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JOHN 6: 1-21
8th S. after Pentecost '06
Including the brief reference at the start to Jesus healing the sick, we have three examples of Jesus' Lordship over creation here. None of them sits easily with 21st C ways of looking at things, & it might be helpful to acknowledge that without setting out to be a non-believer or 'modernist' (whatever that really means) martyr.

As I see it, that central issue of sovereignty won't go away. If we take it away we may well find God moving away too! Tell it as it is is our job. Not at all apologetically except in that old technical sense of that word. Is God God or not is a useful principle to explore from what we have before us here. We may approach that literally, more broadly, or a mixture of both perhaps. However we tackle the issue, our congregation needs to recognize us as honest, not just preaching duty bound to pedal old truths that don't hold up any more. (If that's the way we or they see it.)

In all three 'pictures', healing, feeding, calming, Jesus demonstrates that God is still in control bringing order out of chaos - sickness, hunger, danger - and does it not only because it is God's nature to be powerful, but also because it is God's nature to care. So we're into very incarnational stuff here. How we preach that will be a matter of choice, but preach it we must if we and our people are to worship and follow the True God not just some spiritualised, gutted version of God that appeals to us / them.

I see God healing people in a whole lot of ways, including our equipping medicos & ancillaries to bring hope to those who don't have medicare or medicaid or whatever we call it. More, God can heal people when we pressure governments to care. Sometimes, some of us will be given the grace to die with dignity and find our healing that way.
I see God feeding vast numbers of the hungry as we give what we can to aid-agencies to go where we can't & give hope, & also pressure governments into caring.
I see God stilling storms in all kinds of situations personal, societal, national, & international, as we become not peace talkers but peace makers, including by pressuring governments to care.

Whatever the basic literal truth of this passage, none of it will become or remain true till we enter into the story of the world's needy and care for them. I believe more and more strongly that God won't do what we should and could be doing. I was going to say, nor will God go where we could & should be going except that God is there already, isn't God?