Read John 6:1-15
After Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem where he heals the man
at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus rejoins his disciples in Galilee. You might
remember when he was there before, he was a bit perturbed at the people because
they were clamoring after him to perform some kind of sign or miracle. It seems
that things hadn’t changed much. Word had gotten out about him healing people,
so instead of asking to see a miracle people just followed him around hoping to
catch him in the act. This wasn’t a small entourage, John says it was a “huge
crowd.”
When I was in Middle School, they called it Junior
High back then, I had a friend from church, Lonnie, whose mother had some kind
of breakdown and had to be institutionalized for a summer. Lonnie’s dad was a
long haul truck driver and would be gone as long as a week or so at a time.
When Lonnie’s dad was gone, Lonnie and his brother Lance would stay with us.
Lonnie was the same age as me, thirteen, and Lance was
3 or 4 years younger. When you’re 9 or 10 years old, you don’t realize that a
middle school boy is probably the most confused, unpredictable, bi-polar creature
on the planet. All you know is they are older than you which automatically
makes them mysterious, worldly and godlike.
Lance stuck to Lonnie and me like
glue; he followed us everywhere.
Looking back, I can’t blame the kid; there was no one
around his age to play with. Even my kid sister was older than him, and she
was, well, a girl. But I remember how annoying it was to have someone following
me everywhere I went and watching every move I made. It was particularly frustrating when some of my other
friends would come over. We would go to great lengths to ditch Lance every
chance we got.
One time we ditched him
so well we actually got him lost—after all, it was an unfamiliar neighborhood
for him. When he didn’t follow us home, we were ecstatic. My Mother, however,
did not share our excitement. She wasn’t sympathetic to our pleas that he was
annoying and embarrassed us in front of our friends. Neither did she think
Lance’s dad would be enthusiastic about us permanently misplacing his son, even
if he was annoying and embarrassing. Mom made us go find him and bring him
home.
If it was that disturbing
having one nine-year-old kid following me around, I can only imagine what it
might have been like for Jesus. He couldn’t get away for his quiet time in the
morning. He couldn’t get time alone with his friends. Imagine what it must have
been like sitting around the campfire at night reviewing the day with his
disciples and seeing the firelight reflect off of dozens of pairs of beady eyes
in the dark and knowing that the eyes didn’t belong to owls or coyotes or
raccoons but to people watching to see if you’ll conjure up hotdogs or s’mores
out of thin air. Or, imagine visiting a friend’s house for dinner and trying to
recline at the table and have a conversation while a crowd of people clamored
to watch you through the window—and remember windows didn’t have glass panes in
them then.
This was Jesus’ life when
this story opens.
In an attempt to get away
with his disciples Jesus takes them up on a mountain. It didn’t work; the crowd
followed him up the mountain. Instead of getting upset and chasing the crowd
away, or lecturing the people about personal space or rights of privacy, Jesus
had compassion on them. He decided to feed them.
John tells us the
Passover was near. That is important for a couple of reasons. Most Jews who
were physically capable and could afford it would travel to Jerusalem for the
Passover. After all, it was the major event of the Jewish calendar so this crowd
probably did not represent the cream of society. Chances are these people were
too poor, too weak, too sick, or maybe considered themselves too sinful to be
able to, or want to, travel to Jerusalem for Israel’s most sacred religious
observance.
There is another reason
John wants us to know the Passover is near. This is the second of three
different Passovers recorded in John’s gospel. During the first Passover
mentioned, Jesus clears the temple. John means for us to connect that with the
first deliverance of God’s people, the Exodus. During the Exodus, initiated by
the first Passover, Israel received the Law through Moses. When Jesus cleansed
the temple, he was passing judgement on the laws, and particularly the temple
worship and sacrifice system’s inability to deliver God’s people—to truly set
them free. John wanted his readers to realize that Jesus was taking on that
role himself.
During the third Passover
in John, Jesus is crucified. That again connects Jesus to the first Passover, particularly
the Passover lamb which delivered God’s people from death. Again, John is
showing how Jesus is taking over that role.
In this second Passover
John tells us about, Jesus again is connected to the original Exodus story,
this time the manna in the wilderness.
In the gospels, Jesus is
often compared to Moses. Moses was the first deliverer; Jesus is the new
deliverer, Moses wrote down the law; Jesus fulfills the law. As we read last
week, Moses even wrote about Jesus. John goes beyond comparison here; he ups
the ante.
In the Exodus story God’s
people were hungry and began complaining. God heard their complaints and gave
Moses instructions for the people. Moses was merely a messenger who passed
along information then sat and watched while God provided bread and quail for
the people.
