July 28, 2024 – Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Rev. Gary Percesepe
Jesus understood that they were about to come and force him to be their king, so he took refuge again, alone on a mountain” ~ John 6:15
One of the best things about working for Jesus is his stories. (1) If you like your gods theoretical, aloof, orderly, obvious, or straightforward, try someone else. But if you like being teased, surprised, cajoled, and possibly offended, there’s no one better than Jesus when he gets on a roll, particularly in John.
For three Sundays the lectionary gives us one long story from John 6, mostly involving bread. It’s enough to drive a preacher crazy. Fortunately, I saw the problem coming and enlisted help. I’ve asked Kahu Dennis Barger to preach next week, partly out of compassion for you. No congregation should have to listen to a preacher preach three times in a row on the same chapter. But also, to offer you a different perspective on things. No one who speaks of God has a corner on the market, and Kahu Dennis will see things we’ve missed. I’ll be here next week to help lead in worship and to officiate during Holy Communion, but Kahu Dennis brings the sermon. Think of it as tag team preaching.
Later this summer, and into the fall, we may call for more reinforcements. I’ve already asked Kahu Bob Nelson and Karen Rollins to be prepared to enter the ring. A church can never have too many preachers and storytellers; this church is unusually blessed with both. Personally, I’d like to hear from Elleanna Moore again. That sixteen-year-old girl talks naturally about God, straight from the heart. You’ve heard me say this before: theology is just a fancy word for describing how we talk about God. Preaching is not restricted to something that is done from behind this pulpit, it occurs anywhere in the world where someone offers testimony about God. Elleanna and other God-talkers in the Voices and Visions series have not been ashamed to talk about God. Maybe that’s why it’s become a popular element of our corporate worship. But we don’t do it because it is popular, we do it because Jesus talked of God and commanded his followers do the same. The words we use to praise God shape the world that results from our speech. We are talking ourselves into being Christian. (2)
Talk about God and preaching reminds me of a good story about a curmudgeonly seminary professor who once faced a roomful of preachers. The great Lutheran preacher and professor Edmund Steimle guessed that most of them fancied themselves to be scintillating and accomplished preachers, so he growled, “A good sermon is not a beautiful package with a pretty bow tied up by the preacher. A good sermon is like the ring on the surface of a lake when the preacher has gone down in deep water.”
Having dived into deep water myself when I tried to talk about God authentically, I know how easy it is to get in over your head. And by the time we’re through with John 6, three weeks hence, you’ll find that Jesus talked himself into the deepest water of his earthly life, to the point where he’d started to lose his congregation, which dwindled from thousands to maybe twelve, and he wasn’t even sure of them.
“A large crowd followed him,” says John. What church treasurer or deacon wouldn’t be thrilled at the news? A large crowd! Good for us. Jesus has become popular.
Then John tells us why they were following Jesus: they had seen the miraculous signs. Jesus heals the hurting multitudes. Enormous crowds follow Jesus and he meets their needs.
But then we learn that Jesus does not continue to meet their needs. “Jesus went up a mountain and sat there with his disciples.” Jesus needed respite from meeting everyone’s needs. I’m willing to bet that every multitasking mother in this room can relate. Enough, already. Can’t anyone around here take care of themselves?
Jesus looks up from his serene mountain retreat up on Haleakalā and “saw a large crowd coming toward him.” Having a bit of fun with Philip, Jesus looks at the gathering crowd and says, “How much you reckon it would cost to cater this one from Mama’s Fish House?”
Philip clap backs that six months’ wages might buy them an appetizer. A kid is found who has a few loaves and a couple of fish. Jesus commands the people to sit. He takes the kid’s food and offers thanks, and they all eat up, until they are filled.
John gives us a reaction shot: “This Jesus must be quite a prophet of God who has come into the world,” the crowd exclaims.
Was Jesus gratified to hear this? Is he thrilled that they’ve gotten the point, after so much rejection?
No. Jesus rejects their acclamation. “Jesus understood that they were about to come and force him to be their king, so he took refuge again, alone on a mountain.”
Odd, isn’t it? Why withdraw when the people are planning your coronation? (3)
Jesus recognized that he could not meet the needs of the multitude clamoring after him without at the same time denying who he was called by God to be. The next day when the crowds find him, Jesus rebukes them for caring only about their bellies. They ask for another sign, no doubt wanting another free meal, but Jesus refuses and launches into his infamous “bread of life” discourse, telling them what they truly need not what they want.
His disciples shake their heads and say, “This message is harsh.” Boy howdy! The next thing we hear is that many no longer followed him.
Why are we told this story?
This story is not about us. It’s a story about Jesus. We come to church thinking about how to get our needs met, believing that following Jesus is the way to get what we want, but the gospel tells us that following Jesus is how God gets what God wants. The gospel implies that we do not know what we want or what we need before we meet Jesus.
I once heard the preacher William Sloane Coffin say that he did not know how you attract people to the gospel by appealing to their essentially selfish needs and then offering them the unselfish gospel of Jesus.
The feeding of the people is not a miracle, it is a sign. A sign points beyond itself to something more important, something greater than the sign. The healings and the feedings are both signs that God is among us. Not as the fulfillment of all our needs but simply present with us, Emmanuel, God with us.
Is that what we want? Amene.
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1. Kudos to Will Willimon for this sentence. Will probably stole it from someone else, but it’s still a great line.
2. There is a wonderful book by Thomas G. Long by this title and I encourage you to read it: Testimony: Talking Ourselves Into Being Christian, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.
3. This is a moment to reflect upon the nature of so called “Christian nationalism” as it seeks a kingdom without a cross. “As theologian N.T. Wright says in his new book, Jesus and the Powers: Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies, Christian nationalism “acclaims God’s love of power rather than the power of God’s love…. As such, we should reject Christian nationalism as giving a Christian façade to nakedly political, ethnocentric and impious ventures.”