Jesus ‘blesses’ God, i.e. he thanks God; he does not
‘bless’ the food.” It’s worth mentioning to our folks at some point that the
pre-meal prayer doesn’t change or radioactivize the food; we are the ones
transformed. And we have a fair guess at the words Jesus used when he prayed
over the food in John 6 (and at the Last Supper!) – the common Jewish blessing,
“Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread
from the earth.”
John 6:24-35/August 5. Jesus
offers in effect his own sermon on Exodus 16 – which also directs the people
from food (which perishes!) to a higher kind of food, namely trust in God’s
provision, and leading from bondage to freedom. And we see deep connections
here with the story of the Samaritan woman who wants water and then is given
water…
Marianne Thompson helps us hear
the shock/offense of Jesus’ words in this reading: “Jesus’ claims may sound
familiar to Christian readers accustomed both to thinking of Jesus as God’s Son
‘come down’ from heaven and to hearing ‘eat and drink,’ the words of institution
at the Lord’s Supper, but John portrays them as divisive when uttered by Jesus’
contemporaries.” How much of our churchy jargon is nonsense not just to
outsiders, but to the casual attender, the first-time visitor, the
under-theologically-formed?
D.A. Carson offers a thoughtful observation on the crowd’s reaction to
Jesus: “The grumbling was not only insulting, but dangerous. It presupposed
that divine revelation could be sorted out by talking the matter over.” It’s
not in our skill set to decide what is revelation and what isn’t.
Jesus “draws” people to himself.
The verb (from helko) can mean “pull
or drag by force” (in John 21:6 they drag the net loaded with fish into the
boat, and in Acts 21:30 they seize Paul and drag him away!) or “attract” – and while
John’s context pushes us toward “attract,” the stronger nuance is intriguing.
Carson somewhat crassly but clearly puts it like this: “When he compels belief,
it is not by the savage constraint of a rapist, but by the wonderful wooing of
a lover.”
John 6:51-58/August 19. Again, Marianne Thompson’s words above on
the graphic nature of and unsettling shocking sense of Jesus’ words about
eating his flesh and drinking his blood! No wonder critics in the Roman world
misconstrued the Christians as cannibalistic, and crazy.
John 6:56-69/August 26. See above on Craddock’s exposition of the
few who are left being asked if they too will exit. This is the only scene in
John where Jesus is in the synagogue (in contrast to Mark, where he’s a
regular!). D.A. Carson asks who Jesus’ deserters “take umbrage.” “They were
more interested in food, political messianism and manipulative miracles than in
the spiritual realities to which the feeding miracle had pointed. And, they
were unprepared to relinquish their own sovereign authority even in matters
religious.” Jesus does not give them a thrashing. Instead he makes himself even
more vulnerable, surrendering himself. Verse 64 uses that theologically rich
verb paradidomi, “handed over,” which is the key term in the Synoptics for
Jesus letting himself be acted upon. The plot of every Gospel is the same:
Jesus strides onto the stage of history as a powerful actor, impressing,
impactful; but then he turns toward Jerusalem, no more miracles, quieter,
increasingly passive. This is his glory. For us, as John 6:61 puts it, this is
an offense, a scandal; the verb, skandalizo, drives us to 1 Corinthians
1:18-25.
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My newest book, Weak Enough to Lead, is available, and my next most recent book, Worshipful, now has an online study guide with video clips.
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