[CatherineTorpey]

The Rev. Chad Tanaka Pack is preaching this Sunday! Chad was with us a few years ago while he was preparing for ordination. When our denomination, the Reformed Church in America, wouldn’t approve his ordination because he is gay, it precipitated a process for the Collegiate churches to end up affiliating also with the United Church of Christ denomination.

Chad’s sermon is “Holy Carbo-loading.” Great title, based on the scripture John 6:24-35, where Jesus describes himself as the bread of life. This scene happens not long after the “feeding of the 5,000.” Amanda preached on this miracle as told by Mark a couple of weeks ago.

As I’ve mentioned many times, the gospel according to John was written a little later than any of the other gospel accounts, around the year 90-100. The earliest, Mark, was probably written around the year 70. Our passage is typical of John, where Jesus makes big claims about himself — which he rarely or never does in the other gospels. It can be argued that the reason for this is that John’s gospel reflects somewhat more developed ideas about the meaning of Jesus’ life and ministry. It is also possible that it has more to do with reflecting not a later, but simply a different set of Christian ideas held by the “Johannine” (John’s) community of Christians. So in John’s gospel, Jesus talks in a way that reflects what that community would expect Jesus to have said. (By this way of thinking, each gospel account has Jesus speaking in the way that that particular community would have expected Jesus to speak, based on how they understood his life and ministry.)

Our scene takes place in Capernaum, which is on the Sea of Galilee. A group of people had followed Jesus there, eager to figure this guy out. They want to know how Jesus is going to prove that he is sent from God. “Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness,” they said. “What are you going to do to prove yourself?”

They are referring to the miraculous provision God had made for the Israelites whom Moses had led out of slavery in Egypt, about 1200 years earlier. When the enslaved Israelites were led out of Egypt, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. They had nothing to eat, and complained that they had been better off as slaves because at least they hadn’t starved. God said to Moses, “OK, fine. I will rain down bread from heaven for you.” And so in those days a mysterious and delicious substance called manna had appeared each morning for the people. But the rule was that they could only harvest enough for the day to come, because any extra would go bad by the next day. God had also provided quails in abundance for the Israelites in the wilderness being led by Moses. You can read all about this in the second book of the Old Testament *Hebrew Scriptures), Exodus chapter 16.

Much of Jesus’ ministry takes place around the Sea of Galilee (which is actually not a sea, but a lake). Capernaum, where the disciples seemed to live, was a fishing village but it was also on the Via Maris — an important trade route between Egypt and Syria. Tiberias was a nearby town which was founded during Jesus’ lifetime as the capital of Galilee, where Herod had his palace. It was named after the Roman emperor Tiberius. During this time, Capernaum was a Jewish town and Tiberias was a Roman town. The fact that John has to clarify that the Sea of Galilee is also called the Sea of Tiberias indicates that his audience was probably more familiar with the Roman name of this body of water, and were therefore probably not Jews but gentiles.

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