The next day…the crowd that was left after the feeding of the 5000 begin to look for Jesus…
Not knowing where He went, they got into boats and go looking in Capernaum where Jesus, in the Gospel of John, appears to stay when He is not traveling and preaching…
The crowd is hungry again, and in this subsistent society are in need of either buying bread for the day or finding that prophet that can take very little physical bread and feed huge numbers…
We also know that between the feeding of the 5000 and the crowd finding Jesus in the morning, Jesus has witnessed the disciples trying to cross what John calls the Lake of Galilee where the wind has grown strong and the water rough…
The disciples are frightened of capsizing and Jesus comes to them walking on the water…and immediately as He identifies himself, the water smooths out and the boat reaches the shore…
Two stories… Both of which point to the tangible and physical needs…the need for daily sustenance and the need for safety from drowning in the Lake…
It seems to me that there is a bleeding edge or a tipping point in all of these stories…that edge or point where fear and hunger become so profound that one can open one’s heart, one’s imagination, one’s sense of possibility so one can see the edges of hope…the edges of salvation; the edges of something much larger that what one either desires or expects.
A place where one can look at possibility without crying out ,”Foul!” Without fully understanding …or perhaps understanding at all…a place or an edge where the evidence of something larger than one’s imagination… just a glimpse or the edge of something so great that one must struggle to begin to wrap one’s mind around it…
I think that it is easy for us to say in our minds or hearts as we listen to or read this Gospel…well, they should have known!
After all, the disciples have been traveling with Jesus…Who did they think He was when the five loaves and two fish fed and satisfied so many?
When they saw Jesus coming near the boat and they were terrified… Why did He have to identify Himself…
Why when the crowd of people reached Jesus on the other side of the Lake did they ask for a sign so that they might see and believe…
A sign indeed! What more do they want? The 5000 were fed and ate their fill of the loaves…
But I believe that this is where the edge of salvation and hope enters the story…It is that really tough, sometimes very painful work that one has to do because there is no other choice…
When the evidence demands a closer look…a look that will cause one to question prior beliefs or cause one to do the hard work that demands one’s very best efforts.
The crowds are drawn into the story because they were physically hungry and they saw; they heard; they witnessed and they ate.
So now they have before them the work of belief…belief in something outside themselves; something outside their experiences; something greater than themselves.
Work that hurts because one has worked very hard to KNOW and now what is previously KNOWN is being questioned and the questioning is painful and often leaves one feeling frightened and unsure…
The people had before them a concrete human need and a spiritual human need…two needs that were present in the very same moment; in the hearts of the ones that desired the food that perishes and were at the same time curious about the food that endures.
Jesus is compassionate and loving knowing well that to believe in Him and to believe in God the Father requires considerable effort.
Jesus tells them that Moses did not feed the people in the wilderness but that it was God the Father that sent the manna… And that it was the bread of God that fed them and that this bread gives life abundant…
I think the response of the people at this moment melts my heart… they humbly before Jesus asks for the Bread of life …ALWAYS…
That bread that gives life forever…
This work of the belief in Jesus Christ as Lord requires of us exactly what it required of the crowd that was fed by Jesus with five loaves and two fish.
Our religious understanding develops progressively and in community…in communion with one another
God initiates the sending of the Son and in response men, women, and children believe because the Holy Spirit moves over them causing them to seek out the Incarnate one…
I once sat in a very old library… It looked like a library should look.
The tables were of thick wood polished to a shine… The library smelled of old books and was packed with the books that I wanted to read; to devour…
There were no carrels as in so many school libraries, but everyone studied together at these long tables and the silence was only broken by the turning of pages or the quiet voices of the librarian…
I was studying something that stretched my mind and my beliefs almost more than I could stand…The Old Testament was coming alive and all the things that I knew I knew…were being challenged…
I was like the people in John’s story… I knew where bread came from. You worked all day to buy the supplies to make it and you prepared it the night before so it could be baked in the morning for the next day…
I knew that if you got into a boat …especially at night in rough waters that you could easily capsize and be lost…
I knew what I knew but what I loved was the challenge of being taught what I never imagined…
My hunger for this information about the Old Testament made me weep…
I remember so clearly sitting there and like the people that ran after Jesus for the bread being humbled in God’s presence and the need to shyly ask…”Sir, give us this bread always…. Feed me with the beauty of your story. Fill me to the very brim with your love that is revealed in the salvific stories of the scripture….
God initiates these stories in both the Old and New Testament so that we are beckoned; are tempted; are fed and then hungry for more…
This work of belief always carries with it a sense of choice…and to believe and to develop belief requires considerable effort…
Sometimes it is an “Aha” and it delights us…sometime as we stand at the edge, it is as though it is dangerous to say, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
What will it require of us? What will it lead us to see? What will it reveal to us…changing us in ways that are unknown and perhaps frightening…
I can visualize the people hunting for Jesus…running after him… crying out for bread… and then as it dawns on them the enormity of the life changing offering before them…humbling asking to be a part of this glorious and grand redemption…
Amen
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