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“The Persistence of Disbelief” – (John 6:1-20/Ephesians 3:14-21)
First Presbyterian Church, Richmond (July 26, 2009)
Samuel L. Adams
A little more than a year ago, Helen and I took our kids up to Washington for some
sightseeing and a game between the Nationals and Braves. This was our son Charlie’s first trip
to DC, and he had just turned 4. We wandered along the Mall and saw the World War II
memorial on a beautiful spring afternoon. As most of you know, from the base of the
Washington Monument one has an expansive view of the White House lawn. As I was
explaining to my five year-old Charlie that the flying of the American flag over the White House
indicates that the President is in town, he exclaimed, “Daddy, look. I see some people walking
around. I bet the President is looking up at us right now.” Ever the skeptic, I told him that many
people worked at the White House, and just because we happened to be looking that way did not
mean that the President would come out on the south lawn and wave to us. Unhappy with my
answer, Charlie replied, “Daddy, we are a long way from the White House right now, and you do
not really know whether it is the President or not. It could be.”
After wandering down to the Lincoln Memorial, we returned to our hotel, and I went
down to the fitness room to do the treadmill. Glancing at the television, the first story on CNN
began this way, “President Bush just appeared on the south lawn on the White House, facing the
Washington Monument to discuss the nation’s gas prices and what to do about them.” My son
Charlie had not only seen the President during his very first hour in Washington, DC, but he
uncovered the inherent skepticism of his father in the process. If he had been a little older than
4, a teenager for example, I am sure he would never have let me hear the end of it.
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The imagination and faith of a child are two of the most beautiful things in the world, and
I am sure parents of all ages remember watching the progression of their kids as they figure out
different things about the way the world operates. One major aspect of this progression is
coming to terms with the difference between the fantastic and the mundane, the imaginary and
the real, the fictional and the non-fictional. Each one of us can remember when we drew certain
conclusions about human interactions, myths that were debunked, and days in which our
imagination was swallowed up by grim realities. These experiences may have been punctuated
by an adult telling us that this is part of growing up.
Now I do not want to belittle the importance of intellectual and emotional growth.
Maturing can be a wonderful thing as we learn from our mistakes, make new discoveries, and
sharpen our perception of human behavior. The Old Testament book of Proverbs celebrates the
wisdom that comes with experience, in a saying that should warm many of our hearts, including
my own: “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life” (Prov 16:31). Longevity
is celebrated in this saying as a sign of wisdom. When I have been in the presence of an elder I
truly respect, I often notice the experience that emanates from their gaze. My grandfather, who
grew up in the Great Depression and fought during World War II, had the look of a person who
had seen so much that nothing could surprise him.
Many of us have mourned the loss of Walter Cronkite, who devoted his career to
separating truth from fiction and telling us about it. The wrinkles on Cronkite’s brow and the
gravitas he brought to the nightly newscast were reflections of his vast knowledge and
experience. He was our national sage: here was a man who had seen and heard everything and
knew how to discriminate fact from hogwash. This was a true gift to the nation during the
tumultuous period he served as anchor.
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And yet with this kind of experience, skepticism and even cynicism can arise. We get
burned a time or two by people we thought were our friends, and some of us get jaded by
unforeseen circumstances. Others are scarred by tragedy, such as the premature death of a loved
one, the loss of a job, or divorce. These also are aspects of our past, and they make us who we
are. For all of us as we grow older, it is a matter of seeing that things are not always fair. To use
the words of another wisdom book, Ecclesiastes, we find out that “the race is not always to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to
the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecc 9:11). All of us have experienced the
turbulence in the economy this last year, and regardless of your political persuasion, it is safe to
say we have all been given a bitter reminder to keep our wits about us, because not everyone
plays fair. We even have an expression for knowledge based on experience: worldly wise.
