Who do you say He is?

     I know there will be some disappointment that I do not focus on David’s big sin with Bathsheba this week.  I was in discussions with colleagues who seem to be reading it for the first time as a scene in which David sexually harasses, if not outright rapes, the wife of another man.  I suppose the #metoo movement has caused people to see things in different lights, and that is a good thing.  Certainly, many women in our congregation would know the difficult situation in which Bathsheba finds herself today.  The king finds her sexy and sends his guards to fetch her.  As Mel Brooks is fond of saying, It’s good to be the king!  And, when confronted by the king’s demands, what can she say?

     Just so we are all aware, this will be known for the rest of Scripture as “David’s sin,” not Bathsheba’s.  For all my colleagues and others in the church who like to argue that God is misogynistic, particularly in the Old Testament, He seems curiously silent about blaming Bathsheba in this story, if He is misogynistic.  I mean, after all, had she not been sunbathing in plain sight of the king in that skimpy bikini or whatever, the king would never have been tempted to sleep with her, have accidentally fathered a child on her, tried to cover up his actions by summoning her husband, and, when that did not work, been forced to kill the husband to cover up the sin – that would be a misogynistic perspective.  In this story, of course, David’s big sin is brought into the light.  He has to own his actions.  But that’s a sermon for another day.

     No, I am hopeful that we do not have too many adulterers and those plotting murder to hide their adultery among us, as I did not feel called to preach on that passage.  Instead, I was drawn to John’s Gospel.  Part of the draw, I am certain, has been discussions away from Advent with clergy and folks not members of our parish.  I recognize we live in a world that wants to reduce Jesus’ standing in the world to that of prophet or wise man or hippie who tapped into the eternal consciousness status.  I know from my conversations these past three years with Adventers that we are uncomfortable with some of the claims made by the Church regarding Jesus and some of the stories told about Him.  Yet, those stories are told and recorded precisely so that you and I can figure out who Jesus is.  Is He the Messiah, God’s Anointed, the Redeemer and Savior of the world?  Is he a prophet of God?  Is He a wise man?  Is He a nut job?

     The questions are by no means new, as I remind the folks at Wrestling with Faith pretty much every month.  Every generation has to deal with the claims of and about Jesus.  The Roman’s, of course, accepted that only Caesar was a son of a god.  If the Jew’s God existed, He was merely one among a pantheon of gods, and not one particularly powerful.  After all, Rome conquered Judea and then later destroyed His Temple.  Were the Jewish God truly God, He would have protected His people against Rome and would never have allowed the destruction of His Temple!  That’s the way the world and the cosmos worked as far as they were concerned.  A God becoming human?  You have got to be kidding!  You and I would not be here otherwise, but clearly people accepted back then the claims of and about Jesus and chose to become His disciples, despite all the evidence regarding the way the cosmos worked.

     More recently, the struggle is just as stark.  CS Lewis, that wonderful Christian apologist with an Anglican perspective bluntly put it that you and I in the end must come to terms with only two conclusions.  Either Jesus was a madman with delusions of grandeur seldom seen in human beings, or He was precisely who He said He was, the Savior and Redeemer of the world!  Our answer to that question of which was He has repercussions throughout or life and even eternity.

     A few months ago, during the Easter season, I was reminded of that raging battle in a unique form.  I know some Adventers watched Jesus Christ Superstar with John Legend.  I know, most of us old folks tuned in to see Alice Cooper play Herod (that’s a sentence I never thought I would hear come out of my mouth!), but NBC really wanted to market John Legend as the star – it makes sense since he played Jesus.  Perhaps the most famous song from that musical is where Judas asks the question I just raised for us today.  To that tune we all associate with this musical, with the loud brass and Judas repeats the question “Jesus Christ, Superstar.  Do You think You’re what they say You are?  Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Who are You? What have You sacrificed?”—You hear the words with the music, don’t you?  We should.  The musical builds to that question, much as the world’s is forced to confront it as well.  Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterpiece simply deals with a question that has resonated throughout human history for 2000 years.  Who is He?

