“Jesus is not that kind of king”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Reading: John 6:1-16
These past few years our congregation has been on a learning curve with both Welsh Christians and indigenous Canadian identity. We merged with the Dewi Sant United Church who’s monthly Addoldy Cymraeg service is this afternoon. I was on the subway recently and noticed, hmm, there are stops for St. George, England, St. Andrew, Scotland, St. Patrick, Ireland, no love for St. David in our fair city? Not even a train station on one of those lines with no trains?
Gibimishkaadimin is just one example of reconciliation work in the United Church of Canada in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That work showed me—there are more Anishnaabe folks in this neighbourhood than anywhere else in Toronto. What’s God asking of us here then, TEMC?
I’m struck how much Welsh and Indigenous stories have in common. English power tried to use Christianity to colonize Wales for half a millennium. Welsh people said we don’t like this state aligned English church so much. But we’ve loved Jesus for 1000 years before you got here. The great Welsh revival of 1904 was powered by hymn singing, and Welsh Christians still sing their way into faith. The hymn is our treasure as evangelical protestants, if you go to a Catholic mass they’ll be singing “our” hymns. St. David’s Day is not then just about Welsh cakes and costumes and daffodils. It’s to thank God for a hardy people skeptical of the Church of England at times, but ferocious in their love for Jesus Christ. And a good hymn.
In Canada, one would think with all the harm done that indigenous peoples would say “no thanks” to Christian faith forever. But indigenous peoples are statistically slightly more likely to profess Christian faith than the rest of us in Canada. You heard the Rev. Dr. Ray Aldred last week, the kids today, I’ve got other indigenous leaders coming later in the year. They say yes, this faith, this country, did harm. We don’t trust all white Christianity. But this Jew, Jesus, from the tribe of David? He’s one of us.
There was a time after World War II when Canada was more churchgoing than my native United States. That’s why there are so many former Methodist churches around this city, including ours—Toronto was called not just Toronto the Good (a joke against how churchgoing and teetotalling we were), but also the Methodist Rome—the world capital of church/state fusion. Quebec in the 1950s might have been the most churchgoing place in the history of the world, some 90 percent of Quebeckers going to mass. After the Quiet Revolution, all that energy went right out of church and into defense of Québécois identity. You can still see leftover Christian fundamentalism in our neighbouring la belle province, not in church so much as in defense of linguistic and cultural uniqueness.
Where do you see leftover fundamentalism here in Ontario, former English Protestant Canada? In morals. We don’t argue over doctrine or dogma so much. Methodists never did; Anglicans never did. But if someone recycles incorrectly? Drives badly? Has the wrong view of US politics? You can yell at those people. That’s leftover fundamentalism, shifted from dogma to ethics. The appropriate outrage over Canadian treatment of indigenous persons in some quarters is directed at the church alone. That’s fair in one way. Mainline churches ran residential schools (not Lutherans or Mennonites or newer evangelicals, but we Methodists and United and Catholics did). But who funded them? Or under-funded them? Canada. That is, all of us. The outrage itself is a vestige of Protestantism. As Ray told us last week, indigenous persons say, “let’s forgive, make treaty, become family.” Some troubled white Canadians, without the guardrails of Canadian politeness or ongoing church practice, say “let’s burn churches.” One Coptic Orthodox church in BC was torched—the arsonists might’ve googled whether Egyptians or Orthodox ran residential schools. They did not. When I served a Chinese church and indigenous reconciliation would come up, folks would infer ‘yeah, you white people were terrible to the natives.’ Right, whose land is your expensive house built on again?
I know it sounds strange in this room to say the fusion of Christianity and Canadian identity is over and is never coming back. This is a glorious building, built in 1915 to look like it’s 1115. If the Vikings come back, we’re ready to fight them off. Send an orc army and we can hold out under siege. The old trappings of power and money look alive here. But walk one building over in any direction and ask whether they care about what the United Church of Canada says or does, they’ll look at you funny and then complain about the parking mess we cause. Anybody know or care who the United Church preferred candidate was in the most recent provincial election? In the current Liberal Party race for leader and so PM? Nope. There was a day when we would have all known, and it would have mattered. That’s our challenge Timothy Eaton Memorial Church: how do we be faithful with all these legacies we inherit? Protestant grandeur and Catholic beauty in here. But today our neighbours might not just find it weird that we go to church, but morally awkward, or even dubious. Do you not know what the church did?
So why are we here? Not because of the church’s record, which can be spotty, but can also be magnificent. We are here for one reason. Because of Jesus Christ, our God and king, and his church through which he’s saving everything. I have said this before and will say it so often that you guys roll your eyes: if you want diversity in church, don’t talk about diversity. Churches that front diversity get older and whiter and more liberal. Nothing wrong with old white liberals! I’m becoming an old white liberal with alarming speed! But if you want a diverse church, talk about Jesus, and see what kinds of diverse people he draws to himself. And then get busy being church together.
Even in an age like ours that’s indifferent to faith when it’s not hostile, folks tend to know that Jesus feeds multitudes from a few loaves and fish. They know he heals the sick. It’s why we invented the hospital and still invest in them. In previously colonized places like India or Hong Kong, Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists still send their kids to Christian schools. I preached to a Taiwanese congregation once, mentioned colonization, and they said ‘yeah that’s what China is doing to us. But Alexander McKay from Scotland who built our hospital system? We love that guy.’ Scottish missionary—say a word against McKay at your peril. There is a language among India’s hundreds of languages where the word for church is this: the-building-beside-the-school. Missionaries built churches, of course, usually after the clinic and the school were built. I know we don’t see this mission legacy in Canada—we expect the government to do such things. Well, who founded that government, those hospitals, those schools here? Anglicans and Methodists. We’re often ashamed of our history now as colonizers. But the colonized elsewhere are not so unilaterally hostile. Humanity is always mixed. Just like you and me.
