Sermon on John 6:22-35
Pastor Jennifer Garcia
God has a history of feeding people: from providing fruit-filled trees in Eden, to manna in the wilderness, to a sustaining meal for Elijah in our first reading, to Jesus feeding the 5,000 with a little kid’s lunch,there are a ton of examples of God taking care of people’s physical needs.
But the crowds who ate that little kid’s lunch in last week’s Gospel story didn’t seem to realize what they experienced was something different from what their ancestors experienced.
They did realize something miraculous happened—I mean, they tried to make Jesus king afterward. But they seemed to be missing something.
Jesus escaped the overeager crowd, and arrived in Capernaum before they were able to chase him down.
The people looked for Jesus, and they found him.They started interrogating him,but Jesus kept redirecting their questions, pointing them again and again to something more important than their grumbling stomachs.
Still, they asked him for another act of power. “After all,” they said. “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness…”
They thought they know what they were looking for:“Feed us, Jesus! Feed us again! Then, we’ll really know you’re from God.”
They thought they knew what they were looking for…
I’d like to share with you the story of someone who didn’t know what she was looking for, but found it anyway.
Sara Miles grew up an atheist. She worked in restaurant kitchens and as a journalist in war zones in Central America. Later, she made a home in San Francisco with her young daughter and her girlfriend.
“One morning,” she writes in her book Take this Bread. “I walked into St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. I had no earthly reason to be there. I’d never heard a Gospel reading, never said the Lord’s Prayer. I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian—or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut. But on other long walks, I’d passed the beautiful wooden building, with its shingled steeples and plain windows, and this time I went in, on an impulse, with no more than a reporter’s habitual curiosity.”
She describes the beauty of the space, and the awkwardness of singing with these strangers.
Then, something took Sara Miles completely by surprise:
She writes, “I still can’t explain my first communion. It made no sense. I was in tears and physically unbalanced: I felt as if I had just stepped off a curb or been knocked over, painlessly, from behind. The disconnect between what I thought was happening—I was eating a piece of bread; what I heard someone else say was happening—the piece of bread was the “body” of “Christ,” a patently untrue or at best metaphorical statement; and what I knew was happening—God, namely “Christ” or “Jesus,” was real, and in my mouth—utterly short-circuited my ability to do anything but cry.”
Sara Miles did not chase Jesus like the crowds had. But he fed her anyway.
And the crowds that chased Jesus? He had already fed them in much the same way, though they didn’t realize it.
The Gospel of John doesn’t record the Last Supper in the way the other Gospels do. The part about Jesus taking the bread, giving thanks for it, breaking it, and giving it to his disciples? In the Gospel of John, that doesn’t happen on the night in which Jesus was betrayed.Instead, on that night it focuses on Jesus washing his disciples’ feet—another meaningful act of service.
But, listen again to what we read in last week’s Gospel:
“Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.”
Jesus took bread, he gave thanks, he distributed it.Sound familiar?
The story of the feeding of the 5,000 functions like communion for the Gospel of John.
It makes sense that the crowds didn’t completely understand the significance of that at the time. They didn’t have the Gospels to compare or the knowledge of Jesus’ death and resurrection to be able to put those pieces together and see that symbolism.
They did get that something miraculous had happened, though, and they wanted more of it.
So did Sara Miles. She knew that something miraculous had happened, and she wanted more of it.
She writes, “I couldn’t reconcile the experience with anything I knew or had been told. But neither could I go away: For some inexplicable reason, I wanted that bread again. I wanted it all the next day after my first communion, and the next week, and the next. It was a sensation as urgent as physical hunger, pulling me back to the table at St. Gregory’s through my fear and confusion.”
Sara Miles was like the crowds: she wanted that bread again. And again, and again.
This was such a significant experience for her that she continued going to St. Gregory’s, and she started a food pantry there, so that she could feed others. You can read more about it in her book Take this Bread—it’s really a fantastic story.
The nourishment she received strengthened her for her faith journey and for serving others.
Communion does this for us every week we receive it.
Jesus, the bread of life, still feeds us. We receive that mystery of bread and wine, body and blood, and it fills us and nourishes us and leaves a surplus, just like the twelve baskets of leftover bread after the crowds ate their fill.
That’s where we get the spiritual energy as a faith community to continue to feed people body and soul. Our mission is feeding people, because that’s what Jesus did. Jesus feeds us, and we feed others around us.Caring Hands is an extension of the meal we receive on Sunday mornings and a sneak peak of the banquet table of the Reign of God that will never end, where people of all sorts feast together and delight in God.
Even if youaren’t able to volunteer in the pantry, you are part of this mission and this community, just the same as the people who volunteer in the pantry but who are elsewhere on Sunday mornings. We are in this together, joined in this meal and this mission.
Our God, who has a history of feeding people, will never stop feeding us.
So, when we eat of that bread and drink of that cup in a few minutes, we can hold onto the promise that it will never run out. It is nutritious and life-giving. Let that life flow through you, and see where it takes you.
As we go forward, both individually and as a faith community, feeding people body and soul, remember that it is Jesus who feeds us and strengthens us. Jesus gives us himself, the bread of life, always.