Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

King for a Day

by Dave Wilkinson

John 6:1-15

February 27, 2000

Have you ever felt like Alexander?

I don’t mean Alexander the Great. I don’t mean Hamilton, Graham Bell or P. Keaton. I mean Alexander in Judith Viorst’s children's book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Alexander is a boy of seven or eight who has an unbelievably stressful day.

"I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skate board and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day -- There was lima beans for dinner and I hate limas. There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain, and I had to wear my railroad-train pajamas. I hate my railroad-train pajamas. When I went to bed Nick took back the pillow he said I could keep and the Mickey Mouse night-light burned out and I bit my tongue. The cat wants to sleep with Anthony, not with me. It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think I'll move to Australia."

We all have our Alexander days — days when stress builds and builds. We have our dream Australia where people never stress and there’s always another shrimp on the barbie. Jesus was no exception -- although I suspect that He dealt with stress better than we do. As Jesus began his second year of public ministry, two pressure points emerged. One biggie -- there was a price on His head. The religious leaders wanted to kill Him. Early in Mark's account we see that they called Him a blasphemer when He healed a paralytic. They were shocked when he associated Himself with sinners. They were astounded when His disciples did not fast like they did. They were greatly offended when the disciples picked grain to eat on the Sabbath. They were beside themselves with anger when Jesus healed the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.

Pressure also came from His popularity with the common people. Life was chaotic. Luke's description of one day is characteristic: "Meanwhile, a crowd of many thousands had gathered so that they were trampling on one another." After a time away to the mountains, Jesus came home, and the crowds gathered once again "so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat."

In John 6, Jesus has gone away with His disciples for a time of rest, private teaching, and prayer. This planned private time, however, doesn’t happen. It was the time of the Passover and many pilgrims were traveling to Jerusalem. These pilgrims discover that Jesus is nearby and they start coming to Him. The sense of the verb is that the people kept coming to Him -- more and more of them all the time. John leaves out the content of Jesus’ teaching and goes straight to lunch time.

Verse 5 states that Jesus sees the people and turns to Phillip with the question, "Where are we to buy bread, that these people may eat?" Phillip was the natural one for Jesus to ask because he lived in the nearby town of Bethsaida. But even more, as John declares in verse 6, Jesus’ purpose was to "test Phillip" -- to help Phillip discover what he is made of.

When Jesus asks Phillip, "Where shall we buy bread that these people can eat?," I do not doubt that Jesus is hoping that Phillip will respond, "Lord, we can't buy, but you can provide." Phillip had certainly seen enough of Jesus' power and had himself worked miracles and cast out demons in Jesus' name. But Phillip doesn’t even answer Jesus' question, "Where?" Instead he answers his own question, "How?" Being a practical man of figures he rapidly computes that it will cost about six months wages for a laborer to give each person even a small amount of food. For Phillip, that computation settles the whole question. Money, or the lack of it, is the bottom line. Phillip has a lot of descendants in the church today who find their faith measured by a financial flow chart. I’m trying to not be one of them. Because in his computing, Phillip leaves Jesus out of the equation and ends up with the wrong answer.

Now Andrew steps forward. Andrew has an answer to Jesus' question but I think he feels pretty silly giving it. He says to Jesus, "There is a lad here with five barley loaves and two fish — but what good are these for so many people?" Andrew wants to step out on faith but he can't quite bring himself to put his full weight down.

In Greek John uses a double diminutive to describe the boy with the lunch. He makes it clear that this is a little boy -- maybe five or six years old for at twelve he would no longer be called a boy but a man.

Remember here that John is describing something that really happened — with real people. This means that the boy come from somewhere before he was momentarily frozen in the scriptural narrative. Then he also went home to somewhere.

I can picture him asking his mother for permission to go with the others to see the man everyone is talking about. I can see her telling him that he's too young to understand what is being said and him pestering her until she gives in and allows him to go. I can see her fixing him a lunch with what John describes as five small loaves of the barley bread eaten by the poorer people and two dried or pickled fish called "opsaria" which were about the size of sardines

I can see him overhearing Jesus' question and Phillip's response and, in a simple act of uncomplicated generosity, offering his lunch to Jesus' disciples for their use. He didn’t know it was too small. I can see him coming home at the end of the day with shining eyes to describe what he and Jesus had accomplished together. Phillip had what he thought was the answer but the little boy had the lunch and he gave it.

