Reaching Out
Commentary
2 Samuel 11:1-15
Our scripture this week reminds us that the world situation we are currently facing is not unique, either historically or morally. King David is about to get himself into a despicable situation because of the general choices he makes as described in the first verse.
“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle…” Spring in the Middle East is the time following harvest. Because the summer is so hot and dry, most crops are planted in the fall of the year and harvested at the end of winter, before the rains stop falling and the ground grows hard with the heat. This means that the men would now be free to be conscripted and sent to war. Evidently our century is not the only one in which war has become a way of life around the world! The author says this in such a way that we understand that war was an annual affair for the people of Israel.
The author of 2 Samuel also tells us whom the Israelites were going out to fight: the descendants of Lot, the Ammonites. Lot, we remember, had settled on the plain that became the Dead Sea, in the city of Sodom. The residents of Sodom and Gomorrah had a reputation as heartless people, refusing to offer hospitality to strangers and engaging in human sacrifice to their god. Angels were sent to Lot to warn him that God was about to destroy these cities (in a conflagration that sounds like a volcanic eruption). Since Lot had opened his home to them and protected them from the predations of the townsmen, who apparently were quite open about their intention to rape them, the angels returned the favor by helping Lot’s family to pack up what they could carry and escape the city. However, Lot’s wife did exactly what the angels had told them not to do -- she looked back. For this momentary lapse, she was magically turned into a pillar of salt. Lot and his daughters kept going and escaped to the hills, which were honeycombed with caves (it is in one of these caves, just east of the Dead Sea, that the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered).
From that distance and the shelter of the cave, Lot and his daughters watched in horror as fire rained down on the cities of the plain, utterly destroying them. Lot’s daughters decided that if they were to continue their bloodline, they would have to trick their father into getting them pregnant, and they succeeded. The Ammonites and Moabites were the result of these incestuous unions. The Ammonites settled the land we now call Jordan, Moab just to the southeast.1 This story was a source of mockery by the Israelites against the Canaanites. The constant war between the three nations sprang from this background.
There is another odd thing about this verse: “King David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him. . . But David remained at Jerusalem.” This was not the way the people of the ancient near east went to war. The king of a nation led his army into battle. Not just go with them, staying away from the front lines; would be highly visible toward the front of his army, so his soldiers can see him fighting. The courage and determination of the king in battle was to be a spur to his men. But King David stayed home and sent his armies to fight without him. No explanation of this is given, but by the events that follow we can see that no good comes to David, nor by extension, the nation. Rather, his staying behind leads directly to him falling into serious sin.
The story begins, not in the night as has so often been portrayed, but “late one afternoon” as David rose from his midday nap. He had gone up on the palace roof for a walk, looking over the city. As he was doing this, he saw a woman bathing in her enclosed garden. The bath she was taking was a mikvah, or ritual bath, necessary for observant Jews before the Sabbath and after a woman’s period is over. The requirement was for the person to immerse themselves completely in water. Most Jewish communities had public baths for this purpose; the rich, however, could afford to install a private mikvah. It was installed in a walled yard, often surrounded by trees and flowers. Thus, the woman had every right to expect privacy. But King David’s house being the tallest in the city, he could actually look down into this walled yard.
David thought she was beautiful. Admiration, however, was not enough. He sent someone to find out who she was. She was the daughter of Eliam, an advisor to David early in his reign. Her grandfather was Ahithophel, David’s mentor. David has ties to Bathsheba’s family.
Furthermore, she is wife to Uriah the Hittite, said in some sources to be a member of David’s elite fighting corps. Uriah’s homeland took up most of the Anatolian peninsula, just east of present day Istanbul, between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It had been a large empire, similar to Egypt in north Africa, and was one of the earliest nations to use iron. They had lost their glory 200 years before this story, but supplied Israel with iron-wheeled chariots and weapons, as well as cedar, which may account for David hiring Uriah as part of his elite corps.
