Communication matters doesn’t it? We want to be understood, sometimes the results of miscommunication are mildly entertaining, like the time I nipped to ASDA with Lucy’s shopping list as in the picture. I dutifully got everything on the list. Only to be asked why on earth I’d bought polish. Apparently it wasn’t polish at all but Polish, meaning some Polish sausage things the boys love.
Being clear about what you want others to understand is crucial because miscommunication can be costly. In 2005, a Japanese trader cost his company £190m when he sold 610,000 shares for 1 yen (0.5p) instead of selling one share at 610,000 yen as he was supposed to. More recently the British government was sued for £9 million when a clerical error inserting a rogue “s” meant the wrong company was recorded as being in liquidation. When three days later Companies’ House corrected the miscommunication it was too late, orders had been withdrawn and suppliers stopped supplying. The 124 year old firm went into liquidation as a result of that miscommunication at the cost of 250 jobs.
John 6, which was read to us earlier, is full of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Jesus is trying to explain to the crowd who he is and what he has come to do but they just can’t get it, and it results in frustration and anger, not from Jesus but from the crowd. Jesus graciously perseveres because understanding who God is and who we are really matters. It’s of eternal significance and not just for the future but for now, for what we were made for, for what life really is. We’re going to work through this passage and look at some of the miscommunications, the misunderstandings we might share with them about God, life and Jesus.
Don’t search for the right thing in the wrong places
We have a complex relationship with food don’t we. Britain we’re told has an obesity problem, 1 in 4 people are obese, whilst at the same time we have a growing eating disorder problem with an estimated 725,000 people affected by eating disorders. Then into that already confusing mix we throw in weightwatchers which has over 6000 meetings a week and Slimming world with 700,000 people attending 12,000 groups a week. There’s more food on our supermarket shelves than ever, yet thousands are forced to use foodbanks. Our relationship with food is complex.
In Jesus’ day there wasn’t that level of complexity. You worked to provide enough for your family to eat. There wasn’t an array of choices, bread was the staple. If you had enough bread you were OK. So as we read John 6 we need to keep that in mind, bread sustained life.
Jesus has just fed 5,000 men plus women and children with 5 loaves and two fish. It’s a miracle. But as he leaves the lakeside there’s a problem. The crowds want more bread(26). They want another miracles, they want their rumbling bellies filling again. But Jesus isn’t a one man foodbank, did you notice how he describes the miracles? “a sign”(27). The feeding of the 5000 is pointing to something greater than itself.
Later on Helen will be baptized, that’s a sign. Her baptism, tipping the water over her is a sign of what has already happened. Helen has trusted that Jesus is the Son of God and God’s rescuer and that he can forgive all her sin and make her God’s child. Jesus has washed her sin away. Pouring the water over her head is a sign of what’s already happened. The water itself doesn’t cleanse her, it doesn’t make her a Christian, but it points to Jesus, in whom Helen has put her faith, who already has.
The miracle with the bread was like that. It’s like a sunbeam shining down illuminating something, but the crowd are fixated on the bread not what it tells them about the one who did the miracle. They just want someone to fill their stomachs everyday so Jesus warns them that their misunderstanding means they are missing something(27). “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
Jesus gave them physical bread that satisfied them as a picture that he can fulfill their, and our, spiritual hunger. There’s more to life than just the physical needs , he’s calling them and us to recognize we have more than a physical hunger. Because if we don’t understand that we’ll try to fill a non-physical hunger with physical things but never be satisfied.
Jesus knows the Bible teaches that we’re made in God’s image, we’re more than physical beings. We have a hunger in our core to know God, to live forever. Jesus sees not just their hungry stomachs but their hungry souls. Filling their stomachs was a sign that he’s the one who can fill hearts too.
We don’t live by bread alone. We’re more than just physical. We share that deeper hunger. But we can just try to fill it with material things. The new car, new job, new clothes, new image, new igadget, new tastes, new place, new experience, new family, new wife or husband or partner. Yet when we get it does it satisfy us? It may for a time, but then we start that search again.
But Jesus wants us to understand the nature of our hunger. We are spiritual, we’re made with a hunger for meaning, for love, for life. Really it’s a hunger to know God. And uniquely (27)Jesus says that he can give that to us.