In verse ten John records that Jesus instructs his disciples to have the people sit down on the grass. There are about 5,000 men which would indicate that there are probably 15,000 people in all. Then Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks.

In giving thanks in this way Jesus may have been taking upon Himself the role of the father of this very large family. He may have used the traditional blessing of the Jewish meal, "Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord. our God, who causes to come forth bread from the earth. Then he distributes the bread and the fish to the waiting people -- as much as they can eat. This meal is as large as our Thanksgiving. I can picture five thousand men eating their fill, and then lying back on the grass wishing that football and television had been invented.

The people understand the message that Jesus is giving in this miracle -- but only a small part of it. They say, "This is of a truth the Prophet who is to come into the world." They remember the way God provided manna in the wilderness through the hand of the lawgiver Moses. They also remember the story of how the Prophet Elijah had provided an inexhaustible supply of oil and grain for the poor widow who had sheltered him from the wrath of Ahab during a famine.

But even more than a Prophet from the past they see a king for the present. They want to make Jesus their king.

A few of you may remember a terrible, old 1950s television series "Queen for a Day" in which the women who could tell the greatest tale of misery and woe as measured by an "applause-o-meter" was showered with gifts and crowned queen for a day. The women who weren't quite as miserable received a toaster,

Well now Jesus is "King for a Day." But instead of giving Him gifts, the people expect to receive gifts. They have already received a free lunch. Who knows what else he could provide? Medical care? Old age security? They are willing to make Jesus their king as long as He will live up to their expectations, "Their gratitude," as Dr. Samuel Johnson pointed out, "was in reality their eager expectation of favors still to come."

It is at this point in his earthly ministry that Jesus receives the greatest amount of public acceptance and support. But it is acceptance and support for all the wrong reasons. It was the road to power that Jesus had rejected back in temptation in the wilderness when he refused to turns stones into bread. Jesus refuses their attempt to make Him king. He simply absents Himself. He "withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone."

These people came for bread. But thousands of others came to Jesus even when there was no free lunch.

Why did thousands of people seek Him? What made him so attractive? Mark says it is because the vast majority had heard all the things he was doing, including healing the sick and casting out demons. Other passages tell us that people sought Jesus to see miracles performed, to listen to His teaching, to have Him settle disputes; to discourse with Him in social settings; or to seek the way to eternal life.

Who came looking for Him? We've already seen that most religious leaders sought him for ill will. Mark tells us that even his own relatives came to take custody of him thinking Jesus to be mad. Others, however, sought after Jesus for good reasons The shepherds and magi pursued Jesus to worship Him. Nicodemus needed answers. The Samaritans in John 4 desired truth. All kinds of people sought Jesus from birth to his Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem. Jesus was truly the people's choice for one reason or another.

Last week Sheri introduced the eight themes of our 50-Day Spiritual Adventure -- eight reasons that made Jesus attractive. These are some of the underlying reasons people sought after Him so persistently. We'll rivet our attention on these reasons beginning next Sunday.

We are setting the stage for a celebration this morning -- a celebration of the real Jesus. We will discover or rediscover what made Him attractive and admired by the masses in the first century and what makes him attractive today. As present-day disciples of Jesus, we'll explore the powerful message in His lifestyle and relationships. In the coming weeks, as we examine the Gospels, we'll eavesdrop on Jesus as He receives his marching orders from the Father in a daily routine of listening prayer. We will find Him breaking down the stereotypes of "us" and "them." We'll rediscover that he genuinely likes people and draws out the best in them. We'll see Jesus serving others in true humility and communicating truth in everyday language so that people can understand who He is and why He came. We'll hear Him speaking of a better kingdom that has come -- and is coming-in all of its fullness. We'll see him bravely striding toward the Cross. We'll shout "Hallelujah" in response to Jesus fighting the forces of evil and winning a great victory. And, in a world blinded by its own agenda, we will have the great joy of inviting others to live in the light of Christ.

