John 6.1–40
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 27th March 2022
If you ever attended Sunday School you know about the feeding of the 5000. Along with his turning the water to wine, it is Jesus’ best-known miracle. It happened about midway through his ministry. His action in the temple was the previous Passover. We are one year on. He will be put to death at Passover time just one year later. Incredible to think that most of his life’s work was done in two short years!
Mark tells us how he sent out his twelve apostles on a mission to the towns of Galilee. Their task was to announce the near arrival of the kingdom of God. The first question they must have met was, “Who says?” and the answer was, “Jesus!” They would then have been forced to tell everything they knew of him, which wasn’t that much at this stage, but enough to get people wondering and excited. When they returned from their mission they were followed by crowds from all the places they had visited. Mark says that so many were coming and going that they had no time to eat. It was the high point of Jesus’ popularity. He decided to get the disciples away for a bit for some rest and recreation on the other side of the lake.
When Lorraine and I visited Israel in 1987 one of the things we wanted to do was find the place where Jesus fed the 5000. Mark gives a good description. We found it—or did we? Kilometers of the eastern shore fits his description. As now, so then, the eastern shore is sparsely populated. But it is a marvelous playground. On Friday afternoons the Israelis pour in for their sabbath day break. There are camping grounds end on end along the lakeside. On the populated western-side the edge of the lake is strewn with boulders. Wade around in the water and you are likely to break your leg, but the eastern shore is pebble-beaches, ideal for swimming. Jesus and the twelve sailed across the lake. They didn’t count on the excited crowds, which kept them in view and came on foot around the north end of the lake. The hoped-for rest didn’t happen; Jesus took pity on the crowd and taught them. At the end of the day he fed them—5000 of them with a few bread rolls and small fish. It caused a sensation.
Coming to John’s account, the first thing to note is that there were 5000 men (males). John makes that clear. It hasn’t escaped attention that 5000 Galilean men going into the wilderness sounds like trouble; In 1962 Hugh Montefiore wrote an article entitled, “Revolt in the Wilderness.” The Galileans were known for their revolutionary tendencies.
The second clue John gives us is that it happened at Passover time. Passover was the festival of liberation. At Passover they celebrated how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt; they still do. They also dream of the future liberation he promises in the Scriptures: the coming of the King-Messiah. Five thousand Galilean men going into the wilderness with a new leader at Passover time was worrying.
The third thing John tells us, is that, as a consequence of Jesus’ remarkable miracle, they wanted to make him king. Only John reveals this distinctly political side to the miracle. This was a people who strained to be free; they only waited for the right person to lead them. Jesus was talking about the promised kingdom; he had just done a great sign. Their hopes were now at fever pitch. Had Jesus gone along with it, a Galilean force would have carried him all the way to Jerusalem, and the revolt which started thirty years later would have been on then. The fourth thing—and this comes from Mark, not John, is that Jesus had to force his disciples into a boat and get them away. They were in danger of being carried away by the enthusiasm of the crowd; they wanted Jesus to be king more than anyone. Once he had them out of the way, Jesus escaped into the mountain behind until the excitement fizzled out and the crowd dispersed; he was not prepared to become a popular leader.
The next thing to note is that his refusal to lead caused great disillusionment among the Jews of Galilee. The feeding marked him out as possibly the Messiah. But when he drew back from doing what Messiah was meant to do, he was clearly something else, and people lost interest. John tells us that after this, “many of his disciples drew back and no longer went around with him.” (John 6.66) So, the feeding of the 5000 was a turning point, which is why the incident is related in all four Gospels.
It will be obvious from the way I am speaking that I regard the feeding of the 5000 as real history. And it had consequences. To begin with, it led quickly to the twelve realizing he had to be Messiah. Up until that point they were doubtful, but this clinched it. What he did outshone even what Moses did. Moses provided manna in the wilderness, but he didn’t create anything; he only relayed God’s instruction that the people should go and pick it up. This and another feeding miracle led straight to Peter’s great confession, “You are the Christ (the Messiah) the Son of the living God.”
There was a later consequence, which we don’t learn in the Bible, but from Josephus, who wrote the history of the war with Rome. In the decade before the war, when the Jews were being driven to madness by the incompetence and cruelty of one of the Roman procurators, there were some strange events in Judaea and Galilee. A succession of revolutionary leaders—Josephus calls them sorcerers—led their followers out into the wilderness, promising that God would show them signs of liberation, after which they would capture Jerusalem, and establish the kingdom of God. One after another they were chased by the Roman army and dispersed. But whatever gave them the idea they could do miracles, and then lead their followers to victory? Well, the first occasion like this was twenty-five years earlier when a man named Jesus fed 5000 men, but did not follow through on it; the memory was still fresh in people’s minds. There is no question that Jesus fed the 5000 in the wilderness, and that this was perhaps the most powerful of his miracles in its affect, apart from the resurrection itself.
