Not Your Personal King
Not Your Personal King
John 6:1–26 They wanted the king without the cross. So do we.
Have It Your Way
John 6:1–26 — They wanted the king without the cross. So do we.
I grew up going to Burger King all the time — I loved those paper crowns more than the food. Their old slogan, have it your way, was stuck in my head as I studied our text for this morning. We live in a culture where everything is supposed to be right now, right when I want it, exactly as I want it.
Well, we didn't eat at “The King” this week, but my family did watch the classic Disney movie The Lion King, and the two clicked together. I noticed a character arc I'd never caught before. Simba, as a cub, tells his father that being king means he gets everything he wants. Mufasa, the wise king, tells him that is not what it means at all. Later, Scar takes the throne and says almost verbatim what the young Simba foolishly believed — I'm the king. I can do whatever I want. The entire kingdom is almost destroyed because Scar grasped at everything he wanted. Simba has to go through the whole arc before he understands what it actually means to be a king.
Hold onto that theme, because John 6 has a lot to do with it.
A Story All Four Gospels Tell
In our church's sermon series, Follow Jesus: The Gospel of John for Real Life, we've come to the feeding of the 5,000. This is one of the very few stories that shows up in all four Gospels. John is usually the outlier; almost every miracle he tells us about happens nowhere in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Not this one. And I think there's a reason for that.
The most obvious one, for me, is what this story reveals about what a church is. Christians have looked at this passage for two thousand years and said: Jesus fed the hungry, so I think that's what we're supposed to do too.
Just this last week our church wrapped up our backpack outreach to the elementary school down the street — over a hundred backpacks and supplies to help the families in our community start the school year strong. I'm very grateful for the many generous people we have in our church who helped make this happen.
Helping needy people is not an added bonus to being a Christian. It's precisely at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. We are embedded in our community, and we want to actually meet the needs of the people around us. The disciples looked at the size of the problem and thought it was astronomical, too big. Jesus said, we're going to do this anyway.
Another benefit to having this story show up four times is that each writer tells it a little differently. Mark, for instance, very intentionally parallels Psalm 23: Jesus has the crowd lie down on the green grass and sets a table in front of them. Read Mark's feeding and then Psalm 23 back to back sometime, and see what connections you find. The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. Mark says, that's Jesus.
John offers a unique twist. He includes two details that appear nowhere else, and those are the ones I want to sit with.
The Disciples: Bring the Little You Have
Jesus sees the crowd coming and asks Philip where they are going to buy bread. John tells us plainly that Jesus already knew what he was going to do — and I picture him asking it with a smile on his face. Jesus could have said, “Stand back, guys, I've got another miracle for you to watch.” He doesn't do that because God loves to draw his people into the story. He wants to partner with us, even knowing we won't always understand what's going on and won't have the perfect answer.
Philip does what many of us might do. He fixates on the problem, and he assumes the solution has to come from him. He pulls out his spreadsheet and starts adding it up: two hundred denarii, about a year's wages, and even that would barely provide a mouthful. Five thousand men means five thousand families — probably ten to twenty thousand people out in that desert. Philip is the practical one who has to break it to his team: it's just not going to work. I think he was focused on the problem instead of looking at the answer sitting in front of him all along.
Andrew doesn't have the solution either. But he finds a boy with five barley loaves and two fish and brings them over: but what could this do? That's childlike faith, mustard-seed faith, and it's a model for me personally and for us as a church. We don't have to know exactly what Jesus is going to do next. We don't have to have the perfect answer to everything. What we can do, in faith, is say: this is the little we've got. Can Jesus do something with it?
This response of faith helps put perspective on what happens in the next scene.
The disciples are out on the water in the dark, in a storm, watching their rabbi walk toward them on the sea. In the biblical story that image belongs to God alone; Job 9:8 describes God as the one who treads on the waves of the sea. No mere human, but Yahweh of the Old Testament showing up in the flesh — the very thing John's Gospel has been telling us from page one. The disciples are terrified, and I would be too. But Jesus is revealing something new about himself that the hungry crowd didn't get to see. Even in their fear, the disciples welcome Jesus gladly into their boat.
The disciples in this story give us, not so much an example of ‘great faith,’ but a great example of faith we can all cling to. All the fear, all the doubt, but with childlike, mustard-seed faith that still welcomes Jesus in.
