Sermon for July 28, 2024

July 28, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 6: 1-21


The feeding of a big crowd of thousands of people—it is the only miracle that occurs in all 4 Gospels. There are interesting differences between the Gospels; for example, this Gospel is the only one where Jesus distributes the food, not the disciples. And because it’s the Gospel of John, in this story, we have 12 baskets of left overs—abundance out of scarcity! It’s a theme that threads its way through the Gospel of John.

Many scholars and Bible commentators have looked for symbols in this story, and we don’t have to look far. It’s 12 baskets, a specific number which must mean something. It’s near Passover, which has lots of symbolic possibility about God’s ability to do the impossible. Could the Sea of Galilee have significance and the fact that it’s also called the Sea of Tiberias?

I am far more interested in human behavior, particularly in this story. Jesus knows what he is going to do, but he asks his disciples for input—why? Is he thinking that they might have a better idea? Is it another teaching moment?

We see Phillip and Andrew approach the problem the way that humans so often do. What resources do we have? How far will these resources stretch? How much money do we have? How can we make it stretch even further? Some people might see this approach as scarcity thinking, but it may be more like basic budgeting.

We might wonder why the disciples approach the problem in this way. They’ve been hanging out with Jesus for awhile. Why aren’t they expecting a miracle? It may be in the way that Jesus forms the question: Where are we to buy food for these people to eat? Notice that Jesus doesn’t say “How are we to feed these people”—the disciples go right to that question. It’s not that they don’t want to feed everyone; they just don’t see how it can be done. You’re probably familiar with this way of thinking. Not scarcity, exactly, but certainly not abundance.

In the Gospel of John, but not in the other Gospels, we see the response of the people who are fed—they want to make Jesus a King. And why not? Many a politician has run on a less stable platform than making sure that everyone is fed.

This Gospel passage reminds us that Jesus has periodic offers of worldly power. Again and again, he turns away. And there’s a darker thread emerging. The people’s desire to elevate Jesus would put him on a collision course with authorities, even if his teachings were completely in line with what Rome would have wanted him to be preaching.

And then we get another story, a dark and stormy night, a walk on the water, terrified disciples and Jesus calling to them. Why do our lectionary creators include both stories as part of today’s Gospel? Why not stop with the miracle of feeding the multitudes in the face of long odds and few resources?

As I have heard these stories through the years, I’ve focused on the power of God, and our human inability to trust in God’s power. I’ve focused on God’s miraculous abundance, and our human inability to trust that God will come through. As I read the Gospel this year, I’m struck by the wide range of human responses to God.

There’s the spreadsheet approach of offering up our resources—a response that seems more rooted in math than in a reasonable trust in God’s abundance. There’s the approach of doing the work, collecting the fragments so that they aren’t wasted—but where is the joy in that drudgery? There’s the wanting to control divine power when the people are so intent on making Jesus a king that he must slip away by himself to make sure that his mission isn’t thwarted. And there’s the storm that always seems to be threatening, the boat that is always sinking, the way our lives feel so precarious that we can’t recognize when Jesus coming across our troubled water.

I’m also struck by the differences in human responses. Jesus shows the crowd who he is, and they want to make him king. The disciples know who Jesus is, and they go out in the boat at night without him. Why would they leave him behind? And what about that phrase near the end—they wanted to take him into the boat—did they?

As I’ve returned to this story, looking for clues, wondering what was left out, I’ve returned to the approach of most Bible commentaries: what we have here is a revelation story, a theophany—Jesus showing us who he is, Jesus showing us who God is. The story is grounded in symbolism: it takes place beside a sea and on a sea named for a Roman emperor—thus the reason why we have both names, the Sea of Galilee and the Sea of Tiberias. Jesus walks on it, after he’s taken evasive measures to avoid being made just that kind of earthly ruler. This story takes place near Passover, the festival that celebrates another time that God controls the sea, delivers the people, and feeds them in the wilderness. The story is full of wilderness elements: the dark of night, the storm that rages, the mountain where Jesus goes to be alone, the sea that threatens to swamp the boat.

God’s relationship with humans is intimate; it’s the taking care of people’s bodily needs—for food, for healing—that makes the people want to be near Jesus. But make no mistake, this intimacy and God’s concern for creation--that doesn’t mean that God is tame or that God can be tamed. Our encounters with God may be the kind that terrifies us: a storm, a sea, a vivid reminder that despite how much control we like to think we have, we are not the messiah, we are not the ones in charge.

In this version of Jesus and the stormy night, Jesus doesn’t calm the sea or make the winds subside. Jesus calms the disciples’ response, their fear, by revealing who he is: the one who comes to us and offers to create calm out of chaos.

Our journey as believers doesn’t mean that we will never encounter storms. But again and again, Jesus shows us who God is: a God of abundance who is not beholden to the limitations of human imagination and understanding. We may not always understand our triune God, but this Gospel assures us that we will arrive at that distant shore, safe from the storm, nourished in ways we couldn’t have even conceived of when we first started.