The Book of Signs (John 6)

The Book of Signs

Fourth Sunday of Easter (Daily Office Year 2)
3rd May 2009
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
Evening Prayer 6:00 p.m.
Readings: Exodus 16, 4-15 ; John 6. 30-40
Eucharistic Readings Year B: Acts 4.5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3.16-24; John 10.11-18

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we read, “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” He said to them in reply, "An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights” (Matt 12:38-40.) The original point of this saying was probably something like this: if you insist on some proof from God—some marvelous act or deed of power, some miracle—before you will follow him or believe his word, the only proof God will give you is the silence and meaninglessness of death and the tomb. In the context of Matthew’s Gospel, this becomes an implicit prediction of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

It is because of this text that the term “sign-seeker” is generally seen as describing a bad thing. The term has come to mean someone with little or no faith, a crass and selfish doubter with the attitude, “show me and then I’ll believe.”

On the other hand, in traditional catechisms, one of the reliable warrants for the reasonableness of the Christian faith is the presence of what are called “miracles” in the life of Christ and the apostles. This is a Latin word for things so unusual that we just have to marvel at them. These “miracles” provide the grounds for the faithful to believe and trust in God, in contradistinction to the “signs” that the faithless seek after and will never find.

In one common form of this view made popular by Western, especially Roman Catholic, catechisms in the 19th and early 20th century, God’s call and revelation to us is validated by miracles. These are understood as examples where natural laws are suspended by an act of the revealing God in order to provide the faithful with sufficient cause to accept God’s messenger and message. In this view, God has made things so plain that only the truly wicked can reject the authority of God, since to do so they have to deny what is right in front of their faces.

Sign-seekers in this view demand more evidence from God than the abundant evidence he has already given. Through their desire for more examples of the miraculous before they will believe, they number themselves among the wicked who reject what God has set forth plainly enough for all fair-minded and honest people.

So it comes a bit of a shock when people find out that the Gospel of John uses the word “signs” to describe Jesus’ marvelous deeds, and says that these signs lead to Jesus. Tonight’s Gospel reading is one such example.

Of the four Gospels in the New Testament, John is the latest, written during the third generation of Christians, though parts of its tradition go back to the life of Jesus. The author tells a story very different from those found in the other three Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

More than the other three Gospels, John tells the story of Jesus wholly from the point of view of his disciples after they had seen him die and then once more fully alive after Easter. John puts the insights revealed by later development of the post-Easter faith right onto the lips of Jesus in his Gospel story.

The author of John is very up front in telling us his purpose: "...these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through faith in him you may have life” (John 20:31).

The Johannine Jesus is revealed to the reader through a series of acts that we would call miracles: turning water to wine, healing the paralytic, multiply the loaves and fishes, walking on the sea, curing the man born blind, raising Lazarus from the dead. John does not call these things miracles. He calls them signs, or pointers to the true meaning of Jesus. The word he uses is semeia—the word where we get the word semantics, or the study of meanings.

John sees these acts of power not just as evidence that Jesus is God’s chosen one, God’s Son. Rather, for him they indicate—they point to, they serve as symbols for—the mystery that John sees as the reality of God in Christ.

This is not an effort at biographic history. This is an effort to point the reader to Christ, the risen Lord, the Eternal Word of God come down from heaven and now returned there, as experienced by believers now.

At times in the narrative the signs give Jesus a chance to give a discourse—at other times, a chance to engage in dialogue—on aspects of Jesus as Eternal Word of God and Son of the Father.

Today’s reading introduces what is called the Discourse on the Bread of Life.

In the previous chapter, Jesus has taken a few loaves of bread and fish and turned them into more than enough to feed the crowds flocking after him, and to spare. Jesus and the disciples have escaped the crowds who want to make Jesus King because of his sign of multiplying the loaves and fishes.

Jesus goes off to be alone in meditation and prayer while the disciples escape by boat; he catches up with them in the night by walking on the water to the boat.

When the crowds find them the next morning, they ask Jesus, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” (John 6:25). They saw the others depart on the boat and know Jesus was not aboard. They want to know where he came from and how he got there.

But as in so many other places in the Gospel of John, the crowd is asking the wrong question—instead of asking how he got there over night and where he came from, they should be asking where he ultimately came from (John’s answer is, “from above, from the Father’s bosom”).

