Preached on Sunday, July 29, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.
Today for your money, you get not one miracle, but two – and two rather famous ones at that. All four gospels contain the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes, some more than once. (Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 15:32-39, Mark 6:31-44, Mark 8:1-9, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15) Three of the four gospels contain Jesus walking on the water, and that miracle always occurs just after the feeding of the multitudes. (Matthew 14:22-33, Mark 6:45-52 and John 6:16-21)
The two miracles are closely linked and our new lectionary preserves that link in our gospel reading from John this morning. These miracles are important ones, they have a real meaning and significance for us. They had a very definite significance to the early church, in the first few centuries after Jesus, Christians looked at these miracles and ordered their common life in deference to them.
And they had a significance for the people who witnessed them first hand, those very first followers of Jesus who retold these stories until the evangelists wrote them down in the versions that come down to us today, a significance that might be different than our own, but one that we might do well to try and recapture.
The miracle of the feeding of the multitudes is a very important, redolent event in the life of Jesus. As we’ve noted, it appears in all four of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and as we have it today in John. Details among the gospel accounts disagree, as we know they often do. And Matthew and Mark each tell not one but two stories of the feeding of large crowds of people on bread and fish.
So the overwhelming importance of the story to the early followers of Jesus and to the evangelists is clear from the many versions they circulated and wrote down. For the early church, this miracle meal has a direct correlation to the Eucharistic meal that became so much a part of their life together as first in houses, then public buildings and then great basilicas they gathered to celebrate the Eucharist, making it the central ritual of our common life.
That ritual has in turn been handed to us, and we will soon share it once more around this altar this Sunday morning. John’s version of the story emphasizes the connection to the Eucharist for in his version, it is Jesus who feeds the crowds himself, not his disciples.
One liturgical scholar has noted that our Sunday morning celebrations might ought to include fish along with our bread and wine. Now fish first thing on a Sunday morning is not everyone’s cup of tea. But then again, ‘cup of tea’ reminds me of our British friends who have been known to enjoy kippers with a cup of tea of a morning. Or here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan we might could do a bit of lox from Zabar’s on a bagel with a schmear… Actually this isn’t sounding too bad at all, come to think of it.
But the point is made, the miraculous meal – food that is blessed, broken and shared with the people – is a clear prefiguration of the meal at the last supper, the meal we commemorate in the Eucharist. For us today, we often see this story as a reminder that, as followers of Jesus, we are to be mindful of the hunger around us and around the world, and we are to seek to feed the hungry. This is especially redolent when we read this story in the other gospels where Jesus explicitly commands the disciples to feed the crowds.
But for those who were there, those who were among the first to share the stories that John’s would gather into his gospel, another correlation, another significance would have been apparent.
John notes that the timing of this miracle is near to the time of the annual Passover, the commemoration of the deliverance from slavery of the people of Israel. And those people of God ate of divine food too. They were fed, miraculously, by manna in the desert, by bread from heaven itself.
And the most integral part of the story of the Exodus, an event that is mentioned more than 80 times in the Bible, is the delivery of the people of Israel at the Red Sea. Not surprising then that evangelists are prone to link these two miracles, the feeding of the many, the walking on the water. For they are, taken together, a mini-Exodus. Proof that the God of Israel, who feeds the people, and delivers them over and through the treacherous waters, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, is somehow present in the person of Jesus.
When the terrified disciples out on the sea of Galilee see Jesus walking across the waters, he assures them, “It is I…” Ego eimi in Greek, the same response Moses was given on Mt. Sinai. In addition to Exodus, the book of Job and Genesis talk of God as one who walks upon the water, one who makes a path in the sea. Most often when we hear the story of walking on water, we look upon it as a story of comfort and a reassurance that though the seas of our lives can be stormy, and the world around us can make us feel cast adrift, if not in bodily danger, Jesus is there, calming the seas, undeterred by the waves.
But for those first hearing and reading these stories, Jesus would be seen as one who might be a mighty prophet like Moses, or even a warrior king like David. If this Jesus really was descended from the God of the Exodus then surely he had come to deliver his people once again from captivity to the Romans, just as their ancestors had been delivered from bondage in Egypt.
But Jesus proved to be a different kind of prophet, and a different kind of kingand a different kind of savior of his people. Jesus was indeed the one to come, a messiah. But a messiah that triumphed in ways that were unexpected, and maybe not entirely to the liking of those who so desperately awaited his coming, that seems to have been the case then and it often seems to be the case now. God just doesn’t always do what we expect or wish for.
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We often wonder why there is hunger and want in the world, in our own neighborhood. Why the sea and storms can be so devastating? Why doesn’t God cure these ills, prevent these disasters?
The God of our expectations, the God of our desires, is not the God we have.
We don’t have a God that fills every belly. Rather, we have a God that feeds us with spiritual food, miracle food, that sustains us and, at the same time, makes us mindful of the needs of those who are, like us, members of the very Body of Christ.
We have a God whose body and blood fills us and steels us for the work of feeding those in need. We don’t have a God that decrees an end to all storms, rather we have a God that quiets the storms that come, and assures us that we can weather them, with the sustaining help of faith. You know, the story of Jesus walking on the water is not a miracle story per se. The theologians call this sort of occurrence a theophany, a revelation of God.
In the Bible, theophanies are often heralded by the assurance, “Be not afraid” and the divine moniker, “I AM.”
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I’ve known you all for four years now. I’ve come to know many of your stories and your struggles. I’ve shared some of them with you. I know that, like the disciples in the boat out on the Sea of Galilee, you too know that when the seas are rough, and when you’re most afraid, that is indeed when Jesus is near, is most present in your lives.
Like many, many generations of faithful people, you know that the God we have does not prevent the vicissitudes of life, but rather sustains us for them, helps us weather them, feeds us with food for the journeys we travel and the battles we fight.
So you have taught me to believe, during this time I have shared with you. Like those disciples in the boat, those people fed on the hillside, we share with one another the story of how God is revealed to us, in times of trouble and in the times when God sustains us with just the strength we need, just the right nourishment for the task put before us. We do not expect an end to the world’s troubles, rather it has been revealed to us that we are to be supported and sustained as we seek to address the world’s troubles.
We do not expect calm seas, rather we have been shown that we can steer through them, with the faith and assurance of God’s son always nearby. So much better then, to have the God of revelation rather than the God of our expectation.
Not a magic God that takes away the hunger and fear and trouble of the world. But a caring God that feeds us, sustains us, companions us through the strife.
So wonderful to share such a glorious God in the troubles and struggles we share with one another.
So joyful to share this living God on a Sunday morning,in a meal of bread and wine around this altar, and maybe with a little lox at Coffee Hour among God’s good people.
So glorious to be able to proclaim the glory of God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God, in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen+
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
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