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June 8, 2008
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Stories of Transformation from the Book of John
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Changed Bread"
John 6:1-15
As you listen to the Scripture reading this morning, or as you read along in your Bible or the pew Bible, I ask you to listen for an image, or phrase or word that strikes you.
Share what struck you with someone next to you.
This is one of the most familiar accounts connected to the life of Jesus. It is the only one of the miracles which finds itself retold in each of the Gospels. So, most have heard of the feeding of the 5,000, the phrase “loaves and fishes” means something to many people, and you will hear people tell stories saying how God has done it again in their lives – where there was not enough to feed whatever their multitude was, but God multiplied what they offered so that all shared.
As we look at it for a moment today, we recognize it as the event (one of two in this chapter) that preludes a dialogue and discourse which will last the rest of the chapter. If you had heard the whole chapter with the dialogue about how Jesus is the true bread come down from heaven, and about how life comes through feasting upon, in other words believing in Jesus, you would have recognized that the main point is that Jesus is the bread of life.
Already in John we’ve witnessed how Jesus transformed the ordinary elements of life. He was the true life. In Him was light. The true light. He transformed water into wine. He was the best wine which God had saved until last. Jesus turned Nicodemus’ eyes from a physical to a spiritual birth. He helped the woman at the well to encounter the Living Water. He alone helped her eyes shift from an earthly to the Heavenly supply. Now this crowd experiences a similar shift.
The words used to describe the meal give no hint that the meal was just sacramental in size. This is not a story given as a parallel to Holy Communion. Rather, this crowd ate until glutted, sated, satisfied, filled. They could eat no more, the text says. At this point, having begun with just 5 small loaves, still 12 baskets full were collected of the fragments that were left over!
John adds the detail that these were barley loaves quite possibly pointing to a miracle done by the Prophet Elisha in 2 Kings when he fed 100 people from 20 barley loaves and had some left over. The loaves there and here would have been a small flat bread common to the region. In Elisha’s time, God multiplied the bread, and here again, the bread is multiplied but the magnitude of multiplication this time shouts that “one greater than Elisha is here.”
When the crowd experienced this miracle, they awakened to the possibility that Jesus was the one long anticipated, the prophet whom Moses predicted would one day come. Jesus knew that they intended to forcefully seize him and make him king, so he withdrew from them.
This begins a dialogue with the crowd and then with the Jews about his identity. They track him the next day to Capernaum not because they believe He is the Son of God, but because, as Jesus tells them, they ate and were filled. They were seeking life in the wrong places, they are “working” for the food that perishes. They need to instead place faith in Jesus, which is to do the work God intends, to ‘believe in the One sent”. Whereas they had made the trek around the Sea or across it in search of physical food, Jesus tells them to instead place faith in Him, to put their energies into believing. Faith here is presented as our response to what God has done in us, and Jesus as the source of true nourishment, the true bread, the source of life.
As we think of this remember the bread Jesus is speaking of is the flat bread I just described. They would not have used utensils to eat meals, but would have used a piece of bread. Without the bread to grab the food, to sandwich it and scrape the bowl clean, you could not have eaten. The “bread of life” is an apt phrase then, for it was the means of gaining nourishment, as Jesus is the only means to the life God offers.
And there is plenty of life in Jesus.
The little boy discovered this. He had left home with just enough lunch for himself. His five barley loaves and the two sardine-sized fish would have been enough to sate his hunger. The region around the sea of Galilee was known for these small fish which they pickled and shipped all around the known world. So when you hear of two fish don’t imagine 30 pound salmon, but sardines.
So he had only a small lunch but demonstrated more faith in what Jesus could do with that then the disciples who had been traveling with Jesus for some time. First Philip thought the idea preposterous and impossible to purchase enough bread from the local stores and then Andrew offered this boy’s lunch, I assume with the boy’s permission for he offered it to Jesus.
It was after the meal was served and enjoyed that Jesus gives instruction to his disciples in v. 3 to “gather the fragments leftover, let nothing be wasted”.
When reading through this story, that was the phrase that caught me. It caught me for it has history in my life as the Holy Spirit has used the verse and applied it to my own heart when facing hurts and places where I feel shattered into pieces, the care of Jesus for me has come in this verse, “gather the fragments leftover, let nothing be wasted.”
It has come in working with people as they have come to me with deep hurts and deep seated beliefs that Jesus does not care for the hurts, and has spoken to hearts a message of hope that yes God speaks over broken people that “nothing will be wasted” of all they have encountered and endured.
It reminds me also of the Romans 8:28 verse that says God causes all things to work together for good for those who love him… for the “all things” being worked by God seems to equal the “let nothing be wasted” spoken here.
But you may think I am stretching this passage far afield when Jesus was just speaking about the gathering of fragments of bread not about human hearts, until you notice what I have been pondering about the word translated here “wasted”.
