Not about the food.

We are going to save the end of the series on the Five Fold ministry 
for another time.
We were down to the Teacher and talking about maturity. 
And honestly, 
I think the best way to express the role of the Teacher
is to bring forth good teaching. 

Every three years 
in year B in the Lectionary,
we are brought to the sixth chapter of John.

This passage is so important that we get 
the miracle,
and the explanation of the miracle 
over several weeks
every three years.
This chapter is the heart of Christian teaching,
and the intent is that we will take several weeks to teach
on the core of the New Covenant.

Of all the stories and miracles in the New Testament,
there is only one 
that is repeated in all the gospels.
There is only one miracle that Jesus stopped and explained.
And there is only one miracle 
that is referenced again and again 
throughout the early church fathers.
And this miracle 
is the feeding of the five thousand.

In my Bible and seminary training,
the teachers,
and most of the protestant commentators,
said that this miracle is recorded in every gospel
because they were living in a subsistence economy,
and these were people who were oppressed
and this is about a "justice issue."
It's about the food.
And as was typical,
we got what to think,
not how to think.
No reflection,
full stop,
move on to something more important.

Yes,
it's about the food.
But it is not about the food.
Every time we see people 
eating and drinking together
in the Bible,
we are tapping into one of the over arching themes
in the Bible.
And this theme,
eating and drinking in the Kingdom of God,
is closely related to another theme,
the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
Again and again,
food, marriage, and love are linked.
God is pursuing us,
just like a young man pursues his beloved.

In John 6,
Jesus gets in a boat
and goes to the other side of the sea of Galilee.
You get this sense in John's gospel,
that Jesus is spending a lot of time crossing the sea
in a boat 
in order to escape the crowds.  
And the terrain around the sea is very hilly,
and it says that Jesus went up into a mountain
and sat down with the disciples.

We have to pay attention to the details.
No detail in Scripture is ever wasted.
John tells us 
that the Passover, "Pascha"
was coming.
What is passover?
It is the feast of the Unleavened Bread.
How do you celebrate it?
By breaking the bread.
What does it celebrate?
The Covenant God made with Moses
when they were delivered by the blood of the Lamb
from slavery in Egypt.
So already,
the events here are not about the food.
They are about Passover.

And then Jesus sees the crowds coming toward them.
And he asks Philip,
"Where can we buy bread to feed these people?"
It says that Jesus asks him this 
so that Jesus could test him.
And Philip responds not with where,
but with his earthly thinking.
"It would take more than a year's wages to buy just a little bit for each person."

I would like to buy food,
but I'm broke.
I guess they will have to starve.
Poverty thinking.

Jesus is revealing the heart of limited thinking.
How human thinking 
sees a problem
and then says
"I need this much money to solve the problem."
We pray and ask God to give us the money,
so that we can solve the problem.
That is giving Mammon power in the situation.

It's really interesting how often this way of thinking manifests itself.
I have to stop people praying this way all the time.
And I have to stop myself from thinking this way.
As we are going to see,
Jesus solves this problem
without ever spending a dime.

Out of the all disciples,
Andrew was the possibility thinker.
I find it interesting
that whenever he is mentioned
it says that he is Simon Peter's brother.
Andrew sees the possibility,
he found someone in the crowd who has some food.
The boy has five loaves and two fish.
But Andrew also speaks out his disbelief:
"What are these among so many?"

It is really important here
to unpack what is going on here
from a Jewish symbolic grid.
This is a symbolic book,
Jews used numbers in a clear symbolic system,
and John was the supreme master of their use in the New Testament.
Every number matters in John.

Five, from the Old Testament lens
always points back to the Torah,
to the five books of Moses.
And here, 
there are five barley loaves.
Barley is mentioned in Deuteronomy 8:8
as one of the signs they have entered the promised land.
It was one of the grains permissable to eat at Passover
and was part of the wave offering at the feast of the first fruits.
It represented God's 
provision,
favor,
and abundance.

Two fish also have a symbolic meaning.
The Jews of second temple Judaism
linked all seafood to Leviathan
the sea monster who is symbolic of satan.
It was during this period 
that Jews began eating fish on Friday nights during their 
Shabbat meal
because they believed that in the Resurrection
at the coming of the Messianic age
they would be eating the flesh of Leviathan.
It is was a sign of the victory of the Messiah.
This is where fish on Friday originates.

