Bible Text: St John 6:1–15 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
The feeding of the five thousand is an act of gratuitous generosity. It’s totally unnecessary. It’s just Jesus lavishing His goodness on people. As soon as Jesus sees them coming he decides to feed them. There’s no hint they’re even hungry. You contrast this with the feeding of the four thousand, and you see the big difference. There, when he feeds the four thousand, they’re hungry, they’ve been with him for three days, they have no food, there’s legitimate concern they’ll faint on the way back to the villages, the feeding is necessary. But not here. Here it’s lavish.
Because Jesus is showing what kind of a God we have. He wants to be overly kind and generous to us. That’s the divine impulse. He made us, He redeemed us by the blood of Jesus, He claimed us as His own children and gave us His Spirit. He loves us outrageously. We see this impulse in parents, and it’s an impulse derived from the divine generosity. A father wants to spoil his children. It gives him joy to give them gifts, to see them smile, to see the delight in their eyes. A while back, we were gathered with some friends around the table after supper, with a bunch of cookies on the table. And my daughter, came up to sit on my lap, and she asked for a cookie. And so I gave her one. And then, she slides off my lap, and eats the cookie, and a couple minutes later, she’s back on my lap again, wanting another cookie. So I gave her another. I think this happened five, six times – and I knew I shouldn’t just keep giving her cookies, but I couldn’t help it, so I started to half them, and give her a half at a time. The point is it gives a dad joy to make his daughter happy.
When you think of God you have to think of a God whose impulse to be generous, even to spoil you, is far greater than any earthly parent’s. He wants your good. He wants your happiness – that’s what today’s Sunday is called; Laetare – be happy. He is a doting, gratuitously generous, Father. That’s what Jesus shows us in the feeding of the five thousand.
But he shows us much more. When He is outrageously generous, when He feeds people who don’t even ask for it or need it, what happens? They want to take Him by force and make Him king. Make demands of Him that He just keep feeding them. He spoils them and they act like spoilt children. They forget His teaching, they become selfish, they become obsessed with an easy life and they forget about their sin and their need for a Savior. By the end of John Chapter 6, most of them abandon Jesus because He won’t dance to their music and give them more bread and signs of earthly riches.
There’s the rub. Why did I finally have to say NO, no more cookies, to my daughter? Because I wanted to make her sad? Because I wanted to follow some arbitrary rule about not eating too many sweets? No. Because I know what’s good for her. And eventually, if you give a girl too many cookies, she’s going to be sick and throw it all up. If all you do is indulge a child, you really do spoil her and ruin her character and give her a lot of unhappiness in the end.
Why does God sometimes withhold His generosity from you, make you lack, make you suffer pain, make you wonder how you’re going to pay for this, or get through that? Is it because He doesn’t love you, doesn’t care for you, doesn’t want to be generous? No! Because despite God’s earnest desire to make you happy and see your smile, He knows what happens when He spoils His children. They become intolerable brats, entitled, insisting on their own way, demanding things from Him and when they don’t get it complaining and blaming Him. God knows our sinful nature.
So He sends us crosses. That’s His discipline. And any good father knows that discipline is just as much love as generosity. The kids may not see it at first, but saying, No, no more cookies, may make the three-year old cry today, or run away and not sit on your lap, but it builds character that lasts a lifetime.
That’s why, if you keep on reading in John 6, you see the twelve disciples get in a boat to cross over the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum, where they live, and as they’re on the sea, the Lord sends a storm on them. I’ll just read it for you here: “And the sea swelled because a fierce wind began to blow. Then they rowed for about 3 or 4 miles, when they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat. And they were terrified. And He said, ‘It is I. Don’t fear.’” They’re in that boat, terrified, afraid for their lives. They go from seeing the great generosity of their God to being alone, afraid, in danger, working hard to get themselves out of their predicament, rowing for miles, but failing. And they need Jesus.
That’s us. It would be a sin for us not to rejoice in the generosity of God toward us. It’s constant and amazing. Rejoice in it, in good food, in good weather, in good friends, in family. See how much your God wants to shower you with blessing. But know at the same time your sinful nature, and how easily you would be spoilt and your mind turned away from God and you would forget your sin and your need for Jesus, unless your God disciplined you and gave you crosses and pains and difficulties and trials.
When Jesus comes to those disciples, and they’re terrified, on that lake, He says four words in the Greek: I AM. Don’t be afraid. It gets translated “It is I,” but in the Gospel of John it always means Jesus is asserting WHO HE IS. He’s God. He’s the great I AM, the name God gave to Moses in the burning bush. I AM WHO I AM. When Jesus is with them God is with them, a very present help in trouble, not just in the good times when you can see His generosity, but especially in times of trouble and fear and worry. And those words, “Don’t be afraid,” are the summation of the Gospel. What are they afraid of? Mortality, obviously, dying. I’ve been stuck in a storm in a boat on a lake, with lightning crashing down, and the waves spilling into the boat, and the rain pelting my face, and the motor dead. And I thought I was going to die. And then you’re not needing a bread king, you’re needing a Savior.
Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid” to His disciples. And that’s what He says to you. Don’t be afraid of death or punishment from God for your sin or any evil. Because Jesus is no bread king. He is King and Lord over death and hell and you need not simply His generosity in food and drink, but the generosity that flows from His hands and feet as He suffers and dies to reconcile you to God. So that you can see the true generosity of your God , that instead of punishment you receive joys of body and soul forever in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
And so it’s beautiful that by the end of John 6, just about everyone leaves Jesus. It’s not beautiful they leave Jesus, it’s beautiful what the Holy Spirit is teaching here. Take it to heart. The spoilt ones, who have gone through no storm, no difficulty, no cross, who haven’t recognized their need for a real Savior, who only want to make God into a bread king. They all leave Jesus. Because all they want from Him is the good life here on earth. He tells them they need more than bread, they need eternal life, they need Him, they need His flesh and His blood that He gives for the life of the world, they need to eat it and to drink it, they need His life, because theirs is sinful and His is perfect, and He is giving it to them and for them. But they don’t want it. They call it a hard word. They call Jesus a hard Word. And they walk away from Him and all His talk of dying for sinners.
But the disciples? The twelve? Those who went through the trials, through the storm, who had to face their mortality and realized Jesus alone could save them from death and the sin that causes it? They refuse to leave. It’s no hard word for them Jesus speaks. It’s exactly what they wanted more than anything to hear. Jesus looks at them and says, “Will you also leave Me?” And they confess those famous words, that spring from heart of every Christian, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Thank your Father in heaven for His generosity. Know Him as the God who showers you with everything you need on this life and more, because He is an indulgent Father who loves you more than you could possibly know. But thank Him more for His discipline, for the hard times when He shows you that you need much more from Him than the good life on earth. You need Him, you need His life, you need His cross and passion and burial and resurrection, you need His body and blood given and shed for you. And He gave it and He gives it. Praise be His name forever. Amen.