     We switch this week from Mark to John and begin a several week study of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.  In part, we will begin a serious examination of that question, who is Jesus, but we will also get some teaching on the Sacraments and the idea of believing or faith.  We will also get a healthy dose of community.  But, for the next several weeks, we will be chewing on and gnawing on, who Jesus is.  By the way, you don’t appreciate it, but that’s a really good pun a few weeks from now.  The crowds, we are told, continue to follow Jesus because of the healing miracles He is doing for the sick.  Jesus and the disciples retreat up a mountain.  When Jesus looks up, John notes, Jesus saw the large crowd coming toward them.

     This miracle and the Resurrection, you may or may not know, are the only miracles shared in all four Gospels, but each author has a little different perspective on the event recorded.  Two details are important enough for John to have shared with his intended audience.  First, the festival of the Passover is near.  This little detail should be of incredible importance to us.  It sets the stage for the entirety of chapter 6 and the Bread of Life discourse.  There is no way that the events that unfold over the next few weeks can be properly understood apart from the Exodus event and Moses.  Every person who is fed by Jesus will be reminded of the Passover and Exodus and of the leadership of Moses.  The comparisons and contrasts will be unavoidable.  The second detail is the fact that there is nothing among the people that can account for the abundant provision that occurs.  I know idiotic preachers like to claim that sharing was the miracle here, there is no way that so many people could be fed by five loaves and two fish.  But, inspired by the innocent sharing of the little boy, the crowd discovers it has enough to provide for all.  Wrong!  Jesus provides, and provides abundantly.  All eat their fill because of Him, and the leftovers are more than existed at the beginning of His provision.  The crowd understands that Jesus is responsible.  They follow Him around for the rest of this chapter and chew on His hard words precisely because they recognize the provision that comes from Him.  That is not to say by any means that they will accept His claims, but they will wrestle with them.  Just as you and I must as well. . . Just as significantly, we are given a pattern about unsurprised failure here.  One of the great frustrations of those passionate about God is the fact that so many people water down His claims or outright reject Him.  Such rejections and tempering’s are lamentable, but they are not surprising.  Put differently, you and I should not be discouraged when people reject God and His claims on their lives.  Such happened when He was incarnate, just as it happened prior and after.  In the end, of course, God gave us the freedom to choose, but that also means we must choose.

     So, who is Jesus?  Is He a prophet like Moses?  John has set the stage by reminding us that the time of this miracle is around the time of the Passover.  Imagine the Fourth of July on steroids—that’s what the Passover meant to Israel.  We offer burnt offerings and amazing fireworks because of unfair taxes.  Passover was the time where the Jews reminded themselves that God kept His covenant with their ancestors and heard their cry in slavery in Egypt.  God acted amazingly to free them.  What followed, of course, was forty years of wandering and instruction, led by God’s prophet Moses.  Each miracle in the Exodus story has significance, but the feeding and watering miracles had a prominent focus in the history of Israel.  When Israel was hungry, God fed them with manna.  When Israel needed water for themselves and their flocks, God provided clean rushing water.  When Israel grumbled about the lack of meat, God gave them so much quail that it was coming out through their nostrils.  So, one of the significant acts of God was to provide, and to provide abundantly, in the midst of starvation, in the midst of thirst.  Apart from the cultivated land.

     If I have done my job this morning, you understand the cultural heritage of today’s Gospel narrative a bit better.  There is, of course, one important distinction.  In the Passover narrative, Moses never takes credit for doing the miracles.  When Israel is hungry, Moses intercedes on their behalf for food.  God answers Moses’ prayer with manna and the instructions of how to gather it.  When Israel thirsts, Moses asks for water.  God tells Moses to strike the rock, and Israel is watered in the desert wilderness.  When Israel complains about the lack of meat and that the manna has become distasteful, Moses intercedes with God, Who promises flesh will be coming out their noses.  Again and again, whenever there is need, Moses intercedes and God acts.  The plagues over Egypt, the parting of the sea—name your favorite miracle.  Never does Moses believe, nor God’s people, that Moses did any of those might acts!  Always, each and every single time, it is God acting.  It is often left to Moses to explain, but nowhere does Moses take nor is he given credit.  All are attributed to God.

