Studies in the Gospel of John #13
John 6:5-13
When Jesus looked up and saw the great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip answered him, “Eight months’ wages would not buy enough for each one to have a bite!” Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
Each of us who knows Christ in the pardon of our sins, who has come to understand that our righteousness comes from his life, death and resurrection, and not our own goodness, has what the church calls a “testimony.” We have a story to tell about our encounter with Jesus Christ from our own angle of vision. None of our stories are the same. Each of us is unique and different. Even “the very hairs of our head are numbered by God”—even the ones we no longer find on our head. As we come to this next miraculous event in the life of Jesus, it is important to remember that all of the Gospels are a testimony.
Mark, Matthew, Luke and John are testimonies of early Christian communities gathered around the preaching of these great evangelists. The Council of Nicea, which developed the early Christian doctrine of the “Trinity,” did so to combat the teaching of “adoptionism.” The adoptionists taught that Jesus Christ did not come into the world as the Christ of God, but that he became the Christ of God through his experiences, through his faithful obedience, through his suffering and death, and/or through his resurrection.
The reason that Nicea condemned this as a heresy, is that if Jesus, or anyone else can be born human and through obedience become the Christ of God, then sin does not restrict human nature, and righteousness and holiness, the total fulfillment of the law and will of God, can be accomplished solely by human effort.
Most scholars agree that the Gospel of John presented the strongest arguments against adoptionism in presenting their arguments. Yet I believe that even the Gospel of John does present a form of gradualism. Jesus comes into the world as the pre-existent Christ, but as the author of Hebrews pointed out, he did become the savior of the world by appreciating and developing his own humanity in the context of other human beings.
John begins his first chapter, the Word; the Christ became flesh and dwelt among us. The pre-existent Christ of God came to us in human form, in order to accomplish God’s total, full and free salvation in the human plane.
Jesus first encounter was his Baptism. The Spirit of God coming down in power, the voice of God’s declaration, were not his becoming Christ, but Christ taking on full obedience as a human being. Later when the Pharisees began to gossip in an attempt to create a rivalry between Jesus and John (He makes more disciples than John does, his disciples baptize more people than John’s disciples), Jesus decided to leave Judea and return to his home in Capernaum of Galilee.
Jesus respected the authority of John’s ministry. AS disciples of Jesus we must always respect the authority of the humanity of those who travel the Gospel road with us. We need to see Christ in each other. We need to recognize and honor the gifts and contributions of one of the other. We must follow the example of perfect humanity that Jesus set and learn not to interfere in someone else’s vineyard, ministry, field of endeavor. So Jesus demonstrated the process of his own developing “incarnation,” because he traveled eighty miles north, so has not to violate the boundaries of John the Baptist, whose ministry of calling Israel to repentance was necessary and important to Jesus’ own ministry, yet very different and unique.
Jesus only got as far as Cana. There his mother had summoned him to come to a wedding and bring his posse with him. This first miraculous act attributed to Jesus occurred because Jesus had developed a special feature of his humanity, his human personality. Jesus had learned to honor and obey his mother. This speaks to our own experience. “Momma” is central in Black American African culture. Momma is to be respected and adhered to, even when we may not agree that what she wants us to work on or consider has anything to do with our mission, our goals. So when Jesus’ mother told the servants at the wedding feast, “Do whatever he tells you to do,” this was a way in which Jesus continued his “incarnation.”
After the wedding Jesus went home to Capernaum of Galilee, but he wasn’t there long. He was once again summoned to Cana, where there at the pool of Bethesda, he found a man who had been lying on his back for 38 years, a victim of a victim story and a victim mentality. When the man expressed that he wanted to be healed, Jesus told him, “Then get up, take your pallet and go home.” Jesus identified with the humanity of those who suffered—yes, who had even made a culture out of their suffering, out of their perceived inabilities. In this, he demonstrated his “incarnation.” He did not heal, but encouraged the man to accept the healing that he already saw God do for the man, perhaps even 38 years earlier.
