The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses. / New Edition

by Frederick Denison Maurice

'When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, and saw a great crowd come to Him, He saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this He said to prove him: for He Himself knew what He would do. Philip answered Him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto Him, There is a lad here which hath five barley-loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?' The force of the sign is often, as I said before, to be discerned in these incidents, quite as much as in what we call the miraculous part of it. We see how our Lord uses events as an education of His disciples; how part of an event serves to bring out the character of one man, part of another. And what was true then, according to the doctrine that goes through the book, is true always. As the Teacher does not change—as, in essentials, the learner of the West is not different from the learner of the East—the same method of discipline belongs to both. We may understand, from the specimens of it which St. John gives us, how our thoughts are awakened—how we are made conscious of doubts, that they may be satisfied.

St. John follows strictly the former Evangelists till the 14th verse. There the effect of the sign upon the multitude is given in words which we have not elsewhere. 'Then those men, when they had seen the miracle which Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet which should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force to make him a king, He departed again into a mountain Himself alone.' Two names are brought together which are quite distinct, but which have mingled with each other in all the world's history. 'He is a Prophet; God has sent Him.' That is the natural feeling of a crowd which has been conscious of a wonderful power exerted on its own behalf. Then comes another:—'How shall we exalt this Prophet? How shall we show our sense of His might, and our gratitude for His benefits? Let us make Him our King. None is so worthy to reign over us. He may not be willing to put Himself at our head; why should not we take the matter into our own hands?' It was no new thing. Many a champion had arisen before in Galilee to rid the people of their oppressors. Each had come in the name of God. The desert was the ordinary scene of their exploits. Was it not the very place for an insurrection in favour of this Galilæan Prophet to begin? If some compulsion were used, the mysterious power which had fed them would, of course, be ready to support His own claims.

Unless we remember this wild excitement among men who had been hungry and who had eaten, and the voice of command with which He sent them away to their houses—the kingly might coming forth in His resolution that they should not make Him a king—we can scarcely enter into the stillness and awfulness of that night-scene which is brought before us in the following verses:—'And when even was now come, the disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. But He saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. Then they willingly received Him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.'

I believe the conscience of men has received the right impression from this story. It has come to them in dark oppressive hours as the witness of a Presence that had been with them, though they knew it not,—of a calm power in which they might trust. This might not be their notion of a miracle. If they had been asked to define its nature and its purpose, they would carefully limit it to the time in which Jesus dwelt on earth; they would say it was a departure from the laws of nature to attest His divine mission. They would explain away the faith they had expressed unawares; they would say they had only been making a moral or personal improvement of the incident. No, brethren, it is not so. They discovered the true meaning of the sign at first. The other is the cold intellectual misinterpretation of it. They feel in their hearts that it is not a violation of the laws of nature, for the Son of Man to prove that the elements are not man's masters. They feel that when He raised up His disciples' hearts to trust in Him, He was teaching poor, weak, ignorant men the true law of their being, and thereby teaching them to reverence and not to despise the laws which He had imposed on the winds and on the waves. They feel that the whole beautiful narrative is not an argumentative assertion of a divine mission which can confute disputants, but the practical manifestation of a divine kinghood to meet the cravings and necessities of human beings. What does a debater care for 'It is I; be not afraid?' What else does a man tossed about in a tempest care for? The words were not spoken to Scribes and Pharisees, and were not heard by them. They were spoken to fishermen out in a boat at night; and by such they have been heard ever since.

St. John tells us this in the next paragraph. If we attach the modern notion to miracles, we shall, of course, conclude that so singular a witness of the Messiahship of Jesus must at once have been declared to those who were hesitating about it, and half ready to believe it. The occasion for announcing it was given. 'The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto His disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone; (howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks): when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither His disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. And when they had found Him on the other side of the sea, they said unto Him, Rabbi, when camest Thou hither?' Here were the excitement and astonishment all ready. These people had said the day before,—'This is of a truth that prophet which should come into the world.' What strength would that conviction gain, if they heard that He did not cross the lake as other men crossed it! He says nothing of this. 'Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me not because ye saw signs, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.' They did seek Him because they had seen miracles or wonders; for it was a wonder that they had eaten and been filled; it was one which might be repeated. But they did not seek Him because they saw signs. The signs had not told them who He was; they had not come because they wanted Him, but because they wanted something which He could give them. He did not then announce any other sign of His power; it could have done them no good. But He proceeded to draw out the signification of the first sign; to show them what there was in it beyond the satisfaction of their immediate hunger.

