Jester and tester

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Jester and Tester

John 6:1-14

Frank G. Honeycutt

St. John’s Lutheran Church, W alhalla, South Carolina

He said {¡!is to test him,for he himselfknew what he was going to do. (John 6:6)

1 don’t know exactly how to say this without appearing a bit irreverent, but have you ever noticed that Jesus seems to he something of a sly tease in the Bible? It’s Easter Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene has been crying her eyes out there at the empty tomb for a couple of hours, and Jesus appears to her, but he seems to be in disguise. She mistakes him for the gardener? He’s wearing different clothes, and this guy she knew so well before the previous Friday is not even recognizable. Now why does Jesus do this? Why does he seem to play with Mary and her fragile emotional state? It’s Easter Sunday evening. Two forlorn followers of Jesus walk a lonely road away from Jerusalem. They’ve completely given up on this entire kingdom of God enterprise when this guy walks up and asks them what’s wrong. We know it’s Jesus, but these two haven’t a clue. The two sad guys ask Jesus if he’s the only stranger in four counties who hasn’t heard the things that have transpired recently. Jesus, incognito , coyly answers, “What things?”2 Now what’s up with that? Why not help these two grieving guys feel better quicker? The disciples are crossing a stormy sea. The boat is on toe verge of going down, and all twelve guys are bailing like crazy, but Jesus is snoozing on a soft little pillow in the stem? Comfy, Jesus? He makes things right in the end, but why does he let these disciples squirm like fish on a hook? Part of our lesson involves Jesus walking on water. In Mark’s version of this same story, Jesus comes striding across toe sea, but then here comes this lidie detail: “He intended to pass them by.”* Just out for a little stroll, I guess. “Hey guys, please notice me in all my buoyancy, but I’ve got to be moving on. Ta-ta for now.” These are not isolated passages in toe scriptures, but a running theme—Jesus as trickster, joker, something of a theological tease. And so today’s story should not really surprise me. Jesus sees a large crowd coming his way. His popularity is on toe rise. It’s Passover and toe area is full of faithful pilgrims, so Jesus and toe disciples retreat to a mountain for a bit of privacy. But toe throngs just keep on coming. They all take toe blue-blazed side trail and follow Jesus up the hill. I should know Jesus well enough by now to sense toe twinkle in his eye, to look between toe lines of scripture, the words themselves, and try to set this scene in all its sensory lushness—the grass, the crowd; the wind, water, and weather; even Jesus’ emotions. The hymn “Break Now toe Bread of Life” is wonderfully inviting: “Beyond the sacred page, I seek you Lord.”5 Beyond it. I should know this is coming. I should know that Jesus has a tri،:k up his sleeve to make some point. But it does take me by surprise. Again! The disciples are nervous in this scene. They should be. Think about your last dinner party and how much ci’i’ort you put in to entertain a single table of invited guests. Now imagine 5,000 uninvited souls knocking on your door for some supper. It’s like toe whole town of Walhalla (and a couple of thousand more) hearing about

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a picnic in your backyard. You can oniy stretch hotdogs so far. But Jesus sits there as calm as a cucumber. And he says to ?hilip, “Gee. Gee whillikers.” And perhaps there’s a pause here for dramatic effect. “1 wonder how we’re gonna’ feed all these people?” That line alone, if I’d been there, may have left me wondering about Jesus and his sanity. But we arc privy to more. Wc are privy to the mind of Jesus, editorial information that trusting, innocent Philip did not have. And this is what was going on in Jesus’ mind: he said this to test Philip because he himself knew what he was going to do. Now perhaps we should not skip over this line too quickly. This is no anomaly with Jesus. This seems to be a character trait—the man’s a ]ester, a tease, a tester. This is not just my opinion. There are far too many biblical examples to argue with the facts. What intrigues me is the obvious follow-up question— ﻣﺄ/وWhy does Jesus behave this way so consistently? Why this bait and switch style of theological teaching ? And why does he do it still—with individuals like you and me? With entire congregations maybe? Here’s a bit of truth that all serious students of the Bible will need to get used to at some point: Jesus is not going to make it all obvious for us. He’s going to tease and nudge and drop small pieces of bread along the path for us to pick up one at a time. Why? Because fois is what good teachers do. Jesus refuses to serve up a soufflé of universal principles that will magically fix all oflife’s problems. Jesus rarely provides instant solutions. This is hard for us to get used to in a world of instant everything. “My life was a mess. 1 was on my seventh marriage. I’d maxed out seventeen credit cards. I was addicted to Snickers Bars. And then I found Jesus and everything was instantly okay.” Instantly? Now come on. You can call it testing if you want. But I prefer to call it teaching. And I prefer to call foe result discipleship—where we follow in trust, where we mimic foe man, where we slowly over time are transformed, converted bit by bit into something the Bible calls foe very Body of Ghrist. ؛ ﺀهk ؛k

And so a little boy comes forward with just a meager amount of food. But here’s foe thing: it’s all he has. In some ways he reminds me of the old woman at the temple treasury who put in “all she had.” ؛kike foe woman, foe little boy does not hold back. Now don’t get bogged down in how it all happens. The point is that Jesus does foe rest. Jesus takes even what appears to be a meager offering presented in hope and trust and transforms our offerings for foe sake of the whole. The story says that “Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them” to all in foe crowd. I hope you recognize those very familiar words. They are almost the Words of Institution, foe words we hear in conjunction with each Lord’s Supper. The Greek word for “give thanks” at this mountainside picnic thtown by Jesus is eucharistein—a word that gave birth to one of foe names for fois holy meal: Eucharist. Jesus can do lots even with a little. But he needs to know if our hearts are in it. ?erhaps he even tests our hearts as he once did with his disciples of old. There is a marvelous line from the Book of Ephesians where ?aul prays that God foe Father “may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being, with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (3:16-17). Paul is concerned here about foe inner being of the Christian. It’s surely no secret that we are obsessed with the external being in foe American

Journalfor Preachers

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culture. We value beauty and washbeard abs aud wealth and first place and so many external things. It’s easy to spend two hours waxing the car while complaining there’s no time for prayer. I’ve done this. We all have. Why do we spend so much time on external stuff to the neglect of our inner lives? Because if truth were told, there’s a lot of darkness we Irani around internally, stuff we hide from friends, spouse, and even try to hide from God. It’s easier, we think, to stay busy, stay distracted, watch a lot of TV, and try to keep the internal darkness at bay. But one great truth of Christianity is that our external problems have internal solutions, not the other way around. Christ wants to probe places where 1 prefer to keep him at a distance. “May you be strengthened in your inner being,” says Paul, ff we really want to change, we do so from the inside out, not the other way around. Maybe this explains the teaching style of Jesus with his disciples. Knowing that all of us would be so secretive about our inner lives, the private place we hide so well, Christ has to surprise us with grace, even sneak up on us when we’re not looking, when our artfully protected guards are down.

Notes 1 John 20:15. 2 Luke 24:19. 3 Mark 4:38. 4 Mark 6:48. 5 “Break Now the Bread 0 ؛Life” 6Luke21:4.