Despite all of this, David is smitten at once, and has Bathsheba brought to the palace. There is no evidence in this story that she was glad for the diversion, nor that she cried out “rape” so both interpretations of this event have their admirers. It should be noted, however, that being summoned to the palace might have had a quelling effect on Bathsheba. Would it have been any good for her to cry out? Might that have made matters worse? Was she overwhelmed by the attentions of the King? Did he seduce her, ply her with wine? Or was it simply royal rape? David undoubtedly was able to justify his actions to himself. But the story says that she was taken back to Uriah’s house. She must have felt used as she wandered the house and garden, alone again.
A few weeks later, David gets a message from Bathsheba: “I’m pregnant.” He, like many important men, had not considered consequences of his actions. He panics. What to do? But the solution is easy -- recall Uriah and give him a furlough. What’s the first thing soldiers do when they get furloughed? This will simplify things. She’s not so far along that Uriah would suspect anything. Rubbing his hands in glee, David carries out his plan.
But Uriah does not do what David expects. David has fed him a far better meal than he’s been getting on the battlefront, they have drunk fine wine. David urges Uriah to go to his own house and “wash his feet.”2 But Uriah does not go. He sleeps at the palace instead. And despite all of David’s urging, Uriah refuses to go home to his wife. He is a leader of soldiers, soldiers who are sleeping on the ground and eating things easy to cook. “Should I dishonor my men this way?”
David is beside himself. He writes a note to Joab and asks Uriah to carry it back to the front. “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him so that he may be struck down and die.” Sadly, Joab does as he is told. So Bathsheba is now a widow, and David does her a favor by marrying her. And since David’s queen has been refusing to see him, Bathsheba replaces her at David’s side.
And all this as a consequence of David -- God’s choice to lead a united kingdom of Israel -- staying away from the battle and catching a glimpse of Uriah’s beautiful wife.
Ephesians 3:14-21
Ephesus was one of the seven churches in Asia Minor that are mentioned in Revelation. The city was the second largest in the Roman Empire, and the home of the largest temple dedicated to Artemis (Diana). The goddess was portrayed in this temple in the Asian manner, a multi-breasted goddess of fertility. She was worshipped through sexual union with male or female prostitutes. People came from all over Asia Minor to pray for increased crops and fertile animals as well as for women who had not been able to become pregnant, and as is true today in pilgrimage sites, people readily bought silver and bronze statues to take home, both as souvenirs and as the centerpieces for home altars.
It was the sale of these statues that caused Paul trouble when he was in Ephesus, because the artisans feared that if he converted people to following Christ, their sales would dry up (See Acts 19).
The first part of the third chapter of Ephesians talks about Paul teaching that Jesus came for the gentiles as well as the Jews, and the overwhelming response to the message that “we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” In v. 13, Paul says “Don’t be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory” as one of those churches that readily accommodated both Gentiles and Jews.
“It is for this reason” that Paul kneel[s] before the Father, praying for the Ephesians. He makes a point of saying that he is praying for them to receive the Holy Spirit “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” because between Paul’s visits a Christian preacher named Apollos had come and preached. Apollos had not learned of the baptism by the Spirit that Peter and Paul had both observed, so he was urging baptism as a means of washing away sin, but not the indwelling of the Spirit. Priscilla and Aquilla had taken Apollos to one side and told him what his preaching was lacking, and he had changed his message, but Paul wants to be sure that the correction is emphasized (vv. 16-17). He emphasizes the glory of knowing the fullness of the love of Christ. It is not enough to have knowledge of Christ (v. 20), joy comes with “all the fullness of God.” Which we do not have when we have not received the Holy Spirit.
It’s the same as with human relationships. We may come to know a great many things about a person over the internet, but mostly we learn what that person wants us to know. It’s easy to hide behind a photo; we may choose an old picture, making us look younger, thinner, happier than we currently are. We share the person we want to be, rather than expose our weaknesses. The only way we really get to know each other is to spend hours together in person. We watch how our date treats the waiter in the restaurant, how s/he reacts to bad news, unwanted phone calls and paying the bills. There are those who can be one person in public but cannot maintain the façade at home. So we go to meet the parents, brothers and sisters, old friends, who each tell us a part of the story of our intended. And even then, there are clues we miss, and it turns out that this person isn’t right for us over the long haul. How nice it would be to have a way to see the person within!
