Shepherd of the Mountains in Jackson, WY
John 6:1-21
The feeding of the multitude is such a gift of a scripture passage to preach as a bishop who sees and experiences so much across our vast synod—88 ministry sites between Jackson and Leavenworth, WA—12 hours in the summer when roads don’t collapse. Assistant to the Bishop Phil Misner, Director for Evangelical Mission Liv Larson Andrews, and I are out in congregations 2-3 Sundays each month. Ahead of our Wednesday morning staff meetings, we often write reflections on our Sunday visits. The abundance of Jesus’ love, the Holy Spirit’s activity, and God’s gifts is remarkable and the bearing witness to it all is the biggest joy of this call to serve as bishop.
We have witnessed small scrappy congregations providing after school programs for the youth everyone else in town seems to have forgotten. We witness congregations in small towns that are the hub of spiritual welcome and physical nourishment and belonging; they have become what city planners refer to as third spaces. We have celebrated large and small churches partnering with nonprofits caring for indivuals experiencing homelessness. We have witnessed churches offering childcare and food pantries—which become care for the soul in addition to the body.
And most importantly, and I really cannot stress this enough, our congregations, no matter the community, are a place where God’s love and mercy are preached and sung and received during the Lord’s Supper.
I witnessed a similar sort of abundance last week while in New Orleans for the ELCA’s triennial Youth Gathering—16,000 youth, young adults, and adult leaders gathered to grow in faith, hear from inspiring speakers, praise God through singing, and learn from and walk alongside the citizens of New Orleans. The triennial youth gathering is always a week full of the abundance captured in today’s scripture passage.
I always kind of wonder if we there will be enough—enough volunteers, enough activities, enough patience, enough compassion, enough energy, enough time, enough empathy, enough organization. I don’t worry too much because we have done this many times, but because of Covid, we skipped 2021, so we were a bit out of practice. It is a week when we all exercise plenty of human agency while simultaneously trusting the Holy Spirit to show up and provide. This year, I had lots of memories of my first time as a participant: hearing, among others, Maya Angelo, in Dallas in 1991as a high school freshman. That summer and last week I again felt some of the awe I assume the crowd experienced on the hillside in Galilee when the preacher, healer, miracle worker Jesus fed them all with a little bread and fish.
This is the only miracle story told in all four gospels. That should be a clue to any reader of its importance. That Jesus has compassion, that God is a God of abundance, that caring for physical bodies is important are all part of this significant story and all tell us crucial things about God in Jesus Christ.
But just as important to the parts of the story found in all four gospels are the details that are only part of John the Evangelist’s telling. I tend to not dwell on textual differences when preaching, thinking it distracts from the good news. But this morning is the exception because John’s unique details are so important to the life of faith, to following Jesus today.
In John’s telling, and only in John’s telling, it is Jesus himself who distributes the food. He does not delegate or equip his disciples for the task. He gives the food away himself. Why is this significant? Because the Last Supper in John does not include an actual supper. It includes the all-important foot washing, which we remember and sometimes reenact on Maundy Thursday.
In John’s gospel, the feeding of the multitude is the Lord’s Supper moment. This is the moment when Jesus gives himself away. Jesus is intimate with the people. And he gives himself away, not in an upper room with his disciples, but in the everyday stuff of life. Remember that—he is with the crowd. He is in the midst of conversations, hunger, friendships, family drama, even the bugs and leaves and grass of the natural world.
So, in those times when you have wondered if God is with you in the everyday, the times when we sense the Holy Spirit working but can hardly believe it, we can trust that God is in fact with us. That time last week in New Orleans when I was at first so tired and the next day so grateful for the many youths and adults God had put in my life through the Youth Gathering; I thought about the story in John 6. Yes, this is our God’s M.O., God’s method of operation, to show up in the regular stuff—in conversation, in work, in recreation in the natural world, in weariness, in moments of grief and memory.
And this brings me to what may be most wonderful and remarkable about this miracle story. One of my favorite theologians [Douglas J.H.] claims that “what is truly amazing is not that a seeming human could multiply loaves and fishes in so astounding a manner but that this human being could represent, by his words and deeds, such a sign of hope and healing that hundreds of needy people would follow him about and feel that their hunger for ‘the bread of life’ had been [satisfied].”
Continuing to Jesus’ walking on water, “What is truly awe-inspiring is not that someone could walk on the surface of the water without sinking, but that his presence among ordinary, insecure, and timid persons could calm their anxieties and cause them to walk where they feared to walk before.”
This is not to take away any of the awe and wonder from this most powerful and beautiful story. Nor is it meant to take away awe and wonder from the ways each of us has experienced the power of God through the Holy Spirit working through our lives. Whether we call them God-sightings, theophanies (a Greek term for the appearance of a deity), experiences of the divine, or transcendent moments, I hope you are having them and paying attention to them. God shows up in the ordinary all the time. We only have to have our senses alert, to practice each day being aware of God’s presence in our lives individually and as an entire faith community.
We might imagine that feeding of the multitude as this beautiful peaceful pastoral scene. And many artists have taken their turns portraying the event. But these were hungry people, probably oppressed by the Roman Empire, almost surely seeking hope. Then here comes this Jesus and he not only gives them actual bread. He gives them himself. He gives them, we might assume, a sense of belonging, identity as followers of him. He also gives them an even greater gift: hope.
Healing, perhaps a more wholistic and this-world word for salvation, forgiveness and hope are the gifts received even today in the Lord’s Supper. It does not matter if you participate in the Lord’s Supper in the outdoor chapel at Luther Heights Bible Camp, in the living room of one of your homebound members, or in this sanctuary. Jesus gives himself away once again, meeting you wherever you are, when the words are said, “broken for you” and “shed for you.” Healing and forgiveness are as real today as on that hillside thousands of years ago.
But again, the remarkable thing about this story is that Jesus’ takes the meal, what I clearly see as him instituting the Lord’s Supper, to the hillside, full of grass, caterpillars, physical and spiritual hunger, messy and thriving relationships. It is this event, this powerful story, that gives me permission to speak quite frankly about the holiness of so many of the other meals eaten around the Northwest Intermountain Synod—soup suppers during Advent or Lent, potlucks, meal trains for people who or grieving or sick, or family dinners in each of your homes. Yes, Jesus is there too, during the every-day. There, too, he is giving us hope and healing, filling us with the bread of life, himself.
Please do not ask me to explain in this sermon how the Holy Spirit does this work. The “how” is fun to talk about, but what is important is the “why.” Why did Jesus give himself away in barley bread? Why does Jesus give himself away in bread and wine at this table? Why does the Holy Spirit show up in all the ordinary meals and encounters of life? Because…God’s love is everlasting and as abundant as during that miracle of feeding the multitude. And God will use any and every opportunity to make sure we know we are beloved and are part of the kingdom of God.