As John shows us, Jesus
sees the need, and he himself is the one who breaks and multiplies the bread
and fish and feeds the people. He is not a bystander or messenger. He provides
the bread that feeds them, and later in the chapter we see that Jesus himself
takes on the role of “the bread of life.”
One of the things I love
about the Gospel of John is its many layers. While John gives us the big
picture by highlighting the signs that point to Jesus as Messiah and focusing
on stories and events that teach us about the kingdom he came to initiate, he
is also careful to show how Jesus interacted with people in their everyday
lives, in everyday situations, with everyday problems, and everyday fears.
I know there is no real
everyday problems or fears. Every person’s situations, problems and fears are
unique. As the saying goes, “there is no such thing as minor surgery when you
are the patient.” The point I am trying to make is that everything in John is
not prophetic or big picture, most of it is real life situations—except that
maybe the way Jesus related to people in their everyday life is the big
picture. Anyway, that everyday, person to person, picture of Jesus is what I
want to focus on here.
Jesus looks out over the
crowd and has compassion on them. Instead of taking charge and barking out
instructions, Jesus turns to Philip and asks, “Where are we to buy bread, so
that these may eat?”
Philip was most likely
the youngest of the disciples, so chances are he was on the bottom of the
disciple pecking order. When a task came along that no one else wanted to do, I
suspect the other disciples passed the job off to Philip. He would have been
the last disciple to think that anyone would be interested in his opinion.
Put yourself in Philip’s
shoes for a moment. When Jesus asked Philip
that question it must have been exhilarated and terrified for him all at the
same time. Here you are the youngest, least experienced and least qualified of the
disciples yet this man who you suspect might actually be the Messiah (although you’re
not sure yet whose version of the Messiah he will turn out to be) is asking your
advice on how to accomplish a task. The problem was, the task was impossible.
Philip’s answer sounds
like someone who has no idea how to proceed, but wants to sound smart at the
same time. He knew he was the disciple of an itinerant rabbi, and he knew that
whatever funds they did have were gifts of generous benefactors. They didn’t have
the means to be so extravagant. “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not
sufficient for them, for everyone to receive a little.” A denarius
was equivalent to a day’s wage. So in essence 200 denarii was nearly a year’s
wage (considering festivals, sabbaths, etc.) “A year’s salary couldn’t buy
enough to feed this crowd” Philip was implying.
Pause the story here.
Notice how Philip doesn’t answer Jesus’ question? Kind of reminds me of the man
at Bethesda.
“Do you want to be healed?”
“It’s not my fault,
someone always gets into the pool ahead of me.”
“Where can we buy bread
to feed this crowd?”
“It’s not our fault we
don’t have money to feed them.”
I think Philip avoided Jesus' question because he thought it would make him look foolish. Maybe he thought if
he answered Jesus’ question directly Jesus would laugh at him and say something
like, “do you think we have the money to buy food for all these people?”
Perhaps Philip was uncomfortable with the question Jesus asked so he answered a
question that he felt comfortable answering.
When I first arrived on the
Submarine and was working on my qualification, I had to go to specific qualified
members of the crew and get oral checkouts in order to qualify to stand watches.
To qualify for the Auxiliary
Election watch (AE for short), I had to be checked out by the Electrical Division
Chief Petty Officer. He was the one who made out the watch bill and assigned
all of the tasks for our division right down to field day assignments—he decided
who had to do the bilge diving—and he even determined who slept where. What I’m
trying to communicate here is that whether my life on the Submarine was
miserable or relatively pleasant depended largely on his opinion of me.
I know my main motivation
going into that oral exam should have been to qualify so I could be a
productive member of the crew. But I confess that my main goal was to not look
stupid.
For a couple of weeks I
had tailed the AEs around, and I knew where all the readings were that I had to
monitor and log. The normal range for every reading was engraved on my memory
and could be recited without thought. I had studied all of the electrical
systems in the boat and understood how they worked. I was confident; I was
ready—I thought.
I sat down on the stool
facing the Chief and waited. I kind of hoped he would ask me a complex question
right off so I could dazzle him. He slowly lit a cigarette and leaned back against
the bulkhead. “What is the first thing the AE does when seawater gets into the
ships battery?” That took care of my confidence instantly.
Three things flashed
through my mind. First, when the sulfuric acid in the battery mixes with
seawater it causes a reaction that releases chlorine gas. In the confined
spaces of a submerged submarine chlorine gas makes people start dying quickly.
Whatever it was I was supposed to do had to be done fast.