Yet something is lost when we become skeptical and worldly-wise, even if the
circumstances of our broken world lead us in that direction. We lose the child-like wonder that
comes with believing in what is seemingly impossible. This is not a small point, because our
Christian tradition confronts us again and again with miracle stories. The New Testament in
particular is filled with accounts of Jesus’ healing of someone, his ability to cast out demons, or
perform some super-human act as a way of bringing others into the faith and making a point to
his detractors. For those of us seeking a rational Christianity that explains everything in a logical
and a systematic manner, these miracle stories are difficult to categorize. Do we dismiss them
entirely as the folklore of ancient Judea? Or do we say that those kind of things happened in
ancient times, but they no longer occur in today’s “real world”? Those of us who examine the
Bible in academic circles frequently point to the New Testament miracle stories as an effort by
the Gospel writers to link Jesus with Elijah, Elisha, and Moses. One can go through the narrative
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details and find numerous parallels between what Jesus does and the miracles associated with
Elijah. This is one of the reasons Jesus is frequently mistaken for Elijah in the Gospels. Other
stories, including today’s lesson from John’s gospel, make Jesus a prophet and a leader in the
mold of Moses.
Yet these stories have a larger purpose for us as Christians: they remind us that with God,
all things are possible. The miracle stories make accessible for us the beauty of the creation, the
wondrous gift of life that God has given to each of us, and the fact that amazing events happen
around us every day, and we are too busy becoming worldly-wise to notice. C.S. Lewis explains
that “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the
whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” Miracles place God’s ability to
accomplish anything into a bite-sized nugget so that we can understand the awesomeness of the
One we worship.
Of all the miracle stories, the feeding of the 5,000 is probably the most famous one.
Aside from the resurrection, this is the only miracle account that appears in all 4 gospels, so it is
obviously a narrative of some significance, very important for the earliest Christians. Today we
look at the story as it appears in John, the gospel that shares the least in common with the other
three. Now one of the things I impress upon my students at Union is to read the Bible with
discerning eyes, to look at passages very carefully, to mine the text for interesting details they
may not have noticed before. Above all, to be careful that they do not confuse familiarity with
understanding. All of us know this story, but I want us to look more closely this morning at
John’s account and see if there is anything surprising and relevant for a contemporary world that
is so filled with skepticism and disbelief.
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The first thing you might notice is that Jesus is being somewhat sly in the story. He
knows how things are going to pan out, but he plays on the insecurity and know-it-all attitude of
his apostles to make a point. He sees the huge crowd coming his way nudges his disciple Philip
and asks, “Where in the world are we to buy bread for all of these people to eat?” He is certainly
aware how things are going to play out, but he wants to hear the answer that just about any
person would give to make a larger point. “Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for
each of them to get a little” is what Philip tells him. In other words, Philip tells him, “No way!”
We have no chance of providing for all of these people, and so the question you are asking is
pointless.
There is a real subtlety in the gospel lesson at this point. Notice where they get the food
from, for I do not believe this to be incidental information in the passage. Andrew tells Jesus
that “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so
many people?" (John 6:9). We know nothing about this lad other than the fact that he has the
five loaves and two fish, which is all the food that is present. If we want to play Sherlock
Holmes for a minute and make some deductions, two are apparent. First, the boy is already
acquainted with the disciples and Jesus; they know who he is and that he has bread. Second and
more importantly, he is willing to turn his food over to Jesus. The other three gospels do not
recount this boy as the source of the food – the disciples simply go out into the vast crowd
looking for what is available. In John, however, we have this young man, and the only thing we
know about him is that he is willing to surrender his small supply of food to Jesus. He seems to
have faith that something good will happen, and he is willing to take a risk on behalf of everyone
present to see what Jesus will do. This brings us to a point not often made when examining the
feeding of the 5,000. Without the willingness of this child to believe in Jesus, the miracle would
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never have occurred. It is not the doubting of the apostles that makes the feeding of the
multitude possible, but the faith of a child.
What follows in the Gospel lesson is the recounting of the miracle itself. These verses
parallel the gift of manna in the Old Testament, when God provides food with Moses in charge
of the people, and everyone is filled. All of those present with Jesus sit in a grassy field and eat,
with more than enough to spare. Jesus is the host of this banquet, and thanks to the faith of the
lad who provided the food, he is going to see to it that everyone is fed. Jesus orders his disciples
to let everyone eat until they are satisfied, and then gather up the remainder. Here is a final
detail to the feast: Jesus does not want any food to be wasted. Even though he has just fed a
great multitude, he orders his disciples to take up any of the remaining bread and fish. Jesus
combines a miraculous ability to provide with an aversion to waste.