We are now setting the stage for a 50-Day Spiritual Adventure that could transform our lives and touch this community. In one sense, the next 50 days could be like any other 50-day period filled with the usual round of activities that leaves us a bit weary but unchanged. Or these could be 50 days of growth! These can be fifty days to put aside our small ambitions and enter into the mainstream of what's happening in God’s work across our land. There are thousands of churches like ours that have said "Yes" to celebrating Jesus as the Lord of life in this millennial year. They are committed to doing all they can to see that every man, woman, boy, and girl has the opportunity to hear the Good News about Jesus before the end of the year. That's no small ambition, is it? It is a God-sized dream that requires God focused and God empowered people. In the next 50 days we are going to see lighthouses of prayer beginning to shine in our neighborhoods and work places and schools.

What is a lighthouse? A lighthouse is a person or family or church or any group of people who commits to pray for and care for their neighbors (or coworkers, schoolmates, friends) and to sensitively share Jesus Christ with them, as God directs. Jesus calls us to be light-bearers for Him where we live and work, beyond the walls of the sanctuary in the nitty-gritty of everyday life. He calls us to bear the light to everyday people who are trying to make sense of schoolyard killings, war, broken families, empty lives, tragic loss, or the breakneck pace of life.

Jesus wants you and me to be channels of His hope and love to those around us as we celebrate Him over the next 50 days. Our celebration is not simply a rehearsal of all that is good about Jesus, but of what can be truly good about us as we follow his lead. To fully celebrate Jesus is to find ourselves being transformed into His own likeness. No, none of us will ever be mistaken for Jesus, but our hope is that we will be so changed that others will readily see that we belong to Him. We are either signposts pointing others to Him by who we are and how we live. Or, sadly, we are detours diverting people from Him.

I don’t want to be an endless detour like this one for the Spring Road Bridge outside our window. I want to be a living signpost, don't you? The real Jesus of the Bible becomes attractive to others as they see him genuinely reflected in our lives day by day.

As we close, let me make two more observations about our text -- and the Jesus we discover in the Word. In verses 12 and 13 an important fact about the nature of the gospel is revealed. Jesus does not provide just enough for the people's needs. He provides enough that they are all filled and the more they eat the more is provided.

After they have all eaten their fill there are still enough large broken pieces of bread to fill the food baskets each of the disciples carried. As Paul declares in Ephesians 3, "Jesus is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think." The gospel is not given as a T.V. dinner or a snack. The gospel is given as a feast so that, as the Shepherd's Psalm declares, "our cup runneth over."

You will remember back in the second chapter of John that Jesus did a similar miracle to the feeding of the 5,000 in the changing of water into wine. We’ll look at this event is a few weeks. Both miracles demonstrate a total mastery over the basic elemental forces of the universe. And yet there is a profound difference between the two miracles. In turning the water into wine Jesus made water into the best wine -- wine that won praise for the bridegroom from the steward of the feast. But in multiplying the loaves, Jesus did not change the barley into wheat. The loaves continued to be barley -- the simple food of the poor.

I think there is significance here. Later in chapter 6 Jesus will speak of Himself as the Bread of Life. He is making the point here that the bread He is and the bread He provides is meant for our daily use. The gospel is not an addition to tickle our tastebuds after the basics of life have been met. The gospel is, in itself, basic to our lives. It goes straight to the necessities of our human nature -- the need for love, for forgiveness, for value, for purpose, for acceptance -- the need for a future.

There are some who reject the gospel because it seems too simple -- too basic. They prefer something more complex -- more difficult..so they can take pride in understanding it. But the gospel is simple. As Paul declares it consists of one sentence, "Christ and Him crucified." In the symbolism of the barley bread Jesus brings the gospel down to its basic level -- that the gospel is not for the refined tastes of the gourmet in religion. It’s for the needs of everyday people. It is not just for the intellectual or the spiritual athlete but for people like you and me -- and the people God calls us to speak to.

It is also interesting to think about the boys mother. When she packed a lunch for her son she had no idea that she was taking part in a miracle. She was just doing her duty -- her household chore -- and participated in an act of God's power breaking loose in the world. You see, it was not the size of the boy's lunch that is important. It is Jesus working through the lunch that he was willing to give that made the difference. It is not us, but Christ working in us that makes the difference. When we do something, however small it seems, for Jesus and His kingdom we can never know what may result Our five small loaves and our two small fish can become food for 15,000. Our homes can become lighthouses of God’s love.