John 6:1-21
More Than We Can
Imagine
James Sledge July
25, 2021
What Welcome Table has done over the last fifteen months is nothing short of remarkable. But something Welcome Table does not do is address the underlying causes of hunger and food scarcity. That so many people will stand in line for a meal and ten dollars speaks to grave problems in our society. Many guests have full time jobs but still struggle to make ends meet.
As a pastor, I regularly talk to people who struggle with housing. From time to time, I provide a motel room for homeless individuals so they can get off the street for one night. I also occasionally help people who are late on their rent or utility bill. They work but their meager income frequently can’t be stretched far enough. I am happy to provide some small amount of assistance, but even if I can keep someone from being evicted, I’m doing nothing to address the lack of affordable housing or our society’s failure to ensure that hard working people earn a living wage.
Larger issues such as hunger, affordable housing, income equity, systemic racism, and more are daunting problems that can feel overwhelming. As a part of our recent Renew process, we separated our mission activities into a Mercy Ministry Team and a Justice Ministry Team, recognizing a need to focus some of our energy on these larger issues. Our congregation recently joined VOICE, Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement, as a part of this justice focus. Joining with other congregations and faith communities provides greater resources for grappling with larger, systemic issues. But even so, how can a handful of faith communities make a difference when the problems are so large and intractable?
In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus presents the disciples with an impossible problem. Thousands of people have followed Jesus and his disciples out into the countryside, and Jesus asks Philip where they are going to buy bread for everyone. It’s a ridiculous question. Even if there were a place where they could buy that much bread, they couldn’t possibly afford it. Half a year’s salary wouldn’t be enough.
Yet despite the ridiculous, impossible nature of Jesus’ question, the gospel reading says explicitly that the question is a test. Did Philip fail this test when he answered that half a year’s wages wouldn’t buy enough bread? Does Andrew get a better grade for pointing out the boy with five barley loaves and two fish? Does his grade go back down when he adds, “But what are they among so many people?"
You know what happens next. Jesus somehow turns those meager provisions into food for everyone, and there are baskets full left over to spare. It’s a story that many modern people struggle with. For many of us, religious miracles are the purview of self-aggrandizing faith healers and other religious charlatans. Or they are simply primitive people’s explanation for something they can’t understand.
Such thinking has led some Christians to explain away the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5000. There was no magical creation of bread and fish, the explanation goes. Jesus instead unleashed a torrent of sharing when he gave thanks then began to distribute the food to those around him. Others were moved and began to share the food they had stashed away, and before long, there was more than enough for everyone.
Never mind that the gospel account gives little warrant for such an explanation and clearly understand Jesus to have performed a Moses like provision of manna in the wilderness. But apart from that, do we really think we can reduce everything to a rationally explained, disenchanted world with no possibilities beyond what we can see or understand? Do we really want to? Do we really imagine a world with a powerless god who could never accomplish what rational thought says is impossible?
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When I first looked at today’s gospel passage and began thinking about what sort of sermon might come from it, I wondered about preaching on only a portion of it. There are, after all, two different stories in our reading, the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on water. Wouldn’t it make sense to focus on one or the other? But the more I explored the reading, the more I thought the two stories were talking about the same things, about the power of Jesus as well as the work of the church.
In the first story, the disciples are certain that the meager resources at their disposal can never address the need at hand, a belief that would seem to be true. They do not have the resources to feed everyone, but, says the story, there is a power in the person of Jesus that they do not fully understand or appreciate, a power that makes possible much more than their resources alone can accomplish.
In the second story, the disciples are alone in the boat. (The image of a boat, by the way, was used by early Christians as a symbol of the church.) The disciples are straining to make headway against the wind and the waves, so little headway that Jesus could overtake them by walking. The story obviously wants to speak of Jesus’ divinity with this remarkable episode of walking on water, but I’m intrigued by what happens at the end of the story, after Jesus got into the boat. And immediately the boat reached the land towards which they were going.
I wonder how often, when we are confronted with problems that seem far too large for us to take on, when we consider challenges that touch our hearts but are far beyond our abilities or resources to confront, we are not so different from those disciples in our gospel reading. Our fives loaves and two fishes aren’t nearly enough, and our efforts aren’t nearly enough. We’ve rowed and struggled but we’re making little progress. But is Jesus in the boat with us?
I recently stumbled onto a quote by mid-twentieth century evangelical, A. W. Tozer that perhaps speaks to this. “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”
Is that true? Are we, for all practical purposes, on our own? Our sacred stories insist we are not, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, the risen Jesus is present with us, is working through us, here in the boat with us. Are you here with us, Jesus?
When Pastor Diane Hendricks served here, she often ended her sermons with a doxology that claimed that living presence of Jesus with us, and perhaps that would be a good ending to this sermon. “Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than anything we could ask or even imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, now and forevermore. Amen.”[1]
Amen indeed.
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