JOHN 6:24-35

Jottings on John…Pentecost + 11…Revised 2018. 

The crowd begins with a rather trite question: “When did you come here?" Aren't they game to come straight out & ask for more bread & fish? They haven’t often eaten so well! Jesus, though, knows what they really need is to go beyond trite questioning to opening up to their real needs. As He knows what we really need, too. Worth pondering in a sermon?

It’s easy to 'spiritualise' our own, or others’, needs so we don't have to do much about them. After all, spiritual things are God's realm, aren't they, so we can leave that kind of thing to God! Here, Jesus is trying to re-connect people & their physical need (they rarely had a decent feed!) with their spiritual needs. Connect them back with eternal life, or, as I have come to appreciate, ‘real' life (‘Complete Gospels’)¹. Real life includes feeding body, mind, & spirit! How to close these gaps between the physical & the spiritual is worth keeping in mind.

When pressed, the people ask Jesus “What must we do…?:” Jesus’ reply is, “Believe in the One God has sent!” Don’t we ask that same question; perhaps often? What if it’s a matter of helping folk understand the difference between believing about, & believing in, that One God has sent?

In ‘feeding the more than 5000', Jesus is connecting himself back to Elisha. Now He goes further still & connects himself back to Moses leading the people through a wilderness that is both physical & spiritual. (Are all wildernesses both?) In the process Jesus invites us all to re-connect with our spiritual ancestors, & through & beyond them, to God-self. Is any-thing more important in any putting together process than that we ‘join up the dots’?

In his inimitable way, JN wants us to see that putting the physical together with the spiritual isn’t just a miracle, but a Sign. Of Who this is ‘putting things - & people - together’; not so much by any outside act, but by dwelling within us. As a Sign of God's love & compassion. Restoring us to that state of Grace from which our mystical / mythical ancestors fell. Man & Woman. As a Sign we’re re-connected to, restored to, that relationship with God & each other intended from the Beginning. Each time we celebrate Eucharist, bread & wine become Signs of His ‘putting together’ presence in us & among us. So we, too, become Signs of God's loving active presence in the world - God’s world. Enjoy! 

Afterthought: ‘Across the world, across the street / the victims of injustice cry for shelter & for bread to eat / and never live before they die.’ From a Lutheran (?) hymn.

¹ Polebridge, Harper, ’94

Brian

JOHN 6:1-21

Jottings on John…Pent + 10…Revised 2018

Returning to John for a period gives us the opportunity of appreciating how he sees things through ‘spiritual eyes’ different from those of the synoptists. How John interprets the stories he’s telling. Seeing things like the great feeding not just as ‘miracles’, but ‘Signs’ 

 [vv. 2, 14]. This helps us, like him, to discern Jesus, God’s Word, who tells creation into being [JN 1, cf. GN 1], come among us in the Person of one of us. Helps us discern what others refer to as miracles, being in fact Signs calling us into being, as Creation was once called into being. You may find a theme to develop among the following:

Sick people cry out for healing. How can we answer their cries? What do we, simple disciples of Jesus, & mostly not professional healers of any kind, have to offer them as a Sign of God’s eternal love for them, & ours? Whatever & wherever their circumstances.

Hungry people cry out for feeding. In so many places; some of them close to home. Are we sharing what we have, or keeping it to ourselves, for ourselves? Let’s call today’s lad Benji to keep his face & his loaves & fish before us. Reminding us there are still ways God can make small amounts of anything, given generously, a Sign of His eternal love & ours. More, challenging us to offer whatever our little may be.

Our simplest resources - like Benji’s barley loaves & tiny fish - cry out for sharing among those who need them. Is there anything so small it’s not worth sharing as a Sign of God’s eternal love & ours? 

They may be only ‘fragments’ of this or that, but, as God’s gifts to us, they deserve to be preserved for sharing; somewhere along life’s journey with someone crying out for them. What are only ‘broken pieces’ to us may be just what someone else is crying out for as a Sign indeed, of God’s eternal love & ours. 

Women & children who ‘don’t get into the count’ in this story might stand for all those in life situations who ‘don’t count’. Representatives of that Orwellian, ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others’ way of looking at people. Who do we hear crying out to be recognised as an equal, as a Sign of God’s eternal love for us all, &, unselectively, them? 

Are we hearing those physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually drained crying out for replenishment in their need? Maybe what they, or we, really need is God-Space of one kind or another which they / we can experience as a Sign of God’s eternal love for us all?

After thought: Can we discern God Himself crying out His eternal Name: “I AM - It’s Me” when even He needs a Sign He’s recognised among us? Reassuring us - & God-self? 

Brian