SERMON FOR JULY 25, 2021                                      TEXT: JOHN 6:1-21                                   

          “Show your face, and we will be saved” — Psalm 80:3. I read a fine sermon on this text recently. Invoking John Calvin, the preacher writes:    “. . . the faith that save us takes place when, amid the bundle of events that make up our lives, we recognize a face. And by being ‘saved’ Calvin does not mean just being assured of a life hereafter . . . . He means being safe, here and now, because all the hostility (as he puts it) is done away with once God’s face is shown. We are no longer anxious, but secure: confident that, come what may, it’s going to be alright. Faith does not guarantee long life, success or affluence. But once God has shown God’s face, we know that God’s loving-kindness is better than life; and though we walk though the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil.”

          In chapter 14 of John’s Gospel, just after Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet, one of the Twelve, the same Philip mentioned in today’s text, says to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus responds, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:8-9). You would think he and his compatriots would have known better after all they had experienced with Jesus up to this point. John records a series of signs performed by the Lord that reveal his power and point to his identity. Today’s Gospel contains two of them.

          First there is the feeding of the five thousand. “When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’” The prophet they have in mind seems to be Elisha returning to herald the advent of the kingdom of God. Let’s look again at today’s first lesson from the Book of 2 Kings (4:42-44):    A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.” But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord. John specifies that Jesus too had barley loaves at his disposal, and when the crowd had finished eating, the disciples gathered twelve baskets of fragments. They did indeed eat and have some left.

          It is not just Elisha that Jesus’ actions call to mind. They reach even farther back to Moses, who led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Before long the desperate Israelites are complaining to him, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:2-3). And the Lord tells Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you.” God then provides the people with manna and quails rather than barley loaves and fish. Moses makes it clear that the bread from heaven is not just nourishment but also a sign, a further manifestation of the power and good intentions of God toward his people. “In the evening,” Moses tells them, “you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord . . . .” (Exodus 16:6-7). In the evening the quails came up, and in the morning the manna, the bread from heaven, appeared.

          John then includes this interesting detail: “Now there was a great deal of grass in the place so they sat down, about five thousand in all.” Jesus has not yet identified himself as the good shepherd — that comes later in John’s Gospel — but there is a hint here of that most beloved of psalms, the 23rd, entitled “The Divine Shepherd”: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures . . . .”

          And finally there are the hallmarks of the meal that is the lifeblood of the church, the Lord’s Supper. The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels, and John’s version is distinctive. In the other three Jesus “blesses” the bread and then has the disciples pass it out to the people (Matthew 14:19, Mark 6:41, Luke 9:16). In the fourth gospel Jesus “took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them . . . .” In John’s account of the last night of Jesus’ life he focuses on the foot-washing rather than the Last Supper. The familiar words of institution, “In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks; broke it and gave it to his disciples” are absent there, but there is an echo of them here.

          After the miracle of the feeding the crowd hails Jesus as a prophet and seeks to make him king. Jesus flees and then performs the second sign, his walking on the water. So what does it tell us about him, when the wind-whipped sea keeps him upright, rather than pulling him under? This story also appears in Matthew and Mark. In all three gospel accounts the disciples do not recognize the one approaching them; they are terrified by the apparition. And in each case the Lord reassures them, seeking to calm their fears along with the elements. The wording in John’s account is significant: “It is I, do not be afraid,” says Jesus. “It is I” can also be translated “I am.” We are meant to get the reference, even if the disciples were too distracted to do so. At the very beginning of God’s relationship with the people Israel, right after Moses first encounters God in the burning bush, he asks the Lord’s name. “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:13-14). “It is I/I am” — Jesus identifies himself with God’s name. He feeds his people with bread from heaven; he commands the forces of nature to serve his purposes. Truly whoever has seen him has seen the Father. The disciples are beholding the face of God but do not realize it.

            “Show your face, and we will be saved.” We won’t experience the kind of direct revelation they did. Jesus will not take your pastor’s place at the altar to give thanks and share the bread of heaven from his hand to yours. He will not walk on the water to meet us in the middle of Lake Mascoma during a violent thunderstorm. Yet we actually have more to go on than did that crowd sated with barley bread and fish, who would have made Jesus king. More than the disciples who listened to his teaching but could not hear his words about the suffering and sorrow certain to come. The crucifixion is behind us; we live in the light of Jesus’ resurrection. And yet we are always anticipating the cross and learning, like those first disciples, to see the Lord’s face where he shows it and to show his face to others in their time of need.

          The preacher I cited at the beginning of this sermon has this to say about the challenge facing us: “In the moment of crisis, even the disciples who had lived and worked with Jesus could let their hearts be troubled. They did not cease to believe in God, but they had not learned to let Jesus be the measure of what they believed about God. . . . If the story of Christ is the measure of what we believe, we are unlikely to expect that the presence of God in our lives will always be too plain to miss. It is a story of pain and conflict, in which the last word but one is: ‘Why have you forsaken me?’”(Mark 15:34). There is no way around that penultimate word. But beyond it always is this first and final one: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:3-5). Amen.