Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand/Jesus Walks on the Water | John 6:1-24

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Welcome morning friends. My name's Alex. I'm one of the pastors here. If you're visiting, it's great to have you here. We'd love to say hi afterwards. Drop by start a conversation. We have many people here that are starting a similar journey to you, and so we'd love to connect with you.

A bunch of years ago, my oldest daughter, Elena, had a somewhat strange hobby whenever we were at her grandparents' house. She would go to a credenza that housed every DVD that they own and she'd just begin pulling them out haphazardly, just throwing them everywhere. Just giant mess. And then occasionally she'd sort them specifically into piles.

She'd contemplate them, look at them and just, just put them into different places. And I remember distinctly this one time where she picked up this 1D VD. And excitedly, she began pointing at it going, daddy, it's daddy. And so I wandered over to look at the DVD that she had in hand, and no word of a lie.

This was the face on the DVD.

Yes. Laura laughed as well and I said, yes, my dear. You are right. We do look alike, don't we? It was a beautiful moment. Between the two of us and of course com completely inaccurate. In actual fact, if I've had a doppelganger in life, someone that I actually look similar to it, it's actually been this person, this is Josh Groin.

He does not look like Brad Pitt. He has the voice of an angel. And I did not get that. I actually got Brad Pitt's singing voice which is the worst part of him. It actually reminds me of this brilliant joke from the British comedian Tommy Cooper where he tells the story of a man who goes into his attic and comes out with an old box left by the previous onus as he rummages through it.

He's excited to find a violin. And a painting. And he goes excitedly to an antiques dealer and he says, I think I found something really valuable. I think it's a Stradivari violin, the best violins ever made, and a Rembrandt painting, one of the greatest painters of all time. And the antiques guy looks at it for a while and comes back with an assessment.

He says, I've got some good news and some bad news. You do have a Stradivarius and a Rembrandt, but Rembrandt made terrible violins and Stradivarius didn't do a lot of painting. I got the worst gifts, right? I got Josh Groins looks, and I got Brad Pitt's singing voice. That's another way around. It. It's supposed to be at tall.

Now, interestingly, in the first century world, and least in the Jewish world, they weren't particularly interested in how you looked. We have huge databases now. We can track people across history. We can look at the mind details and try and find parallels, and maybe some of you out there have doppelganger.

And as some of our staff definitely do. I'm not gonna tell you who they are. You can go and search for yourselves, but back then that wasn't really a thing. But in the Jewish world, the spiritual Jewish world, they were interested in comparison In the Jewish world. Any spiritual figure was compared. With Moses quite instantly, Moses had done these incredible things around 1500 years before Jesus' time.

He'd walked into Egypt with God's power at hand, and he'd led the people surprisingly from slavery. He'd taken them away from the great superpower of the day. He'd led them up to the shores of the Dead Sea and his word. As the staff went into the water, the waters. Partied. He'd led them up to the mountain and as heed prayed and asked God, Manor had appeared on the ground in the midst of a desert to feed the hungry people.

You can start to feel from some of those stories why he was so revered. In actual fact, he'd even said himself in a book called Deuteronomy, God your God, he's going to raise up a prophet for you. God will raise him up from among your kinsmen, A prophet like me. Listen, obediently. To him, and the people waited, and the people waited, and the people waited.

And we can understand why. Because the story, this Exodus story, this grand narrative of theirs, we didn't seem complete. Sure they now lived in their own land, but they had another superpower. Rome ruling over them times hadn't really changed, and so they waited. Think about it from our perspective. Think about 1776, the American Revolution.

How would you feel if that story wasn't quite complete? What if there were British red coats living amongst you? What if they were marrying American women? What if they were pastoring American churches? You'd want someone to come along and finish the story. Where is Abraham Lincoln today? And so in their narrative, they waited.

As Jesus fame grows, the comparing begins, the people of the day start asking questions. Could this be the Moses that Moses himself spoke of? Could this be a new redeemer? In reality, they don't want something new. They want something old. They don't want Moses replacement, they just want Moses back. Today we get to drop into a story where Jesus reveals himself in a very particular way.

He does it again through miracles. A couple of weeks ago, and we looked at this idea that miracles are a thing that we maybe struggle with. Maybe you hear churches maybe a jump for you. It's a new thing. You're trying it out and maybe you hear stories about miracles. And you have a whole bunch of questions.

Couple of really interesting quotes about miracles. One is an A note and one's maybe an ask. This is Craig Keeno. We looked at this two weeks ago. So Pervasively has enlightenment that the movement of the last 200 years, enlightenment's cultures anti naturalism, affected the Western church. Especially educated European and North American Christians as all of us that most of us are suspicious of anything supernatural.