Here, even more than in the case of the woman at the well, we may wonder at the deep mysteries which He revealed to what we should call ignorant sensual people. That they were a crowd of such people, St. John tells us plainly. And yet to what Jerusalem doctors had He spoken of a Bread of Life—of a bread of which a man might eat and not die? But let us begin where He begins. Each sentence, each clause, even each word, that He addressed to this rabble at Capernaum, is meant for the ears and hearts of the wisest among us. 'Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you: for Him hath God the Father sealed.'

To the woman of Sychar He spoke of water, for she had come to draw water. To these Galilæans He spoke of bread, for they had been eating of the loaves. Neither to one nor the other would He speak of the spiritual gift without speaking of the sensible gift,—without making them feel that that also was from God. He addresses the people of Capernaum as men working for their food ordinarily, though for once they had received it without working for it: and He bids them believe that there is another nobler work which is appointed for them,—a work, however, which does not prevent the fruit of it from being a gift. They were earning, by the sweat of their brow, a food which sustained their lives from day to day,—God endowing them with both the power to toil and the reward of toil. They might toil for a bread that would sustain another different kind of life in them,—a life not of hours and instants, but eternal. This bread, He says, the Son of Man will give. After what I said last Sunday of His use of this title,—of His assertion that the Son of Man must be the judge of men, must be the life-giver to men,—I have no need to dwell upon it here. I would only lead you to notice how exactly this application of it accords with that in the dialogue at Jerusalem, and yet how suitable it is to the Galilæans whom He is teaching. In both cases we find men brought directly into contact with One who knows them, who reads their hearts, who is the source and the standard of all that is human in them. In both, this Son of Man leads them to a Father from whom He has proceeded, from whose life His is derived, who has given Him His authority, whose will He has come to do. The words, we saw, were most provoking to the Pharisees of the holy city. Their inhumanity made it impossible for them to enter into the revelation of a Son of Man; their sense of distance from God, and their conception of Him as a mere Lawgiver, made the name of Father monstrous and incredible. With these ignorant labourers it was otherwise. A Son of Man,—a King who was yet a Brother,—they secretly longed for; half their wild acts were done in the struggle to find such a one. The thought of God was more terrible;—oftentimes they would have wished to hide themselves from Him under any hills and mountains; oftentimes they might have been glad to be told that there was no such Being. But there was that in them which owned Him as the Giver of all that they had; as worthy of the trust which their fathers put in Him; as associated with the graves of their parents and the faces of their children. To hear Him called a Father,—however little they might understand in what sense He could be a Father,—to hear that there was One whom He had sealed as a giver of Life to men,—this answered to some of the dreams which they had dreamed in their happiest hours: to some of the necessities which had been awakened within them in their saddest hours.

But these were vague, half-realized thoughts. The word 'labour,' or 'work,' was familiar to them. Jesus meant, they thought, that God would not give them anything which they did not earn. 'What shall we do,' said one, who was the spokesman of the rest, 'that we may work the works of God?' As often happens, the language was accurate beyond the conscious intention of the person who used it. He desired to know what work they should work for God, whereas it was really a work of God that was demanded. 'Jesus answered, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.' God was working upon them; He was calling them to trust their King and their Friend; to give up their hearts to the Lord of their hearts—to Him who could alone quicken them to any good and fruitful work.

Of course, they understood by the expression, 'Him whom He hath sent,' that Jesus was claiming to be Messiah,—the sent from Heaven. 'They said therefore unto Him, What sign shewest Thou then, that we may see, and believe Thee? What dost Thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'

Jesus had fed them in the desert when they were fainting. That was a strange and great act, no doubt, worthy of a Prophet, perhaps of a King. But the manna had actually dropped from heaven out of the clouds. If He came from Heaven, would He have merely taken the bread in His hands and blessed it? Would there not have been a sign like that which showed Moses to be indeed the messenger of God? Would there be no appearance in the sky? It was the question of people whose minds were perplexed about Heaven, and who, happily, had not found out seemly phrases in which to veil their perplexity. A material heaven—a heaven of sky and clouds—was what they saw and confessed. They had a dim vision of something beyond this. Their hearts yearned for a Heaven as calm as that upon which their eyes gazed; as full of light, as productive of life, but yet altogether different from that. What it was, where it was, they could not tell. Do you think we should have helped them if we had talked to them about an intellectual Heaven or a subjective Heaven? Do you think such nonsense can be of much help to ourselves?