8th Sunday after Pentecost [Pr. 12] July 26, 2009 “Series B”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear heavenly Father, we come to worship with so many needs. Some among us may be ill. Some of us may be facing difficult decisions. Some may be experiencing difficulty in relationships. Yet amid all of our questions, our pains, our longings, we all have one great need: to be near you, to know your will for our lives, to love you as we ought. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, open our hearts to your redeeming grace in your Son, Jesus the Christ. This we ask in his holy name. Amen.
I have always loved the way that John weaves together various stories to help us come to terms with the identity of Jesus, and our relationship with him. I am so glad that our Gospel lesson for this morning does not end with the story of the miraculous feeding of the five-thousand, but goes on to include the story of Jesus coming to the frightened disciples on the stormy sea. It gives us the opportunity to see how John has woven these stories together to help us gain a deeper appreciation of the redeeming grace of God in Jesus the Christ.
First, let’s consider what is arguably one of the most popular stories in the life of Jesus. John tells us that Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, but a large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. According to John’s Gospel, signs is the word the this evangelist uses to refer to Jesus’ miracles, because he wants us to see that the miracles that Jesus performed were not ends in themselves, but pointed beyond the act itself to reveal that he was truly the Son of God.
When Jesus sees the crowd, John tells us that he goes up a mountain and with his disciples, and sits down, perhaps for a brief rest. But soon he looks up, and sees this huge crowd coming toward him. And according to our author, the first thing that Jesus does, even before the crowd arrives, is to ask Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for all these people to eat?” Of course, John tells us that Jesus asked this of Philip in order to test him, for Jesus already knew what he was going to do.
And I think we can say that Philip failed the test. Here they were, on the top of a mountain, in a rather deserted place. I doubt that there were many bakeries in the neighborhood. So Jesus asks “Where?” And Philip responds “Six months wages would not be enough money to buy bread for each of them even to get a little to tide them over.”
It seems that Philip was more concerned about the cost of feeding the crowd, than where he would be able to find a bakeshop to make the purchase. Perhaps they were living in a recession like we are experiencing today, where the topic of money just seems to dominate everyone’s thoughts. But then, Andrew pops in and tells Jesus that there is a boy in the crowd whose mother packed him a lunch of five small loaves and a couple of fish, adding that such a small lunch could not even begin to feed such a large crowd.
Then Jesus does what he knew he was going to do from the beginning. He has the people sit down, takes the bread and fish from the boy, says a prayer of thanks, and has the disciples distribute the meal to the crowd. everybody ate until they were filled. In fact, there were twelve baskets of leftovers. And the people in the crowd, when they realized what Jesus had just done, came to realize that he was “the prophet who was to come into the world.”
But according to John’s Gospel, that is not the end of the story. In verse 15 John adds, “When Jesus realized that they [the crowd] were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” In other words, even though the crowd that day got a glimpse of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, they failed, just as Philip earlier failed, to truly grasp the significance of what they had experienced.
In essence, we might be able to sum up this key verse, which makes the transition into our next story, with this thought. The crowd liked what they saw that day. They liked the idea that Jesus had the ability to feed them. They liked the idea that he was able to heal the sick. Let’s grab hold of him and make him our king, so that he will be obligated to meet our needs in the years to come. With him as our king, he’ll pull us out of this recession, and all of our needs will be met.
This should not surprise us. As I see the amazing growth of some of the congregations in our country today, such as Community Church of Joy, as yet a Lutheran congregation in Arizona, their growth, as they openly admit, is based on meeting the needs of the people. Thus, their services are entertainment based, with rock bands and skits to meet the needs of the people. With over 100 channels on television, they insist, you have to compete with the entertainment factor of their everyday life, and make people feel good about being in church.
We are such a consumer-oriented culture today, that we have to feel as though we are getting something out of everything we engage in. I can’t tell you how many advertisements have come across my desk over the past few years, advocating that our congregation purchase expensive power-point equipment and videos in order to make my sermons soar with relevance and impact. I pitch them in the round file. After all, I believe that I have a source of helping me to make my sermons more relevant, in Pastor Blair’s post service comments.
But now we move into the second story that John weaves together with this story of the crowd wanting to seize Jesus and make him king because of his miraculously feeding their hunger. While Jesus is further up on the mountain, his disciples go down to the sea, and get into a boat to return to the other side of the lake. That was their pattern of ministry, to go from one side of the lake to the other.
But while they were out on the lake, it became dark, and a great wind arose, causing great swells in that shallow lake, such as those that come up on Lake Erie. In the rough water, they began to panic. They got out the oars, frantically trying to help the sail take them to the other side. Miles from shore, in either direction, they desperately feared for their lives. And if that wasn’t enough to send their blood pressure to the limit, they suddenly saw Jesus walking on the roaring sea, coming toward them. John tells us that they were terrified at what they saw.
Isn’t that quite a different picture of what John has pained for us in the feeding of the huge crowd. They were so happy. They felt that if they could seize Jesus and make him their king, they wouldn’t have a worry in the world. But here was Jesus’ disciples, terrified, fearing for their very lives, even frightened by this figure walking toward them on the raging sea. Could it be Neptune, coming to take them to their demise?
But then Jesus spoke to them. He said, “It is I; do not be afraid.” And when they heard his voice, they reached out to him to welcome him into their boat. And again, we behold a sign of Jesus as the Son of God. As soon as Jesus got into the boat, it immediately reached the shore to which they were headed.
What a contrast. Here were Jesus’ own disciples, terrified for their lives, and yet Jesus came to his disciples, who were in need. They were not flocking with the masses to be with Jesus, to meet their needs. Instead, he came to them, to be with them in the midst of their fear, and they welcomed him into their boat, which was in torrent. And Jesus had the ability to help them reach their destination.
As William H. Willimon states in his commentary on our text, and I quote, “In my church these days, we have an almost exclusive focus upon Jesus as the one who feeds, loves, and heals, and an almost complete neglect of Jesus as the one who saves.
Relatively affluent, self-sufficient, self-satisfied people are consumers of products, purchasers of goods and services, rather then those who think they are in need of rescue and salvation. We tend to think of church as where we come to be with Jesus, to obtain his benefits and blessings. But what if church is also that potentially fearful place where sometimes a storm arises, the sky grows dark, clouds gather, and Jesus comes out to us, lays hold of us, grabs us, and saves us?” End quote.
It is my understanding that from reading these two stories that John wove together that Jesus flees from our desire to seize him to meet our every need, especially those needs to be entertained and feel good. But from these two lessons, I emphatically believe that Jesus does come to us in the midst of the storms of life that we encounter in life, to be with us, to walk through them with us, and to carry us to our ultimate destination.
So, we may not be that entertaining in our worship here at St. John’s. But I believe that we are true to the Gospel, and the hope that all of you who may be hurting or in peril at this time, that if you open your hearts to God’s Spirit, Jesus will come to you and walk with you, to see you to the destination that he has promised you at your baptism. For some, it may be a passing fear. For others, it may be eternal glory. For others it may be a totally change in life. But cling to the faith, for Jesus will come to you.
Amen.