     Contrast that with Jesus’ actions today.  In a precursor for our Eucharist, Jesus takes, blesses, and then distributes.  Jesus Himself provides.  He does not need to intercede with God because He is God’s Son – a claim that will, by the end of the chapter, cause many to fall away.  There is no intercession, no hocus pocus, no arguing with God.  Jesus has compassion on the 5000 and feeds them all until they are full.  More amazingly, even after eating their fill, there are more leftovers than original food!  Leave aside for a second the obvious imagery of twelve baskets.  Just think of the physicallness, if you will, of that provision.  There are more leftovers at the end of this feeding story than there was food to begin with!

     I know that miracle bothers many.  How can there be more food leftover?  In the grand scheme of miracles, as if you and I have daily encounters with them, which is harder to believe: that God could raise a man from the dead or that He could generate so much food?  I mean, if we believe, if we truly accept that the Tomb was empty that Easter morning, what makes twelve baskets of leftovers seem so implausible?  If we accept that God created everything, the heavens and the earth, all that is seen and unseen, what would prevent Him later from creating more food for this event? 

    Clearly, the folks in the crowd kind of understand the significance of the meal.  They go to take Jesus by force and make Him king, and Jesus withdraws to the mountain by Himself.  But they seem to forget after a while.  Maybe they don’t trust what they have seen and tasted; maybe their new hunger pains make them forget what Jesus just did.  Maybe like us they doubt what they saw, what they tasted, what they understood.  We are not told.  In a short time, though, they will need to be convinced all over again.  In a short time, Jesus will tell them they are chasing after the wrong provision.  In a short time, most will reject His claim as Lord and Messiah and God’s Son.  And they witnessed the miracle first hand.  If folks like that can fall away so easily, is it any wonder that we can and do, 2000 years later and however many miles distant?

     John, of course, is not done.  The feeding of the 5000 ought to be enough for one pericope, but John sees fit to include the events that happened later that evening.  When evening comes, the disciples get into the boats to head back to Capernaum from Tiberias.  Just to remind you all, many of Jesus’ disciples were from Capernaum, and a number of His Apostles were fishermen.  Getting in the boats to transport around would not be that unusual, especially when travelling between these two communities.  A storm blows up, but it is not the storm that terrifies them.  Instead, they see Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat and that terrifies them.  Why?  Part of the fear, no doubt, is the unexpectedness of the event.  Part of it, too, likely revolved around the Canaanite and other ANE cultural teachings regarding the water.  The ocean was, axiomatically, understood to be the abode of chaos in many of the Mediterranean cultures.  No doubt a few of the disciples worried that the figure they saw walking towards them was the deity of chaos, possibly signifying to them that their lives were ending.

     Keep in mind, too, the disciples and Apostles would also be steeped well in the Passover and Exodus time of year.  Who could not help see or hear of such a story that time of year and wonder if it related to the parting of the sea?  Perhaps they related the event to Psalms 77 or 107?  Perhaps, unlike us, they understand the polemic at play in this encounter.  We miss it throughout the Old Testament as we think we understand chaos and the forces of nature better.  But nearly every time Scripture mentions the oceans, it speaks of God as setting its boundaries, limiting its tides, playing with its Leviathan’s like little guppies, and otherwise bringing order to chaos.  Every time Scripture speaks of God ordering the great waters, it speaks that God is greater than the idols of other nations and cultures.  How would you feel if the next time you were on a cruise in the Caribbean, I somehow walked across the water to you to remind you to go to church, get your pledge in, or chew you out for forgetting to get a substitute?  Lol We’d both be pretty freaked out, would we not?  We are not told what the motivation of the disciples is, we are told simply that they are terrified by what they see.