It's just a note on the current culture, but here's an ask for you may be a suggestion. This is CS Lewis in his book Miracles. If you have Hi two, great word. Hi two disbelieved in miracles. It is worth pausing a moment to consider. Whether this is not chiefly because you thought you had discovered what the story, the big story that navigates us as humans.

You discovered what the story was really about, that atoms and time and space and economics and politics were the main plot. Of course, miracles might be questioned, but sometimes if we're honest, when we assume that kind of stuff just doesn't happen. We're doing exactly that. We're assuming we understand the story we're living in.

So with that in mind, we're gonna pray and we're gonna enter into this story. Jesus, would you reveal yourself? You are the one that makes dead bones come alive. You're the ones that speaks deep into our soul, that brings new stories out for us to live by. Capture our hearts in this. Okay. In your name, Jesus.

Amen. John six, chapter one. If you have a text you'd like to turn to it, carry on. I'm gonna dot around between the stories in John and a couple of others in Matthew, mark, and Luke, the synoptic gospels, as they're called. Both of these stories appear in some other places. The first story that we're gonna look at that appears in all of the gospels, all of the biographies of Jesus' life.

The second story we're gonna look at that's in three of them with a few different D differences that help us navigate it. Sometime after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the sea. Of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is this fishing sea primarily that surround the area. Jesus was born in Matthew, mark, and Luke.

It's the star of the show. Everything in the early parts happens around the Sea of Galilee. In John, it's barely been mentioned, and now here we are on that same sea that's so important in those biographies, Jesus' life and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick.

Yeah. John will start to tease out this idea that there's people that follow Jesus because they believe in him, and people that will follow Jesus because of what he does. Seems important to John. There's another idea that he starts to tease out that's that there's a difference between miracles, things that happen and signs, things that point specifically to who Jesus is, and he here where he's talking about signs.

Then Jesus went up on a mountain side and sat down with his disciples. The first scene that we get invited into today is on a mountain side. It's on a mountain side. Now to us, we look at that and say, that's just background. Mountain sides of the background. While action happens in the foreground, maybe we start thinking of a mountain and start to think, I'd like to climb that mountain.

It looks like a beautiful recreational activity. That's not how it really worked in the first century. As soon as someone said Mountain, they started to get some different ideas. This is one of the hardest things I think for us to understand, especially if you're new to reading scripture. There's a different set of rules to the rules we think we play with today.

Let me get to this. This is Marcus Borg, theologian writer on the Old Testament, new Testament. He says this the past. It's different areas that we get to look at is a foreign country. They do things differently there. They notice different things. So if you've ever grabbed a passport, jumped on a plane and ended up in a foreign country, you automatically know something of how this works, if it's Cancun, doesn't count.

Canada doesn't count. Those are the same, but it has to be somewhere a little bit different. My wife and I met in a different country. We began dating over the Atlantic, and so we quickly experienced this. She would come visit me in England. I would introduce her to bland cooking and small Cornish roads that looked just like this.

Unbelievably to an American. These are roads that you can travel at 60 miles an hour. You can actually in England fit two cars down these roads at the same time. And so for Laura, she came to England and said, we can't fit one of our cars down these roads. They're just too big at the same time. I came here and I experienced a great Phil Mignon for the first time and also.

Commercials for lawyers, which I had never seen in my life either. You start to feel quickly that things operate differently. Yeah, you get it and I like it. Some of you are there. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. And so for a Jewish person in the first century, when you said mountain.

They started to think about what happened on a mountain. Maybe they thought about a text like this. Exodus 19, in the third month after the people of Israel left Egypt, they came to the Sinai Desert. On the same day there, Israel, the nation, set up their tents in front of the mountain, and Moses went up to God.

Mountain wasn't scenery, it wasn't recreational activity. Mountains were where people encountered God. And now Jesus is with a bunch of people on a mountain. And as if that wasn't enough, John gives us another little clue. The Jewish Passover Festival was Nia. The moment where they celebrated God freeing them from Egypt.

Now he's not saying it's now, he's saying it's Nia. Why mention that if it doesn't matter to the story? He's trying to nudge us. He's starting to say to us this story, this really old story. This matters here. I'm showing you something from that old story, and then we get into the actual miracle itself.