At the beginning of his ministry Jesus experienced temptation: “Command these stones to become bread,” the Devil said, and Jesus replied, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word coming from the mouth of God.” He would not use his miraculous powers to create bread, and yet here he is doing just that. It seems a strange contradiction, until you pick up on what he says when the crowds catch up with him on the other side of the lake.
Truly, truly, I say to you,you are seeking 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 to eternal life, whichthe Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father hasset his seal.
It seems a strange thing to say. Surely they were flocking around him because they had seen a sign. “No,” says Jesus, “you are just interested in filling your bellies.” They were failing to see through the sign to what it signified. They wanted a king who would provide for their physical and political needs; they had no interest in discovering what God wanted, and entering into his plan. If Jesus had gone with them, he could have revelled in the popularity, but as soon as he went some other way than what they wished, they would leave him. This is the tragedy of politics, the tragedy we see unrolling in our own country. A leader will be popular so long as he keeps on with the handouts. This is the exact temptation Jesus faced at the beginning: do miracles to win the allegiance of the crowds. But what will happen when you try to lead them into the way of God. He would not turn loaves into bread to satisfy his own hunger; it was too much of a temptation to travel that road to his kingdom. But when compassion required it, then it was right to feed the 5000. But he then had to deal with the natural reaction of the crowd.
The way he spoke with them in Capernaum was calculated to defuse the excitement he had caused. It is a hard speech; I just want to look at how it begins.
John 6.27: Do not work for the food that perishes, but forthe food that endures to eternal life, whichthe Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father hasset his seal.
You see that Jesus is steering them away from the physical and political towards eternal life. We spoke of eternal life last week; it is the life of the age-to-come, the kingdom of God. The irony is that ultimately the kingdom of God means the end of poverty and need and the solution to all the world’s political problems, but there are bigger problems that need to be dealt with first: the rebellion of human beings against their God, our guilt, and our inevitable dying. These men who were clamouring for food and freedom forgot the they would all be dead within a generation, and facing the judgement of God. There could be no kingdom of God without people first returning to God and being forgiven and received. That is what Jesus sights are set on.
His crowds are still hopeful. They realize he must be giving them a moral lesson. “OK,” they say, “What must we be doing to do the will of God?” You can hear it: “Alright Jesus, we understand you are a rabbi; tell us how to please God? What’s the commandment we should focus on?”
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he has sent.”
This not what they were expecting. What God wants is for us is to trust Jesus. So many today tell us he taught a simple rule, “Love your neighbour as yourself!” He did, but, as he said, it was just a summary of the law. He did not come to teach the law, or any new law; he came to be the saviour of men and women who had failed to keep the law. He came as the physician-healer we all need in our sickness.
When the tumour in my skull was diagnosed, the ENT surgeon said he would remove it. A very experienced surgeon-friend advised against it. It was a new procedure, which at that time was highly controversial in surgical terms. He advised a second opinion, which I got. Perth’s leading neurosurgeon said to me, “If I had what you had, I would trust him.” So I did; the alternative was death, and although the procedure took eleven hours, when any slip would have meant paralysis or death, he brought me through.
That is where we are: on a path to eternal death, and Jesus is the one physician who can save us. “What shall we do to be doing the work of God?” “The work of God is this: that you believe in the one he has sent.”
The Jews challenge him for a sign: “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness,”—they quote from Psalm 78: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” This is odd; has he not just done such a sign? But if he is claiming to be Messiah, and calling them to a personal faith in himself— that would put him above Moses, and perhaps they think he needs to do something more than a single feeding miracle to authenticate a claim like that.
“No,” says Jesus. “Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven.” The manna lasted for a day; so did the food he himself had just given them. But that whole wilderness generation died in the desert, and so would the crowd to which he was speaking. “The true bread from God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” And when they ask him to do as he said and give it to them, he says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.”
Early in my ministry I visited a young woman who had just escaped a Hindu guru’s cult and become a Christian. I tried to encourage her in her new faith. She asked me, “What does God want me to do?” It sounded like she was thinking being a Christian was about doing good works, so I side-stepped her question, but she came back to it again and again. “What does God want me to do?” In the end I said, “I think he wants for you to have a honeymoon with him. I think he didn’t call you to be his servant or his slave.” Of course, doing good is good, and is part of the Christian life—but not the heart of it. The heart of it is a personal relationship with God; he wants you to know you are loved as a daughter or a son, before anything you do.”
You want to know how you may have real life now, and a life that will only get bigger when you die? You want to know what you have to do to please God? Come to Jesus! Trust in him! That is the truth that John brings us back to whenever we dip into his Gospel. “I write these things to you so you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life in his name.”