So Jesus does not answer “how did you get here?” by telling them of yet another sign, the walking on water. He sees that they are so focused on the acts of power themselves that they do not realize what they actually mean. They are misunderstanding the signs. While the signs point in one direction to one meaning, the crowds think they point somewhere entirely different, to another meaning.

So Jesus says, “You are seeking me not because you have seen signs, but because I filled your bellies with bread.” He adds, “Don’t work for food that eventually will rot and go bad. Work for food that will last forever and give you life forever.” The bread the crowd is demanding that Jesus again make for them appear out of nowhere, he says, will mold, get wormy, and go bad if not eaten. Jesus says the bread he multiplied the day before is not just a meal, or “mighty act of God” to prove his authority. It is not merely perishable nourishment. It points to nourishment that will always be there, and will always give life.

He says: raise your sights above passing things, but to ever-present, unchanging ones, to what “I, the Son of Man will give you” (v. 27).

It is not the giving of perishable bread that establishes the authority of Jesus; it is not such a miracle or “work of God” that validates his message, he says. “The Father has shown for you my authenticity (“set his seal upon me”) because I am the one who will give you bread that lasts forever.”

This is not a theology of evidence of authority. This is a theology of trust, engagement, and mystery, of letting God lead where he will.

But the crowd continues to miss the point. “If you can do such wonderful things—such works of God—then why don’t you teach us how to as well?” (v. 28). They think Jesus has performed a magic trick, and they want him to teach them how to do it as well.

He replies, “There is only one work of God that ultimately matters—trust in God, have faith in the One who sent me” (v. 29)

It is at this point in the story that tonight’s reading begins. Again, the crowd misunderstands. They return to the issue of finding a warrant for belief.

They ask, “What marvelous deed will you perform for us to see now so that we can have a proof that we should have faith in you?” (v. 30). They point to a marvelous act of God in the traditional story of their people—the people of God fed on manna in the desert—as an example of one of the warrants they use for their accepting the authority of Moses as God’s prophet. “And this wasn’t just ordinary bread, what you call perishable, but bread from heaven. Give us some similar proof,” they ask. (Note that they are forgetting a key detail in the Old Testament story—if a family did not trust God but wanted instead to hoard the manna or save it for a later time, by sunset it would rot and go wormy.)

Jesus replies by saying that 1) it was God, not Moses who gave the manna, 2) the Father gives bread now, and 3) manna met the physical needs of God’s people but “true bread” is more than that.

Then Jesus says this: my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." (v. 33).

The crowd replies, "Sir, give us this bread always" (v. 34), thinking he still is talking about foodstuffs.

And Jesus replies,
“ I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
whoever has faith in me will never thirst” (v. 35).

Jesus calling himself here the bread from heaven that gives life is the start of long discourse on spiritual sustenance, Jesus as bread in the Eucharist, and the universal will of the Father and the Son to save all.

“I am the bread that gives life.” This phrase has echoes in other symbols, signs, and statements in John’s Gospel.

At the wedding banquet in Cana in chapter 2, in his first sign, Jesus makes wine from water. Later, in his last discourse, he says “I am the true vine.”

Meeting the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob in chapter 4, Jesus says “whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up.” Like the crowds misunderstanding the bread who ask “give us this bread,” the Samaritan woman initially misunderstands and says “give me this water.” In chapter 7, on the last day of the feast of Tabernacles, he says, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever has faith in me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him.’”

At the Feast of Hannukah in chapter 8, when the candles of the Feast are being lit, and again in chapter 9 just before he cures the man born blind, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

In chapter 10, he says, “I am the gate for the sheep. . . . I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.. And since this is Good Shepherd Sunday, I note that he later says in the same chapter, “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

In the final sign of Gospel before the passion, just before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he says in chapter 11, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever has faith in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and has faith in me will never die.”

During the Last supper in chapter 14, he tells his disciples “Where (I) am going you know the way.” Thomas replies, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus replies “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you also know my Father.”

And, as I noted above, in his final discourse before the passion, Jesus in chapter 15 says that he is the source of God’s wine: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. . . . Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”

The signs, symbols, and images are rich and varied, but all point to one reality, one truth: Jesus as the Eternal Word of God, the Son of the Father Eternal.