John chapter six, verse five. When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming towards him, he said to Philip, where shall we buy bread for these? People to eat. I love to imagine Philip in this moment. It's like deer in a headlights. Philip seems like the fairly good kid in school. Sits off to the side, doesn't answer all the questions, but doesn't get into trouble, and suddenly Philip is front and center.

I imagine him saying something like, did you ask Peter or something like that? Just passing the buck. The people are hungry and in this version, Jesus notices. Some of the other versions we read that the people get grumpy. Now here Jesus is aware of what the people need. Verse six, he asked this only to test Philip for, he already had in mind what he was going to do, and Philip gives the obvious answer in this situation, he says it would take half a year's wages to buy bread for each of each one to have a bite.

The actual Greek there is 200 Dara. We could convert it into modern currency, but it wouldn't help. The average person in this day and age spent almost every bit of money they had just getting food to eat, and Philip looks at this crowd and says, it doesn't matter what we do, even if we had a bunch of money, which we don't, we still couldn't give them much to eat.

It's just too expensive. Another of the disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up. He was a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish. But how far will they go among so many at its core, this story is actually a generosity story. That there's this big narrative that we'll try and pull out to get us to this table here, this Eucharist, this communion.

But at heart here, there's some generosity on display. The small boy in the midst of a deep need brings what he has, probably his lunch for the day. Five barley loaves, the cheapest you could get. Wheat was more expensive. Barley was the food of the poor people. Some fish that are probably sardines, probably A garnish at best, and here he is offering that to Jesus.

As a note on this, I might say this, it's easy to assume that what I can offer doesn't matter. To God is not significant. There's such a great need in this world, and what I have seems so small. It's a conversation perhaps for us all who call South Home to say how do we become a church that our city and world would miss?

That probably takes generosity and it's a conversation Sal has had over and over again, at least in the last five years. We've occasionally had people that have given incredibly generous gifts. Which perhaps is an opportunity for some of us to say, I guess everything's good, and yet continuing to be a church like that, that takes significant resources.

So little challenge for you as a side project. If you're someone who's called South Home for a while, you're like, I'm here to stay, but you've never done this kind of thing. Never said from the little I have, here's something for God to use. I'd encourage you not to forget that this part of the sermon happened, which is easy to do, and go home and ignore it.

I'd encourage you to say yes to some kind of giving. Now, here's where I think this is like an interesting thing to think about. I suspect in terms of generosity, in terms of giving, the difference between zero and something is far bigger than the difference between something and a lot. This is what I mean by this.

Something says, I'm here, I belong. I'm part of this thing with you could be the lowest amount you can possibly imagine, but it is some message that I'm actually part of this community and helping it be what it can be in the world Outside. Nothing says I'm actually probably not here. Something and a lot both say I'm here, but the difference between zero when something is greater than something.

And a lot. So wherever you are financially, I'm talking like minuscule dollar a month. If you are in here with us doing this thing, I would encourage you to take that as a pastoral nudge towards giving from someone who at one point said no to giving a tour. Back in my own history. Little note on the sermon, moving on verse six, chapter six, verse 10.

Jesus said, have the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place. There's a little like opulence message here. This is a wild in us. Sure. But it's not a desert. Something happens when Jesus is in town that's just a little bit different. And they sat down. About 5,000 men were there. So 8,000 people, 10,000 people.

We just. Don't know because there's certainly women and children too. Jesus took the loaves, the small barley loaves, the insignificant gift, and he gave thanks. There's a message in this too. This table before it was called communion, before it was called the Lord's Table, before it was called Mass or any of those things was called Eucharist.

Thanksgiving gratitude. It was a moment where we came and we remembered what Jesus. Dear. Now, remember, John's readers are Christians in this new movement. After Jesus' death and resurrection, they know exactly what Eucharist is. And now here's John riding back retrospectively, recording this moment where Jesus does this very Eucharist thing here by using those exact same words, eucharisteo to give thanks, gratitude, all of those things.

It's what Paul uses. When in First Corinthians he says, for I receive from the Lord. What? I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread and what? When he had given thanks, he broke it. An unmissable sign to a bunch of first century Christians. This thing that's happening here, this is a Eucharist thing as well directly, as much as it's a Passover thing.

Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed to those who were seeded as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish to a bunch of people in need who have nothing to eat. Jesus provides food. He becomes the one who gives generously to them. Now, this is where I think the Moses comparison hits us.

Because on one hand is the story not similar. Moses is in a wilderness. The people need food. He prays and God provides. Jesus is in a wilderness. The people need food. He gives thanks for food. Probably something like this. Blessed of, oh our Lord, king of the universe who has provided us food to eat, but he doesn't actually pray that God will provide.

