The Hillside and the Basket
John 6:1-15
There is a certain rock known as a geode. From the outside it is but a dull looking stone. Yet crack it open and one discovers a breathtaking array of crystals in a hollow core. I feel like I’m holding an uncracked geode in my hands when I look at a Bible text. I know there is a powerful blessing in the passage. It must simply be opened to the light. So today we look at the story of the feeding of the multitudes.
Our text begins with a human need. Jesus had been busily ministering from Jerusalem to Galilee. The healings, the preaching, the conflict left him spent. So, he got in a boat with his disciples and sailed across the lake to take a break. But the throngs of people had not had enough of the Jesus’ words and deeds. They wanted more. So, they tramped around the lake’s north shore, perhaps a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, to be where Jesus was.
It was the time of Passover. So, the roads would have been filled with pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. How quickly word spread of Jesus and his whereabouts. And so it was that the crowd swelled as men, women, and children detoured to have a look at Jesus. They were looking for Passover bread and found Jesus instead!
There stands Jesus atop a hillside. The crowd he sought to be rid of has followed him and even grown. By now it is late in the day, supper time is near, and stomachs begin to rumble for food.
But there’s more need than for a meal. The sick, the lonely, the adulterous, the confused, the lost, the misguided all these Jesus sees as he looks over the vast throng gathering at his feet.
Such needs are still with us today. Day after day the news gives accounts of the gunshot and bleeding victims across our nation and the hungry are vividly heralded weekly. Through the miracle of modern mass communication, we see more needy crowds than Jesus did in his day. It seems we see so many hurts and can do so little about it that we feel powerless. So, we avert our eyes, close our ears, grow calloused in our hearts. The result is that the poor become increasingly invisible to us.
It is so easy to see and not see, to hear and not hear, to become so self-absorbed in what we want that we miss what others need.
We each pass by more hurting people, more potential ministry in a single day than anyone person could do in a lifetime! There on the hillside where you stand, do you see the throngs of hurting people all around you? Jesus did. Ask Christ to open your eyes to the lost and hurting in your workplace, in your neighborhood, at your family holiday gathering.
Our passage further points out that there was an inadequacy. “Lifting up his eyes, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?’ He said this to test him for he knew what he would do. Philip answered him, ‘Two hundred denarii would not be enough bread for each of them to get a little’ “. Two hundred denarii is equal to roughly half a year’s wages. In other words, Philip surveyed the multitude, and standing right beside Jesus declared the situation hopeless. “There is nothing that can be done!” he said.
Christ had set up this situation and used it to test Philip. John tells us Philip was from this region. He knew the towns, the valleys, the roads, and the lake. He would have known what local resources could be brought to bear on the needs. Philip did the math in his head. Standing beside Jesus he looked at the hillside crowd, surveyed the contents of his own purse, and declared his resources woefully inadequate.
Philip wasn’t the first to feel inadequate in the face of life. I knew when my first church had 47 people in it that it was too big for me. Inadequacy. That’s what a missionary in Zaire feels as he walks through a village smitten with the Ebola virus. It’s what the parents of an angry teenager feel. And it is what Philip felt standing beside Jesus looking at a hungry crowd of 5,000.
It was a test. Would Philip stress the difficulties presented or the resources possessed? Would he measure his powers or his problems? Would he focus on the hillside of people or the basket? Would he count the crowd or the loaves? Would he look at his ability to begin the work or his inability to finish the work?
Jesus was testing Philip, even as he still tests us today. He was educating the disciples to do what they could and leave the rest to God. He was illustrating the universal law: Resources and powers are given to those who use what resources and powers they have.
Philip flunks the test. He can’t see Jesus for the crowd. He considers his and the area’s human inadequacy to meet the need, never once considering God. And so, he is pessimistic. “Half a year’s wages would barely give each a morsel. The situation is hopeless. Nothing can be done.” Meanwhile there is Andrew. In the crowd he discovers a lad with five barley loaves and two fish. This he carefully explains to Jesus. Then he despairs, “But what are they among so many?”
To be sure, Andrew sees the crowd, the hunger, the expense. But he also sees Jesus. He sees the daunting task, but he also sees a way to begin. Andrew could say, “I am only one. I can’t do everything. But I can do something. And just because I can’t do everything, I will not fail to do that which I can do.” We are told in the text that the little boy carried with him a picnic lunch of five barley loaves and two small fish. This is inadequate! And these few loaves and fish were the paltry offering.
Jesus received the fish and bread, and causing the masses to be seated, gave thanks to God, and began to break the loaves and distribute them. The Bible says the crowd ate until they were “filled”. Philip so pessimistic, Andrew so full of questions, the little child so naive, and the multitude so full of hunger all learned of God’s caring provision even for their stomachs. They learned the spiritual law that God can do a lot with a little if God has it all. They learned that little is much when God is in it. They learned not to look at the multitudes or the lack or what lines one’s own pockets. Look at Jesus. Give Jesus what you can. And leave the rest to God.
Poor Philip. Isn’t he so like you and me? Here we stand beside Jesus looking out on a need so vast that our own yearly salary couldn’t satisfy even one meal. All the while standing beside us is Jesus, the God who sees the need, who is never inadequate, and who is willing to receive what we’ve got, bless it, and make it enough!
You may believe John 6:1-14 is a miracle of Jesus in multiplying the bread and fish, or you may believe Jesus’ miracle in the selfish human heart causing the multitudes to share. But above all, remember this: The next time you see a need or feel inadequate, don’t look at the hillside, look in the basket. Don’t count the difficulties presented. Look at the resources possessed. Don’t measure your problems. Measure God’s power! Christ is standing beside you. And you plus Christ are enough!