John tells us that Jesus was trying to get away from the crowd. They had followed him from Cana to the sea near his hometown of Capernaum—drawn by the miraculous signs. Jesus and his disciples went up on a mountainside and sat down. They were seeking rest. But it was not to be. Jesus looked -- a great crowd was coming toward him.
Now many of us think that since we are retired, life should be easier, but the truth is that since God has blessed us with much more energy at age 65 and 75 and 85 and even 90 than our parents had at the same ages, folks tend to expect more of us. “I know they must be home, because they are retired. Let me ring them up.” The truth is, we don’t retire from life, from our obligations and witness and testimony and ministry as disciples of Jesus Christ, until God says its time to retire.
While Jesus and his disciples had gone up into the mountain to get away from the people, he found himself in a position on that mountain to see the people coming far off in the distance. Isn’t God wonderful? Doesn’t God have a great sense of humor? He was saying to Jesus by placing him at this vantage point, “You rest when I say its time to rest.” Jesus was learning another lesson of the incarnation. He had to respond to basic human needs.
What do you think Jesus/ first thoughts were? —“Wow, guess we won’t get any rest now,” or “Really, what do they want now?” No. Jesus first thought was “How will we provide food for them? The people of the multitude weren’t even hungry yet. As they continued to pursue Jesus, they had not even stopped to think about where their food would come from. But God cares for us. God not only provides, God has a plan for how are needs are to be met. God is not haphazard, but rather strategic on our behalf.
We must come to realize, that every situation of need, every crisis, every challenge, every test, is allowed by God because God desires to demonstrate his provision. God has “something else” for us. God has a “deeper life’ planned for us, better use of our gifts and talents, better places to live and work, more relationships for us to engage in. God has predestined us as children of God, sons and daughters of light, to grow, to prosper, and to overcome. God wants our faith to grow until we learn that in every situation, just as Jesus had already telegraphed and made preparation to feed the massive crowd—even when they did not even yet realize they would be hungry, so “there is a way of escape.” There is “light at the end of the tunnel.” No temptation has confronted us but such as is common to the human condition, but GOD has made “a way of escape” for us so that the tempters darts and arrows will not overtake us. In fact, on the other side of our crisis is “God’s better for us.”
So is it ever with us. Before we call, he answers. God’s unconditional love always responds to the reality of our needs, and even anticipates them. Jesus could see ahead. He was not “What miracles can I do to satisfy them?” but rather, “They will need something to eat.” The Apostle Paul wrote to the church of Philippi, chapter 4:19 “And my God will meet all our needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
The irony is that Jesus asked Philip, Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? Philip was the pragmatist. When he went to Nathaniel and told him, we have found the Messiah, Nathaniel protested, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip’s response was “come and see.” Philip lived at the level of common sense, at the level of “seeing.” It was Philip who responded to Jesus saying, “Lord show us the father and that will convince us.” And so to the man who believed what he could see, Jesus asked, “Where is the bread to come from to feed all these people?
In Philip’s calculations what Jesus was asking was the impossible. This is why we affirm, “I’m not moved by what I see.” The five senses are important, but they can work against you. Likewise, Christ confronts us as he did Philip, to remind us that we must rise above the material and visible. He wants all of us to remember that what is possible is not bound by the challenge of what we face. Neither is it bound by doubt. Philip was a man of figures, he believed in what could be put into tables and statistics. Philip was leaving out one small essential element in his calculations regarding what was possible. He was leaving out Jesus Christ. Jesus never asks us or expects us to do anything that he has not given us the ability and power to do, in accordance with our faith.
A friend wrote to me recently, “God doesn’t count numbers. God makes numbers count.” Whether it is five thousand, five hundred thousand or five billion, numbers never challenge God for God supplies all our need according to HIS RICHES IN GLORY. The One who created all things will not run short. God’s provisions, God’s resources for every aspect of our lives are inexhaustible.
God is calling on us to give our all, to give up our enslavement to the five senses, to move beyond counting numbers to making numbers count—even according to our faith in the one who makes our discipleship possible. Amen.
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