Proper 13
Year B
St. Stephen’s, Orinda
Great things, Thou hast done, O Lord, my God. I would name them and proclaim them, but they are more than I can tell. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Some of you know that in High School I was a springboard diver. That means, every four years, I have a chance to sound almost intelligent while watching sports. John is amazed that I can predict the scores of the dives. But I am a pretty good judge. After all, I woke up this morning and realized that this sermon—my third attempt at a sermon this week—was a 6.5. So I am going to do my best to salvage this sermon on the fly…
I think the biggest mistake we make is believing that understanding Jesus is, to use one more diving metaphor, a low degree of difficulty task. In reality, Jesus’ audience has shown time and time again how difficult it is to understand Jesus and the truth to which he testifies. Jesus confounds us, both in his teaching, and his reactions.
Our gospel is the morning after the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus fed the crowds, and as evening came, the disciples made their way into the boats. Now, the crowds looking for Jesus, they don’t know anything about stilling the storm or walking on the water, but they are diligently searching after Jesus. In terms of distance, it would be the equivalent of listening to Jesus preach in Jack London Square, and then crossing the Bay trying to find him at Candlestick. Now…that demonstrates a great deal of faithfulness. The disciples will tell you, crossing the Sea of Galilee is to potentially risk life and limb. But instead of praising these would-be disciples, Jesus lectures them. “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
The crowd is surprised by this reaction, but if we have been reading John’s gospel carefully, it shouldn’t surprise us. We are now in John chapter 6. In Chapter 2, at the cleansing of the temple, Jesus says that his body is a temple, and yet they fail to understand his meaning. In chapter 3, Jesus speaks of being reborn by the spirit, and yet Nicodemus can’t understand the metaphor. In chapter 4, Jesus describes himself as “living water,” but his audience fails to understand. And in chapter 5, Jesus chastises a crowd for claiming to be upholders of the law—yet if they really believed in Moses, they would already believe in Christ.
Here in chapter 6, Jesus is speaking of bread, and just like each of the earlier teaching cycles—the audience doesn’t get it. Jesus is offering life, but the crowd wants calories.
And let’s not belittle that concern. Food safety was a real concern. There is a reason why the Lord’s prayer—the very prayer that Jesus himself teaches his followers to pray includes a provision for our caloric needs—give us our daily bread. Give us sustenance.
The crowds know their scripture. They recall the story of the manna in the wilderness, they quote Psalm 78. They have a faith, a sure and certain faith that God has, and will provide for the needs of God’s people. They point to Moses and the gift of the manna.
Now…as an aside. This is a wonderful example of how there is a Christ and I am not him. Jesus’ objection to this claim is based on who was actually providing the Manna—God or Moses. But my objection is prooftexting.
The would be followers of Jesus, the crowd clamoring for some bread, quote Psalm 78, verse 24. The same one appointed for today. But the crowd and the lectionary are proof-texting a bit. Yes, the seven verses we read together seem all-together positive and demonstrate how God meets the needs of humanity. But these same seven verses are the exception to the rule. Psalm 78 isn’t a Psalm extolling God’s grace—it is a recounting of humanity’s pig-headedness. Just before our lectionary begins, the Psalmist writes this:
Yet they sinned still more against him,
rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
They tested God in their heart
by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God, saying,
“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
Even though he struck the rock so that water gushed out
and torrents overflowed,
can he also give bread
or provide meat for his people?”
Therefore, when the Lord heard, he was full of rage;
a fire was kindled against Jacob,
his anger mounted against Israel,
because they had no faith in God
and did not trust his saving power.
The fact that the would-be followers of Jesus quote Psalm 78 should immediately signal that we need to be suspicious of their demands. The crowd might think that they are asking Jesus to echo God’s providence, yet what they are really echoing is their own misunderstanding.
The crowds ask for bread, and it would be all to easy to say that Jesus is offering sustenance—but Jesus isn’t offering spiritual sustenance, Jesus is offering service.
Put another way—all too often, we approach Jesus as an instrumental good. Ahh! This Jesus can multiply loaves of bread…we need to keep tabs on where he is so that we don’t have to worry about what we’ll eat—Jesus will give us food, always. Yet what Jesus offers is himself as an intrinsic good. “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world...I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
What’s more—when we come to recognize Jesus as an intrinsic good…it is my belief that we will find ourselves being transformed into an instrumental good. When we stop seeking Jesus for what Christ can do for us—when we begin to act as agents of the gospel, it is at that moment we up provide the very sustenance for others we sought for ourselves.
That is the good news this morning. When we stop seeking Jesus for ourselves, we begin acting, serving others in Christ’s name. Our goal is to stop seeing Jesus as instrumental means to our happiness and instead begin seeing ourselves as instrumental to other’s joy.
And I could continue more and more about intrinsic and instrumental goods, but thankfully, for all of us, St. Francis happened to write a prayer which sums our gospel perfectly. It is a prayer which seeks not personal, but communal good. It is a prayer which seeks Jesus not for what it might mean for us, but what it might mean for the world. It is a prayer that doesn’t seek after Christ so much as recognizes that Christ has commissioned us to follow the gospel. So let us pray:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