There is a story from Southern Chinese Chan Buddhism (or Zen). A Zen Master points to the moon and asks his student, “What is that?” The disciple answers, “the moon.” The Master says, "No, it is my finger.” The point is that the pointer should never be confused with the thing it points at.
In today’s Gospel, John is telling us that the signs, the symbols, the miracles—these are not the point. The point is Jesus Christ himself.

Our doctrines, our systems, our historical research—these are not the point.
Our liturgies, our good works, our service and labor for others—these are not the point.
Our prayers, how we feel, what we desire—these are not the point.
The point is Jesus Christ himself.

He is the way, the truth, the life. He is the nourishment and refreshment that lasts forever. He is life itself, hope, and love.

John argues that in Jesus, we find all that we need. Now that is not to belittle other real needs. To say Jesus is the bread of life is not to say that we have no need to work to earn our daily bread, or to help feed the hungry with real bread. It is simply saying something like Jesus says in Matthew, quoting the Book of Deuteronomy, “A human being does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”

In this story and discourse in the Gospel of John, miracles and “the works of God” are seen to be good things only if we let them teach us about God and let them lead us where they will. They are things that can distract us from God if we focus on them alone as solace or reassurance, as “proofs” of some authority or examples of some theological argument.

That’s because focusing on the pointing hand and not the moon it points distracts us from the moon.

That’s because talking about God in the third person and God’s acts as proofs lets us continue to keep God at a distance, observable and observed, contained and constrained.

That’s because focusing on what God did once, long ago, perhaps to feed the children of Israel in the desert, may keep us from seeing God’s hand offered out to us here, and now, if we close our hearts to him.

This is why John’s Jesus says the sole work of God is to trust or have faith in Him. Saint Luke makes the same point in his story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10). Jesus there says, “Martha, Martha. You are worried about doing many things. But only one thing is needful, listening to me.” If you have trust and faith, all else will grow from this. If you work on any number of things without trust and faith, you are only going through the actions.

The first commandment is not, “Thou shalt assent to the proposition that there is a God.” It is not “Thou shall argue convincingly that there is a God.” The first commandment is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, might mind, and strength.”

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or Sarah, Leah, and Rachel, is the living God, not the categorized, defined, and codified God. He is the great I AM, not the great HE WAS.
Unless we approach God, as Martin Buber says, as “thou” rather than “he” or “it,” we are approaching a dead idol. And idols do not have the power to save.

The manna in the Exodus story would spoil and turn bad within a day, and could not be hoarded for future use. Jesus points to this short shelf life of manna as a sign of the deficiency of miracles, or the works of God, seen solely as proofs. He says that He, the true bread come down from Heaven, does not go bad.

And though Jesus as the Bread that gives Life never goes bad, our acceptance of Jesus, our faith in him, our trust in him, and our connection to him, must be renewed and cultivated every day, just as the children of Israel needed to gather manna each day.

George MacDonald wrote,

“With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh.
..In holy things may be unholy greed.
Thou giv’st a glimpse of many a lovely thing,
Not to be stored for future use in any mind,
But only for the present spiritual need.
The holiest bread, if hoarded, soon will breed
The mammon-moth, the having pride.”

Pathetic creatures that we are, we can turn even God’s gift of Himself to the world into a proof, into a story of things long ago. Or we can turn the call for an act of trust in God into a doctrine of salvation through faith alone, turning the faith act into a work itself, reducing the Gospel to a Gospel of works. Where Jesus’ contemporaries talked about Moses and Manna, and the need for more miraculous evidence as a way of distracting themselves from what Jesus was calling them to, we talk about the doctrine of salvation through grace by faith alone, or we talk about the proofs of God offered by the miracles in the Holy Scriptures.

In many ways we today find ourselves in the situation Jesus’ contemporaries found themselves in regard to the stories of God’s saving acts long ago. That is one of the reasons the catechisms I mentioned earlier, with their insistence on intellectual assent and the provability of the Faith lost their appeal.

How can miracles recounted in the Bible prove the existence of God when you doubt that the miracles actually took place? How can you gain salvation through grace when you are relying on a declaration and confession of faith as a type of work with which to bribe God, or to reassure yourself?

To all of this, to them and to us, Jesus says this: There is only one thing needed. I am the Bread of Life. I am the Living Water. I am the Wine of God. I am the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Resurrection, and the Light of the World. Trust me. Have faith in me.

May we so live, and that each day.

In the name of God, Amen.