Sermon on John 6:35-51

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

For a couple weeks now, we’ve been talking about people not really getting what was going on or what Jesus was telling them.

The disciples were stressed out by Jesus’ command to feed the crowd of thousands of people and then scared by Jesus’ ability to walk on water.

Then the crowds, who seemed to understand that something amazing was happening, because they wanted to make Jesus king, still were mostly interested in Jesus for the free food. They chased him across the sea to try to get him to feed them again.

Today’s reading zooms in on a specific subset of the crowds that were following Jesus. Remember that whenever the Gospel of John says “the Jews” it doesn’t mean all the Jewish people in that area. That would include Jesus and his disciples and would be confusing. 

“The Jews” is the term the Gospel of John uses to refer to the group of religious leaders who were threatened by Jesus’ popularity and wanted to maintain the status quo. This terminology has, unfortunately, contributed to centuries of antisemitism. This is one of the many reasons why we read the Bible carefully, look at the context to give us clues about what it means, and consider how our interpretation affects our neighbors.

In our readings so far over the past few weeks, Jesus has either been talking to his closest disciples or addressing the crowds as a whole. But once Jesus finishes his explanation of what it means that he is the bread of life, it says that “the Jews” (or the religious leaders) “began to complain about him.”

It seems they were happy enough to hang around, hear Jesus talk, and eat some free food, but when he started talking about being the bread of life and coming down from heaven, they got suspicious.

They questioned him about how he could be from heaven if they knew his parents. He didn’t miraculously appear—they knew his family!

They didn’t see what Jesus was offering them, so they complained among themselves.

Granted, much like Jesus’ conversations with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well before this in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ explanations are confusing: what do you mean “born from above”? What do you mean “living water”? Or in this case, what do you mean “bread of life”?

Jesus spoke in metaphor, parable, imagery—rhetorical devices that lose their power when categorized, labeled, poked, and prodded.

Still, what might it mean to be the “bread of life”?

Bread was a staple—it wasn’t the fluffy French bread you can get in the grocery store. It was dense, heavy, and filling. It sustained people’s life.

I had a Taiwanese classmate in seminary who talked about Jesus as “the rice of life,” because that was the staple she was used to. I’ve also heard Jesus described as “the tortilla of life.”

Jesus isn’t a nice side dish or a dessert, much to the disappointment of my sweet tooth. Jesus is a staple, an everyday life source, nourishing and filling.

Jesus described himself as the “bread that comes down from heaven,” the manna that God sent to the starving Israelites in the wilderness. Jesus is God’s way of saving us from death and assuring us of God’s provision and faithfulness. Whatever wilderness we are in, God does not abandon us there. God feeds us and cares for us.

And as we talked about last week, the feeding of the 5,000 functions like communion in the Gospel of John. Since this Gospel focuses on Jesus washing his disciples’ feet on the night in which he was betrayed, this is the moment when Jesus took bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples and the larger community of Jesus followers.

Eating the bread that Jesus gave them united them. They sat on the grass, eating together. They bonded and formed community, united in Jesus.

Jesus will go on in next week’s Gospel reading to describe his flesh and blood as bringing eternal life to those who eat and drink it.

Communion is a promise of eternal life in the Reign of God, a sneak peek of the never-ending banquet of the Beloved Community. Through it, we are united with Christ and each other and all the Jesus followers throughout time and space. It is miraculous and mysterious.

And yet, it can also become routine and lose its meaning. When we come to this table every week, eating the same wafers and drinking the same grape juice, we can forget the mystery.

We can, perhaps, forget the gravity of our first communion, whether when we were children, teens, or adults.

We can forget the longing for communion we had during COVID, when we had to navigate new ways of being the Body of Christ without being together in one room.

We can also forget that Christ meets us in every meal and not just here on Sunday mornings. Just like every drop of water can help us recall our baptism, every meal can remind us of our unity in Christ, whether at this table, your kitchen table, or in our parking lot on Tuesday nights.

Some of the most meaningful experiences of communion I have had would not be officially recognized as communion.

The nonprofit I worked for before seminary was the Orange County Conservation Corps. They serve at-risk young adults who get work experience doing environmental projects around the county while finishing their high school diplomas.

On the last day of work before Thanksgiving, when the corpsmembers would come back from their work sites, there would be a Thanksgiving meal waiting for them. We staff members would pile their plates high with turkey, stuffing, and the works. Then, we would serve each other and join them at long tables with plastic tablecloths in the warehouse that still smelled of disinfectant.

It was a humble meal, but a glorious celebration. We were equals at those tables, united in gratitude, laughter, and bellies full of Costco pie.

It certainly was not what most people picture when they think of communion, but among the staples of turkey and potatoes, hierarchies were erased, aching muscles forgotten, laughter and community abundant. If that’s not a foretaste of what heaven will be like, I don’t know what is.

Communion can be found in surprising places.

The bread of life, rice of life, tortilla of life meets us where we are. Jesus sustains our life and connects us with each other.

Proverbs 15:17 says:

“Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is
    than a fatted ox and hatred with it.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a dinner of vegetables. But we can take this proverb’s meaning to be: it’s better to have a simple meal with people who love each other than a lavish feast with people who are acting hatefully toward each other.

