And how Jesus challenges expectations
Proper 16B | John 6:56-69
Reading this gospel passage this morning—it offers us kind of a gloomy, how’d-we-get-here vibe. Doesn’t it sound like a low point? When the mission doesn’t just seem hard, but kind of unpopular. Like the path they’re on can’t possibly be the right one. It’s the kind of moment when we like to point fingers or think about a change in leadership. Fire the manager or hire a new CEO to “turn things around.” Those are our usual responses.
In this case, the leader who is “screwing up” is Jesus, so…maybe we aren’t just missing something but that maybe there’s something wrong with our approach. That’s what we’re going to explore today. But to do that, we’ll have to help each other remember the whole scene.
Let’s set the scene.
Chapter six begins with the feeding of the multitudes, when the disciples, with the help of Jesus, feed thousands of people who have been following him. Which sounds pretty great—until the crowd tries to take Jesus by force and make him King. So Jesus hightails it, but they find him again. And so Jesus pushes them away, saying they are doing this for the wrong reason.
Now, what is that reason?
Jesus answered 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.
—John 6:26
Many Christians today might say, I don’t see the problem. Jesus fed them. People want to be fed by Jesus. This makes sense—if it weren’t for the fact that it doesn’t align with Jesus’s motivation in feeding them.
Jesus rebukes the idea that they came for food alone because he offers them food that is of the grace of God.
He wasn’t feeding the hungry because they were hungry—he was feeding the crowds longing for freedom because he had pity on them. And instead of seeing that as a sign of God’s liberating grace, they saw Jesus himself as their literal meal ticket.
What Jesus rebukes in the crowds and then in the critics is an obsession only with the physical world. And I would venture to say that Jesus rebukes the desire to separate the divine from the physical; to desire the bread and not the signs, to eat and not seek, to be fed and not to be freed.
This is not a good look.
We’re in the midst of an election season here in the U.S. And we’re being told that a human being can save us. Or that we can protect ourselves, turning our nation into a fortress. Or that it is righteous to send bombs to a “friend in need” who will use them to slaughter families, destroy hospitals and schools, in the name of physical and existential safety.
And we have people in our state who argue that pronouns present a threat to our children, that learning about human sexuality is corrupting, and that they must be protected from learning about America’s racist history.
And locally, we have people removing benches from their property in hopes of “changing the behaviors” of our most vulnerable neighbors.
Rather than embrace the liberating love of Christ, which sees the miracles as signs of the grace of God, we are drawn from God to human solutions, often posing as righteous.
When Jesus brings up the Manna, he is describing a lapse in allegiance.
Jesus reminds them of one of the great signs of God’s grace—when the people, liberated from Egypt, were fed for decades by daily bread. Manna, a sticky bread-like substance that came from heaven that allowed everyone to eat their fill each day.
And because it would come each day, they didn’t need to save it. To protect themselves from starving. That selfish impulse has no place in the blessed community because it is unwarranted. Not when all are fed by grace. When there is sufficiency for everyone to have all they could want or need.
And this, too, is important to name. Not enough so that everyone gets some. But that all get enough to fill them. It isn’t equal portions. Or saving some to make sure everyone can eat before you get to have seconds.
Many of you have heard my Tale of Two Fish Fries before, but I’ll tell it again, briefly, because it reveals the way of grace.
There was once a traditional fish fry offered to the community by a local Roman Catholic church. It was busy, institutional. After waiting in a long line, we were offered one or two pieces of fish and instructed that we could come back for seconds after everyone had eaten. I finished my meager plate quickly and hungrily waited for the time when I would be allowed to receive seconds. After fifteen minutes, I was offered one piece.
The following week, I went to a fish fry at the VFW hall, hoping to get our meals to go. I was greeted warmly, the people kept loading the foam clamshell containers, saying to the one next to them “oh, he needs more than that!” I brought home ridiculous amounts of food and I was left with the sense of belonging—of grace.
What Jesus evokes about the Manna, about this saving grace given to all, is that it is built on trust, not certainty. And it is about their physical and spiritual salvation. They didn’t just get fed. If they saved food for later it would spoil. There is no punishing the poor in their poverty or seeking greatness in extravagance.
It is sufficiency for all people.
They came to see Moses as the deliverer of grace.
Not God.
They focused on the physical. On the saving of their bodies and the certainty of being fed. Just not the trust. Or the grace. And because of that, they were rejecting what comes from that grace: joy and liberation.
So it should be no wonder that Jesus’s own invitation to witness grace, would first be rejected, and then, in him, a second rejection.
We can see this in the way the evangelist we call John tells the whole story. The chapter begins with thousands and ends with Jesus talking only to his disciples. And even, of them, only The Twelve. The crowds have abandoned him. The setting shifts from the shore to a synagogue at Capernaum while he’s talking, from the great signs to multitudes to an intimate teaching with only the most committed of students who don’t know where else to go.
This message of liberation is for everyone. We just don’t all want to hear it.
Is Jesus the problem?
Of course not.
But I hope we can see why we get confused, eh?
The problem is us. Our expectations are split rather than coordinated. We make it about our physical world like it can even be separated from God. As if we can be separated from God.
Also, friends, let us not forget how rulers like to project an ordination onto this physical certainty. A manifest destiny to dominate and cure the world for others. To be of special importance and unique hope—while all of God’s hopes just so happen to lie in their success. Or, perhaps they claim to lie, more cunningly and convincingly, in national fortunes, wealth aggregation, or in the obliteration of another race of people.
None of this sounds like the love of Christ! None of this reflects the joy of Christ. And absolutely none of it offers the true hope of Christ. We chase mirages of salvation in the desert rather than trust in the Manna from heaven, the bread of life, or the love of Christ.
A trust that doesn’t deny the reality of life. It embraces the fact that God exists within it. Within our neighbors. Within every aspect of life itself.
So let us rejoice in the humble uncertainties for the love that we trust is at the heart of our existence. Let us rejoice together that trust is a group project for all of us. Let us rejoice in the one certainty we can truly rely on: that this is an all of us deal. All of us fed, housed, loved in God’s grace. Here as in heaven.