Jul 28 | “Reaching for the Light” (Sermon, July 26th)

I’m so glad to be here as your curate, and it’s rather thrillingly appropriate for me to preach on this passage from the Gospel of John, which I feel is so dear to the heart of this parish.

This is the only story which all four of our canonical Gospels share in common. But it means different things to each writer. The Gospel of John’s mission is to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah despite how he was received on earth. John’s lens tells the story of an anti-coronation, the lifting up of a king who was unlike any other king the world had seen before. Nothing in this Gospel is free from the specter of that 20/20 hindsight irony lens.

Today’s story has been portrayed as a sweet pastoral scene, where people sit together in harmony with Jesus at the head of the table, probably surrounded by sheep and sunshine, and demurely nibbling their bread. It’s been the kind of thing someone might have put on the cover of a children’s Bible with pastels. This doesn’t give us a fair picture, though. There’s nothing neutral about this story in the Gospel of John. After all, this section of the Gospel, Chapters 2 through 12, is called the Book of Signs. This is a sign, and a sign always points to something outside of itself. It’s not good enough to just say that this story is about sharing. Despite the fact that we don’t always follow the rule, pretty much everyone learns about sharing by the time they’re three years old, and they don’t have to go to church to do it. John’s Jesus always tells us to go deeper. Let’s go deeper.

First: Today, the city of Tiberias is a holy city for our Jewish brothers and sisters, but this was not always the case. Tiberias was named after the Roman Emperor by Herod Antipas, who we heard about a few weeks ago in the story about John the Baptist’s death. It had also been built over top of a necropolis, or a city of the dead. This location, plus the name it shared with the hateful Emperor, made it an unclean city for many Jewish people. If Jerusalem was at the top of the ladder to heaven, Tiberias was probably a couple of inches beneath the soil.

Unclean location.

Second: “The Passover is near.” Here comes a huge crowd of people – conspicuously not in Jerusalem, where the great Passover feasts are to be held. They were probably too poor to make the journey. These are people from the Galilee, and about 90% of that population was desperately poor. Our beloved friend Philip (tested by Jesus the way Israel is tested in the wilderness) finds a boy, who has two little fish – which he may have caught himself – and barley loaves. Barley was a poor people’s food, usually fed to animals. Rich folks would have had the more expensive wheat bread. The inability of these people to engage in the prescribed rituals would have made them an object of pity to the religious leaders, and scorn to the upper classes.

Unclean people.

This is the raw material for the sign that is about to occur. A Eucharistic anti-banquet, hosted by Jesus, the anti-monarch, in an anti-palace. Our king refuses the world’s trappings of wealth and makes his royal court among beggars, lepers, and thieves. As Jerusalem prepares to feast sumptuously, the Messiah transforms ghetto, gangster, and gruel into gold.

And there’s not only enough – there’s an abundance. There are twelve baskets left over. We the informed readers of John remember that there are other disciples who are to come afterward, who have not seen but will come to believe. Perhaps the baskets of fragments are kept in honour of those unknown, anticipating their hunger for the bread that will last.

Another person’s hunger can sometimes be something that we can’t see with our eyes. It’s not always physically apparent – but the feeling, the empty maw, remains, for the physically and the spiritually hungry. It’s an all-consuming feeling of waiting – the body or the soul whispering, “When?”

This is what reminds us that we cannot simply remain on the warm grass of this field, enjoying and sharing our bread. This beautiful meal is more about who God is than who we are. It is a sign pointing to the light shining in the darkness, a sign we are called to embody, right here and right now.

We are the raw material for a sign which is about to occur, a sign pointing to who God is. We are disciples looking among the unassuming pebbles of God’s precious earth for crumbs of bread to feed a multitude we could never have imagined would come this far, after all they’ve been through – after all we’ve been through. We are disciples gathering up the leftover fragments of this great gift, holding onto it for those who will come after us, who have not seen and yet will come to believe.

The hungry of our world, the hungry of this parish, are waiting for signs, and reaching out for bread.

Well, we have bread! But that’s the easy part. One of those two hungers is much easier to fix than the other, isn’t it? There is little honour or sense in caring for a soul and not the precious body which clothes it.

But all the same, when the bellies are full, Jesus still has work to do. We don’t live by bread alone.

When the people have eaten their fill, they are desperate to make Jesus their king. They still don’t understand. John always insists that Jesus’ kingship is about being lifted up not on shoulders but on a cross, and that hour has not yet come. The community of love will not be ready until that hour has come. It is not only the crowd which needs to see and believe. We disciples also need to see and believe.

Jesus withdraws to the mountain, and the dark comes. A fierce wind begins to blow. And finally they see Jesus, walking through the dark and the storm toward the boat. The light is shining in the darkness, and although the darkness overcomes the disciples it does not overcome the light of the world, the one who says to his terrified friends, in our problematic English translation, “It is I;” and in Greek, “I AM.”

The hunger of the belly has little comfort to offer in the face of the storm. Storms are where the heart begins to hunger.

And while some of us may be lucky enough to never feel the hunger of the belly, none of us pass from this life without knowing the hunger of the heart – the all-consuming feeling of waiting, but not for physical things; for things which cannot be grasped by the darkness. Things like the light.

So we’ve brought our baskets of fragments, and we’re in the boat now with them. The storm could be a lot of things. Remember, the wind is pneuma, in Greek – the same word for spirit. That wind that we hear right now is the Spirit, singing as loud as she can.

It’s scary how loud she sings, and it’s scary that she’s not particularly organized or logical about where she does it. Fear and disorientation is, again, understandable, but we’re allowed to leave it behind. The Beloved walks on top of the chaos. His voice cuts through it: “Take heart. I AM.”

So let’s receive the light out of the storm, out of the dark, and into the boat – this meticulously maintained but slightly creaky boat lovingly made by human hands, this boat which holds his precious flesh every time we gather.

He’s here, but, like the Kingdom he calls us to build, he’s also not here.

He’s here, and he’s out in the storm, and we all have work to do.

For ninety years we’ve been feeding hungry bellies and hungry hearts. We’ve reached out through the storm toward the light and received our beloved into our boat.

This time, though, let’s also take a page from Matthew’s Gospel, and step onto the water ourselves.

Take heart.

He is.

We are.