Completing God’s Work — John 6:1-21

The Fourth Evangelist begins with a prologue (John 1:1-18) which inserts Jesus, imaged as the Word and Wisdom Sophia, into God’s work of ongoing creation. God’s ongoing work threads throughout in words and phrases — the works of Jesus are to those on the fringes of society and religion. These fringe-dwellers included those ignorant of the Torah (Jn 7:49); the physically marginalised (the sick man by the pool Jn 5:1-15; the beggar born blind Jn 9:1-41); the geographically marginalised (the official Jn 4:46-54; and the woman of Samaria Jn 4:4-42).

Being attentive to clues found in the Prologue when we hear the Gospel proclaimed from John 6, on the last Sunday of July and for all the Sundays of August, helps us to be aware of the spirituality Jesus lived, and with him, to complete the works of God in our time.

John 6 divides into two parts. The first tells of the feeding of a large crowd (Jn 6:1-15) and a boat trip (Jn 6:16-22). The second records a long discourse (Jn 6:22-71). The feeding of the five thousand, found in all four Gospels, is shaped differently in the Fourth Gospel: location, timing, actions and words. The first four verses are an introduction: Where? Who? When? Why?

Where?

A new place is introduced. Jesus goes “to the other side of the Sea of Galilee”, also described as the “Sea of Tiberias” here (Jn 6:1) and after the resurrection (Jn 21:1). Why does the Evangelist so name the sea and the city of Tiberias (Jn 6:23) in the only references to them in the New Testament? Between 17-20 CE, Herod Antipas (4 BCE-39 CE) built Tiberias on its waterfront location. He was the first local ruler of Galilee for centuries and the son of Herod the Great. He named this new administrative capital after the Roman Emperor Tiberias. The reign of Antipas was a time of relative political peace. Galilee developed into a small, prosperous Jewish kingdom where collusion existed between Herodian rule and the provincial aristocracy.

Who?

“A large crowd kept following him” (Jn 6:2). Jesus disappeared in the Jerusalem crowd (Jn 5:13). Now, a new set of characters enters: a crowd from Galilee. The founding of Tiberias and the giving of land to its inhabitants meant local people were displaced and there was pressure on landowners to break up small holdings. The fast-developing Herodian economy of Galilee affected the lives of the marginalised crowd — tax collectors, peasants, lepers, the sick, small farmers, labourers, widows, women, children. They were Jews living under Roman occupation. They were mostly poor, earning their living on land, sea or by trade. All had a collective history of exile and deportation, of being ruled by other nations, of working day and night and paying huge taxes in society from which they did not benefit.

When?

Passover time is the context of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus (Jn 2:13) as well as his arrest, trial and execution (Jn 11:55-19:14) and also of John 6. This festival was one of three when all Israelite males were commanded to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 16:16). This week-long spring festival celebrated the Exodus (Ex 12:1-18) and is associated with liberation and with God’s salvation past and future.

The Why of Where, Who and When

So why does the crowd near Tiberias seek out Jesus at Passover time? During changing times, maybe, the marginalised crowd could not afford to make the journey to Jerusalem for the Passover. They came to Jesus who preached and healed in the countryside. He avoided the cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris. Change occurs not only through money and markets but when a change of values means people and resources are exploited for profit rather than for providing what is needed for subsistence. The works of Jesus resist the changing values and attitudes represented by the rise of Sepphoris and Tiberias. He adapts the Wisdom and Exodus traditions to a new situation in a prophetic critique of the ways things were.

Wisdom Sophia

By John 6, Jesus is established as Wisdom Sophia who invites her people to “come eat of my bread” (Proverbs 9:5). The Fourth Gospel has no Eucharist institution narrative, so John 6 is seen as the counterpart of Last Supper accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Jesus takes the initiative. On whose behalf? The marginalised. Jesus “looked up and saw a large crowd” and then asked Philip where they might “buy bread for these people to eat” (Jn 6:5-6). The word used for “buy” in their conversation comes from the word for the market place, agora.

Andrew noticed a boy with five barley loaves and two fish. Barley was the food of the poor and slaves, and was also fed to animals. The barley loaves evoke Elisha feeding a multitude (2 Kings 4:42-44). The word “bread” back then, as today, meant both bread and food in general. Behind “bread” in all its senses is the hard work and the self-giving of men and women to provide for families. In ordinary life, meal and sacrifice are linked. Bread in its particular and widest sense comes from the soil and water that irrigates it.

Jesus’s words and actions echo the Passover deliverance from slavery in Egypt and God feeding the people with manna and quail (Ex 16) in the spring. The cycle of the seasons connects with the Passover. So, at that time, the Galilean hills would have been covered with lush grass and wild flowers. Jesus gives directions to “make the people sit down,” using a word meaning to stretch out for the meal. Reclining was the customary position for eating. The references to “a great deal of grass” and having “as much as they want” evoke Psalm 23:1-2: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.” The reader is prepared for the declaration of Jesus later: “I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:11).

Gather the Fragments

After Jesus had given thanks (eucharistein), he distributed the bread himself. This recalls the Last Supper stories where Jesus acts in this sequence: he took the loaves, gave thanks (eucharistein) and distributed them. Provision for all gathered and some left over is a recurring description of biblical meals. God says to Elisha: “Give it to the people and let them eat … they shall eat and have some left.” In the Exodus wilderness feeding, they gathered 12 baskets of left-over manna. The Greek words for fragments and gather were used in the early Church when speaking of Eucharistic fragments.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, about one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets wasted or lost every year. What can Christian communities learn from the spirituality of Jesus to complete the works of God when he directed his disciples to gather up the surplus so that nothing is lost? What can the Christian community learn about caring for the landscape when the Gospel says the place was cleaned up and restored to how it was found?

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 228, July 2018: 20-21.