With God, it’s even worse. We don’t get to see God, even over Instagram. We have to depend on written records of people we don’t know to know God’s history. We listen to the testimony of those who say they know God, and judge by their behavior whether they know the Jesus of the Bible. How good it is when we feel the Spirit moving, and our own hearts open, and we know the truth of all those who have claimed to know God. But in that light, it’s no wonder so few people flock to the church today. We have to find ways to convey the power of the Spirit to open our hearts and change our lives.
Paul ends this section with a prayer of praise. This is one of the most sublime passages in the scripture, glorifying God, who is never confounded by our requests for help. Indeed, God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (emphasis mine). That power is at work within each of us, and for that reason we reach out in love to others, without asking if they are deserving of our care. We know that we can rely on God even when we feel at our weakest; when we have been let down, even betrayed, we have Christ Jesus to lean on. For these reasons, we join in saying “To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever.” Amen!
John 6:1-21
I started to lead a vacation bible school class for confirmands with the story “Feeding the Five Thousand,” but one of the girls said, “What is it with you pastors and this story? [The previous pastor] was forever telling this story! I’m sick of it.”
I was shocked, but as I thought about it, I said, “I think because it’s a story we can all relate to. Life seems overwhelming sometimes, and this story tells us that God is up to the challenge.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s easy. Pastor ___ said that everybody had brought food with them, but nobody was willing to open their lunch in front of people who might not have done the same. Once the kid’s lunch was out in the open, everybody got out what they had, and if they had extra, they put it in the basket being passed, so everybody had enough. And it probably wasn’t 5,000 either. I don’t remember why he said that, but it wasn’t.”
Gee, I thought to myself, this is going to be a tough crowd.
And that’s what happens when we try to explain the miracle stories. The story of Jesus walking on the water is up against a joke a pastor told me about the rabbi, the priest and the pastor who went out fishing together. They were using the rabbi’s boat, and he was showing them places where he had been fishing and had really good luck. Then the rabbi stood up and said, “Excuse me, I have to relieve myself.” He got out of the boat and walked to shore, hid behind some bushes, and then came back, walking on the water again! When he got back into the boat, the priest said, “Okay, what’s the trick?” The pastor was offended. “Have you never heard that Jesus walked on water? The rabbi must be a very holy man!” The rabbi laughed and said, “Well, I am holy, but in this case I just know where the rocks are.”
These miracle stories aren’t about Jesus’ magical powers, even though what he accomplished so impressed his disciples and the crowd that they declared that he was “the prophet who is to come into the world.” Rather, they are illustrations of faith at work. The works are not Jesus’ works, but the working faith of the disciples. Unfortunately, we are still like the people of Jesus’ day, waiting for God to come to our rescue, scrabbling for crumbs, when what Jesus was trying to do was to train us to make things happen.
In the first story, Jesus sees that the crowds that gathered for his healing ministry was following him and the disciples (v. 2) around the lake. Jesus finds a good spot for teaching and sits down on the grass. Turning to Philip, he says, “Where can we buy bread for all these people?” Philip takes the question literally: “Six months’ salary wouldn’t buy enough bread!” Andrew, on the other hand, offers a start: “There’s a boy here with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish. But of course that’s nothing with so many people.”
Listen to the two answers. Philip throws up his hands. Andrew says, “Here’s a start. I bet you can do something with it, little as it is.”
What follows is a miracle, no matter how we try to explain it. Maybe many of the people did in fact have lunches, and more than enough for themselves, and everyone shared and were amazed that they were all satisfied. Maybe they felt that the words of Jesus were such that they didn’t need to eat, they were busy ‘chewing on his words.’ Maybe Jesus’ prayer really did work the kind of miracle the Hebrews had in the wilderness, when a fungus appeared on the desert soil and they found it was good to eat and could be prepared in different ways so they could tolerate eating the same thing every day. Does it make a difference to our faith which explanation is the real one?
