Pent 10

Sermon Pent 10, yr B, 2024

Good morning you beautiful people!  I have missed you!

And it looks like I’ve gotten back in time for several weeks of gospel readings around the topic of Jesus as the bread of life.

It’s always a challenge preaching on those readings which it feels like we’ve heard a thousand times, especially knowing we’ll hear a similar message over and again for weeks. 

In any event, today we get the first of the series.  The feeding of 5000, a reading we get in all 4 gospels and one I think all of us have heard preached on.

Some preachers talk about the miraculous nature of the feeding.  Some focus on the boy who came forward with what little he had.  Others on the idea that the women that weren’t counted as the men were, but likely brough lunches for the day and the boy’s generosity encouraged them to share as well.  As I read and re read this familiar passage this week, one line jumped out at me. 

Something that I had never noticed.  “Now the Passover, ….was near.”

Back when I lived in Japan the movie Troy came out and some friends and I went to see it, and my Japanese friends reaction to the movie has stayed with me.

Now, if I were to ask you how many have read the Iliad… raise your hands. 

But who has heard of Achilles?

Who knows that an Achelles heel is your vulnerable spot? 

Who knows what was special about Helen of Troy. 

How about what was inside the Trojan horse the Greeks delivered?

We may not have read the book…but many know the story… the outcome etc. 

Now, when my Japanese friends watched the movie Troy…they didn’t know the story.  Everything was new, everything was a surprise.  They lived in a different culture, a different time and didn’t know the story, they were taught the histories of Asia not Europe.  So, when Achilles went to battle, they simply didn’t know he’d win, so they saw the movie with very different eyes.

When we read the bible in many ways we are like Japanese people watching Troy and this is one of those days when that is clear.  In John there is a line in todays gospels that the other gospels don’t include.  It is “Now the Passover, ….was near.”

A simple enough line that seems to have just been dropped in; perhaps to give a bit of context?  However, for those who originally would have read that…a whole ton of associations would have occurred to them immediately.

It's as if we were talking to ancient Greeks and causally said Winnipeg was a vast city, much like Troy.  You’d start thinking that Winnipeg was doomed, and perhaps there was a big battle, and maybe Winnipeg had a tragic hero like Hector. All sorts of connections would form in your head.

The Hebrew scriptures make great use of these literary associations, so when John was writing his gospel and casually drops in a reference to something as fundamental to Judaism as Passover…

 IT AIN’T CASUAL.

But we are Japanese watching Troy for the first time, so I’ll add a reminder.

The Passover took place during the final plague that Moses announced to the Egyptians to make Pharoah release the enslaved people of God.  The Passover of God saved the Hebrew people, so that when the death of the first borns occurred, the people of God were ‘passed over’.  Moses then led the People of God across the Red Sea into the Wilderness. 

So, mentioning Passover associates Jesus with Moses, with deliverance and with God’s saving grace. Comparing Jesus to Moses, in that time and with that people, places Jesus alongside the authority that Moses was understood to have in Jewish faith and tradition.  Reading about Jesus feeding of the multitudes, they also would have recalled that Moses fed multitudes as well.

They would have recalled that while in the wilderness the people of God became hungry and the Lord provided them, through Moses with bread, Manna from heaven.  Something out of nothing, a miracle and a gift of God.  The people reading John would have remembered the miracle of the Manna and the sign that the God who delivers his people in the Passover will provide for his people.  Likewise, they would see Jesus providing bread miraculously for the people of God; Recognizing that once more God provided.

Manna in the desert and bread by the sea, a miracle and a sign for the whole people of God.  It is a sign for us too, but one whose depth of significance we may miss because of the distance of time and culture.  However, this teaching is itself is as old as the people of God themselves. 

Trust in God, God walks with you, God provides.  A teaching the people of God, old and new, forget again and again.

In Moses’ time people were gifted Manna from heaven and were promised it would feed them each day…be their daily bread.  Yet, we read that some did not trust and tried to hoard the Manna to the next day…when it spoiled.

In Jesus time we find the people saw the signs and wonders, ate the miraculous bread and wanted to declare Jesus King, like the old kings of Israel, which if we recall, generally didn’t go well and was against God’s recommendation.  It’s as if we opened the doors of the church to find a large wood horse and thought, oooh pretty I think we’ll bring that inside. 

We don’t remember and we don’t learn.

God called the people of Israel to have faith and trust.  Jesus called the people of his time to have faith and trust. God still calls us to have faith and trust.   We know it isn’t simple, after all it took the people of Moses time a generation to move from survival mode as refugees, to a people of faith trusting God and ready to follow and it was a change that needed to be relived over and over again throughout history.

Perhaps that is why God provides the analogy of bread. 

Bread is ancient, it is simple and it is fundamental to so many cultures.  If you have nothing else to eat there is always bread, if you have the fanciest of feasts, there is always bread.  It is the stuff of life.  Just the smell of it brings comfort, joy and when eaten it is so satisfying. 

Bread represents the fundamentals, what is necessary and what brings both comfort and strength.

 Which is why we pray for our daily bread, rather than our daily Starbucks.  We pray and rely on God for the fundamentals for this day.  Not hoarding for tomorrow, not for luxuries, but trusting in God for all that is needed, our daily bread.

Flour, salt, water…and sometimes yeast, simple and life giving.

We read that Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them , as much as they wanted, and they were satisfied.  This is the food the Lord has given you (said Moses), some gathered more, some less, they gathered as much as they could eat. Each one received what they needed, no more, no less.

Over the next several weeks we are going to hear again and again from the gospel of John about bread.  I am the bread of life, I am the bread that came down from heaven, I am the living bread, I am the bread of eternal life.

The next few weeks are going to feel like a scratched LP, or a pop up that won’t quit.  Jesus going on about bread and Moses and the eucharist.   Like that ol’ Aristotelian teaching method we’ve mentioned before:  “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell them, tell ‘em, then tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em” If it’s this important it bears repeating, but as Japanese people reading Greek history and myth we can easily miss the depth and detail of the teaching. 

Jesus and Moses, Bread and Manna, their relation is key to understanding the depth of Jesus’ teachings in John. 

These are teachings that span millennia, lessons God has been trying to get us to understand since before the pyramids were built.  Using different means over the millennia, until culminating in using a piece of God’s own self, Jesus.  As we listen to the gospel of John these next few weeks.  As we hear Jesus’ teachings about who he is and uses the analogy of bread.  We remember the depth of meaning that goes with the analogy of bread, and the association of Jesus with Moses.

 John’s gospel is full of sign and symbols and it’s important to listen for the little things that help us gain a deeper knowledge of John’s understanding of Christ and what we are called to learn about Christ, the bread of life.  That we may in turn walk with God and grow in faith and trust. amen