John 6:1-21
Beginning today and continuing all through August, the gospel is from John, chapter six, what is known as the Bread of Life discourse, and the New Testament readings will continue to march through Ephesians, one of the Pauline letters. For the next five weeks, I will be preaching on these texts and connecting them with the congregation values we have named at Ascension: outreach, calling others to service, affirmation, pointing to Jesus and prayer.
While the gospel points to Jesus and who we are as believers, living in relationship with God, the letter emphasizes that we are reconciled to God and called to live together in unity and with purpose.
In today’s gospel, we hear the only miracle story that all four gospel writers include in their accounts of Jesus’ ministry. Traveling across Judea and Samaria, Jesus and the disciples have drawn large crowds and now they are on a mountainside on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee when Jesus asks his disciples how will they feed the people who have gathered there to watch him heal the sick and listen to him teach.
And the disciples — the very same ones who have been traveling with him as he has turned water into wine at Cana, healed the official’s son in Galilee and also healed the blind man at Bethesda — respond anxiously, focused only on the scarcity of what is in plain sight and what they can hold in their hands. There is nothing in their words or actions that witnesses to what they have seen Jesus do or who they believe Jesus is.
In a world where headlines barrage us 24/7, there is no shortage of situations that evoke despair, and when we look at the immense need that exists, it’s easy for us to shake our heads dismissively and shrug our shoulders helplessly,
moved, not to action, but to inertia.
So, we turn off the news, silencing the stories of people in countries like Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen and Somalia who perennially face the threat of severe famine. It’s just too big a problem.
But sometimes, disease, violence or other evil corrupts our very own neighborhood or community and stares us in the face like those people standing with Jesus and the disciples on the mountainside.
How do we respond when that happens?
Well, often, like the disciples, we look at the resources we have in hand and we scoff, quick to identify why something is impossible, why it can’t work and why it’s pointless to try. Maybe we even dismiss the notion of miracles as obsolete because we haven’t witnessed one ourselves. We bring our skepticism and our knowledge of the world and its facts and numbers to the table. And like the disciples, we discount what we know about who God is and what God promises.
Thankfully, God works in unexplained ways, then and now. Jesus instructed the disciples to have the people sit down and he took the five barley loaves and the two fish out into the crowd and he fed them.
Jesus knew what the disciples didn’t: knowledge is truth, but knowledge is more than an accumulation of data. In John’s gospel, especially, knowledge is about relationship.
Relationship with a God who sees the hunger that exists in this world: hunger for real bread to fill empty tummies, and hunger for hope and healing to fill ravaged hearts. And this God is the same one who meets us in those overcrowded places where the need is overwhelming and satisfies our hunger.
Indeed, the text says the crowds had as much as they wanted and were satisfied, and when the disciples gathered up the left overs, they filled twelve baskets. Love multiplies. [i] And it recreates and renews in places of suffering and need, but it doesn’t happen by magic. Each of us is called to follow Jesus out into the world and live among God’s people, sharing the Good News of what God makes possible.
Our participation in God’s continuing work in the world sustains us. Looking at the immense need that exists in the world, we do not despair, but claim the hope that we have in God’s power and reconciling love, remembering the victorious power of Jesus who overcame death and the grave to bring new life to each of us.
As the Church, our ministries are opportunities for us to reveal God’s power in our words and actions. Here at Ascension one way we have done that for the last thirteen years is by providing a hot meal to those who were hungry. In 2005, volunteers began preparing and serving a meal on the first Wednesday of each month. Monthly, as many as fifty people would come into the fellowship hall to eat lunch. A few years later, more congregations became involved in feeding ministries and now hungry people can find a meal every day of the week in the city of Shelby. Our volunteers continued to feed hungry people, preparing a meal for the men’s shelter when it was in the building behind our property, and after the Rescue Mission opened its new facility on Buffalo Street. Throughout these 13 years, donors have contributed money and groceries to sustain the ministry and provide a place “for God’s glory and mercy to break forth in the world.”[ii]
Later this morning we will close this specific outreach ministry with prayers of thanksgiving for its volunteers and donors, and while we end this season of outreach ministry, may we always look and listen to see where God has come to meet us, remembering that, often, it is the seemingly foolish ideas, absurd odds, and even inadequate resources, that lead to miracles.[iii]
Let us pray…[iv]
Loving God,
Thank you for the surprising gift of Your Son who is the bread of life for us all.
You nurture and strengthen all who look to Your hand.
May we offer ourselves to the world that all may know Your abundant mercy.
We pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
[i] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 10248-10249). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Feasting on the Word, Kindle Locations 10126-10127.
[iii] Pulpit Fiction, Tenth Sunday after Pentecost.
[iv] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources, http://laughingbird.net/
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