Jesus didn’t usually do this kind of thing, and the reason is obvious in v. 15: they were about to come and take him by force to make him king. They were hungry for a Jewish leader who was this strong, who could come up with solutions for poverty and the rule of a foreign power over the Holy Land. They wanted to grab hold of him, make him be king, wage war on the Romans and throw them out of the land. He climbed over the top of the hill and up a mountain before they could see where he was.
Many nations of the world are restless right now. Many of them have elected leaders who have promised to make their people prosperous, who have promised that they will keep out those who are fleeing their homes to seek a safe place where they can find work and avoid starvation. We are not the only nation seeking to build walls rather than treaties. Everywhere we look, people are turning inward and voting for leaders who will let them do that. But the hope that prosperity can be bought at the cost of others rather than we ourselves is a false hope, the very opposite of faith.
The second story tells us that Jesus had not come back down the mountain before dark. The disciples went down to the water, got a boat, and headed for home. As they were rowing across the lake, they saw Jesus walking on the water toward them. This scared them; they thought he was a ghost. John’s version doesn’t say this, nor does he say that Peter asked Jesus to let him walk on the water also. John’s is a stripped-down version of the miracle. No one but Jesus walks on the water here. There’s a reason for that. John’s gospel is all about the divinity of Jesus, not his humanity, and the disciples never quite get the hang of miracle-working themselves. In fact, John doesn’t have Jesus getting in the boat. Look at v. 21: “Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going [Capernaum, where Jesus had taken up residence].
So how do we explain this story? Maybe the point is in his reassurance to the disciples in v. 20: “Don’t be afraid, it’s me.” After all, we’re all afraid. And we lie about it.
I had a terribly frightening experience one night. A man in the neighborhood of some friends had the idea that our friend had been having an affair with the neighbor’s wife. He came to the house with a gun and forced our friend into the car and they drove away. When the wife came in the door a few minutes later, we had to tell her what had happened. She was obviously very upset by all this, but it got worse -- soon her husband was at the door and told her to put on warm clothes, that the neighbor insisted that they go for a ride together. If they refused, the man was threatening to kill them and their three children. So our friends got in the car and left.
I turned to the children and said, “Go get your snowmobile suits and boots and gloves. Put on the pants and boots, and have the jackets and hats and gloves ready. If this man comes in the house, you have to go out the other door, so be ready to put your jackets on if I say so. Okay?” They all nodded, and we checked the other door to make sure it wasn’t locked and that they could wade through the snow if they had to. And then we waited.
As the time stretched on and we hadn’t heard the car in the drive, the son turned to me and asked, “Are you afraid?” “Yes,” I replied. “I’m afraid, because I don’t know what’s going to happen. But no matter what happens, you and your sisters need to get out of the house. I’ll keep the man from following you so you can get to the farm down the road. Just don’t hesitate, and don’t look back. That’ll just slow you down.”
As it was, the man dropped off our friends and drove away. They had been able to talk sense to him. We were all safe. It’s good to have a plan. And it’s good to admit that we’re afraid; it keeps us from freezing up with fear.
So I think the point of the second miracle story is not that Jesus could walk on water. I think the point is that we need not be afraid if we know Jesus is there in the midst of fear. And the disciples didn’t need to walk on water. Verse 21 says that as they began to reach out to take Jesus into the boat, they “immediately reached the land toward which they were going.” If we can just reach out to Jesus when we are afraid, we can immediately see a solution to our fear.
And that’s miracle enough.
1 See Genesis 19:37–38; Moses said that the Canaanites’ religion was anathema to God, who told the Hebrew people to kill all the Canaanites, as well as their livestock perhaps because using these animals to sacrifice to God would be as bad as entering into their religious practices.