We all wonder when we read a story like this whether it really happened. It defies human
logic to suppose that an enormous crowd could be fed with such meager provisions. Yet before
we relegate this story to the realm of folktale, it needs to be state plainly that we hang our faith
tradition on the notion that God sent his son into the world to give us new life. That this savior
literally walked the streets of first-century Palestine, performing amazing acts and interpreting
the Scriptures. Our entire Christian tradition is predicated on a statement that Jesus will make
later in this chapter from John: “‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be
hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’” (John 6:35). This story of the feeding
of the 5,000 forces us to take Jesus’ statement about being the bread of life both literally and
figuratively. Just as he provided wine at the wedding in Cana, he now tends to the needs of all
the hungry admirers in his presence.
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I have mentioned that the New Testament miracle stories have so many parallels with the
Elijah and Elisha narratives, which the kids in our church enacted so beautifully. Think back to
the chorus that Virginia Taylor sang, for it is relevant this morning: “God will provide strength
for the journey, bread for the morning, and shelter for the night.” This assertion is not just a feelgood chorus for a kid’s play, but the heart of our Christian faith. These miracle accounts remind
us that we owe our livelihood not to our own initiative and industriousness, but to God, who
created us and who supplies us with the food and water we need for survival. What is the first
major petition of the Lord’s Prayer? “Give us this day our daily bread.” In this statement we
affirm our dependence on God, on the miraculous intervention of the Lord we worship to supply
our every need. With a grocery story on every corner and an abundance of food in our pantries,
it is too easy to forget that this bounty is itself a miracle, a reflection of God’s amazing creation
and gracious intervention on behalf of all of us. Such bounty has to be met with thanks and a
commitment to making sure everyone gets served and nothing gets wasted.
The Christian message seeks to break through the persistence of our disbelief. Nowhere
is this hope expressed more beautifully than in the prayer in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: “I
pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and
length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that
you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us
is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the
church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Eph 3:18-21). Despite
lofty estimation of our intellects, this prayer reminds us that the love of Christ surpasses human
knowledge. Not only that, but God continues to work within us and in the world, accomplishing
more than we can possibly fathom. We may persist in our disbelief, but God persists in love for
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us, a love that does not condemn us for our own sinfulness, a love that works in the world in
ways we can never fully understand.
Many of you have seen a movie that came out a few years ago, Finding Neverland. It
tells the story of J.M. Barrie, the author of the classic play Peter Pan. Barrie befriends a widow
and her four young boys in London and begins to spend time with the boys. He models many
details in the play on these boys who do not want to grow up. You all know the story about the
London family whose children go to Neverland, meet Peter Pan, and get in all sorts of
adventures. In the movie, when the play premieres in London, Barrie is worried about how the
adults, with all of their worldly wisdom and disbelief, will perceive the story. So he decides to
pepper the opening night audience with children from a local orphanage, encouraging them to
clap for Tinkerbell and get excited about the wonderful details of Neverland and Peter Pan.
Barrie’s gamble pays off: the enthusiasm of the children is contagious, and the adults quickly
become entranced with Barrie’s play themselves. It takes the faith of these orphan children to
rouse them from their disbelief.
The paradox of being a Christian is balancing the experience of years with a belief in the
miraculous. We learn the way the world works, how to “get ahead,” and what defies logic. Yet
today we pause to acknowledge the miracle that occurred in Capernaum 2,000 years ago. A
bunch of hungry people in a field needed food, a child provided the loaves and fishes, and Jesus
made sure there was enough for everyone. His disciples doubted the possibility of this event, but
Jesus persisted anyway. As if this were not enough, he continued his journey all the way to the
cross to perform the ultimate miracle: dying for our sins and coming back to life so that we may
have life and have it abundantly. He is the bread of life, the one in whom we are supposed to
place our trust. Even when we persist in our disbelief, Jesus persists in his love for us. “God
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will provide strength for the journey, bread in the morning, and shelter for the night.” Thanks be
to God. Amen.