     Jesus, of course, speaks into that terror.  Literally.  It is I; do not be afraid.  “Ego eimi” – It is I – are the words spoken by God to Moses from Burning Bush.  You would know it simply as the great I AM statement.  I won’t bore you with the grammar lesson other than to say that His selection of this phrase seems intentional.  Jesus could have just as easily said, “eimi,” and announced it was Him.  Instead, He uses God’s self-identifying language from the Burning Bush, a self-identifying effort that predates all those events celebrated in the Passover, which serves as the background of all of this.  Still want to argue that Jesus did not know Who He was?  Still want to believe that He was not who they thought He was, the Son of God?  In the midst of the culmination of the Exodus event, the Passover, Jesus choses the words that announced to Moses and Israel that Yahweh had not forgotten His promises to Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebekah, Jacob & Rachel, and all the matriarchs and patriarchs!  All who longed for Messiah to appear would wonder if God was acting again!

     What is the second half of His answer?  “Do not be afraid.”  When you reflect upon your favorite stories in Scripture that involve an encounter with God, what always follows the introduction?  “Do not be afraid!”  When Abraham meets the travelers; when Jacob wrestles with the Holy One, when the angels announce to Mary the impending birth, or when angels tell Mary and the other women His is not dead, they always instruct the human being not to be afraid.  Why?  Because instinctively, when we are in the presence of a holy, righteous, just, and etc God, we recognize our own standing.  Instinctively, we are terrified.  And were not God in the business of relating to us, we would remain in terror.  Rightfully so!  Can God accept sin?  Of course, not.  Among His various revealed characteristics are His holiness, righteousness, and justice.  He no more can accept sin in His presence than you or I can countenance not breathing or blinking.  And when confronted with sin, what does God do?  He destroys it!  Human beings are right when they recognize the mortal danger of being in the presence of a righteous and just God.  Were He not willing to credit our faith as righteousness, we could not stand before Him.  None of us.

     It is a hard word, is it not?  It is incredibly hard to learn that we do not deserve grace.  It is a hard word to be reminded that, were we left to our own devices, our own efforts, none of us could approach God without fear.  He is not lucky that we chose Him; no, indeed, we are the lucky ones in this relationship.  And part of our reminder over the next few weeks will be that God chose us, that we approach Him on His terms, that we needed Him to stretch out His arms in that saving embrace on the hard wood of the Cross 2000 years ago.  Always in the background of the next few weeks will be that reminder that death passed us each over, just as it did our spiritual ancestors in Egypt. 

     Why, do you think, are these two narratives blended together?  Why, do you think, did not our lectionary editors separate them and add another week to the sacramental lessons included?  It seems to me there are a couple important reasons to read them together.  Often, when I pray before preaching or before healings, I ask that God give us the eyes to see Him, ears to hear Him, and a heart to understand Him.  I see the nods.  Good, most of you have heard it.  Have you ever wonder why the sacraments sing to you?  Have you ever wondered why you are in a liturgical church and happy that you are, even as friends and families are just as content to be in churches that de-emphasize the sacraments?  Is there something wrong with us.  Is there something wrong with them?