Great critics of faith like the late Christopher Hitchens, God rest him, would say okay, why not just end world hunger, Jesus? Heal all diseases at once? I mean, it’s cool he feeds 5000 that day, heals folks here and there. But couldn’t Jesus have waved a hand and healed everyone, fed everyone, for all time? Why not?
The answer is ... I don’t know.
You know the story. A great crowd seeking healing. No plans for food. Hapless. In the wilderness at mealtime. One kid thought to bring a lunch—five loaves, two fish. Jesus takes those, blesses, breaks them, gives them out, and keeps giving them out until everyone is fed. Twelve giant baskets full left over. Jesus loves to eat. Run out of food, and no problem he makes more. Jesus is the king of bread. He’d have been terrible at the Atkins diet, no good at South Beach or even the Mediterranean one. Sure, he’s down with olives, fish, nuts, I guess. But bread? Always on the table and he’s always bringing more. Jesus is the king of bread.
Food. Healing. Everyone needs those things. But you know what we need more of? Story. Hope. The great Elie Wiesel, I learned this week, passes on this wisdom from the rabbis: God creates humanity why? Because God loves stories. You and I can go some three minutes without oxygen. Three days without water. Three weeks without food. But not three seconds without story. Because story is meaning, purpose, value. Without those things we’re dead already.
We miss two elements to this story, whether we’re Christian, hostile, indifferent, or something else. One, to manufacture bread from almost nothing is a political act. Napoleon coined this famous military adage: an army marches on its stomach. If you have soldiers and weapons, but you ain’t got food, you ain’t got no army (that’s my southern translation of Napoleon’s terrible French). You can bet the puppet Jewish collaborators in Jerusalem heard about these feeding miracles and told their Roman overlords. About every century or so there was a great Jewish revolt against Rome, put down with increasing violence. In 70 AD, after Jesus’ resurrection but before John wrote this gospel, the Romans burned the temple. In 132 AD the Jews rebel again, and Rome destroys all Jerusalem and bans Jews from ever living there again and renames the place Palestine after Israel’s historic enemy the Philistines. David the Jew lost after all; Goliath the Philistine Roman won. To multiply loaves of bread resolves hunger no doubt. But it also signifies military possibility. If you feed me, I’ll fight for you. Everybody hates those Romans, those colonizers, who crucify and burn and erase and rename. Do you see why crushed people love Jesus? He feeds and heals. He also frightens the guys with the armies. Gives hope to the hopeless. These feeding miracles repeat in the gospels six or seven times in just four gospels. Rome only needed to hear about it one time before it started collecting wood to crucify this bread man.
At the end of this story, we the people move to make Jesus king by force. He vanishes. He’s no violent king, no Roman emperor, no collaborator like Herod. For us sinners, there is no greater power than the one that relieves our suffering and increases our enemies’ suffering. For Jesus, Messiah of Israel, Son of God, the power to expel Rome is nothing. Real power is feeding, healing, forgiving.
The other angle we miss. Does this story sound familiar at all? Not just in the history since Jesus, but in the history before him? Jewish history, that we share with our elder siblings in faith, as well as our younger cousins in Islam?
Jesus goes up a mountain. Like Mt. Sinai where we receive God’s good law, God’s good way to live.
It’s Passover, the festival of the Jews, recalling freedom from Pharaoh in Egypt.
There’s a crowd. A mob. A mass of humanity with no leadership. Like freed slaves. Like us. We’re hungry. At least in Egypt we had food.
Jesus tests us, his disciples, Philip, Andrew, Simon Peter, the others. Where’s the bakery? Uh, Jesus, we’re in the desert and we’re poorer than sand. Do we trust Rome to provide? Religion to provide? Or God to provide? That mosaic is from a church on the spot where this happened. It was built by Mussolini.
One kid brought lunch. Children are special. They matter. When we adults with degrees and accomplishments and money fail, and we do, some child will have brought everything in the kitchen. It’s not enough for 5000 men, 1000s more women and children. But it’s enough for Jesus. He uses what we bring to make infinitely more. Baskets full more. We eat so much we feel like we’ll never need to eat again. We’re wrong. We’ll be hungry again in about six hours. Don’t worry. Why? Well, we got the baskets full. The child who remembers. No, we got Jesus. He’s all the food we ever need.
The fragments make 12 baskets. Twelve. Like the 12 tribes of Israel. Like the 12 disciples who with the Holy Spirit will become 12 apostles and spread out to all the world with Jesus’ healing and feeding. This kind of king makes mighty Rome look like scared fools. In Bible’s math, 12 is more than millions, no swords are more than all the swords.
So why doesn’t Jesus wave that magic wand and end all hunger and disease? All oppression and violence? No idea. We don’t know why God is the way God is. All we know is this: Jesus remakes Israel and births the church. He’s coming soon to finish redemption. That day is coming very soon. When?
One of you with a Pentecostal background asked me recently—you keep saying Jesus is coming soon. Do you know something we don’t? No, not even Jesus knows when he’s coming back. But the church has been saying “soon” for 2000 years. We might say soon for 10,000 more. God is unbearably, scandalously, outrageously patient. Humanity deserves no more patience. You’ll agree if you read the newspapers. But patience is all God is. Explain why God saves this way? Through compromised Israel and hapless church? No chance. Love it, worship it, follow it, eat it, drink it, be made new by it, with all Jesus’ weird friends? Yes. 10 million times yes. Including today. Right now. Amen.