2 A Hebrew euphemism for preparing to have intercourse.
Our scripture this week reminds us that the world situation we are currently facing is not unique, either historically or morally. King David is about to get himself into a despicable situation because of the general choices he makes as described in the first verse.
“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle…” Spring in the Middle East is the time following harvest. Because the summer is so hot and dry, most crops are planted in the fall of the year and harvested at the end of winter, before the rains stop falling and the ground grows hard with the heat. This means that the men would now be free to be conscripted and sent to war. Evidently our century is not the only one in which war has become a way of life around the world! The author says this in such a way that we understand that war was an annual affair for the people of Israel.
The author of 2 Samuel also tells us whom the Israelites were going out to fight: the descendants of Lot, the Ammonites. Lot, we remember, had settled on the plain that became the Dead Sea, in the city of Sodom. The residents of Sodom and Gomorrah had a reputation as heartless people, refusing to offer hospitality to strangers and engaging in human sacrifice to their god. Angels were sent to Lot to warn him that God was about to destroy these cities (in a conflagration that sounds like a volcanic eruption). Since Lot had opened his home to them and protected them from the predations of the townsmen, who apparently were quite open about their intention to rape them, the angels returned the favor by helping Lot’s family to pack up what they could carry and escape the city. However, Lot’s wife did exactly what the angels had told them not to do -- she looked back. For this momentary lapse, she was magically turned into a pillar of salt. Lot and his daughters kept going and escaped to the hills, which were honeycombed with caves (it is in one of these caves, just east of the Dead Sea, that the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered).
From that distance and the shelter of the cave, Lot and his daughters watched in horror as fire rained down on the cities of the plain, utterly destroying them. Lot’s daughters decided that if they were to continue their bloodline, they would have to trick their father into getting them pregnant, and they succeeded. The Ammonites and Moabites were the result of these incestuous unions. The Ammonites settled the land we now call Jordan, Moab just to the southeast.1 This story was a source of mockery by the Israelites against the Canaanites. The constant war between the three nations sprang from this background.
There is another odd thing about this verse: “King David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him. . . But David remained at Jerusalem.” This was not the way the people of the ancient near east went to war. The king of a nation led his army into battle. Not just go with them, staying away from the front lines; would be highly visible toward the front of his army, so his soldiers can see him fighting. The courage and determination of the king in battle was to be a spur to his men. But King David stayed home and sent his armies to fight without him. No explanation of this is given, but by the events that follow we can see that no good comes to David, nor by extension, the nation. Rather, his staying behind leads directly to him falling into serious sin.
The story begins, not in the night as has so often been portrayed, but “late one afternoon” as David rose from his midday nap. He had gone up on the palace roof for a walk, looking over the city. As he was doing this, he saw a woman bathing in her enclosed garden. The bath she was taking was a mikvah, or ritual bath, necessary for observant Jews before the Sabbath and after a woman’s period is over. The requirement was for the person to immerse themselves completely in water. Most Jewish communities had public baths for this purpose; the rich, however, could afford to install a private mikvah. It was installed in a walled yard, often surrounded by trees and flowers. Thus, the woman had every right to expect privacy. But King David’s house being the tallest in the city, he could actually look down into this walled yard.
David thought she was beautiful. Admiration, however, was not enough. He sent someone to find out who she was. She was the daughter of Eliam, an advisor to David early in his reign. Her grandfather was Ahithophel, David’s mentor. David has ties to Bathsheba’s family.
Furthermore, she is wife to Uriah the Hittite, said in some sources to be a member of David’s elite fighting corps. Uriah’s homeland took up most of the Anatolian peninsula, just east of present day Istanbul, between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It had been a large empire, similar to Egypt in north Africa, and was one of the earliest nations to use iron. They had lost their glory 200 years before this story, but supplied Israel with iron-wheeled chariots and weapons, as well as cedar, which may account for David hiring Uriah as part of his elite corps.
