What do you suppose the crowd was thinking, there on the Sea of Galilee, that spring afternoon? They had been following him, watching him heal sick people, hearing him teach, wondering and speculating. A few would drop out, having seen enough, but they’d quickly get replaced by others. Close-knit families, chance-met travelers, estranged kinsmen, perfect strangers all jostling together, maneuvering for the best place to see, the best place to hear. What conversations we might overhear, if we were there!
“Hey, Hannah, what are you doing here? Going to get that rheumatism fixed?” “Well, I don’t know, do you think he’d want to bother with something like that?” “You know, Eli, I heard that Jubal, you know, Ethan’s cousin, got his club foot straightened out. Anything to it?” “Reuben! You’re the last person I expected to see. Didn’t I always hear you say you’ve got no time for these wandering rabbis?” “I just got here. I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about. Is it true what I heard, that he fed the entire crowd with just a couple of loaves of bread?” “That’s what they say. And it’s true no one seems to know where all the food came from. It was pretty good bread, too, with some smoked fish as well. But I don’t know. Who could do a thing like that?”
“Remember that Moses fed the people with manna in the wilderness. Maybe he really is a prophet from God.” “Do you suppose it could be Elijah come back again?” “Didn’t someone say he was from David’s line?” “He’s sent from God to free Israel!” “Yes, that’s it! Let’s crown him king! We’ll get rid of the Romans at last! We’ll be mas-ters in our own land. Let’s go!”
But where was he?
Anybody see where Jesus went?
But nobody had seen him.
“His disciples got on a boat to go back to Capernaum,” someone said, “but Jesus wasn’t with them.” “I haven’t seen him since we ate,” volunteered another. “But we were going to proclaim him king of Judea,” said the group that had gotten the idea. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea, after all. Why would he sneak away like that? We don’t want somone who can’t be counted on, after all. We’d better check him out a little more. After all, we don’t really know that he’s the promised one. We’ll make him prove himself.”
But where was he?
A group of boats from Tiberias came by and picked up as many of the crowd would fit, and took them back to the other side of the lake. And to their surprise, there was Jesus with his disciples.
“How on earth did you get here?” they wondered. “Hey, Rabbi Yeshua, when did you come? There was only one boat that left last night and you weren’t on it. And you haven’t had time to walk the whole way around the lake. How did you get here?”
“What difference does it make how I got here?” said Jesus. “What’s your point?”
“What we want to know, Jesus, is if you’re the Messiah. Because if you are, we’re prepared to crown you king. But we want to be sure before we stick our necks out.”
“What do you want a king for? You remember what happened the last time you had a king? He took half your sons for his armies and your daughters for his servants, he took your crops and your livestock, he married foreign wives and turned you away from God. And then you spent the next 400 years fighting your brothers and your neighbors. Why do you want a king? Haven’t you learned anything?”
“Well, we won’t have to pay taxes to Rome any more. The land will be ours, and we can keep what we earn.”
“Oh, it’s the economy, is it? Do you remember what happened the first time God brought you to the promised land? You forgot all about him and started worshipping idols and quarreling among yourselves and defrauding your neighbors and otherwise behaving as if you’d never been taught the difference between right and wrong. Why do you think God would set you up to act like that a second time?”
“But Jesus, the Romans interfere with the temple, too, it’s not just about money.”
“Oh, really? Is that so? I notice that you didn’t try to make me king just because I healed sick people and cast out demons and taught you the Scriptures. Don’t try to sell me on the idea that this isn’t all about getting a free lunch, I know better. Just because I fed you, you want to make me king. But after your stomachs are filled, what then?”
“What’s wrong with wanting bread?” they asked. “Moses gave our ancestors manna when they were hungry, there’s nothing wrong about that, it’s in Scripture.”
“Moses didn’t give you manna,” said Jesus.
“He did, too, what are you, some kind of subversive? I tell you, it’s in Scripture!”
“It was God who gave you manna,” said Jesus. “Not Moses. Stop worshiping people. Not that your ancestors ever gave Moses the sort of respect that you give him. It’s amazing how people manage to remember only what they want to remember. Let me ask you something. How many of you remember what happened when God fed your ancestors with manna?”
Silence.
“Stumped you, did I?” said Jesus. “Don’t remember the parts where you don’t look so virtuous, right? Well, let me refresh your memories. Once the edge was off their hunger, this is what they said:
"...We have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”... “[we’d rather have] the fish we ate in Egypt... also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.” Moses heard the people of every family wailing, each at the entrance to his tent. The LORD became exceedingly angry, and Moses was troubled. “Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’... The LORD said to Moses... “Tell the people: ...[tomorrow]... you will eat meat. The LORD heard you when you wailed, 'If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt!' Now the LORD will give you meat, and you will eat it. You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it because you have rejected the LORD, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, 'Why did we ever leave Egypt?'” [Num 11:5:20]
“Let me tell you something,” said Jesus. “If I fed you every day the way I did yesterday, with bread and fish, you’d be sick of it before the month was out and clamoring for sweet wine and figs. If I freed you from Rome, the next thing you know you’d be asking to rule over your neighbors. Why do you spend your whole life working for stuff that won’t last beyond tomorrow - if even until then? Why don’t you look beyond your bellies for once? Can’t you see what God is doing among you? Don’t you know what it is that you’re really hungry for?”
Dead silence. Umm. No, not really.
“Rabbi, we don’t understand. The people who followed Moses may have rejected the Lord by complaining about what he gave them, but we haven’t. Why are you talking like that? What is God doing that we haven’t seen? What is it that we’re supposed to do?”
“What God wants you to do is to stop looking for what I can give you, but to look at ME. You keep asking for a sign; what do you think my feeding you was, if not a sign? You have seen enough signs, in fact, more than enough. The reason you are still demanding more is because what you need is not to be fed, but to be changed. Look at yourselves, who are so proud of being the children of Abraham: God gave you freedom; you begged for security. He gave you land; you watered it with the blood of your brothers. He gave you the law, you turned it into chains. He gave you a king and so you became slaves. God has given you everything you have asked for - freedom, food, rules to live by, land, a king, his own name - and you have wasted it all, thrown it away on trifles and illusions'
"You are already hungry since I fed you yesterday. If I fed you every day you’d still be hungry because it is not your body that is hungry but your soul. God has sent me to give you what he knows you need, not what you think you need. He loves you too much to let you go on medicating your soul’s hunger with junk food. “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