Two is the number of division and separation.
Two is the splitting of the cell,
the dividing of the day from the night,
and the turning from evil.
Paul expressed the symbolism of two in II Corinthians 6:14,
by pairing ideas:

Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers:
for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness?
And what communion has light with darkness?
And fellowship has Christ with Belial?
And what part do believers have with unbelievers?
And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?
For you are the temple of the living God; as God has said,
"I will dwell in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
Wherefore come out from among them,
and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing.
And I will be your Father, and you will be my people.
In order to become one with God
you have two become two with the darkness.

The first century Jewish reader would immediately understand all this.
Jesus is taking the bread of the promised land,
the bread of the Torah,
and he is taking the flesh of Leviathan
and calling us to turn
to metanoia,
to shuv
to repent.
Why,
because this is about the Messianic age.
This is about the Kingdom.
It is not about the food.

And Jesus tells them to sit down.
In the Greek it says they were reclining,
just like at the passover.
This isn't a picnic full of hungry people.
This is a passover feast.
We are reclining,
we are not slaves in Egypt.
God is about to do a miracle,
and you don't have to do anything to make it happen.

And now we see 5000 men.
Earlier on John uses the generic word for "people" in the Greek,
but here,
it is very clear he is using the word for "males."
This is about the "minyan"
about a representative gathering of Jewish men.
There are five thousand
because we are back to the Torah.
These men
are the nation of Israel.
They are the representative
of all the Jewish men who have ever lived.
These are the men of the book.

And then we come to heart of the miracle:
Jesus took the bread,
gave thanks,
divided it among the disciples
and to those who were reclining.

Let me read you some of this in the Greek:
Elaben, oun tous artous ho Iesous
kai eucharistesas,
diedoken.

Jesus took bread,
made eucharist
and divided it.

Where else did Jesus take bread,
give thanks,
and divide it?

He did it when he fed the four thousand.
He did it in the upper room.
He did it in the house in Emmaus.
And he did it by the seashore.
After Pentecost, 
the disciples did it every day in the temple.
Paul did it on a ship right before a shipwreck,
and it says that the bread fed 247 people!
And of course,
Paul says that he received directly from the Lord
this instruction in I Corinthans 11.

And it says
that they were all filled and were satisfied.

This is not about the food.
This is about the Kingdom.
And Jesus says to them
"gather up all the fragments
so that nothing may be lost."
Every bit of the this Kingdom is precious.
This bread is the bread of the Promised land.
And notice there is no fish leftover
because the power of leviathan is completely broken.

And just to prove it is about the Kingdom
they had twelve baskets left over.
Twelve is the number of Israel
and the government of God.
Twelve, the number of the Kingdom 
is three,
God,
times four,
the creation.
God reunited and rebuilding a broken creation.
This is not an allegory,
this is the language of Scripture.
And every time
we eat this bread
and drink this cup
we proclaim the Lord's death,
the Coming of the Kingdom,
until he comes again.
We are giving what we need for the in-between,
the already, but not yet, Kingdom.

And the folks in the crowd recognized what was going on,
because they say,
"surely 
this is the prophet that was promised."
They got it.
They saw what was happening.
This bread and this multitude
are the New Covenant.
The Messiah is going to break the back of Leviathan
and create a new people.
And we will be at rest,
and there will be enough.
And the abundance is the sign of the Government of God 
in the earth.

There is no limit to this kingdom.
It is not limited by the bank account.
It is not limited by circumstances.
And the provision of God is released,
when we offer it to God,
give thanks,
break it,
and give it away.

And this Kingdom
is all about eating and drinking at the Father's table.

I find it interesting 
that Friday night
there was a satanic ritual played out before the world.
The Olympics chose to mock 
the Eucharist
before the whole world.
They didn't mock the Quran or Buddha.
They mocked the thing that was real and true.
What fellowship has light with darkness?
And yesterday,
the power went out in Paris.
There was only one place that had light,
the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
Sacre Coeur,
at the top of Montmartre. 
You can't make this stuff up.

This broken bread is the source of our life and our power.
It is the bread for the journey
and the sign that God is going to win.

Lord Jesus,
we thank you for the five loaves
and two fish
that you have given us.
We thank you for the breaking.
And we thank you that in the breaking and the giving
you feed the multitudes.
We ask you Lord
to make us this broken bread and poured out wine
so that that all may see 
and know that your kingdom is unstoppable.
Amen.