Despite all of this, David is smitten at once, and has Bathsheba brought to the palace. There is no evidence in this story that she was glad for the diversion, nor that she cried out “rape” so both interpretations of this event have their admirers. It should be noted, however, that being summoned to the palace might have had a quelling effect on Bathsheba. Would it have been any good for her to cry out? Might that have made matters worse? Was she overwhelmed by the attentions of the King? Did he seduce her, ply her with wine? Or was it simply royal rape? David undoubtedly was able to justify his actions to himself. But the story says that she was taken back to Uriah’s house. She must have felt used as she wandered the house and garden, alone again.
A few weeks later, David gets a message from Bathsheba: “I’m pregnant.” He, like many important men, had not considered consequences of his actions. He panics. What to do? But the solution is easy -- recall Uriah and give him a furlough. What’s the first thing soldiers do when they get furloughed? This will simplify things. She’s not so far along that Uriah would suspect anything. Rubbing his hands in glee, David carries out his plan.
But Uriah does not do what David expects. David has fed him a far better meal than he’s been getting on the battlefront, they have drunk fine wine. David urges Uriah to go to his own house and “wash his feet.”2 But Uriah does not go. He sleeps at the palace instead. And despite all of David’s urging, Uriah refuses to go home to his wife. He is a leader of soldiers, soldiers who are sleeping on the ground and eating things easy to cook. “Should I dishonor my men this way?”
David is beside himself. He writes a note to Joab and asks Uriah to carry it back to the front. “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him so that he may be struck down and die.” Sadly, Joab does as he is told. So Bathsheba is now a widow, and David does her a favor by marrying her. And since David’s queen has been refusing to see him, Bathsheba replaces her at David’s side.
And all this as a consequence of David -- God’s choice to lead a united kingdom of Israel -- staying away from the battle and catching a glimpse of Uriah’s beautiful wife.
Ephesians 3:14-21
Ephesus was one of the seven churches in Asia Minor that are mentioned in Revelation. The city was the second largest in the Roman Empire, and the home of the largest temple dedicated to Artemis (Diana). The goddess was portrayed in this temple in the Asian manner, a multi-breasted goddess of fertility. She was worshipped through sexual union with male or female prostitutes. People came from all over Asia Minor to pray for increased crops and fertile animals as well as for women who had not been able to become pregnant, and as is true today in pilgrimage sites, people readily bought silver and bronze statues to take home, both as souvenirs and as the centerpieces for home altars.
It was the sale of these statues that caused Paul trouble when he was in Ephesus, because the artisans feared that if he converted people to following Christ, their sales would dry up (See Acts 19).
The first part of the third chapter of Ephesians talks about Paul teaching that Jesus came for the gentiles as well as the Jews, and the overwhelming response to the message that “we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” In v. 13, Paul says “Don’t be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory” as one of those churches that readily accommodated both Gentiles and Jews.
“It is for this reason” that Paul kneel[s] before the Father, praying for the Ephesians. He makes a point of saying that he is praying for them to receive the Holy Spirit “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” because between Paul’s visits a Christian preacher named Apollos had come and preached. Apollos had not learned of the baptism by the Spirit that Peter and Paul had both observed, so he was urging baptism as a means of washing away sin, but not the indwelling of the Spirit. Priscilla and Aquilla had taken Apollos to one side and told him what his preaching was lacking, and he had changed his message, but Paul wants to be sure that the correction is emphasized (vv. 16-17). He emphasizes the glory of knowing the fullness of the love of Christ. It is not enough to have knowledge of Christ (v. 20), joy comes with “all the fullness of God.” Which we do not have when we have not received the Holy Spirit.
It’s the same as with human relationships. We may come to know a great many things about a person over the internet, but mostly we learn what that person wants us to know. It’s easy to hide behind a photo; we may choose an old picture, making us look younger, thinner, happier than we currently are. We share the person we want to be, rather than expose our weaknesses. The only way we really get to know each other is to spend hours together in person. We watch how our date treats the waiter in the restaurant, how s/he reacts to bad news, unwanted phone calls and paying the bills. There are those who can be one person in public but cannot maintain the façade at home. So we go to meet the parents, brothers and sisters, old friends, who each tell us a part of the story of our intended. And even then, there are clues we miss, and it turns out that this person isn’t right for us over the long haul. How nice it would be to have a way to see the person within!
