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Proper 12 Year B RCL
2 Samuel 11:1-15
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21 
Last week I talked how the disciples were tired and unable to find rest because the needs of the multitude were too great to overcome. The masses like birds with the gaping mouths permanently open to receive overwhelmed the disciples. The clash of the competing needs for rest of the disciples and needs of the crowd who seemed to follow them like in the Verizon commercial were in plain view.
The Gospel readings for this Sunday are the two stories that we skip last week, albeit told by John instead of Mark. The feeding of the five thousand and walking on water. I remember in seminary, some years ago, how the rational exegesis of these two passages was in vogue and I was told my New testament prof. That the miracle was the generosity of the young kid who offered the little he had to feed the multitude, following this act of generosity people felt ashamed, got the food stuff the have hidden in their bags and began sharing.
For the walking on water my prof. Had a lovely and complicated optical theory. I do not remember how many sermons I preached along these lines, to which people listen to respectfully but I am sure they do not remembered by the time they got to the door. Time has come and gone and I am not the same person who accepted uncritically what I was taught.
I subscribe to the thinking of a Dutch philosopher Van der Liew who was a proponent of phenomenological approach. To reduce his thinking in a somewhat simplistic manner, he was not interested in what actually happened, but in the phenomena in front of him with which he will be in contemplation with a loving gaze and then eventually dialogue.
Using his method, what I have in front of me is the received text of Scripture, which describes two phenomena or miraculous events in the life of Jesus. Contemplating it with sympathy, not with the disdain of empirical thinking, I rest in abiding astonishment and I wonder and ask these two phenomena, why was this story told to the Johanine community?
An Old style barefoot Quaker with straw hat and cell phone in hand, selling honey at an Columbus, Ohio market told me once, while citing Plato, we can not recover the context of Scripture as you will not be able to recover the full context of this conversation and reduce it to few lines in a sermon. Therefore, he said, what is left to us is to seek guidance from the inner Light, an old Quaker code word for the Spirit of Christ, as to what this passage should means to us.
Following his advice and resting in abiding astonishment, while listening to Lady Gaga on my iphone, this word came to me over and over “Jesus is Lord”. It is not that Jesus is not friend, or family as elder brother of humanity, or prophet or Messiah, but today in this passage I must declare that he is first and foremost Lord.
Jesus gives thanks for the two fish and five barley loaves and after distributing them, the text tells us that the leftovers were enough to fill twelve baskets. The focus “scarcity” is in the 5 loaves and two fish, while the focus “abundance” is on the twelve basket gathering the left overs. The narrative travels from one to the other, having Jesus offered thanks for them.
The fact that seven is the number of food items multiply and the baskets are twelve should not be a detail easily overlooked as it were unintentional, the story was told with clear purpose in mind. The number seven, two fish and five loaves in Judaism is the sabbatical time when God rested from creation, the Menorah, an ancient candle holder have seven branches, the Jewish week had seven days and often the Jews will calculate the time to liturgical events by counting seven weeks. Seven means generally completion, plenitude of God. The most common meaning of twelve in Scripture is as a reference to the Twelve Tribes, the mythical predecessor of the Jewish People, the People of God. I believe the story means that the smallness of Jesus message, a Sabbath for all of Humanity was not only enough to feed the Chosen People but it that will overflow its borders -leftovers-.
On the second story the disciples could not reach the shore they were trying to get at because of opposing wind, and then Jesus walks on the rough waters of the lake of Galilee and has this message for the disciples in the boat, do not be afraid it is I, after which the boat reaches harbor miraculously. In antiquity the forces of nature were personified and infused with power and will, the dark bottom of bodies of water, wether a deep lake like Galilee or the ocean, was the residence of secret dangers and horrendous monsters. So walking on water while a storm is raging and calming it, were things that only gods could do.
For people of the first century who were listening to the story been
told in church, there was not doubt that someone who could make food
multiply and walk on the dangerous rough waters was God, not just a
prophet, or just a moral teacher, or just a friend, but Lord. Jesus is
Lord.
That was a step further away from the strict monotheism of their
inherited Judaism and one that put the community dangerously closer to
paganism via the Trinitarian formula, Is God now Triune?. To which
Jesus seems to be telling his frighten church under the control of the
storm of contradicting messages, identity problems and persecution, It
is I, do not be afraid.
The Johanine community was not unlike its sisters churches scattered
all over the vast Roman Empire, besieged within and without. The
Johanine community was not unlike our own, a small crowd struggling
with the pressure of the Imperial culture of Rome. Struggling with the
sporadic cases of actual persecution. Struggling with the internal
crisis of identity wether they needed to be Jews or they could remain
Gentiles. To them and to us, the passage tells us that God can turn our
scarcity in overflowing abundance and that we need not to be afraid
because the one we try to follow is Lord of all things.
We are not persecuted in this country, but we are equally under siege.
The cultural attack on the Gospel message is not less aggressive, if
not more insidious and much better equipped with technology latest
weapons. I am not referring at the increasing shedding of the Christian
garment of the public arena like for instance: the removal of the
twelve commandments from court houses, etc. A faith that says that love
of God and love of neighbor is the crux of his belief system has to be
at odds with a culture that promotes love of self and total disregard
of the Other. Have you heard the discussion about Health Care Reform?
By people who all have first class health care coverage!
The churches today questions their own identity, not surprising. We are
in the in a threshold of time, we are in between two worlds. Values
seem to be in flux, we are not sure of anything anymore. This cloud
has been created in part by the confusion concerning the relation
between myth or symbol and reality. The supernatural nature of the
Christian faith is, in fact, indelible. It is intrinsic and cannot be
shed. It centers in the personal God, the personal Spirit who is agape,
who came in the fullness of time in Jesus Christ and who, in being and
beauty, transcends eternally every created order (Nels F. S. Ferré).
Liberal Christianity which was the response to the anti-supernaturalism
of the XVIII century sees itself out of touch with a world that is
restating the relationship between symbol and reality, a new world that
does not see itself as airtight in terms of cause and effect. A more
complex and layered understanding of reality is emerging and a new
reinterpretation of the value of symbol has become again subject of
debate.
It is not just the corporate dimension of the church but the individual
is under considerable pressure as we talked about last week. To both
the individual and the church, buffeted by contradiction and
insecurities, to both the individual and the Christian community
ashamed of their smallness and scarcity, the Lord tells us it is I, do
not be afraid.
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