In this chapter and book John used this word frequently and most of the time it is not used of wasted food but of wasted lives, of people who perish or of people who are lost.
Note some of these places with me:
In 6:27 in response to how the people have traveled far to get more food from Jesus, Jesus says not to work for the food that perishes but for that which endures to eternal life. Here it is food that is perishing or being wasted, and contrasted to eternal food.
In 6:39 the word appears again. This time used of people. Jesus is “out to do God’s will” which he says is not to lose any given him. Those who have placed faith in Jesus will not be lost will not perish, but Jesus will raise them up on the last day.
Beyond this chapter the best known place where this word is found in John 3:16 in which we read that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, Jesus, that whoever believes in him may not perish (that’s our word) but have eternal life.
To be lost then is to perish eternally.
In 10:10 again we find this word used in connection with the work of Satan. In this verse we read that satan comes to steal, kill and destroy. While God’s will is to save through the coming of His Son, satan is working to destroy.
In 11:50 the High Priest prophecies that it is better for one man, Jesus, to die for the people than for the nation to perish, or be lost. Again, perishing is applied to people, and here to an entire nation.
In 12:25, the last use of this word before the discourses which end this book, Jesus has just predicted his death saying that a kernel of wheat must fall into the ground and die or it will remain just one kernel, but it if dies it will bear much fruit. Then in this verse we read that the man who loves his life will lose it. If he clings to his one life instead of releasing it in faith to God, he will end up perishing just with that one life.
From this quick word study we see how Jesus is not concerned with the fragments of bread as much as with a demonstration of how much God cares for those people who are fragmented from His church, as much as He cares for your own heart broken into many pieces because of the sins of others.
For John to be “lost” or to “perish” is an eternal reality.
This is a fitting Sunday to think about being lost and being found, for we have just come through 4 days of the rummage sale. Many of you have spent hours sorting through the stuff sometimes closely akin to trash in order that someone may discover some treasures amongst it all. As I was around the sale on Thursday morning watching all these dear people searching and searching for their treasures, I was struck with how we people will search and search for a bargain, something that can be salvaged. And how in that very attitude of ours we are like the Heavenly Father – who through Jesus said “let nothing be wasted” speaking not only of fragments of bread, of the leftovers, but of people, that not one life be lost to the work of redemption.
The work of God is so much greater than we give Him credit for. We tend line up our faith with Andrew and Philip more than with the little boy. We tend to believe that what we see is what we get. We look at our meager lunch and don’t think to offer it to Jesus so that He can do what he likes with it. We tend to look at people as we looked at the rummage judging by what we see on the outside what is or is not a treasure to Another.
But God views people with hope. If with that boy we offer what little we have to Jesus and release it, what astounding things God will do.
“Let Nothing be wasted” Jesus said and I see Him confirming this again and again.
Skip Heiney and I met for lunch on Wednesday to go over plans for baccalaureate and to clarify again the approach we are to have as we moved toward Wednesday June 4th. We agreed that so often our attitude can be based upon our own ego needs – we want a lot of people there, we want something to be successful in our eyes so that we will look good. Oh we say, so that God gets the glory but so often if we are gut-level honest it is about us. We can get caught in the sin of “counting” sheep instead of feeding them. We talked about this and together agreed to release the evening to the Lord recognizing that it can never be about us but about him. We brought our meager “lunch” – the work we had put into the event, the plans, the advertising, etc -- to Jesus. And He demonstrated again that he will let “nothing be wasted.”
That night fifteen graduates came, among them Linda Kinsky and Jamie O’Neil from our congregation. This was more graduates than we had last year and about 40 guests came from the Banks community. The band was so much better than we had hoped for. Everyone was blessed by the music. One young man who was leaving a basketball camp prior to the beginning baccalaureate said to Trace Thornberry from Grace Bible Church, “who is the band warming up? They are awesome.” The speakers were topnotch. Grace Bible provided an amazing spread of food for afterward. Everything was great. Best was to be back on the High School campus where baccalaureate belongs.
But beyond all that God did in the kids’ lives who came, in our lives through the whole evening, He demonstrated this theme of nothing being wasted. After the whole event was over and only Trace and I were still there cleaning up while the band packed up their things, the janitor, Chad, came in to see what he would have to do for clean up. He had been working in the building during the night and said to me, “Man, that music was incredible. I loved it!” and then this big man demonstrated how he was sweeping and mopping while kind of dancing to the music. I thought of this passage, that Jesus lets nothing be wasted, even the music of this group being used to bless, encourage, and bring light to the heart of this man while doing his job in the building.
As I walk forward I think that Jesus must just be using all the fragments – bits and pieces of conversations, experiences of life, even what we view as junk, in order that nothing be wasted but that all parts of our lives and all people can be brought into the fullness of redemption.
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