Good Shepherds, Green Pastures, and Bread From Heaven

Proper 12B; 2 Kg 4:24-44; Jn 6:1-21; St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC 7/26/15

Jim Melnyk 

“Good Shepherds, Green Pastures, and Bread From Heaven”

The breaking of bread is a sign of the kingdom of God.  Throughout the Scriptures, both the Old and the New Testaments, shared meals are a sign of God’s presence with and God’s abundance toward humanity.

Sometimes the meals are unexpected, like when the three divine beings – one of them most likely meant to be God – visit Abraham and Sarah, and a veritable feast is placed before them (Genesis 18).  Some meals are eaten in haste, with girded loins, sandaled feet, and staff in hand, as on the first Passover (Exodus 12).  Some meals are as wonderful and breathtaking as the sunrise – manna – God’s gift from the heavens to a people wandering in the wilderness; and we are told that those who gathered much had nothing left over and those who gathered little had no shortage (Exodus 16).

Sometimes the meals are with friends, such as Jesus at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus (Luke 10), and other times with the very people who debated with him (Luke 14) or even with tax collectors and other sinners (Luke 5).  And sometimes the meals are surrounded with both great love and yet deadly intrigue – in places like an upper room with betrayal and death as a final course (John 18 ff).

Which brings us to today’s gospel lesson from John – first of five Sundays spent with what are called The Bread from Heaven Discourses.  The theme is kicked off with a story about an unexpected feast – if one could call bread and fish a feast – and Jesus, in this simple meal along the shore of Galilee, ties the ancient stories of his faith to the unfolding presence of God’s kingdom among his listeners. 

More than that, in this portion of John’s gospel we hear the early echoes of what will become for us the Eucharistic Feast which not only looks backward in time to Jesus in the upper room with his disciples, but which looks forward with great anticipation to a great banquet in the presence of God at the close of the age.

Now, I’ve always seen with great ease the tie between Jesus feeding a great multitude gathered by the Sea of Galilee and God’s gift of manna to the children of Israel as they journeyed through the wilderness.  And our lectionary framers do a great job in tying the actions of Jesus to the prophet Elisha who fed a great gathering from twenty loaves and some ears of grain (2 Kings 4:42ff).  But there is one more connection being made in today’s gospel lesson that I had never noticed before.

John, like Matthew before him, seems to go to great length to tie Jesus to Moses – the first and greatest prophet of Israel.  And the connection is tied to good shepherds, green pastures, and bread from heaven.

I am coming to see John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand as an enacted parable by Jesus.  What I mean is this: rather than simply telling a story or offering us a pithy saying that describes the kingdom of God, Jesus acts out what he wants us to know about the kingdom.  It’s sort of like a youngster at summer camp being given a Bible passage and being asked to script out a one-person play to illustrate the story.  And the assignment Jesus takes on is what has come to be called The Twenty-third Psalm.

Think about it for a minute.  The twenty-third Psalm.  You may recall it was part of our lectionary cycle for last Sunday.  We sang a metrical version of the psalm at 11:00 rather than read it – but either way, at both services last week we offered that ancient hymn of praise.

Our story today opens along the shores of the Sea of Galilee – in an area that is traditionally a calm part of the Sea.  Jesus, on the side of the nearby mountain – which brings to mind Moses on Sinai – sees a vast multitude of people streaming toward him, having heard about his healing ministry and seeking wholeness for their lives.  Realizing the people are far from their homes and there are no villages nearby, Jesus takes the initiative to consider their physical need.  Knowing already how he planned to take care of the situation, Jesus looks to Philip to “see if [he] has been listening to all of this ‘birds-of-the-air’ and ‘daily bread’ teaching.  [Jesus] asks Philip as the crowds approach, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’  Philip,” a late colleague of mine writes, “oblivious to the mathematics of grace, gets out his pocket calculator and gives Jesus the bad news: ‘Six months of wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little’ (Jn. 6:7).  Period.  Send them home” (H. King Oehmig, Synthesis, 7/26/2015).

Of course Andrew pipes up about the young boy with five loaves and two fish, but even he is at least as skeptical as Elisha’s servant.  Yet the fact that Andrew brings up the boy’s inventory might be an indication of Andrew’s expectation that Jesus can do something with what is at hand.  Perhaps he recalls the request Jesus has taught them, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Jesus has them sit down in what is described by John as a place with a great deal of grass – he makes me lie down in green pastures (Ps. 23:2) – and reclining becomes a hint of the promise of good things to come – the coming of the kingdom of God.  And so Jesus sets for the multitude a banquet of bread and fish (Ps. 23: 5). All eat until they are filled, and there are twelve baskets full of broken pieces of bread left over – my cup overflows (ibid).

Like the shepherd Moses in the wilderness, who wondered to God where he was to find enough meat to feed those following him (Numbers 11:13),  Jesus cares for his people, and in him the very opening words of Psalm twenty-three find fulfillment: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (23:1).  Too often we listen to stories such as the feeding of the multitude without seeing the richness of the tradition that surround them.  

Both Jewish and Gentile listeners would experience this enacted parable and unavoidably be reminded of Israel being fed with manna in the wilderness, of David’s proclamation of God being the ultimate shepherd, of whom both he and Moses were mere shadows, and of prayers for our daily bread. 

And later, when the followers of the resurrected Jesus gathered together  to give thanks – eucharistēsas – sharing the bread and the wine, they would recall Jesus taking the loaves and the fish, giving thanks, and sharing it among those gathered on the hillside.

During the immediate aftermath of this most incredible outpouring of kingdom food, the crowds will be overwhelmed by what Jesus has done, and beginning to see in him an echo of Moses – seeing him as the prophet Moses proclaimed would come after him – they will seek forcibly to make him their king, and Jesus slips away.  They get it all wrong – but getting it all wrong “doesn’t mean Jesus is not a king” (Peter Eaton, Feasting on the Gospels: John, Vol. 1) – he’s just not the kind of king the people want.  He is a king who doesn’t covet or desire a throne (William Brosend).

Jesus is a king who will build his kingdom on love.  He is a king who will show his love by giving up his life.  He is a king who feeds those who are hungry – those whose hunger resides in the belly as much as in the soul – a king who asks us “Do you love me?  The feed my sheep.” Jesus is a king who brings healing and wholeness to all who need his touch, rather than one who places obstacles in the way of healing.  Jesus is a king who says “If you love me, love one another,” who says, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

We come to this Holy Table today and we should expect to meet the same Jesus the crowds met on the green grass beside the Sea of Galilee.  The king whose only earthly throne resides in the hearts of his followers is present with us today – calling us to the same witness he bore for us two thousand years ago: Feed the hungry.  Heal the sick.  Care for those in need.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Love your enemy.  Change the world. 

As retired Episcopal priest James Liggett puts it, “Every Sunday is our turn to sit down on the mountainside; and we join that crowd in the Gospel.  Every Sunday, what happened there happens here” (Synthesis, 7/26/2015).  We get to experience the wonder of Good Shepherds, green pastures, and bread from heaven.  And having been fed by Word and Sacrament – having sat with the multitude on the hillside – we get to decide what we will do with all that – we get to decide what comes next.  Amen.