Signs within Signs within Signs.....of Christ

10 Pentecost cycle b proper 12 July 28, 2024
2 Kings 4:42-44 Psalm 145: 10-19
Ephesians 3:14-21 John 6:1-21

Lectionary Link

For today and for the next four Sundays, we will be reading from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.  This chapter centers around the multiplication of the loaves and fish story, as a set up for a long bread of heaven discourse presented in the voice of Jesus.  In John's Gospel the multiplication of loaves story is coupled with Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee during a frightening storm for the disciples traveling in a boat.

The Gospel are written as different from other New Testament writings, which for the most part are letters of church leaders written to communities sharing teaching, prayers and poetry, liturgy, personal greetings, and practical instruction for the comprising of a new community experience in blending Jews and Gentiles in the practice of discipleship of Christ.

From our modern understanding of history as being "eye witness empirically verifiable" journalism of events, we can treat the Gospels as a sort of primitive oral history. In doing so, we miss the fact that they are the mystagogy of the early church presented using the narrative of Jesus.  They are spiritual presentations of Jesus within a spiritual continuity with the great heroes and themes of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Moses, Elisha, and Elijah, were known in their roles of being able to feed people in marvelous ways and they were also were people who had a way with water.  Calming waters was an important features of these heroes, since water in biblical mythology is the chaos of the deep over which the creating Spirit is always already moving.  The heroes are those who know how to redirect the energy of chaos toward the energy of creation and peace.

We cannot forget the mystagogy of the Gospel of John, which includes within it a Book of Signs.  The writer of John uses the word for Sign, semeion rather than the words for miracle or wonder. (ergon, dunamis, teras)

The Gospel of John begins with a great poetic assumption.  The Sign of Signs is Word itself, which is also God.  Human beings are made in the image of God as Word, by being creatures with language ability.

Within Word as the Sign of Signs, there arose the most profound human Sign, who was also the divine Sign within human experience.  Or as the writer of John writes, the Word became flesh and lived with us as the most accessible form of the divine to humanity.

We have read today about the multiplication of loaves and fish and about Jesus walking upon the stormy waters.

The early church was also a liturgical church, and the liturgy encoded the mystagogy, the spiritual of the experience of the Risen Christ, and how it would be encoded, taught, and represented in the gathered worship experience of the Christ communities.

Water and Bread, symbolizes the two primary sacraments of the church, are symbolized within the spiritual presentation of the life of Jesus Christ as the Sign of Signs in John's Gospel.  The one who is the Sign of Signs is also the one who continues to mystically provide for us signs of the Christ presences to us.

The Book of Signs within John's Gospel was not included to exhaust the presence of Jesus within the 30 some years of his history in Palestine; the Book of Signs was included to invite all readers to discover the signs of the Risen Christ which continues within our world and lives today.

Water and Bread are basic signs of continuing life for our physical being.  The Gospel of John presents Jesus as the one who gives us the water of spiritual life welling up within us, and as the one who has provided his very holistic life to us for our continuing fullness of life.

As we delve into this Book of Signs about Jesus as the Bread of Life, let us seek the wisdom to recognize the signs of God's love and goodness to us in our lives.  Amen.