John 6:1-15
If you've ever thought about why the
New Testament is so important, especially the gospels, it's because
reading and understanding these writings is as close as we can get to
the minds of the first Christians – the people who were formed by
the preaching of the apostles. When we read the acts of the apostles
or the letters of Paul, the basic message keeps coming through –
God sent his Son into the world to suffer, die, and rise again, and
in so doing, make it possible for those who become part of his
people, part of his mystical body, to be with God forever. As the
people who had walked with Jesus during his ministry went around
preaching this message, they threw in stories about what he had said
and what he did. That's only human; we all love to learn more about
people in whom we have an interest. And so a large collection of
stories existed before even the first gospel was written. When the
gospel writers began to set down on paper the story of Jesus, the
stories, parables, and even the details would reflect the author's
particular take on Jesus – his theology. And we always have to
think about who they are writing for, and why. Mark is writing to
Christians in Rome who are being persecuted; and his gospel reminds
us that Jesus was persecuted, and nobody really understood him during
his lifetime. John, writing much later, probably to Christians in
Turkey who made up of Jewish exiles and pagan converts, but who are
all wondering why Jesus hasn't come again, and some of whom are being
tempted to go back to Judaism, wants us to see that Jesus was indeed
the Son of God come to earth, the Messiah predicted by the prophets.
And that is the background for this story, which is told in different
ways by each Gospel writer.
Notice that it begins with Jesus
taking pity on the crowd. In those days the Romans were building a
great city in Northern Israel, and it takes a lot of food to feed a
city. Farmers all over the land were being conscripted to produce
this food, leaving very little for their families. Failure to
produce meant your land was taken and given to someone else, and
that's one of the reasons there is a great crowd following Jesus in
the middle of the day – they have no land, they have no work, they
have no food.
John has Philip and Andrew both show
us readers that feeding this crowd is impossible. Philip refers to
mare than half a years' wages, but also the notion that they'd have
no place to buy the food if they had the money. John tells us that a
little boy offered to share his lunch, a few small barley pancakes
and a couple of fish. But John has already given away the plot –
Jesus knew what he was going to do.
Jesus tells the crowd to make
themselves comfortable. In the Greek he tells them to recline. Now
this is significant because people generally reclined to eat at
banquet and formal meals. The rest of the time they ate standing or
sitting. John also wants us to notice the green grass. John's
readers who were familiar with the scriptures would hear an echo of a
familiar psalm “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall
want, he makes me lie down in green pastures ...”The Jesus does
something that the host of a banquet or the father in a formal meal
would do – he takes the food and blesses it. If you were at a
formal banquet, the next step would be that the servants would serve
the people invited to the banquet; if you were having a formal meal
at home, like the sabbath meal or Passover, the serving would fall to
the mother of the household. John surprises us, thought by telling
us that Jesus handed out the food. In the other three gospels, Jesus
gives the food to the disciples to distribute. John wants us to
notice that Jesus takes the role of the host as well as the role of
the servants.
So in this story which we've heard so
often, John reminds us that Jesus is the good shepherd. The prophets
predicted that there would be a banquet at the coming of the Messiah.
Isaish says “And you who have no money come, buy and eat Come, buy
wine and milk Without money and without cost.” John shows us that
Jesus is the Messiah, who would call his people to be fed, and would
be the servant who feeds them as well. And finally, there is the boy
who brings the bread and fish. When Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the
story there is no boy. I think John wants to remind us that Jesus
will see to it that whatever we do for him, no matter how small, He
will use it to build up his kingdom, he will multiply our gift beyond
measure.
John's audience, the exiles along the
Turkish coast, the ones who were beginning to wonder when the Lord
would return, the ones who were finding the new life of being a
Christian difficult and perhaps longing a little bit for the old life
– John is reminding them that the prophecies have been fulfilled,
that Jesus is the promised one, the shepherd, the Messiah, the Lord
of the banquet, to servant, and last but not least, the God for whom
there is no such thing as scarcity, the God who promises to multiply
our gifts beyond measure.
And we should be reminded as well.
