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Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – July 28, 2024
2 Kings 4:42-44, John 6:1-21
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
It has often been said that a crisis doesn’t build character, it reveals it.
We have two crises in our gospel reading today, and this saying very much applies to both of them. These crises reveal to us who Christ is. They reveal to us his character, his identity. These crises reveal to us who Jesus is and why he has come.
The first crisis isn’t necessarily a life-or-death situation, but it does involve a large crowd out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat. They aren’t necessarily going to starve to death, but if you’ve ever been out in the woods with a few hangry kids, you know how dire this situation is. Things can go south in a hurry!
But before we even get to the crisis itself, Saint John (the gospel writer) prefaces the story by telling us what time of year this is happening: “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” It is important to understand that there are no insignificant details in John’s gospel. John mentioning that the Passover was near means something. John is intentionally framing this story in the context of this festival.
The Passover is the central festival for the Jewish people. It celebrates God’s saving help. It celebrates God’s deliverance of his people out of their captivity in Egypt. God fed them with the Passover Lamb, filling them with protein just before they began their long march towards the Promised Land. And then, along the way, when they were out in the wilderness without any food, God fed them again with miraculous manna from heaven.
Now it just so happens that there are a bunch of Jews once again living in bondage to foreign powers. Now God’s people are again out in the wilderness without anything to eat. What do you think is going to happen?
I love how Jesus toyed with Philip here, pretending to be concerned, pretending that he didn’t already know exactly how this was all going to play out. “Just look at all these people here, Philip,” Jesus said. “How are we ever going to buy bread for them all to eat?” John tells us Jesus knew what he was going to do all along, of course. Jesus was testing Philip.
We could think of this testing as a Sunday school quiz for Philip. “Do you remember the story about the manna in the wilderness, Philip? Do you remember what God did?” This was a quiz that both Philip and Andrew failed. Even though Passover was right around the corner, they weren’t making the connection at all. They looked to the meager amount of cash they had on hand. Andrew pointed to the one person who seems to have come prepared – a boy with five barley loaves and two fish – but noted that this wasn’t nearly enough to feed this crowd. “What are we going to do?” they asked.
And then Jesus did what he already knew he was going to do. He took the boy’s five loaves and two fish and he miraculously multiplied them, distributing them to everyone there, until all were satisfied. There were even leftovers!
The people who ate this miraculous meal in the wilderness knew they had experienced more than an impromptu picnic. They knew that they had received more than a fish sandwich. They knew that they had seen a sign. They knew that this meal pointed to something important about who Jesus was. They began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world!”
We heard in our first reading for today the story of the prophet Elisha feeding a crowd. This story features some striking parallels to what these people experienced. An anonymous donor provided some barley loaves. There was more crowd than food, and yet, all ate and were satisfied. There were even leftovers! Sound familiar? You can understand why they would think Jesus was the prophet! The same thing was happening again!
They tried to make Jesus their king, but Jesus refused and withdrew from them – he wouldn’t be a king on their terms. He wouldn’t be coopted by their agendas or their felt needs. He had bigger things in mind, bigger things to accomplish – bigger fish to fry, we might say.
They were on the right track, in a way. Jesus was a prophet, insofar as he brought a word from God. He had come to be a king of sorts, although he would be a king unlike any they could imagine, with a kingdom not of this world.
But what this crisis reveals more than anything else is that Jesus had come to usher in a new Passover, a new saving event. What this crisis of not having enough food in the wilderness reveals is God had now come to them in person through his Son. God had come to feed them in the wilderness on his way to leading them to a new Promised Land.
A crisis doesn’t build character, it reveals it, and here it reveals Jesus to be the saving God who has come in the flesh to do more saving, this time from even greater powers. It reveals Jesus to be the one who fills every hunger through the miracle of his abundant grace.
The next crisis is told much more briefly, but it reveals much the same about Jesus. The disciples were out on the Sea of Galilee at night when a storm kicked up. They were three or four miles from the shore. Boats like theirs went under in those kinds of conditions all the time, so this really was a life-threatening crisis. It was dark and chaotic and topsy-turvy. The waves heaved up and down while the disciples heaved those fish sandwiches over the siderails. Just then Jesus came walking out to them on the sea. Walking on the water was a cool trick, but it was what Jesus said that reveals the most about him: “It is I,” Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid.” I really wish Bibles would translate this better, because as it is here Jesus sounds a little bit like Mighty Mouse. “It is I! Here I come to save the day!” He has come to save the day, to be sure, but so much more is going on here with these words! This is ego ami in Greek, which literally translates as “I AM.” In Hebrew it is pronounced Yahweh.
So now it is time for you to have a little Sunday school quiz. Do you know what God said to Moses when Moses asked for God’s name? God said, Yahweh, “I AM.” And so this crisis reveals something about Jesus’ character, his identity. In the fear and chaos of that storm in the dark of night, Jesus revealed himself as Yahweh, as the Lord God, who had come close to them in their time of need. “I AM,” he said to them, “So do not be afraid.”
A crisis doesn’t build character, it reveals it. Through the Word we hear this morning God is revealing to us the truth about his Son. God is revealing to us who Jesus is, and why he has come. God is showing us that Jesus has come to be our savior, that he has come to be our Lord, that he is the Son of God who has come to be with us in the midst of the crises we experience.
Some of these crises are on a smaller scale. They are more personal. They have to do with the struggles and anxieties of daily life: “Where am I going to get the resources I need to survive?” “How am I going to make it through this day?” “How am I going to find nourishment and strength as I travel in this wilderness? What is going to sustain me?”
Other crises are on a much bigger scale. There has been election year chaos on a level we haven’t seen in this country since 1968, and we aren’t even to October yet. There is ongoing international violence, including the 12 children killed on a soccer field this weekend in a rocket attack in Israel. God is openly mocked on a global stage. Yes, you could say that life in this world has felt topsy-turvy and unstable and slightly nauseating.
These various crises, both big and small, reveal something about us. They reveal the wilderness we live in as we make our way through this world. They reveal the darkness and the chaos that kicks up and engulfs us from time to time. They reveal that we need a savior. They reveal that we need a Lord who can give us the strength and the peace and the hope that the world so clearly cannot give us.
The crises we hear about in our gospel reading, however, also reveal Christ to us. They assure us that he is the one who has come to feed our deepest hungers. They assure us that he is Lord of all creation, who ultimately has power over even the darkest, fiercest storms. They point us to the great truth that he comes to us with sacramental food and a holy Word.
Through his Holy Supper, he feeds us with miraculous food to nourish and sustain our souls. He meets us in our wilderness and strengthens us with the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation. (We’re going to be hearing a LOT more about this in the weeks ahead as the lectionary takes us on a deep dive into this chapter of John’s gospel.) In this meal he reveals himself to be our savior. In receiving the bread and the wine that are his Body and Blood we participate in the new Passover. We participate in the saving event of his death and resurrection.
Jesus comes to us with a Word to give us peace and calm in the midst of every storm. Whatever particular crises you might be enduring, whatever storms you might be facing, today Christ Jesus reveals himself to you through Word and Sacrament to assure you that he is God, and he is near. “It is I,” he says to you. “Do not be afraid.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church