John 6:1-21
Ephesians 3:14-21
“Bread, Breadth, and Breathtaking”
Preached Sunday, July 28, 2024
Have you ever had an experience that took you days, weeks, months, or even years to process? To fully understand what had happened, what you experienced, to make sense of it and find the words to describe it?
Unfortunately, traumatic events can often fall under this category: the dissolution of a relationship, abuse, an accident, major or emergency surgery, the death of a loved one…
There are also positive or life-changing or altering events that can fit into this category: falling in love, birthing a child, moving, making a career or life stage change, a significant trip to a new or meaningful destination...
And then, there are those events that may not be life-altering or major events in our lives but they were so experiential, so bodily, that it takes times for our minds and our words to catch up with what we experience in our bodies: that first bite of the most delicious pastry of your life, sky-diving, seeing your favorite music artist live, running your first marathon, looking out at the most gorgeous sunset you’ve ever seen, the view from the mountaintop…
For the people in our Gospel lesson today, for the crowd of 5000 plus - this is one of those experiences for them. This large crowd followed Jesus because they saw the signs he was doing for the sick… Were they curious? Full of hope? In it for the entertainment, the novelty of it all? Perhaps. I would also venture to say that they were hungry.
Now, to be clear, I don’t mean that they were hungry for food - although I am sure they were physically hungry as well. I don’t think they followed Jesus with any expectation that Jesus would feed them dinner - surely with no expectations that he would feed them with the miraculous multiplication of bread and fish…and yet, that’s what happened.
And as they were seated on the ground and bread and fish were passed around and they all ate and had their fill - they experienced something - something life-altering. Something that they couldn’t wrap their minds and thoughts around, even as the taste of the bread and fish was on their tongues and they felt the comfortable fullness in their bellies. They had an experience that changed everything for them. And although they left physically sated - they were now more hungry than ever.
This week’s Gospel Lesson kicks off what we call the 5-week Bread of Life Discourse in the lectionary. The next 50 verses in the 6th Chapter of John all show the people trying to make sense of this experience they just had where they were miraculously fed. The Revised Common Lectionary, that’s the ecumenical assigned readings for each Sunday, spends the next four weeks - five including this one - working through this chapter, walking us through trying to make sense of the experience that the crowd of 5,000 is trying to make sense of, talking about bread. As a disclaimer, while I will be spending a couple weeks talking about the Bread of Life, I won’t be spending all 5 weeks on it in my sermons - cause even for someone who loves carbs, that can get stale real fast… (See what I did there?)
But in essence - the crowd that day experienced something - something beyond the taste of bread and fish, something beyond satisfying their physical hunger, something that they experienced in their bodies and their lives but they needed their minds and souls to catch up. It was life altering but they couldn’t quite find the words right away.
Now let’s put a pin in this story of the feeding of the 5,000 because it’s not the only well-known Jesus story we are offered in this week’s reading from John. We also have Jesus walking on the water toward his disciples in the boat.
For the crowd he just fed, they didn’t know what they had experienced but they knew they experienced SOMETHING. And so their immediate reaction was to overwhelm him and make him king. A king who could feed us all until our bellies are full? Sounds like a good king to me - and it must have to the crowd too - but that's not why Jesus fed them. So Jesus and the disciples retreat and go up to the mountain to pray. The disciples then go down to sea but Jesus hasn’t joined them yet and a strong wind picked up. It was then that the disciples saw a ghost. Or they thought they did - they were terrified to see a figure walking to them on the water. The Sea of Galilee was traditionally thought of in the time of Jesus as reaching all the way down to the underworld - it is no wonder that their imaginations were running wild and they were afraid. This was not something they experienced every day after all.
Jesus met them in their physical fear - as he met the crowd of 5,000 in their physical hunger - and he said to the disciples, “It is I; do not be afraid.” And their boat automatically reached the shore to which they were going.
Again, for the disciples in that boat…this would have been another EXPERIENCE for them to process and make sense of. These kinds of events keep on piling up and happening around Jesus.
Both of these experiences - the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus comforting the disciples' fears after walking to them on the water - both of these experiences are physical. But they also point to something beyond the physical.
Jesus met the crowd that day in their physical hunger.
Jesus met the disciples that night in their physical fear.
Jesus offered the crowd physical bread.
Jesus offered the disciples physical reassurance, “Do not be afraid.”
Jesus meets us in our physical hunger.
Jesus meets us in our physical fear.
He offers us physical bread.
He offers us physical reassurance “Do not be afraid.”
But he also offers something else, something more, something alongside the physical - to the crowds, to the disciples, and to us.
Christ, through meeting the crowds and disciples' physical needs, has also filled their innermost beings - or they’re starting to realize their innermost beings need to be filled with love. God’s love. For those familiar with the idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this makes sense. We have physical needs for food and safety and often our spiritual needs, our emotional needs, our innermost needs struggle to get the attention and realization they deserve until those other needs are met.
But for the crowd and the disciples - those deeper spiritual needs, the need for God’s love - it was there all along. It’s why they followed Jesus in the first place - they were hungry, hungry for something more. Hungry for a reason why. Hungry for hope. Hungry for love.
Which brings us to our reading from Ephesians, one of my favorite excerpts in all of Scripture:
“I pray that…Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Jesus wasn’t just offering bread and reassurance that day - he was offering the breathtaking breadth of God’s love.
And love is a lot harder to understand - to digest - than bread. It’s why Jesus spends the next 50 versus and the lectionary the next 4 weeks talking about Jesus as the Bread of Life. Yes, carb lovers. You are finally justified by the way - If Jesus is God and God is Love and Jesus is the Bread of life, ergo bread is love. Not really, but kind of. I’m off topic.
That day that the crowds were fed, a spiritual hunger was ignited. One that could only be satisfied by Jesus, by God’s love. And it’s not something we can always describe with words.
What has your spiritual journey looked like? What has it meant for you, to become rooted in God’s love? To know the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love? It’s probably an amalgamation of different life experiences and events - some we have words for, some we don’t have words for yet, and some we may never have words for.
For me, I can think about being taken to church as a kid and loving it for the doughnuts - a physical experience. And then staying for the community and love I felt there. I think about summers at Camp Asbury - especially the summer we talked about trees. Did you know that sometimes, the roots of trees go down double the depth and double the length into the ground as the branches do? When it comes to our faith I think about the branches as those spiritual experiences we have words for - and the roots, so much below the surface, as the love God has given us that we’re still trying to wrap our minds and hearts around. I think of the daily humbling experiences of pastoring and mothering and everything in between. All the ways, big and small, that God reaches out to me - to us - in love. My words fail, and yet God’s love remains. And every day, God offers to take my breath away with the ways God wants to root me in God’s love.
So today let’s recognize that we are hungry. And if we’re hungry because our stomachs are empty or we live in fear - know that God meets you in those physical needs. And let us, the church, your community know, so that we can be Jesus to you and meet you in those needs.
And let’s also recognize that we are hungry for something more - to be satiated with love. The love of God which is breathtaking and always offered to us in abundance - as Jesus offers bread and fish to the crowds in abundance that day. God wants to blow us away with the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love for us. So just admit to God that you are hungry, and you will see how the God who is the Bread of Life, satisfies our souls.
Amen.
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