With God, it’s even worse. We don’t get to see God, even over Instagram. We have to depend on written records of people we don’t know to know God’s history. We listen to the testimony of those who say they know God, and judge by their behavior whether they know the Jesus of the Bible. How good it is when we feel the Spirit moving, and our own hearts open, and we know the truth of all those who have claimed to know God. But in that light, it’s no wonder so few people flock to the church today. We have to find ways to convey the power of the Spirit to open our hearts and change our lives.
Paul ends this section with a prayer of praise. This is one of the most sublime passages in the scripture, glorifying God, who is never confounded by our requests for help. Indeed, God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (emphasis mine). That power is at work within each of us, and for that reason we reach out in love to others, without asking if they are deserving of our care. We know that we can rely on God even when we feel at our weakest; when we have been let down, even betrayed, we have Christ Jesus to lean on. For these reasons, we join in saying “To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever.” Amen!
John 6:1-21
I started to lead a vacation bible school class for confirmands with the story “Feeding the Five Thousand,” but one of the girls said, “What is it with you pastors and this story? [The previous pastor] was forever telling this story! I’m sick of it.”
I was shocked, but as I thought about it, I said, “I think because it’s a story we can all relate to. Life seems overwhelming sometimes, and this story tells us that God is up to the challenge.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s easy. Pastor ___ said that everybody had brought food with them, but nobody was willing to open their lunch in front of people who might not have done the same. Once the kid’s lunch was out in the open, everybody got out what they had, and if they had extra, they put it in the basket being passed, so everybody had enough. And it probably wasn’t 5,000 either. I don’t remember why he said that, but it wasn’t.”
Gee, I thought to myself, this is going to be a tough crowd.
And that’s what happens when we try to explain the miracle stories. The story of Jesus walking on the water is up against a joke a pastor told me about the rabbi, the priest and the pastor who went out fishing together. They were using the rabbi’s boat, and he was showing them places where he had been fishing and had really good luck. Then the rabbi stood up and said, “Excuse me, I have to relieve myself.” He got out of the boat and walked to shore, hid behind some bushes, and then came back, walking on the water again! When he got back into the boat, the priest said, “Okay, what’s the trick?” The pastor was offended. “Have you never heard that Jesus walked on water? The rabbi must be a very holy man!” The rabbi laughed and said, “Well, I am holy, but in this case I just know where the rocks are.”
These miracle stories aren’t about Jesus’ magical powers, even though what he accomplished so impressed his disciples and the crowd that they declared that he was “the prophet who is to come into the world.” Rather, they are illustrations of faith at work. The works are not Jesus’ works, but the working faith of the disciples. Unfortunately, we are still like the people of Jesus’ day, waiting for God to come to our rescue, scrabbling for crumbs, when what Jesus was trying to do was to train us to make things happen.
In the first story, Jesus sees that the crowds that gathered for his healing ministry was following him and the disciples (v. 2) around the lake. Jesus finds a good spot for teaching and sits down on the grass. Turning to Philip, he says, “Where can we buy bread for all these people?” Philip takes the question literally: “Six months’ salary wouldn’t buy enough bread!” Andrew, on the other hand, offers a start: “There’s a boy here with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish. But of course that’s nothing with so many people.”
Listen to the two answers. Philip throws up his hands. Andrew says, “Here’s a start. I bet you can do something with it, little as it is.”
What follows is a miracle, no matter how we try to explain it. Maybe many of the people did in fact have lunches, and more than enough for themselves, and everyone shared and were amazed that they were all satisfied. Maybe they felt that the words of Jesus were such that they didn’t need to eat, they were busy ‘chewing on his words.’ Maybe Jesus’ prayer really did work the kind of miracle the Hebrews had in the wilderness, when a fungus appeared on the desert soil and they found it was good to eat and could be prepared in different ways so they could tolerate eating the same thing every day. Does it make a difference to our faith which explanation is the real one?
