He’s Beyond Me
John 6.1-21 is a remarkable vignette in the gospels that is easily lost to a metaphorical/spiritual principle reading. We are so used to reading and preaching beyond (almost despite) the historical context/event, we fail to be captured by the enormity of the events themselves.
It is to be remembered that the gospels are eyewitness accounts that record the life and words of Jesus. Read as history they are accounts that are as arresting as they are inspiring. However, reading them allegorically tends to tame them, to strip them of their power. And those that think they are fictitious/mythical pictures of a Jesus of legend are attributing to the authors Christ like imaginations – in other words, it would take a Jesus to make up a Jesus.
Reading the stories, of the feeding of the five thousand and the calming of the sea, one can’t help but be overwhelmed by this man Jesus. He is beyond me, which is the point.
There are prophetic inclinations and lessons in the feeding of the five thousand: Jesus taking bread, breaking, blessing and distributing it points to the Last Supper where Jesus took bread, broke and blessed saying it was his body given to all; also, in sharing what we have with others God will multiply what we give. These are the topics of sermons aplenty - well and good - but it is easy to forget by our sermonic spiritualising that this was an astonishing miracle that must have overwhelmed the recipients. It certainly did something as they wanted to, by force, make him King (for dubious/selfish reasons).
As long as we extract principles and teach allegorically about how these stories relate to or benefit us, we are in danger of missing the value of an historical account that pointed to Jesus’ divinity, his otherness. This is the point John is making in telling of the life and times of Jesus.
After this and because of the motive of the crowd, which was the antithesis of what Jesus taught or wanted, he slipped away in the twilight to be by himself. Not even the disciples knew where he was, which accounts for them sailing back to Capernaum.
In the middle of the night as they were straining against the wind and waves, he appeared to them, walking towards them on water. They were gripped with fear until he told them it was him and entered the boat. Then, to add wonder to terror, the boat was where they were headed - safe and sound. I mean, who does this, who can do this, if not the Son of God? I imagine they were alternately grateful and terrified. Who, what is this man?
We preach, and rightly, that Jesus can come to you in your storm and calm the troubled waters, but contextually it is apropos to be saying that Jesus has power over the elements – he is the Lord of nature, he is the Creator, the eternal Word. His divine nature is being alluded to by John the apostle in this mind-gasping scenario.
Reading principle, metaphor, or allegory out of these events puts us in danger of making the event of lesser importance, when it is a primary. What we see in these historical incidents is something about who Jesus was – an astonishment then, an astonishment today. One thing is for sure – he is beyond me.