The second thing I
thought was that the battery compartment was located in one of the hardest parts
of the ship for seawater to get to. If seawater had made it to the battery
compartment, a bunch of other really bad things had to have already happened.
Mentally
I could envision seawater gushing out of burst valves and feel the Sub beginning
to nose down and accelerate as it sank.
I knew I had to do
something, but so much was happening so fast. It was overwhelming.
The third thing that went
through my mind was, “I don’t know the answer.”
I wasn’t about to say
that to the Chief, so I grabbed for something I did know. I launched into a
detailed explanation on how the battery worked and how it connected to the
other electrical systems on the boat .
The Chief let me go on
for several minutes.
When I finished, he just
sat and looked at me for a moment. “That was a fine answer, Stef, but you must
have been answering your own question because you sure didn’t answer mine. He
looked at me for a moment more as if he was waiting.
“You don’t know, do you?”
That was it; I was toast.
I came in determined to not look stupid but it only took one question to expose
me as exactly that. At least I was smart enough to realize that anything I said
to try and recover would only make things worse.
“No, Chief.”
He sat for a moment, “Tell
me, where does the AE stand his watch?”
“All over the boat. It’s
a roving watch,” I answered.
“So, where would he be if
seawater got into the battery?” he continued.
I was puzzled at where
this was going, “he could be anywhere.”
“So, do you think we
would assign a specific action for a battery casualty to someone who might be
anywhere in the boat?”
“No, I guess not.”
“What is the first thing
everyone on the boat is supposed to do when seawater gets in the battery?”
“Put on their Oxygen
Breathing Apparatus so they don’t die.”
“So what is the first thing
the AE does when seawater gets in the battery?
“Put on his OBA so he doesn’t
die.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly.
The compartment suddenly felt really hot.
He crushed out his cigarette,
“Let’s take a break. Go play some cards or something and clear your mind. Come
back tomorrow and we’ll try again.”
I was devastated, but
there was nothing I could do. “Okay, Chief.”
As I stood and turned to
leave he said, “A couple of things for tomorrow.”
I turned back toward him,
“yeah?”
“Don’t try to solve the
whole problem by yourself. Trust your shipmates to do their job; you worry
about your job.”
“Okay”
“And the second thing--answer
the question you’re asked.”
Maybe Jesus was just
setting Philip up to state the obvious so the eventual miracle would be understood
as the miracle it was. But I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if
Philip had actually answered Jesus’ question. What if he had said, “Gennesaret is
a couple miles away,” and then waited to see what Jesus would do next. I think
Philip was trying to figure out the whole problem himself instead of just
answering the question he was asked.
Jesus never responds to
Philip’s answer. I wonder if he just looked at Philip for a moment the way the
Chief looked at me.
Just then Andrew walked
up followed by a boy carrying 5 loaves and 2 fishes. “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are
these for so many people?”
I think this is the heart
of the story. Andrew’s offer seemed ridiculous, even to him. He offers Jesus
the loaves and fishes but acknowledges that they are not nearly enough. That
may look like a lack of faith, or even sarcasm, on the surface, but the exchange
between Jesus and Andrew is very different than the one between Jesus and
Philip.
This whole story is about
not having enough. The crowd didn’t have enough to eat, Philip didn’t have
enough money, Andrew only had a boy with a lunch to offer—which wasn’t enough—and
the boy only had 5 loaves and 2 fishes—which wasn’t enough. None of them had
enough, and, in fact, if they had all pooled their resources they wouldn’t have
had enough.
Philip came to Jesus and
essentially said, “I don’t have what you need.”
Andrew and the boy came
to Jesus and said, “this is what we have. It isn’t enough but you can have it.”
See how different that is? Jesus took what was offered to him and made it
enough. In fact, he made it extravagant.
What if Philip had
answered the question and left it up to Jesus? Would Jesus have multiplied
their coins so Philip could have purchased enough bread? We’ll never know.
Philip didn’t offer, so Jesus had nothing to work with. Andrew offered and
Jesus took it from there.
This is an important
lesson. It must be because this is the only miracle recorded in all 4 gospels.
It also must be important because there are 12 baskets full of bread left over.
Coincidence—12 baskets, 12 disciples? I suspect not.
I’m not a painter, but if
I was, I would love to paint a portrait of what each disciple might have looked
like later in life as they carried the gospel to the rest of the world. I would
paint each one carrying a basket on his back, a basket that had once been full
of leftover bread and fish, a basket that served as a reminder that when
something insurmountable faced him and he didn’t have enough, his job was to
give whatever he had to Jesus. Jesus’ job was to take it from there.