Lent 4
– March 24th and 25th, 2017 – John
6:1-15
In the Name of Christ the Crucified +
In the Name of Christ the Crucified +
I want
to start at the end of our Gospel Text. “Perceiving then
that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king,
Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.” This
text, the famous feeding of the 5000 thousand, ends with Jesus
high-tailing it out of there because the mob wants to lay hands on
Him and drag Him off to be king. How's that for a day? It had been
a normal enough day for Jesus – a great crowd had gathered while He
was preaching, and as usual Jesus decides He'll teach His disciples a
bit. Okay Philip, how are we going to feed these folks? It's just a
check up, a chance to see if the disciples are paying attention, know
what is going on. John notes, “He
said this to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”
This is the standard Jewish way of teaching – you present your
students a problem that you know how to solve, but you evaluate how
they would solve the problem. And they've got no clue. Andrew
brings up the boy who has the two fish, the five loaves (really
they're the size of dinner rolls, probably), and Jesus prays and give
thanks and there's food for everyone and 12 baskets left over – an
awesome miracle, a great sign! And the response? Perceiving
then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him
king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.
Think
of all the things that could have been learned by the crowd. You've
probably heard many of them in sermons – there's the fact that
Jesus is true God who provides food, there's the miracle, there's the
play off of Psalm 23 because Jesus made His people lay down in green
pastures and fed them, there's the faith of the boy, there's the fact
that Jesus knows what He's doing – this text is almost hard to
preach upon because there's so much that we could focus on. Jesus is
intentionally teaching with a miracle, it's rich. And yet – what
gets learned? The crowd figures it should go and take Jesus and make
Him King. By force. Here they see Jesus do an act of great power,
of great kindness, of great generosity – and the reaction of the
people is to try to twist His arm and tell Him what He should do and
when He should do it.
Alright folks, time for today's hard question. It's
not hard in the sense that we don't know what the answer is, mind
you. We're just not going to like it. Today's hard question is
this: How often do we act precisely like that crowd? Here we are in
God's Church – we are the baptized, we know God's love and
salvation – and yet how often instead of simply trusting in God to
give us what is good, do we want, do we wish that we could just make
Jesus do what we want Him to? How often do we wish that there were
strings that we could pull with God so He would give us the early
blessings we wanted right when we wanted them? Because that is the
heart of every temptation – to place ourselves over God and to try
to get God to dance to our tune. And even seeing His kindness, His
goodness, so often our response will be to try to shake God down for
more and more, for something else.
It's
because we do not understand the word “our”. Jesus is our King.
In fact, that's the folly of the crowd – Jesus was already their
King – it's just that they wanted His kingship to be on their
terms. Just like we often want God to be our God but on our terms.
That word “our” is a possessive – it denotes either ownership
or belonging. And the problem for the crowd was they wanted to own
Jesus, the problem for us is so often we want to own Jesus, to have
Him do what we want when we want it. But that's not what we should
mean when we say that Jesus is our King. It's not that Jesus belongs
to us – it is that we belong to Him.
So
often we will confuse belonging with ownership – and when we do,
everything goes sideways. With so many things. If we say, “This
is my church” meaning that I own it and it had better do what I
want – that's when things go sideways. Badly. If we say, “This
is my church” meaning that I belong here, that I am fed upon the
Word here, that I serve my neighbors here – then that's great. If
someone says, “You're my spouse” thinking that this means they
get to boss them around – things go badly. If “You're my spouse”
means that I am called by God to love, serve, and care for this
person – that I belong to them – things go smoothly. They are my
friends, so they had better do what I want – bad. They are my
friends, so I will help them out and love them – good. All across
our lives, whenever we start wanting to be in control, that's when
things go bad, that's when fights happen and things break. God gives
us relationships not to Lord it over others, but to shape and direct
our service – every relationship you are in is a relationship of
service. Even me as a parent – I have authority over my kids (in
theory), and that isn't to make them serve me but so that I can serve
them. And really sin has at its core a desire to have control –
it's the lie that a relationship should be about how you rule and
make others do what you want, not how you serve. That's how Adam and
Eve were tripped up in the Garden – they thought being like God
meant they'd get to be in control.
Over
and against that, Jesus shows us what it truly means to say that He
is our King. “Perceiving
then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him
king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.”
No, Jesus will be our King, but that means He is going to do what is
best for us, whether or not we like it, whether or not it is easier
or better for Him. First, Jesus gave the crowd what they needed for
their body, not what they wanted. They need food – alright, I'll
give them their daily bread (more on that this Wednesday night), but
when they wanted more, when they wanted a life of luxury on easy
street with Jesus being the goose that lays them the golden eggs –
no. That's not good for them. So He doesn't give that to them.
Likewise, dear friends – Jesus is a good King for you, and He gives
you your daily bread, He gives you what you need. Not necessarily
what you want. He gives you what is good for you, so that you learn
to remember that you are not everyone else's master, but their
friend, their servant, someone who knows them in order to care for
them. And in this, Jesus is wise. I've got a big enough ego as it
is; I can't imagine what it would be if I were filthy rich on top of
it. And as for you – think of the things you want, that you might
idly daydream about. Now think of what sort of jerk you'd be tempted
become if you actually got it. Oh yeah, if I got that beach house –
I'd stay there and be no good to anyone. Our King gives us what
really is good for us – and He is wiser than we are.
But we aren't just talking about stuff here. If you
want to know what it means that Jesus is our King, ponder this. The
crowd was going to make Him King by force – they were willing to go
and fight and die for Him. They'd suffer to get Him on the throne –
they'd go battle the Romans and stab them and kill them and then
Jesus would reign after they shed their blood... do you get how
backwards that is? Our King – He chooses to suffer and die for our
sake, to give us life. Our King will not wear a golden crown, but
He'll take up a crown of thorns. Our King won't shed any blood but
His own, and He will shed that as the spotless Lamb of God who takes
away the sins of the world.
This is the thing. We major in minors. We get caught
up in the fleeting, temporary things. The crowds worried about
filling their bellies; Christ is focused upon seeing that they get
eternal life. We worry about comfort and extra luxuries – Jesus is
focused on dealing with Sin and Death for us. And even we here who
know better, we can get so caught up in the temporary, the temporal,
the earthly – yet Christ Jesus is your King, and that means that He
is the King who is for you. When you are distracted – He's not.
When you follow your sin down some rabbit trail, He stays upon the
true path of righteousness, and He does what is righteous for you.
He goes boldly to the Cross for you, He wins you life and salvation,
He gives you what you need, what is actually good for you, not only
now, but He also gives you eternal life. Because He is your King –
and He knows that as Your King His job is to do all things for you
good.
That's what Jesus teaches us. Philip gets asked the
question so He can learn how far Jesus' care for folks extends. Then
Jesus runs from the crowd for their own good – teaching them and us
what is good and right. And Jesus teaches us this in our own lives,
as by His Word and Spirit we learn to fight against our sin that
would seek to control everything, as by His Word and Spirit we begin
to see more and more that He is always our King, the King who is for
us. He even feeds us today to forgive and teach us His love. God
grant that He make us to know this more and more now, so that we live
here by faith until we see His goodness for us perfectly for all
eternity. In the Name of Christ the Crucified +