Exodus 16:2-4,9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35
The Rev. Drew Brislin
In the name of the one Holy and Undivided Trinity, Amen.
I’m sure some of you here this morning are Braves baseball fans, and you have heard me talk about how following this team helped me navigate some uncomfortable times in my youth. During the 90’s and early 2000’s the Braves experienced exceptional success, winning their division fourteen years in a row from 1991 to 2005. During that time, I had a friend who was an Astros fan, and we were having a conversation about which team was better. Now this was back in the day when the Astros were a National League team and they played in the same division as the Braves. The rivalry between these two teams as they competed year in, and year out was unmatched. In the course of one of our conversations my friend suggested that I might only be a fan because of the recent success of the team. He suggested that I might be a “Johnny come lately.” In other words, a bandwagon fan. I have to be honest with you, I too have used this accusation as a critique of friends myself, whether in baseball or other sports. The crowd we find this morning following Jesus after having been fed, felt very much like a group of bandwagon fans chasing Jesus because of what he had done rather than for who he is. This morning in our Gospel reading we find Jesus on the other side of the lake in Capernaum. The crowd that he fed came looking for him. When they ask him how he came to be there, Jesus replies that’ you are only looking for me because you are full, not because you have seen signs.’
As we continue in this discourse on Jesus as the Bread of Life, we find a group of people chasing after Jesus. This crowd, who just a day earlier, was seeking to make Jesus a king because of the miracle that he had performed that left them with full stomachs now approaches Jesus trying to figure out how he came to be where he was. We read in our Gospel this morning the question from the crowd, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” they ask. I found it interesting that the Greek translation reads “How did you come to be here?” While both translations sound somewhat the same, I think the Greek can lead us down a more theological path rather than the more logistical translation we hear this morning. Jesus tells the crowd that they should not work for the food that perishes but for the food of eternal life that endures forever the food that he will give them. The crowd then asks, “what must we do to perform these miracles?” It is as if they see Jesus as some sort of spiritual ‘Golden Coral’ and they want to know who much it costs per person. Too often we forget how to pursue what really matters and we become consumers of a religion that simply addresses our needs. Jesus is calling the crowd and us to believe in Him who God has sent, that asking to be full is asking too little. The crowd is thinking transactionally, while Jesus is thinking relationally. In their persistent questioning of Jesus, they reference the manna that Moses provided, and Jesus is quick to instruct them that it was not Moses who provided the bread from heaven, but that it was the Father. The early church father John Chrysostom is quoted as saying, “By His words to them He was all but saying this, ‘It is not the miracle of loaves that has struck you with wonder, but the being filled.’” The ones who wanted to make Jesus a king, saw the feeding miracle as an end in itself, rather than the sign that it was intended to be. That sign being God calling us to have faith in his Son whom he sent to be the bread that gives life and not just the bread that fills our stomach. Do we believe in the good news even when it doesn’t bring us material things? This is the mystery. That we do not know what happens, but we do get to experience this mystery every Sunday and every time we celebrate the miracle of the eucharist in ‘The Body of Christ, The Bread of Heaven.’ In the early days of the church, it was often the Gospel of John that was given to new converts to the faith or read to them in that one of the main goals of this Gospel was to keep bringing people to into this new community of believers and to keep them following in the way of Jesus. It is the Johnny come lately, bandwagon fans that we are called to keep inviting into this new way of being in relationship with God and Jesus and with us.
While my friend suggested that I might be a ‘Johnny come lately’ fan, I was quick to assure him that I had been pulling for the Braves since the early 1980’s. I proved by referencing my fandom of such legendary players as Dale Murphy, Bruce Benedict, Phil Neikro “the knuckleball pitcher”, Chris Chamblis and Joe Torre who was the manager among others back in those days. You might say, I had a relationship with the team as a fan prior to the success that they were enjoying at the time. Relationships with each other help us to build communities to rely on not only in times of joy but also during hardships. We have our most fulfilled lives when our neighbors are experiencing that same sense of fulfillment. There is nothing wrong with being a Johnny come lately. It is far better to being a Johnny never comes at all. What is most important, I believe, is that when we do come seeking, we come with our hearts open to all the possibilities of love and community and relationship that Jesus is inviting us to be a part of as we seek to build up the kingdom here on earth. When we come saying, “Sir, give us this bread always,” do we know what we are asking? Our journey will not always be easy. Our “teams” do not always enjoy that success, that brings us joy and elation. But when our journey is grounded in a sense of community and belonging, we find that we experience a fullness that satisfies us because all that is required is faith in our God, faith in Jesus. It is this faith that will feed us and sustain us.
Amen