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