Note: I preached most of this without manuscript, but this is roughly what I said.
Pentecost 10B
July 28, 2024
John 6:1-21
INTRODUCTION
The past six weeks we have been hearing from Mark’s Gospel. Today we will turn to John’s Gospel for a few weeks, as we “feast” upon the “bread of life” discourse. Today we’ll hear about two “signs” (that’s what John calls Jesus’ miracles) – the feeding of the 5000, and Jesus walking on water. And over the next few weeks we’ll get into the discourse that always follows a sign in John, which will explain why the sign matters. In both of the signs and in today’s other readings, we will see a few characteristics of God become apparent: God is in relationship with us, God is an abundant provider, and God is life.
One other thing to listen for that might not be obvious in this translation: another feature of John’s Gospel is that Jesus identifies himself throughout as I AM. Do you remember where else we have heard that name, “I AM”? Moses at the burning bush – when God tells Moses that God’s name is, “I AM who I AM.” In coming weeks, Jesus will identify himself as, “I am the bread of life.” But he also identifies himself as I AM today, when he approaches the disciples on the boat. The rendering in English is, “It is I,” but the word is the same: he is identifying himself as God.
In the following weeks, we will hear a lot of theological explanation, but today’s readings are more about experience. So, enter into that experience as best you can, considering how your different senses would encounter it. Let’s listen.
[READ]
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| Me with my two campers |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I just had the pleasure of spending the last week with two of our confirmands, Noah and Nate, at Lake Chautauqua Lutheran Center (LCLC) for confirmation camp. It was a week full of traditional camp activities, but also worship, Bible study, prayer, and singing. If I may boast about them for a moment, the pastors who were there leading Bible study told me that both of our kids were really stars: eager to volunteer for things, to answer questions, and just to engage fully in what they were doing. (Made my pastor heart proud!) Both of them told me, halfway through the week, “I’m definitely coming back next year!” It made me really happy that this same week, we sent a check to LCLC out of the Keymel Estate gift, a part of our tithe, in the amount of $32,000. I got to see firsthand the impact that this gift will have, even on our own kids.
Normally, I have attended confirmation camp as “faculty,” meaning, I have taught one of the daily morning Bible studies. But this year, for the first time, I went as one of the chaplains. That means that every day of the week, my co-chaplain and I planned and led a short morning prayer service and a full evening worship service. I also led the music for those services, with my trusty ukulele. That is 10 services in one week, my friends! Some were mostly planned or conceived before we got there, but not all of them. And I preached or offered reflections for five of the services. It sounds like a lot (and it was), but there is something about camp worship and camp preaching that is different from normal preaching. It is purer, somehow, and less heady: a dynamic Bible story, a personal story with a meaningful real-life application, perhaps a few corny jokes, and done. Short, sweet, relatable, and to the point. So, I thought that today, with these stories, two of the most dynamic in scripture, I would offer you a camp-style sermon. Hold on, let me get into camp mode… [leave pulpit]
One of the less-than-ideal things about the way most of us consume scripture is that we hear scripture in worship in a sort of piecemeal way, a story at a time, and don’t always get the overall picture of the Jesus story, and especially not the overarching story of salvation history, the way God has acted toward and worked among humanity over the course of existence. But if you take a step back, you will see that this one story about God feeding hungry people is not an anomaly. In fact, the Bible is full of feeding stories. The one we heard a moment ago from 2 Kings was one. The story of the Israelites in the wilderness being fed by manna, bread from heaven, is another one. The Passover, which John mentions in our Gospel today, is yet another one. Looking forward, the last supper, which happens on Passover, is another one. And there are more!
Point is: God is in the business of feeding people who are hungry – hungry in body, yes, but also hungry in spirit. Hungry for justice, or for love, or for connection, or for community. God feeds hungry people, again and again and again.
But here is something I really appreciate about this feeding story in particular. In this story, God (Jesus) doesn’t act alone. He certainly could have. John tells us that Jesus already knew what he was going to do, and certainly the dude who goes on from here to casually walk across the lake in the middle of a storm to meet his friends on the boat is perfectly capable of feeding the whole crowd singlehandedly. But he doesn’t. Instead, he calls upon the community.
First, he asks the disciples. They have a few feeble ideas. One of them is to bring in a little boy, whose mother had no doubt lovingly packed him a lunch of loaves and fishes for the day. The boy’s generosity inspires others – rather than being greedy, people all join in sharing, passing the baskets all around, until everyone has what they need, and even more. In this remarkable story, not only does God feed the people, but God involves the all-ages community into the effort.
This sort of miracle is what we saw at camp all week. We saw campers take turns cleaning up the dining hall after meals. We saw them cheer each other on as they climbed the climbing wall, and competed in the LCLC Olympics. They offered gentle advice to each other, and comfort, and laughter. They cared for each other. The campers checked in on each other. That camp community that forms over the week is such a beautiful thing to watch.
One of my favorite parts of camp this year, was that we had a little visitor all week: 4-year-old Tony, who was the son of the sailing instructor. He tagged along with his mom all over camp. At the boat house, he shared his own wisdom about the boats he’d grown up around. At the fiesta tent, the central meeting point of camp, he could often be found playing Star Wars games with the boys cabin, felling them using the force or his imaginary light saber. Perhaps my favorite was that Tony would suggest programing for campers or faculty, and it happened! The faculty held an excellent campfire one night, at Tony’s suggestion.
So throughout the week, we were learning from a 4-year-old, and from 60-something-year-old pastors, and from 12-year-old campers, and teenage counselors. My friends, we were feeding each other all week. We fed each other literally in some cases, but we also fed each other’s spirits, laughing together, crying together, hugging each other, singing together, playing Floor is Lava and Star Wars and Gaga Ball together, praying together. It was a truly beautiful community, one that embodied God’s vision for the Church on earth, one that Jesus brought about and demonstrated that day in a deserted place, when he drew upon the community to feed one another.
On the last day of camp, we heard the story of Jesus walking on water – not the version we heard a moment ago, but the version from Matthew, in which Peter actually gets out of the boat and, purely on faith, walks toward Jesus on the water. At our closing worship, we talked about how after this marvelous week of feeding each other in this cloistered community, we were all getting out of the boat, heading out into rougher waters where it isn’t always as easy to live into that community-of-care that we had developed at camp. But throughout the week, our theme verse was, “When you walk through the waters, God is with you.” And that is true also for us. It can be difficult to feed one another, especially when we encounter a lot of people who drive us bananas, or who don’t share our beliefs, or who hurt us. But God is about feeding people. And we are about being God’s people, a part of God’s mission. And God is with us as we strive to be Christ’s body, God’s people, here in this world that is hungry for the good news of God’s love.
Let us pray… Gracious God, we are hungry, for so many things. Feed us, we pray. And not just that, but help us to feed one another. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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