Jesus didn’t usually do this kind of thing, and the reason is obvious in v. 15: they were about to come and take him by force to make him king. They were hungry for a Jewish leader who was this strong, who could come up with solutions for poverty and the rule of a foreign power over the Holy Land. They wanted to grab hold of him, make him be king, wage war on the Romans and throw them out of the land. He climbed over the top of the hill and up a mountain before they could see where he was.
Many nations of the world are restless right now. Many of them have elected leaders who have promised to make their people prosperous, who have promised that they will keep out those who are fleeing their homes to seek a safe place where they can find work and avoid starvation. We are not the only nation seeking to build walls rather than treaties. Everywhere we look, people are turning inward and voting for leaders who will let them do that. But the hope that prosperity can be bought at the cost of others rather than we ourselves is a false hope, the very opposite of faith.
The second story tells us that Jesus had not come back down the mountain before dark. The disciples went down to the water, got a boat, and headed for home. As they were rowing across the lake, they saw Jesus walking on the water toward them. This scared them; they thought he was a ghost. John’s version doesn’t say this, nor does he say that Peter asked Jesus to let him walk on the water also. John’s is a stripped-down version of the miracle. No one but Jesus walks on the water here. There’s a reason for that. John’s gospel is all about the divinity of Jesus, not his humanity, and the disciples never quite get the hang of miracle-working themselves. In fact, John doesn’t have Jesus getting in the boat. Look at v. 21: “Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going [Capernaum, where Jesus had taken up residence].
So how do we explain this story? Maybe the point is in his reassurance to the disciples in v. 20: “Don’t be afraid, it’s me.” After all, we’re all afraid. And we lie about it.
I had a terribly frightening experience one night. A man in the neighborhood of some friends had the idea that our friend had been having an affair with the neighbor’s wife. He came to the house with a gun and forced our friend into the car and they drove away. When the wife came in the door a few minutes later, we had to tell her what had happened. She was obviously very upset by all this, but it got worse -- soon her husband was at the door and told her to put on warm clothes, that the neighbor insisted that they go for a ride together. If they refused, the man was threatening to kill them and their three children. So our friends got in the car and left.
I turned to the children and said, “Go get your snowmobile suits and boots and gloves. Put on the pants and boots, and have the jackets and hats and gloves ready. If this man comes in the house, you have to go out the other door, so be ready to put your jackets on if I say so. Okay?” They all nodded, and we checked the other door to make sure it wasn’t locked and that they could wade through the snow if they had to. And then we waited.
As the time stretched on and we hadn’t heard the car in the drive, the son turned to me and asked, “Are you afraid?” “Yes,” I replied. “I’m afraid, because I don’t know what’s going to happen. But no matter what happens, you and your sisters need to get out of the house. I’ll keep the man from following you so you can get to the farm down the road. Just don’t hesitate, and don’t look back. That’ll just slow you down.”
As it was, the man dropped off our friends and drove away. They had been able to talk sense to him. We were all safe. It’s good to have a plan. And it’s good to admit that we’re afraid; it keeps us from freezing up with fear.
So I think the point of the second miracle story is not that Jesus could walk on water. I think the point is that we need not be afraid if we know Jesus is there in the midst of fear. And the disciples didn’t need to walk on water. Verse 21 says that as they began to reach out to take Jesus into the boat, they “immediately reached the land toward which they were going.” If we can just reach out to Jesus when we are afraid, we can immediately see a solution to our fear.
And that’s miracle enough.
1 See Genesis 19:37–38; Moses said that the Canaanites’ religion was anathema to God, who told the Hebrew people to kill all the Canaanites, as well as their livestock perhaps because using these animals to sacrifice to God would be as bad as entering into their religious practices.
2 A Hebrew euphemism for preparing to have intercourse.
