John 6,1-15 .22-59

Sermon on John 6,1-15 .22-59, written by Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus

SEEKING TOMORROW’S BREAD TODAY

Even Lance Armstrong did not think about a world record in the Tour
de France five years ago! I know that because, coming from Austin, I’ve
followed his career since 1998. A year ago, Armstrong thought he would
go for a 5th victory, but that would be it! Only last Sunday’s
excitement of riding along the Champs-Elysees ahead of Jan Ulrich and
all the rest, five years in a row, with champagne flute in hand, adrenalin
pumping, gave him the courage to say, “one more year!”

Not everybody dreams the impossible dream. Some take life a day at
a time. There are those, however, who knew from their earliest remembrance
that they wanted to be a teacher, a movie star, or a professional athlete.
Kobe Bryant, told Barbara Walters in a recently re-broadcast interview
from 10 years ago, that he wanted to become “the very best basketball
player of all time.” As I stood in line last week to register for
a review course in German Composition at Austin Community College, I
overheard a young man tell his girlfriend, “I have no idea what
I want to do. I have absolutely no self-confidence. I’m only doing
this for my mother.” Long range plans and visions are often difficult
to cast. At times we get in the way and, occasionally, we have no one
to help us focus. Does lacking a broader vision make any difference in
terms of the way we live our lives?

WHEN OUR VISIONS ARE NOT BIG ENOUGH

John the Evangelist wants us to see the early followers of Jesus just
as they were, with all of their shortcomings and shortsightedness. They
lacked the big picture. Today’s text is one of four Gospel lessons
chosen from John 6 in the Revised Common Lectionary to help us understand
this. Whether those being described are disciples or curiosity seekers,
they all have spiritual myopia as a common characteristic. They follow
Jesus from shore to shore around the Sea of Tiberias, but John doesn’t
give them much credit for planning or profound spiritual depth. They
are tired and thirsty and hungry. They have brought nothing to eat on
their pilgrimages to find this famous teacher. They have heard he has
healed people and performed miracles. Perhaps there’s something
here for them too. Right now, bread would be good. Anything would be
good, like a promise to help them out. I do give them some credit. They
knew their Scripture. They knew there was precedent for being fed in
lonely places. Moses, they said, came up with Mana, that indescribable
bread. “What will you do for us today?” they wanted to know.
John lets us see these material boys and girls just as they were because it
allows us to see ourselves as we are. Madonna sang it for us some years ago:

They can beg and they can plead,
But they can’t see the light, that’s right,
‘Cause the boy with the cold hard cash,
Is always mister right, ‘cause we are

Chorus: Living in a material world
And I am a material girl.

We too are often defined by our needs. All too many are focused only
on physical desires in a material world. When it comes to vision, many
dream merely about clothes, cars, houses, bigger houses, vacations, classier
girl and boy friends, better jobs, higher wages. We aspire to link ourselves
with words like Porsche, Cancun, Gucci and Jennifer Lopez.
When I ask people about their dreams, I’m surprised at what limited
vision stands behind a thought like “to be able to retire at 55!” or “to
be able to be sufficiently affluent to take one major trip a year and
buy whatever I need to keep me comfortable and happy.” So committed
are we to such short-sighted visions that we want to be sure that nothing
stands in the way of our achieving them. After all, there is precedent
for this. Many of our forbears made a name for themselves. A recent article
from the Palm Beach Post talked about the dizzying array of protections
that people can buy to assure the good life that they feel they have
a right to: Pet insurance, identity theft insurance for stolen credit
cards, extended warranties for all cell phones, computers and palm pilots.

My goal in talking about this focus on material affluence and the means
to secure it is not to be a spoil sport and say that Christians are to
aspire to lives of poverty. Rather I would point out that when we become
so focused on meeting material needs, we tend to expect entitlements.
We now live in a society when people sue if something stands in the way
of personal fulfillment. If cancer, financial insecurity or job loss
arises, this wasn’t meant to be! Our goal was to be a material
boy or girl! Somebody is going to have to pay for this. Or to take it
in a more profoundly spiritual direction, “God, what are you going
to do about this?” If the answer is not to our liking, many are
those who have then decided, “well, then of course, there is no
God!” It’s interesting how some people make those very shortsighted
decisions because they can’t see beyond their own desire for physical
security. They have limited spiritual vision. It’s called “peace
of mind” insurance. I call it “Lack of vision” insurance.

The Evangelist John may not have phrased the matter in this way, but
the problem he sees in Jesus’ haphazard followers is echoed by
many Christians today. We live in a world which during the last 150 years
has experienced an atrophy of Christian vision replaced by the dullness
of a materialistic, modern world view. This view assumes that God did
not create matter, but that matter evolved minds that created God. So
confident were those who championed this view that they came to espouse
a seamless unfolding of the potentiality of matter. That means they assumed
that in every way, our world was self-creating a better future for all
of us. By the end of the 20th century, however, after too many wars and
genocidal policies pursued in the name of scientific materialism, it
became clear that the material vision was incomplete. In the face of
the awe-inspiring complexity in even a single cell, scientists and philosophers
are beginning to wonder whether we are, as Dr. Stephen Meyer of Spokane,
Washington puts it, not cosmic orphans after all. Perhaps this is not
just a material world with no destiny other than one we concoct for ourselves.
Perhaps there are bigger visions that allow us to ask more profound questions
than “who is going to meet my needs today?”

