The feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus walking on the water have been known to me throughout my life. In fact the mysteries or signs of these miracles become obscured by familiarity. For example, in my imagination, the miracle is as Pastor Ray labeled it, the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Yet that is not stated in John. We are only told the people ate all the bread and fish they wanted and that the fragments of leftover bread filled twelve baskets. How this was done remains a mystery.
Being obscured by familiarity was broken this week by the Oblique Strategy card I drew - Take away the elements in order of apparent non importance. The strategy illuminated the verses. Viewing this John account detail by detail forced a fresh examination. Look at a detail in this fresh look. The narrator of John intrudes and comments on the story in the sixth verse "He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do." This is offered as an explanation to Jesus asking Philip "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" Yet how would the narrator know this? Jesus would need to recount this later and essentially say, "Well, I already knew what I was going to do. I was just testing Philip at the time." This is not a voice of Jesus that I recognize from the Gospels.
There are differences in detail between the Mark account last week and the John account this week. In Mark's account the crowd came to the place in advance of Jesus and the disciples and met Jesus as he came ashore. In today's gospel Jesus goes up on the mountain with the disciples and sees the crowd coming. This is not to dwell on discrepancies in the Gospels but, rather, to show the points and perspectives each Gospel find that are important.
Pastor Ray talked about how easy it is for Christians to sacramentalize this miracle. I agree. Jesus will do it himself a few verses from this in John. The crowd obviously draws the parallel between Jesus and Elisha when they see Jesus as a prophet. They know the scripture we read in today's First Reading - 2 Kings 4:42-44. This shows Jesus is also sacramentalizing scripture which makes his actions all the more powerful.
As I debated which elements would be taken away based on apparent non importance the most important detail in each of these stories was "apparently" the miracle itself. Take away the qualifier "apparent" however, and the list is very different, particularly after last week's set up.
The plan is for Jesus and his disciples to rest and recuperate. That does not happen. In the first story Jesus is moved, by compassion, to feed people. Teaching and feeding the crowd was not initially part of his personal plans. Pastor Ray preached that Jesus feeds without any qualification. There is no question about whether the crowd deserved to be fed or limitations based on any logistical consideration. This detail shows that there no qualifications brought in by his individual preferences or plans he may have in mind.
Another detail to reflect on is the concern Jesus has to sit people down on the grass before distributing the loaves and fishes. This may be viewed as an unimportant detail. If, however, this is seen as an invitation to table fellowship without a table or a link back to the crowd as sheep being fed, the crowd sitting on grass may be extremely important.
This next detail that comes up is an issue that Jesus will address further in John. Is the crowd gathered because they see Jesus as a Santa Claus figure who will provide all that is asked of him? The prosperity perspective of the Gospel comes into full play when the crowd wants to make the Santa Claus Jesus their king. He resists these efforts by retreating. More about this in upcoming posts but it is apparent Jesus will not show his power directly as a king would when addressing basic human needs.
Jesus walking on the water also becomes strange when the story is examined detail by detail. The disciples go down to the sea and get in the boat and start heading to Capernaum. The time moves from evening into night signifying hours have past and still Jesus has not yet come. The obvious question is did they still expect him to come? Did they expect him to arrive on another boat? Even if he did take another boat, would they still be expecting him after they had rowed for miles? Wouldn't a reunion happen only when both boats reached their destination?
Jesus walks on the sea and comes near their boat. The disciples are terrified but, after he speaks, they want to take him in the boat. Whether he actually gets in the boat is not specified in this particular translation but immediately after their desire to get him in their boat is expressed, they reach their destination.
This takes us back to the sermon Pastor Ray preached where he gave us a choice of whether there was a multiplication of loaves or whether the miracle was accomplished by people sharing what they already had with them. John does not give us clues on this but rather uses language in both these stories that is strange and undercuts what is being seen as important if these verses are viewed as a newspaper report of a miracle that could have been videotaped.
A good eye witness reporter would have told us whether this happened by multiplication or by sharing with the feeding of the 5.000. The reasons the disciples left Jesus behind and when they expected to encounter him again before he walked on the water would have been included in any good news article.Obviously these things are not deemed important in how these accounts come to us. Yet these are the questions our minds today immediately confront. We don't first reflect on what the scripture might reveal as important.
Is multiplication over sharing a better option for Christians to believe? Did he actually walk on the water or was the sea shallow where he did this? Interestingly the truth of the feeding of the 5,000 in John is only found in examining the leftovers and the impact of walking on the water is recorded mostly in the disciples' reaction to the event. In both stories the strongest evidence of miracles comes indirectly.
One approach to answering what John is emphasizing is to take a step back. Is the important question whether God chooses to reveal power in our natural world in a supernatural way? We have looked so far at answers that are predicated on this account basically being a poorly written newspaper article or promoting metaphors that are not factually "true" in the everyday world in which Jesus lived. The reason this must be a poor newspaper article is that the critical how questions on every reader's minds encountering this are not addressed in the reporting.
Certainly the language and construction of the narratives in John are not easily categorized. We don't necessarily even have words for a category it may fall under, although some have tried. Leonard Sweet came up with a word, narraphor, that attempts to address the language of the Bible for today's readers. Sweet observes our culture speaks in story and images. People today long for “stories built around a metaphor set to a soundtrack.” And to communicate the gospel in a relevant way, he asserts we have to learn and speak like this to relate God's message.
We are wired for stories. We become our stories. Our search for identity is not primarily a search for principles or world views. Story and image form the heart of our self-conception. We don’t seek values and principles and props alone. We want narraphors that help place us in the world, within ourselves, and to know our God better. This becomes an evermore deeply involving pursuit with images that constantly offer more passionate soundtracks The pursuit belongs to us personally while also remaining above our power.
The summary of today's Gospel in the bulletin states it nicely, "The mystery of God cannot be brought under human control."
OS - Take away the elements in order of apparent non importance
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