He actually is the one. That provides what I would suggest in these stories that we begin to see, this is Paul's idea about who Jesus is not that Jesus does Moses like things, which is what the people are hoping for in these stories. He does what God did for Moses. John is not comparing Moses and Jesus and he's not lowering Moses.

But he is elevating Jesus. He darts to share with us this idea that this, Jesus is not like anybody who stepped foot on earth. This Jesus is nothing but God in human flesh. When they had all they had, when they had all had enough to eat. He said to his disciples, gather the pieces that are left over left and let nothing be wasted.

So they gathered them and filled 12 baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. Again, a different story. Moses provides enough, or God through Moses provides enough, but with Jesus. There's more than enough. In actual fact, the language that has been hidden from us all the time, because it gets lost in this Greek to English translation, Jesus said, have the people sit down is actually this word and a PTO to recline in this culture.

You sat for a casual meal, but you reclined for a banquet. You are a client for a banquet and Jesus hasn't simply provided food. The crowd experiences something different altogether, a banquet. They're invited to see that this Jesus is not like Moses. He's far beyond anything that ever that Moses ever was.

They're invited to this moment that sometimes we call a kairos moment. It's this movement in time where time almost stops still and you're invited to turn around and notice. And believe in who Jesus is and they miss it. God is on display working in the world and they don't see it. In actual fact, we see what they try and do.

They try and turn Jesus. Into a new Moses. After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they said, they began to say, surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself, he withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

The people tried to turn Jesus into their new Moses and Jesus is very clear. That's not who he is. The crowd tries to subvert Jesus. Mission and the disciples miss it too. This is Leslie Negan's. Beautiful quote about the disciples. As Jesus goes back to the mountain, leaving them with mounds of food and a group of people, he says they are in every sense in the dark.

They aren't quite sure what's going on, which leads us really quickly to scene two, where they move from a mountain to a lake. Verse 1617. When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake where they got into their boat and set off across the lake. For Capernaum, you might say, they went back to the thing that they're used to doing.

They're used to many of them life on a lake. They're fishermen at heart, maybe not fishing, but at least in a safe space. They've left the crowds. All of the problems they might have to face as Jesus is off. Praying and they're off paddling by now. It was dark, we're told, and Jesus had not yet join them.

And then we start to see another scene created different from a mountain top scene. A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. The Lake of Galilee, the Sea of Galilee is about 800 meters below sea level. When the east wind blows, it brings cold wind and it drops down into the lake surface as the hot air rises and it whips up these storms out of nowhere, you don't know that they're coming in the moment.

You landed right in one. And this is where these disciples are now. They've just witnessed this great miracle and now find themselves in a storm. In Matthew, we read this in his version. The boat was already a considerable distance from the land, tormented by the waves because the wind was against it. Can you imagine that kind of storm, the noise, the creaking of the boat, the uncertainty of what happens next.

They're in danger. At least that's maybe one. Way of looking at it. These disciples are in danger. In another storm story, in Matthew eight, we read, the disciples went and woke Jesus up. Who in this version is in the boat saying, Lord, save us. We're going to drown. What does it take for a bunch of hardened fishermen to get to the point where they're like, Hey, you guy that lived in the mountains were about to go down.

It's an interesting kind of storm that brings guys like this to their knees. But the storm in this story also provides a function. It holds the disciples in place. They're stuck rowing against the wind, desperately trying to get to the shore. If you see them as maybe running from the first story, they're now stuck in the middle of this one with nowhere to go, and that's where Jesus reenters the scene.

When they had rode about three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water. If you can imagine the storm now, imagine this scene and what that feels like for them in that moment. Jesus walks and water. A miracle that the scriptures are completely comfortable with. In fact, they hold it as a sign of who Jesus is.

Now, think about that concept of walking on the water and now read some of these Old Testament scriptures and remember, this works like a foreign country. This is a different world out there, different kind of place. These people knew their stories, knew their scriptures. Job nine, eight. He alone, God stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.

There's only one person that does this kind of thing. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep you away. He God stilled the storm to a whisper. The waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven.

John is really clear who he's talking about. He's not comparing Jesus to Moses. He's saying that Jesus is nothing but the God of the universe. When they had rode about three or four miles, we read in John, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water, and they were frightened. This is the moment where the fear really hits them.

I think in Matthew's version it says that Jesus was a fantasm, a ghost, perhaps a spirit of the water, perhaps the ghost of Jesus himself, if he'd been killed by the crowd that were very upset about the things that he'd said. In Mark verse 6 48, it says this, he saw the disciples straining at the AARs because the wind was against them.