WHEN A VISION CLAIMS US FOR ITSELF

John wants us to hear the religious response to such a query and he
is prepared to shock his readers with words that will free them from
their need to structure a future on a material landscape. The crowd confronts
Jesus with that old memory that Moses gave them Mana to eat: “What
will you do?” Jesus tells them that they are looking for physical
bread, just to eat and be filled. He hints that God does give bread,
but that it comes through one sent by his Father to give life to the
world. The crowds, impatient for the only Mana their limited vision allows,
say “give us this bread from now on.” Then Jesus stuns them
all by saying, “I am this bread.” Whoa! What do you think
they thought about that?!! More specifically, he says, “I am the
bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry, and he who believes
in me will never be thirsty.” Does this have anything to do with
what they want? What does it mean for him to say that “he” is
what they need!

Let’s think of all the things, first of all, that it does not
mean—and we can be very contemporary in doing this. Contemporary
Christians who all too often seek to use God for their own purposes,
to fulfill their own materialistic needs, can get this all wrong. Some
have seen Jesus as the bread king who will see to it that his followers
never hunger or thirst. I remember “Rev. Ike,” a television
preacher of some years ago, who dangled his affluence before his audience
because, after all, “God wants you to be rich!” There are
religious science sects in Christianity promising there will be no illness
for believers because “God wants you to be well!” There are
Christian behavioral groups which promise performance transformation
because “God wants you to be successful.” All of these approaches
do not take us toward the vision of Jesus as “bread of life” because
they leave us with ourselves and our own material desires.

In presenting Jesus as the bread of life, John is lifting up a sign
which points backwards and forwards to a God who is generous beyond our
expectations, but whose gifts offer more than materialistic boys and
girls know how to ask for (Rom. 8:26). On the one hand, by using this
language, John has Jesus remind us that he comes in the name of a God
who is so generous with people that there is always “some left
over.” (2 Kings 4:42-44—last Sunday’s OT lesson). On
the other hand, Jesus as the bread of life is the sign for future gifts
which are given even before we think or ask. Joachim Jeremias (Das Vater
Unser), in discussing the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give
us this day our daily bread,” suggests a translation which renders
the two words “day” and “daily” less tautologous.
Based on a reference from Jerome, he says that the early Aramaic-speaking
Jewish Christians would have prayed this petition, “Give us tomorrow’s
bread today.” In other words, in the midst of every-day life, give
us not only what we need for survival, but let us here and now already
experience the fullness of your final goodness for us. Let us know you,
in other words, as you really are!

Here is language which allows us to see beyond ourselves and the materialistic
notions which come from needs for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement.
In such visioning we come face to face with all that Jesus seeks to be
for us, more than we can think or ask. We also find ourselves claimed
by him who is our bread in ways that allow us to be bread for others
as well. There is a fundamental Eucharistic exchange taking place in
this dynamic which is, of course, part of our Sunday morning gathering.
It is also, however, the nexus between our regular relationship with
our gracious giving God and our brothers and sisters all around us. Just
as God shares the bread of acceptance and forgiveness, love and sustenance
with us at the Eucharistic table, so that greater vision of his affirming
life empowers us to feed our neighbors with bread that fills in ways
that Mrs. Baird’s or Silvercup cannot. When we think of God in
terms of extravagant kindness, lifting us to yet unseen heights of hope,
how might such a vision claim us more personally and profoundly?

Desmond Tutu, former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa,
in his book, No Future Without Forgiveness, tells a powerful story which
makes clear that spiritual dimensions of Christian visionaries are not
mere weak gestures. It happened that a South African woman was allowed
to confront in court a police officer who, along with others, had shot
her eighteen year-old son at point blank range. He and others partied
while they burned the son’s body, turning it over and over on the fire
until it was reduced to ashes. Eight years later, Officer van de Broek
and others returned to seize her husband. She was forced to watch her
husband, bound on a woodpile, as they poured gasoline over his body and
ignited the flames that consumed him. The last words she heard her husband
say were “forgive them.”

Now Officer van de Broek awaited judgment. South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission asked the woman what she wanted. “I want
three things,” she said calmly. “I want Mr. Van de Broek
to take me to the place where they burned my husband’s body. I would
like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial.

“Second, Mr. Van de Broek took all my family away from me, and
I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him
to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can be a mother
to him.

“Third, I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that he is forgiven
by God, and that I forgive him, too. I would like to embrace him so he
can know my forgiveness is real.”

As the elderly woman was led across the courtroom, van de Broek fainted,
overwhelmed. Someone began singing Amazing Grace. Gradually everyone
joined in.

The bread which this woman in her simple act of extravagant kindness
shared with another sinful human being is the shocking kind of bread
which you and I have received, as did she, from a gracious and loving
God. If we are capable of imagining, visioning, such surprising gifts
of love at work within and through us, then John is right and tomorrow’s
bread is on our table today. We have full baskets ready to be delivered
to those who long to be stunned by a God whom others have for too long
confined to prosaic parsimony. When people want mere things and the best
they can hope for is god as a distribution agent, they need to be reclaimed
by the vision of Jesus as bread of life. It would involve more than living
life one race at a time or one major acquisition per year. It would involve
never hungering or thirsting for more.

Amen.

Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
Austin, Texas
dzersen@aol.com