Today we begin a 5 week series
with the Gospel readings from the 6th chapter of John,
the Bread of Life chapter,
taking us up through August 23.
This happens just once every 3 years,
a rare opportunity to examine a very important biblical theme
for a whole month.
Today we give the setting
for what the next 4 Sunday Gospel readings will be addressing.
The Gospel story today starts with telling what Jesus did
when a huge number of people came to hear him speak
and to bring those who were sick for him to heal.
(To the children: )
What did Jesus do when he saw the big crowd?
He fed them.
How did he feed them?
With a boy’s lunch.
Do you think that the disciples took the boy’s lunch away from him?
No!
What do you think might have happened?
The boy may have heard them talking
about not having enough food to feed everyone,
and so he offered his.
What did Jesus do next with the boy’s lunch?
He gave thanks (said grace)
and then he gave the food to all the people.
How far around did the boy’s lunch go? How many got to eat something?
Everyone.
Did they each just get a little bite?
No. Everyone got enough.
Everybody got filled up with as much as they wanted.
How can we tell?
There were leftovers.
How much leftovers were there?
Enough to fill 12 baskets full.
But how many little loaves of bread did the boy have to begin with?
Five
How can this be! There are more leftovers than what they started with.
What do you suppose the people there were thinking?
They were amazed.
They thought it was a miracle.
They wanted him to do it again.
They wanted to make him their king.
So what did Jesus do then?
He left.
He went up a mountain by himself to pray.
Now comes the second part of this story,
something else about Jesus that was very extraordinary.
First of all, the disciples are in a boat going across the Sea of Galilee.
In a few days our rector, Hunt, is going to be on the Sea of Galilee
during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
He’s going to get to go for a ride a boat
similar to what the disciples were in.
Each time I’ve been on the Sea of Galilee the weather has been quite calm.
But it can also get very wind, which makes for rough sailing.
Now the Sea of Galilee is actually a very big lake, about 10 miles long.
And the disciples were in the boat
when a strong wind was blowing and the water got rough.
Apparently the wind was blowing against them for where they wanted to go,
so they had to row.
Pretend like you are in the boat and you are rowing.
Everybody row.
The wind is getting stronger! Row harder!
Getting tired? Keep rowing!
Now it was starting to get dark,
and they had only made it part way across the lake because of the wind.
And suddenly they see something,
something on the lake.
Even with the wind howling and the waves surging,
here was something moving toward them on the water.
(figure under a sheet comes down the aisle)
What’s that?! -- Is it a ghost?
The disciples are terrified. Everyone act terrified.
(person emerges from under the sheet with a big sign that says “Jesus”)
“It is I, do not be afraid.”
And immediately they reached the land they were trying to get to.
Thank you all for helping me retell this story for the grown ups.
You were helping them pay attention to the story.
Now you can go back to your seats
while I say some things for everyone.
The disciples had been doing their best to row against the wind,
and they had not made much progress across the lake
because of a strong headwind;
it was a time spent in fruitless labor.
We all have probably experienced times like that.
So what’s the deal with Jesus?
walking on top of the water
as though he were taking a stroll along any old road
light enough for the water to hold him
yet not blown away by the howling wind,
while the disciples strained at the oars.
One might even think that Jesus is expressing a quirky sense of humor here
messing with the disciples’ minds.
Well, the disciples see him and of course get quite a start.
This is way out of any understanding they had about the laws of nature.
What human can make himself so light
that water will support his full body weight like that?
Not even Moses at the Red Sea or Elijah at the Jordan River could do that!
They had to clear a path through the water.
Jesus has just blown away their whole understanding of reality.
The world the way they knew it just didn’t hold together any longer.
Water can be walked on like solid ground.
The disciples don’t get it,
and the Gospel writer links this story in
with what happened with the bread.
There is a connection
between these incidents of superceding the known ways that reality works
in the feeding of the multitude and walking on water.
I suggest to you that it all has to do with the nature of the Resurrection
Walking on water is living out of Resurrection reality.
But maybe in this case Resurrection is even more mind-blowing
because this is before Good Friday and Easter; Jesus hasn’t died yet.
This is called paradigm shift,
a shift in our understanding of reality
that reorients the way we look at our world,
jarring to the sensibilities
blowing our previous way of looking at things to pieces
so that we cannot go back to the way things were before.
I would like to suggest that, maybe,
Jesus may be doing something similar here at Emmanuel
- a major paradigm shift
opening up a whole new spectrum of meaning and understanding
about the nature of the faith community,
how we are as a congregation.
From my many years of ministry among various congregations,
what I observe here at Emmanuel
is the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus emerging in awareness
and being expressed outwardly
through such things as how we worship on a Sunday morning,
and inwardly in what I see in individuals I talk with pastorally
and in meditation groups.
The Jesus who walks on water
would mess with our minds and change the way we see the world.
He would open us up to new possibility
way outside the box of our currently limited vision,
and what each of us might perceive as fruitless labor,
so much rowing against the wind.
He wants, I dare say, folks who will walk on the water with him,
people who will discover faith,
faith that is more than belief,
more than believing certain creeds, statements of right belief,
faith that recognizes the Divine as one’s experienced reality
and then puts full trust in that.
What is our faith and knowledge of Jesus?
What is our trust in Jesus, what is our personal experience of Jesus?
Is our knowledge limited to what we can figure out with our minds?
Or will we be frightened if we see Jesus show up in a new, surprising way?
I put these questions out to you for your serious consideration,
because this is really at the heart of why we are here to begin with:
FAITH.
And this is also a major theme for the next four weeks in John, chapter 6:
that to do the work of God means to have faith in Jesus,
and where else can we go? These are words of Life.
Jesus himself is the Bread from the boy’s lunch.
He himself is life sustaining nourishment.
So here is my prayer for the congregation and for each of you here,
words from the Epistle reading from Ephesians today:
I pray that,
according to the riches of [God’s] glory,
he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being
with power through his Spirit,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend,
with all the saints – with all those who have encountered Jesus,
experienced that profound paradigm shift of faith,
and have lived out of this new way of being
faithfully throughout the rest of their earthly lives,
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend
what is the breadth and length and height –
what is the expansiveness of this love
in which we are being rooted and grounded -
and to know – deeply know – the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
- understanding, what the mind can take in -
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Filled with all the fullness of God – be so God-filled, so God-filled
that how can there be room for anything else.