Shortly before Dawn. He went out to them walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them. Is this just inconsiderate? Is this just a race? I'm getting to the other shore before you guys? It's not. In the Old Testament, every time God appeared in a distinct sense to a person, Moses Elijah uses one phrase, he passed by.

He passed by. This is a theophany in Theo theological language, A revelation of God. He saw he was about to pass by, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out because they all saw him and were terrified. Back to John's version, chapter six, verse 20, but he said to them, it is, I don't be afraid.

Strange phrasing in some ways, right? It's me. That's not what he says either. In Greek, the words of these echo, Amy, I am. I am. Don't be afraid. That language comes up in a few different places in a few chapters. John, chapter eight, verse 52. Very truly, I tell you, Jesus answered before Abraham was born.

I am not. I was. I am. Moses encounters God Back in Exodus chapter three, verse 14, God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you. Jesus passes by and then stops and turns to them and says, do not be afraid. I am. And the disciples experience deliverance.

I use that word deliverance on purpose 'cause it's actually what God promised them in the Exodus I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and once again. Moses. Jesus doesn't do what Moses did. He does what God did for Moses. He controls the ocean. He alone is master of it, which leaves us asking the question that all of John's readers would've asked when they first read this story.

Who is this man? This is no Moses reborn. This is something else altogether. John has already alluded to this. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only son who himself is God and is in close. This relationship with the Father has made him known the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth come through Jesus Christ.

In the book, Hebrews the unknown writer says this, for Jesus had been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. Now, Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son, Moji John is elevating Jesus to a different role altogether.

John presents Jesus as the God of the universe and then does something really strange. We get to the end of the story, and this is what we read. They were willing to take him into the boat and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading in these two stories designed to elevate Jesus to a role beyond Moses to demonstrate that he is nothing but the God of the universe.

We end in this moment where God steps in to a boat. What God steps into a boat. That is the wonder of Eucharist. It's one thing for a man to die, for a cause. It's another thing for the guard of the universe to make himself a people to dwell in eternity, to come and to control the waters, to produce food where there is no food.

That is one thing, but the mystery, the magic of this Eucharist is the step from one. To another, the step from walking on water to a boat filled with a few scared disciples on an obscure lake in the middle of an obscure area, in one specific part of the world. The wonder of the Jesus story is not that the God of the universe exists, it's not that someone would start a movement.

It's simply this, that the guard of the universe in eternity past would choose to begin a journey that would lead him to a cross for you. And I cross doesn't start journey to the cross doesn't start at a stable at Easter, which we're soon approaching. Doesn't start at any point on this journey. It starts long ago in the halls of heaven.

What God decided that people like you and me were worth redeeming. That's what we remember here. We remember the cost. If you ever been to a wedding and you've maybe been the person that came from the neighboring town and you get there and everyone's glad to see you, but they're like of course you are here, you live, like just down the road.

And then you've got the person that traveled thousands of miles to get there, and you see the reaction of the bride and the groom where this person walks in after an eight hour flight to a wedding, miles away. Perhaps you see the moment of the tears. I'm just so glad you've come. This is a journey like no other that gets us here.

God of the universe steps down to this space. To a story like this. On the night that he was betrayed, Lord Jesus took bread and he broke it

and he said, this is my body broken for you. He took the cup. He said, this is my blood shed for the sins of the world. Do this in remembrance of me. We are given the privilege of standing here in gratitude Thanksgiving, a table called gratitude. Thankful that the God of the universe who walks on water will also step into boats, do the most common of all things, calm storms, sometimes calm his child.

This is the kind of God we worship. I'm gonna invite you to stand and ponder for a moment as we wait. Maybe you find yourself deep in the store.

Got to say hi to a few of you this morning. Some view leaping life is great. Had those conversations. Yeah, we're doing great. Some of you are limping. I had those conversations just here, just out of persistence. The most special part about communion is the number of people I get to watch for me and knowing those stories, and we still find ourselves in this space looking for the God of the universe who comes incredible distances for people like you and I.

Jesus. We pause. We set our hearts towards you. We're grateful. Grateful that you would do what you did. You'll know, Moses, you are the God of the universe and you stepped down to our level, experienced our world, gave you life for us to create this new story and we thank you. Gonna invite you to come forward.

Take the bread. Take it whenever you're ready. That's a personal moment for you to contemplate, to just appreciate what God has done for you. And together we'll take the cup and we'll celebrate as a community the goodness of God to people like us. Come when you're ready.