Offered to the First Church of Hanover NJ
Mel Prestamo, Elder, PCUSA
As we prepare to look at this passage in John this morning, I think it is important to take a step back to understand what John is trying to accomplish in his Gospel. I am sure that you already know that John’s Gospel tells of the ministry of Jesus in a very much different way from what are known as the Synoptic Gospels. One of my favorite ways of describing the differences between the four Gospels is to say that Matthew, Mark and Luke tells us what happened; John tells us why it happened.
The feeding of the five thousand is a perfect example of this. In Matthew, he devotes 9 verses to the event. [Matt 14: 13-21] He simply tells us that it happened. John devotes 14 verses in chapter 6, verses 1-13. But he follows it up with 38 additional verses [22-59]. John provides additional context and meaning. After seventy or so years of mulling and thinking about the ministry of Jesus, John has a much deeper insight that he needs to share. And if we are going to benefit and grow in our own knowledge of Jesus then we have to follow John down his rich and rewarding rabbit hole.
In the first three Gospels, the writers tell us the story of Jesus’ life and ministry and express in their stories the great degree of Jesus’ compassion for the people. Mark tells us the Jesus is moved with compassion for the leper. Mark also tells us that Jesus had sympathy for Jarious regarding the impending death of his daughter. When Jesus raises the son of the widow from death, Luke tells us that with tenderness, Jesus gave the widow her son. We are told that Jesus wept at learning of the death of his friend Lazarus. But in John, the telling of miracles has a different purpose. John calls them signs. And the purpose of these signs is not to display Jesus’ compassion but to point to and demonstrate the glory of the Christ and through the Christ the glory of God.
At Cana, John says to us, “This was the first of his signs…to manifest his glory. [John 2:11] Of the raising of Lazarus, he says it was for the glory of God. [John 11:4] For John, it was not that there was no love or compassion in Jesus’ miracle acts but that every one of them pointed to the glory of God. And that God’s glory was manifesting itself into our human time and space. These miracles were signs that reveal to us a glimpse of who God is. And knowing this is vitally important if we are to understand what John is trying to tell us in his Gospel.
Every one of the miracles that Jesus performs opens up a brief portal and gives us a glimpse of who God is. And this is the critically most important element of these signs. These glimpses of God are ONLY opened to us through the Christ.
So, with that as our backdrop, let’s take a look at the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.
Right at the top, I am going to suggest to you that there are three ways in which we can look at this miracle. The first would be very plainly that it was an outright miracle where a sparse and meager gift was turned into a bountiful meal. And certainly, the text stands on its own in substantiating that assertion.
The second is that it might be a sacramental meal meaning it was something like our Christian Communion meals. Tiny parcels of the bread and sips of the wine are shared so that everyone can be fed. That is just an OK explanation for me. But the third is a much more compelling explanation for me.
We are told in John’s telling that the “Passover Feast was near.” What does that tell us? Well, it means that thousands of the Jewish faithful were on the road on their way to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover. Remember it was a requirement of the law that anyone within a one day’s journey of Jerusalem must make the pilgrimage to the city. The Jewish historian Josephus recorded that a census taken by Roman governor Quirinius in 6 CE showed that at the time of Passover, the population of Jerusalem swelled to over two million people. This is to give you an idea of the numbers of people who were on the road to Jerusalem.
What is important to understand here is that these people didn’t have fast food restaurants or convenience stores along the road where they could stop off to buy food for their journey. No, if they were making this trek, they would have to plan to bring enough food for themselves when they needed to stop and eat. And that’s what we see here when Andrew finds the young boy who had five loaves of barley bread and two fishes. The fish would have been something like sardines, a staple of travelers at the time.
This meager meal is what the lad had brought along this journey for his own nourishment. It is reasonable to assume that many of the people in the crowd had done much the same thing. Perhaps, Andrew went through the crowd and was turned away by vast numbers of people who had something for themselves but were unwilling to share. It was only this young boy who was initially moved to come forward and share.
Andrew brings this boy and his offerings to Jesus. Jesus instructs his disciples to tell the crowd to sit on the grass. Jesus begins by giving thanks to God with a traditional Jewish prayer of thanks. It might have been something like, “Blessed are thou, O Lord, our God, who causes to come forth bread from the earth.” Now one of two things happened at this point. We can either imagine the loaves and fish replicating themselves over and over piling up at Jesus’ feet so that suddenly there was enough to feed the five thousand. OR, we can envision Jesus solemnly praying to God and that prayer was as much an offering of praise as it was a plea that the hearts of those in the crowd who had food to eat come forward to share.
Then we see a similar miracle. This one was not that Jesus miraculously created a bounty for all but that his prayer had silently moved the hearts of the thousands of people and that they came forward to share. Either way, Jesus has performed a miracle pointing to the glory of God where once again God is feeding God’s people.
