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After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each one of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the signs that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

I spent the last two weeks in Atlanta, taking a writing seminar as a part of a Doctor of Ministry program through Columbia Seminary, where I also did my M.Div. Taught by Barbara Brown Taylor, we spent mornings talking about perspective and point of view, about the nature of the creative process. We shared work in small groups. We had pieces to write almost every afternoon, designed to help us think about making choices about tone and content and audience. But a few broad truths found their way to the surface. One is that only clear thinking becomes clear writing: one can’t exist without the other.[1] A second is that you have to pay attention. Author Anne Lamott tells a story of talking with a doctor six months before her friend Pam died. “This was a doctor who always gave me straight answers,” she writes. “When I called this particular night, I was hoping she could put a positive slant on some distressing developments. She couldn’t,” she writes, “but she said something that changed my life. ‘Watch her carefully right now,’ [this doctor] said, ‘because she’s teaching you how to live.”[2]

Lamott’s point is that when you realize you are terminal, you live differently, make decisions differently, see everything differently. “I might want to write on my last day on earth,” she writes, “but I’d also be aware of other options that would feel at least as pressing. I would want to keep whatever I did simple, I think. And I would want to be present.”[3]

Today’s text is an invitation to watch carefully, to pay attention. The feeding of the five thousand is an iconic story, one many of us know by heart. We know what it’s about, right? The crowds build, the disciples get anxious, and, as only the Messiah could, Jesus solves the problem. THAT is where the lectionary ought to cut us off. I was mad about that most of the last week. But they choose to include the section following, when Jesus walks out to the disciples on the water. I wasn’t sure why we got both the feeding and the walking. The reason why moves beyond John, first to Mark. We have spent much of this year in Mark. His words are tightly packed. He pays attention to pace, speeding us along with words like immediately. Mark’s Jesus tells people to be quiet, to keep his secret, only we know the people don’t. Mark’s Easter story actually ends mid-sentence, telling us the women left the tomb afraid, not telling anyone. Only we know that’s not true. We are invited back into that fast-paced narrative, invited to find our place in it, invited to make sure we don’t keep that secret but tell it, but live it, so that our lives might bear witness.

John feels different. John’s Jesus is more talk, less action. He records few miracles, none of these odd exorcisms Mark loves. John had some extra years to reflect on this Jesus, to get a sense of what His mission was about, to what His church might be called. John’s Jesus is an orator, teaching in long speeches. I am the bread of life, He says. I am the good shepherd. John’s gospel is written in rich language, chocked with metaphor and allusion.[4]

But John and Mark do the same thing with this story. They follow the feeding directly with Jesus walking on the water. Matthew does it, too.[5] That was my key in exploring today’s text. If three of the four gospels pair these stories, the lectionary following suit, what can we see by taking them together that we would miss if they were separate? Separate they are two miracle stories. One on land, with a big crowd. One on the sea, with a handful. On the mountain Jesus is the new Moses leading the people in the wilderness. By walking on the water He calms the storms, tames the chaos. Taken separately they are to establish identity: this man’s power – what He does, how He does it – makes clear to us that He IS the Messiah, the promised One of God.

Taken together these stories do something different. Pay attention, John says. After He multiplies fish and bread they say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’” John puts in the crowd’s mouth a theological claim. They had it all figured out. They have expectations of Him, expectations they intend to force upon Him. But Jesus is not there for them and He slips away, hiking up the mountain.

In the next section it happens again. It is easy to dismiss the uninformed crowd for their naiveté. But John makes sure we aren’t let off the hook, either. As the disciples shove off the shore, the wind picks up. They keep rowing, trying to beat the storm, when they see Jesus, miles from land, walking on the whitecaps. They were terrified, John writes. He claims his own identity here, calming their fears. But the disciples don’t get it, either. They want to take Him into the boat, keep Him for themselves. Again Jesus avoids being who they want Him to be. As the bottom scrapes sand, He walks away.

In both of these texts Jesus carefully avoids being put into our service. After His first display of power, the crowds want Him to be their mighty leader, vanquishing the enemies, ushering in a period of unrivaled prosperity. After the second, the disciples want to own Him, contain Him, use Him as their personal spiritual guide. While Jesus is capable of all of these things and more, the point remains in both of these stories – Jesus is ever-elusive, dodging our expectations, pushing us to examine our own assumptions about who He is and what He will do for us, with us in the world. This is a text that challenges us to pay attention to the world around us, our place in it, the kind of ministry to which we are called. What is it we want from this Jesus? Are we seeing the ways He is already at work?

Barbara Brown Taylor, my teacher last week, wrote in her book, An Altar in the World: “The practice of paying attention is as simple as looking twice at people and things you might just as easily ignore. To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine – unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are.”[6]

He emerged from the Metro at L’Enfant Plaza Station and leaned up against the wall beside a trash can. Late 30s in jeans, a long- sleeved T-shirt, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he threw in a few dollars and as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play. It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, 2007 - the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. But they didn’t know it was a setup. The Washington Post had enlisted Joshua Bell’s help in an experiment. A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell was an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before Bell had filled the house at Boston's Symphony Hall, where pretty good seats went for $100.

Bell began that morning with a difficult piece by Bach. Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Then he kept walking. A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall and listened. Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. One person recognized him, waited the entire time, and introduced herself afterwards. The only other person who really got it was, of course, a child. Sheron Parker was late dropping off her 3-year-old son, Evan, before a training session at work. "There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time." She moves in front of her son, pulls him away. His final haul for his 43 minutes of was $32.17. Some people gave pennies. Four months later Bell was back in Washington. The guy who was roundly ignored was accepting the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing the Flop of L'Enfant Plaza as the best classical musician in America.[7]

I don’t know if I would have paid attention that cold morning by the subway. I certainly wouldn’t have recognized Joshua Bell, though I pray I would recognize beauty. I pray I would be able to get free of whatever very important thing I was on the way to and revel, for a moment, in one of the many ways God gets to us. Pay attention, John says. And as you explore, he promises, I will guide you, doing much more among you than you could ever dream. It might be the product of years of time and money and effort and committee work or it might be right in front of us, like a violin on the subway, like a child pointing out the beauty of the sunset we had missed. These miracles proclaim a different way of being in the world, a way that constantly defies the world’s expectations, a way that in the face of death and greed and suffering, proclaims compassion and life and hope. Might this summer be a time for you to pay attention? To what new and surprising thing might you be called?

[1] William Zinsser, “On Writing Well: 30^th Anniversary Edition,” (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), p 8.

[2] Anne Lamott, “The Writing Life,” (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p 179.

[3] Lamott, 179.

[4] WBC: John, by Gerald Sloyan, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988). Much of the background in this paragraph comes from pages 1-5.

[5] Matthew 14:13-27, Mark 6:30-52.

[6] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, (New York: HarperOne, 2009), p 33.

[7] “Pearls Before Breakfast; Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out” by Gene Weingarten in the April 7, 2007 edition of The Washington Post Magazine. Accessed at washingtonpost.com. I am grateful for a reminder of this article I received via email from Jack Walker.