     Think back to the response of the crowd.  How did they respond to the feeding?  They see the sign, understand its meaning, and then misapply their brains to figure out what to do.  Was Jesus making a messianic claim in the feeding?  You better believe He was.  And if you doubt it, He will remind us in a few verses that those who ate the bread distributed by Moses died but that those who eat of His bread will live forever.  The crowd rightly perceives that Jesus is God’s Anointed, but they wrongly interpret what that means.  They want to make Him a political figure, a king, but He is that and much, much more!  He is the Servant King, the true Pastor, who has come down from heaven to ransom His people Israel.  What chains them more effectively than any Egyptian or Babylonian or Assyrian chains is sin.  Thankfully for them and us, He understands that even when they do not.  And so He rejects there attempts to fashion Him into a king of their own choosing.  In a way, He saves them from a repeat of the selection of Saul.  They will struggle with His refusal.  They will wrestle with His subsequent teachings.  Many will even reject Him and His claims.  But in the end, they will be reminded that He is who He claimed to be, the Son of God, the Messiah.  The meal, with all its Passover overtones, will serve as a reminder to those of us who come after, of His mission, of His love, and of the path He chose to walk to redeem each and every one of us!  To this breaking and distributing we will add the reminders, the reminders that the bread we eat and the blood we drink are His, given for our freedom from sin.  And, just as significantly, we will remind ourselves that it is a pledge of what is to come—a pledge given by God Hmself!

     How about the disciples?  The ones who had been with Him the most?  How do they respond to the feeding and His walking on water?  Jesus asks Philip where they are to buy bread to feed the crowds.  Philip mishears the question and focuses instead on the economics, the price.  Then, later, when confronted with Jesus’ walking near the boat in the rough seas, how do they respond?  They are terrified.  Then, when they finally decide to take Him into their boat, they immediately reach the land to which they were going.  In one sense, maybe we should all feel better about ourselves.  If our ancestors misheard Him, and they were physically with Him, maybe our failure to discern Him and His voice is a bit more palatable given the way we relate to Him today.  I hear the laughter and need to remind us all that God expects us to see Him, hear Him, and notice where He is at work in the world around us, and where He is calling each of us to serve Him in the world around us.  But misery and failure love company, and God seems to revel in redeeming our failures.  In another sense, though, we should realize that Jesus is truly Lord over all the chaos in our life.

     You and I live in a world that seems out of control, nuts, and chaotic.  We can be punished for doing good deeds and rewarded for doing bad things.  In some ways, we notice the upsidedownness of world and wonder whether this Gospel is true.  Jesus’ walking on water reminds us that He is who He says He is and that He does have the power to quell the chaos, to order the chaos, to use the chaos to His glory.  We need only to trust Him, and He will see us to that ultimate destination.

     But behind all that, of course, is the setting for the teaching on bread and flesh.  This story, so far as John is concerned, serves as the foundation for the famous discourse that will follow.  It serves also as a foundation for the Eucharist we will share in a few moments.  Each time we gather for that pledge, that snack, that promise, we remind ourselves that He came down for us, that He lived for us, that He died for us, that He was raised from the dead for us, and that He will one day return for us.  It will serve as a foundation for the reminder that God’s provision is abundant.  And it will serve as a reminder that, like the crowds and the disciples, that we can lose our focus, that we can mis-see or mishear or even misinterpret God’s signs in the world around us.  What He offers us is both a feast and so much more than a feast.  It seems fantastic.  It seems of fairy tales.

     Which brings us back to the question?  Who do you say that He is?  Each time we gather, each time we ask God to bless that bread and wine, to send His Holy Spirit to make them the flesh and blood of our Lord, we are confronted with that question.  Do we think Him a crazed or misled charlatan? Do we think Him merely a wise man or sage?  Do we think Him simply another like Moses?  Or do we believe that He really is the ego eimi of the Burning Bush, the Light of the World, the Logos?  Our answer to that question, of course, determines how we are fed.  If He is anyone or anything other than the Son of God, there is no hope in this meal.  It’s a pleasant snack, but really pretty unfulfilling and not particularly tasteful.

      But, to use the language of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous song, what if He is who they say He is?  What if He sacrificed what they and He claim He did?  What if He was the Messiah?  Then, my brothers and sisters, the claim on each one of our lives is absolute.  And we do well to approach that Table with fear and trembling and anticipation, cognizant of what it cost Him and what it truly offers each one of us!  Life, and life abundant!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†