What we see is a meager gift that a believer brings to the Christ and how in Jesus’ hands with meager beginnings a miracle can happen. Now in this miracle, John sees a sign that points to the glory of God. For us, we can see how Jesus can take our own meager gifts and offerings and make bountiful things happen. On the surface our own individual small gift may seem inadequate but, in his hands, – in God’s hands, miracles can happen.
It is to the glory of God that Jesus provides food to feed the people. Either way that you view how this miracle happened, it is John’s assertion that it pointed to the glory of God.
But this miracle has another element. In it we can see a glimpse of the God that feeds God’s people. We see our God who nourishes and sustains us through God’s Word, the Christ.
Where do we see that?
OK. To answer that question we need to get into the nitty gritty of verses 22-59.
In those following verses, we learn that Jesus now was in need of rest. So, he sneaks off to avoid the crowds. The people, however, chase after him and the find him again in Capernaum. They ask him, “When did you arrive and how?” Jesus’ response is to plainly say to them that they are searching for him not because of the signs that he had performed and that they and seen, but because he had fed them.
Jesus says to them, “Do not search for food that perishes but for food which lasts and gives eternal life, that is the food that the Son of Man will give to you; for the Father, God, has set his seal upon him.”
What is Jesus saying here? He reads the crowd plainly and he calls them out for their shortsightedness. He knows that many of them are nothing more than groupies following the latest pop star. And he says it directly. I will paraphrase here. “The only reason you are here is because I fed you. I have shown you signs from God, but you have not seen them. You have come for bread to eat but the bread you search for will [pass through you and] perish and leave you hungry again. I can give you so much more. The bread that I can give you will feed you forever and give you eternal life.”
And what is their response? In verse 30 we read, “What signs are you going to perform that we may see and believe in you?”
Are you kidding me? Are you blind? Well, yes. Many of them were blind. Jesus fed five thousand people days before and then they come asking “What signs will you perform?” He has raised people from death. He has cured the blind, the cripple, the leper. And you ask, what sign will you perform?
They go on to speak of bread feeding miracles from Jewish history. Moses fed us manna in the desert. In other words, we have seen this parlor trick before. But Jesus counters by saying, Moses did not feed you the manna, God did. Further, “The bread of God is HE who comes down from heaven and gives life to this world.” John is here referring back to the opening verses of his Gospel story. “In the beginning was the Word…” Be clear. For John, Jesus was the Word that was with God in the beginning.
Now it appears they are beginning to get the idea of what Jesus is saying. They respond, “Sir give us this bread.” However, that is to say, “Where is it? Where can we buy it.” Is it available at Walmart or Target?
Jesus responds by saying to them, “I am the bread from heaven.”
Now Jesus’ response creates a firestorm of questions in the crowd. Who does this guy think he is? Isn’t he the son of Joseph who we knew as a boy growing up in Nazareth? How can he say, “I come down from heaven?”
But Jesus insists. “I am the bread of life. He who believes in me will have eternal life. Your fathers are manna in the desert and they died. This is the bread of life come down from heaven that you may eat of and not die…anyone that eats of this bread will live forever.”
Let’s pause a moment and think about what Jesus means by “Bread”. It is not any earthly type of food – manna or otherwise. What Jesus is speaking of is the “WORD” of God. According to John, Jesus is the Word made flesh. “The Word was in the beginning. The Word was with God. The Word was God.” Jesus has come to reveal to us the life sustaining and lifegiving love of God through the Word. Hearing the “Word” of God spoken by Jesus is how we feed on the Bread that will give us eternal life.
So, when we look back at the feeding of the five thousand, we need to realize how temporary that earthly food was. And Jesus points that out to them and us. They were fed yesterday and here they are hungry today looking to be fed again. He tells them, you need to be looking for something more substantial. You need to be looking for the bread that brings you closer to knowing who your God is; closer to having an intimate relationship with God; closer to knowing the name of God. And that bread is the Word. It is the Christ.
Knowing the “NAME” of someone has a very specific meaning in ancient cultures. It meant to know a person on an intimate level. And that is what Jesus is bringing to us. It is an opportunity to know God on a close, personal, and intimate level. That is what Jesus is offering us when he offers himself as the “Bread come down from heaven.”
And now, that is our task. We need not to get bogged down being concerned about what sustains us today. We need to focus on what will bring us closer to knowing the name of God – closer to knowing God on an intimate and personal level. And what will bring us closer to God? It is the Christ. It is the Word. Jesus is the bread that feeds us so that we can know God. Jesus feeds us the Word that is the bread that will give us eternal life in God.
“Sir, give us this Bread.”
