Preaching Paths 28 July 2024 Proper 12B

Preaching Paths 28 July 2024  Proper 12B

Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

The two miracle stories that comprise today’s gospel reading, John 6:1-21, were of utmost importance to early Christians. All three Synoptics have some version of the feeding of the multitude; all but Luke include the story of Jesus walking toward his disciples on a stormy sea. One might choose either to develop a sermon from just one of these stories or to treat them together.

Details in John’s version of the miraculous meal call to mind OT antecedents. Only John mentions “barley loaves,” the bread of the poor, tying this event to 2 Kings 4:42-44, Elisha’s feeding of 100 prophets on twenty “barley loaves” (three being a normal portion).  The resonance between Jesus’ action and Elisha’s no doubt stoked the crowd’s conviction that Jesus was the longed-for prophet whose appearance would inaugurate Israel’s restoration. Little wonder they try to make him king! Jesus eludes them. Christian history is littered with misbegotten efforts to coopt Jesus in service to narrow, nationalist ambitions. Crosses on shields or t-shirts do not make our cause Jesus’ cause.

A  preacher might choose this week to focus on the disciples’ strange decision to cross the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum after nightfall. Were they fleeing the mob trying to crown Jesus, in fear for their lives should the Roman authorities get wind of it? Perhaps they lingered until dark, hoping Jesus would join them. When he has not, they launch the boat and head for Capernaum. Laboring against high wind and waves about halfway across the lake, they suddenly spot Jesus approaching on foot. John makes clear that it is the sight of Jesus, not the storm, that terrifies them. Within John’s gospel, Jesus’ self-identification, “I am,” suggests a theophany. Whether or not Jesus gets into the boat as they desire is unclear. What is clear is that he doesn’t still the storm to get them safely to shore.

Treating both scenes in a single sermon is ambitious yet warranted. Cues in John’s text evoke the Hebrew slaves’ exodus from Egypt. John alone notes it is Passover, recalling how God emancipated the enslaved Hebrews. In both settings, a multitude is fed in the wilderness by a divine hand. In both, there is a miraculous water crossing. Yet, there are contrasts. Leftover manna rots; but 12 baskets of fragments suggest an open-ended feast. Jesus gets his disciples to dry land, but waters are neither stopped nor stilled to accomplish it. How do each of these stories speak to us of God’s ways?

Some interpreters feel compelled to undercut the miraculous element in these scenes: A contagious spirit of sharing fed the 5,000. Maybe Jesus walked on a sandbar (although “three or four miles” of rowing puts midway across the lake). Such reasoning misses the theological point. As in Exodus, so in Galilee, says John: out-of-this-world abundance and the bending of space and time signal nothing less than divine presence. Jesus comes to us in every Eucharist, handing us abundant bread of life, enough to take this open-ended feast into the streets where others hunger for hope. Laboring at the oars of congregational mission in contrary currents, we, like the Twelve, may catch a glimpse of the one who both fully occupies and yet utterly transcends our earth-bound, time-bound existence. Unbidden and unexpected, Jesus comes. His “I am” leaves us in holy shock; yet his “fear not” quickly follows. When the darkness is deep, the seas are heavy, and safety seems far off, “fear not.” John rattles our limited notions of reality and insists: the Word made flesh dwells among us. The world is broken open, and light pours in—Light that no darkness, however deep, will be able to quench.