Hopefully, that’s what communion is each week: a wafer and tiny cup of grape juice among people who love each other.

That is our manna in the wilderness. That is our feeding of the 5,000. That is our Thanksgiving meal in a warehouse. That is our bread and rice and tortilla of life.

It strengthens and unites us for today and points toward the lavish feast with Love that will never end.

You’re all invited—come and eat.

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.

Sermon on John 6:1-15

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

At the nonprofit I worked at before I started seminary, I did some event planning. It was fun—I liked the fastpace and getting to work out all the details. But, no matter how many times I did it or how far in advance I made all the preparations—no matter what,—the night before, I would get this sudden feeling of panic:

·       Did I order enough breakfast sandwiches for the board meeting?

·       Will there be enough entertainment for the guests at the fundraiser?

·       Are we going to run out of sodas?

·       Is there enough money in the budget to make this a successful event?

·       Why do I do this to myself?

No matter how many times I had planned events that went smoothly, I would get that clenching feeling in my stomach, that tension in my shoulders.

I always had this nagging fear of scarcity—of there not being enough—and it would all be my fault.

If Jesus had come up to me and asked me to feed 5,000 people with no planning time and no resources, I think my head would have exploded!

Yet, that is exactly what Jesus did to his disciples.

“Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”

Poor Philip—I really resonate with him here.

He knew what it would take to feed those people: more than 6 months’ wages.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me, Jesus. We can’t do it. There’s just not enough.’

Fortunately, Jesus had a plan B.

The people were fed; there were tons of leftovers.

The feeding of the five thousandis one of the most well-known of Jesus’ miracles, but it had the disciples pretty freaked out.

The disciples didn’t really get yet who Jesus was. So, they came into the situation with a sense of scarcity and fear.Understandably!              

Jesus shows signs throughout most of the Gospel of John, leading up to an understanding of his identity as the Messiah, the Son of God.

But the disciples didn’t see the whole picture yet.

They, like the crowds, knew that Jesus could do amazing things. They had seen him heal people and teach powerfully.

This, though, was new territory.

This story—and the whole of John’s Gospel—speaks to who Jesus is.

The disciples saw Jesus acting mercifully and powerfully.Jesus saw the people’s need and satisfied it.

His disciples were unable to imagine a solution. They didn’t know yet that they were dealing with an abundant God. A Creator God, who didn’t stop creating and acting in the world after its birth.

This act echoes evokes the manna in the wilderness that God provided for Moses and the Israelites in our first reading today.

It also echoes the first reading from Second Kings that we read last week, when Elisha fed a hundred people.

And also Elisha’s teacher, the prophet Elijah, when he had the widow cook a meal during a famine that would have hardly fed her and her son, and the food lasted for many days.

God has a history of feeding people and creating plenty out of very little.

The crowds heard Jesus teach so wisely and then create an abundance of food, and they recognized that he was a prophet of God like Moses or Elisha. They knew the pattern of God feeding people. Jesus fled, because they wanted to make him king. They knew something powerful was going on.

But the disciples didn’t seem to quite see this yet. As we read last week, even after they saw this amazing act of plenty, they just kind of hung around after the crowds dispersed. They waited until it was dark, then they got in their boat and sailed away.

They were afraid when they sawJesus out on the water.They still didn’t get who Jesus was…

Now, we get to see the entirety of John’s Gospel, and others besides it, and the rest of the Bible, and two millennia of scholarship and tradition and art. We have a much bigger picture of who Jesus is than the disciples did.

And yet, I’m still afraid.

I still wrestle with scarcity and anxiety and insecurity and fear.

My head would still explode if Jesus asked me to feed 5,000 people.

It’s scary even recognizing that we’re in a new chapter here at First Lutheran with Lutheran Social Services no longer having an office onsite.

We have almost 5,000 square feet and 17 vacant rooms to fill, and our budget is taking a hit forall the time it’s empty.

That’s daunting.

But imagine what could happen if we really acted as if we had a God of abundance. Because we do!

We have a God who saw the great need of people and filled them. We have a God who multiplied a kid’s sack lunch into a meal for 5,000, with 12 baskets left over.

Now, I can’t do that. But what if we’re not meant to do it on our own? What if we are the 5 loaves and 2 fish?And when we work together and listen to the guiding of the Holy Spirit, maybe, maybe, we can do infinitely more than we can imagine?

Maybe, if we work with those sitting beside us, and five rows over, and our ministry partners here at Faith at First, and the church down the block, and the faith community of a different tradition on the other side of town, and the nonprofit in the next county, and the network in the next state, and so on, and if we keep imagining and listening and letting our fear get replaced by awe and joy, maybe, God can do wonders with us.

God has something in mind for our church house building. God will use all of us—our time, talents, and treasures, all of who we are—to make this community on Earth a little more as it is in heaven.

We are part of the Body of Christ, which spans the world and exists throughout time. We are not alone. We are filled with the Holy Spirit, who works in powerful and mysterious ways. We have a God who can do wonders with nothing more than a little kid’s lunch. And we are so much more than a little kid’s lunch.

Will you pray with me?God of Abundance, you cast out fear and anticipate our needs and the needs of those around us. Lead us in this new chapter to imagine and create with you in this place. Give us courage to share your abundance with others and continue to feed people body and soul. In your name we pray, Amen.