I want to just pause and I want us to ask ourselves what do I really believe will give me satisfaction? What am I searching for? How will you know? Answer this question ‘what do I live in pursuit of?’ What does your bank account show that to be, what does our diary reveal that to be?
But the crowd misunderstand and it reveals another potential misunderstanding we may have:
Don’t come to God the wrong way.
Our society’s as conflicted about God as it is about food. In the 2011 census in Hayfield 62% of people described themselves as Christian. Yet for many of us we rarely think about God ley alone go to church or read the Bible. And our society’s issues with God don’t just end there, ask people what God is like and you’ll get very different answers, because we like to think of God as we imagine him to be. Yet we’d never think of anyone else that way. And when it comes to heaven, an afterlife and how you get there we’re equally conflicted. Many of the same people who say they believe in God would say there is no heaven, just nothingness.
Surprisingly we see the same misunderstanding here. The Jews Jesus is speaking to are as confused about what God is like and how you approach him as we are. Again Jesus lovingly corrects them, because it matters. They misunderstand Jesus and think he’s telling them how to earn God’s favour by works, and they’re pretty convinced they can do it(27-28).
It’s the way we think isn’t it? We live life doing in order to get, we live life earning. I work to earn my wage which enables me to provide. I work hard I earn a pay rise and a promotion etc… We even apply that in our friendship sometimes, I did this for them so when things are hard I ought to get… We carry that across in how we think about coming to God. How do I earn God’s favour? Be good, be nice, be religious, be a good neighbour, be a good mum or dad and son or daughter, give to charity and so on. But actually all that shows is that we know we aren’t right with God, that the relationship is broken, that we deserve God’s anger because we’re trying to earn, or to make up for.
But Jesus challenges their and our wrong assumption about God and how to come to him. “The work of God is to believe in the one he has sent.” Not do, do, do. Just believe in Jesus because the Father is a giving God. He doesn’t only give us what we earn or what we deserve. Jesus reminds the people of that (30-33)it wasn’t Moses who gave the Israelites in the desert bread it was God. God is a generous giving God, and now God has given his Son – Jesus. And the giving theme carries on as the Father who has given the Son also gives faith and eternal life to those who believe in Jesus(34-40).
Don’t misunderstand God. He’s a generous, gracious, giving Father. And he wants to give us life, to give us meaning and purpose and satisfaction. To fill that hunger that nothing else can. And he does so by giving us Jesus, so that by believing in him we can have life now. We were made to know God, that’s what we are spiritually hungry for, but God graciously acts so by believing in Jesus we can know him and have that hunger satisfied. But what is it we have to believe about Jesus?
Don’t reject the real Jesus
Our question echoes the crowd’s question. They’ve misunderstood Jesus’ identity just as we often do. (41-42)They’re confused and grumble “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he say, “I came down from heaven?”
Do you see the problem? They think he’s just a man, a good man, a prophet even, but a man.
John writes his gospel because he’s convinced Jesus is more. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” We see those same things here because it’s what Jesus teaches about himself.
(44-48)Jesus claims that he alone can make God known to us because he alone teaches us about God because (46)he’s seen the Father, he is God the Son. When we look at Jesus we see what God is like.
Jesus then uses the picture of eating and drinking again, but this time in a more gruesome picture of the death he will die, a death of violence and blood. He’s not recommending cannibalism here, look at the parallel between (40) and (54) looking and believing are replaced by eating and drinking, Jesus is using them as a picture. Jesus death on the cross, his body broken and his blood shed for us will make eternal life possible for us if we believe that he takes the punishment for our rebellion and sin, and wins for us a new life and relationship with God. (53)In fact Jesus says that is the only way it can happen.
Who do you say Jesus is? Jesus says he is God the Son come to die to rescue us from our sin. Jesus says he comes because we’re restlessly searching for life, restlessly searching for God and he can break the barrier between us and God, he can bridge the gap of sin, and make us what we were always made to be.
As Helen is baptised that is what she is saying she believes. That Jesus did that for her, and she believes she has life in him. Not just life afterwards, but life that has begun now.
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