The Crowd: A King by Force
Then there's the crowd, and here is John's first extra detail. When the people see the sign, they say, this is indeed the prophet who has come into the world — and they get ready to take him by force and make him king. Jesus, instead, withdraws to the mountains.
I was perplexed by that all week. On one hand, wouldn't we say that's the right answer? Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords, the ruler of the cosmos. John's Gospel is emphatic about it. There's a political, kingdom-minded undercurrent running through the whole book. Jesus clashes with rulers like Pilate. He represents a kingdom that is not from this world — in the sense that its energy, motivation, and values do not originate here — but very much for this world. It's why we pray every week, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven.
So why would he reject the crowd's offer to give him a crown?
They have the right intuition, but the wrong motivation (see verse 26). They want the comfort of a king who will say have it your way. They don't want Jesus as he really is, on his terms. And they don't understand how he is actually going to achieve his kingship. They're still too early in the story. They want the king without the cross.
Why It Matters That This Is Passover
Here's John's second detail, and it's the clue that convinced me of what John was up to: verse 4 tells us the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us only one Passover, because they want our eyes fixed on the final week of Jesus — the Passover when he becomes the Lamb of God who dies for the sin of the world. John gives us three. One a couple of chapters ago, when Jesus cleared out the temple and chased off the money changers. This one, in the wilderness, with the bread. And the last one, in Jerusalem. John is why, traditionally, Christians say Jesus' public ministry lasted about three years.
During the third and final Passover, Jesus is declared “king” once more. Except that time it is Pilate who will say, “Behold your king.” But the crowd cries out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!… We have no king but Caesar.”
And Passover is exactly the time of year when the people would be looking for a new king.
Passover stirred up a revolutionary spirit. God rescued Israel out of slavery through Moses, overthrew the king of Egypt, and brought his people to the promised land. Every year they celebrated that redemption, and every year the Passover would serve to remind them that they were under the thumb of another Egypt — this time Rome. Would God overthrow this oppressive empire like he did before?
But that's not how Jesus is going to win the victory. Not as the conquering Moses overthrowing Pharaoh, but as the lamb who is going to be slain for the sins of the world. That is the heart of the gospel. The crucifixion is going to become Jesus' coronation, and nobody expected it.
The Unexpected Way of Jesus
Can we honestly say we've never been on the side of the crowd? What are the ways in my own life that I have wanted a king without the cross? There are many times I just want Jesus to answer all my requests in my way, in my time. Church for some has become a place to get their needs met and be entertained. Bread and circuses. (Juvenal wrote that famous line in 100 AD; it holds a remarkably similar critique of the people to John's depiction in chapter 6.)
But the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. He even defines discipleship as taking up our cross to follow him. Sometimes that means suffering. Sometimes it means sleepless nights of unanswered prayer, saying, God, when are you going to show up here? It always means dying to my own pride, desires, and will to seek God's will alone. It will mean fasting and waiting and following him anyway.
The people were looking for another meal — you came because you ate your fill (v. 26). It was the disciples who, in all their fear and doubt, were able to welcome Jesus as he was into their boat.
I wonder how many in the crowd that day were among those in the crowd shouting “Crucify!” Something turned in how the people received Jesus. I think it was when they started to realize that the kingdom Jesus was offering did not look like the have-it-your-way model.
Whose Side Are You On?
We sang this morning about our God being ‘with us,’ which of course is one of Scripture's great promises. Jesus is our Emmanuel, God-with-us. But I keep thinking back to Joshua on the edge of the promised land, meeting the commander of the Lord's armies and running up to ask him: whose side are you on — ours, or our enemies'? And the answer comes back:
“Neither; but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped… (Joshua 5:14)
We don't get to hijack God onto our side. We ask God whether we can be on his, and fall down in worship.
That's exactly what's happening in the text we looked at today. Jesus is king — just not in a way where we get to turn him into our own personal king on our own terms. He is the king of the cosmos, and he is inviting us onto his side.
This week:
- Are there ways you've been seeking the gifts without the Gift Giver?
- Do you act like you want the king without the cross?
- How is Jesus asking you to welcome him just as he is, and not as you'd like him to be?
