BREAKTHROUGH
(Open-ended, Life-centred Explorations of the Sunday Gospels for Home Groups)
JN 6: 1-21...7th / 8th S. after Pentecost

NOTES: 1] Many attempt to explain away the two main incidents recorded here. 2] JN calls the feeding a 'sign', his normal term for what we usually refer to as a miracle. There is a strong connection back to 2KINGS 4: 42-42 & Elisha. 3] Though not called a 'sign', we may be meant to see Jesus walking on water as a sign of him triumphing over the waters (representing chaos) to bring a new creation. "It is I" is a word play on the name of God, YAHWEH.(I AM!)    

WARMING UP:  If we could somehow produce a miraculous amount of food, what would we choose it to be?

TREASURES OLD & NEW: Identify God at work in anything this week?

ENTERING INTO THE STORY:

1-4      If  someone were to tell us that Jesus' healing of the sick was a sign, what would his acting like that be a sign of to us? Is there a difference between a sign like this & a miracle? Is such a sign a miracle? Is such a miracle a sign? Of what? Is it easier to believe in signs than miracles? On what basis are stories like this one & the two that follow believable as signs of who Jesus really is in this 21st C.?

5-10   As friends of Jesus today, how well do we discern people's real needs? When we do discern them, how good are we at doing something to meet those needs? Given there are people in our own community hungry for a variety of things they really need (e.g. food, employment, friendship, income, housing, medical care, etc.) is there any point in us telling them old stories about Jesus back then if we can't meet their needs today? Have we yet discovered what our own 'five loaves & two fish' might be today so we can share them as the boy shared them with Jesus & Jesus with the crowd? Does our congregation share its (our!) resources so everyone gets as much as they need of whatever they need?

11-15  Have we ourselves experienced that 'when God fills, God fills' in some way? Can people experience that same 'God-principle' working out from us in our dealings with them? Have we experienced / do we experience meanness in the church when we hope(d) for generosity, or vice-versa? Are there any ways in which God is not filling us & our congregation to overflowing? If so, how do we account for this? If good things are in short supply, who's holding back?
 
            Do we ever experience the progress of Christianity being held back because people in & out of the church find it hard to get past Jesus being more than a prophet, even a great one, or the greatest? Are we making do with a prophet when what we really need is a Saviour? Has an apparent decline in acceptance of Jesus as King got anything to do with the failure & fall of earthly monarchies & the rise of democracies of various kinds? Do we expect God to conform too much to our modern ideas about democracy? What about when democracies fail, too?

16-21   How do we feel about 'walking on water' passing into our language as a joke & a put-down in today's society? Does that leave us & our understanding of biblical truths in trouble? Can stories, biblical or otherwise be true despite being made up? Might anyone who doesn't want to take this story literally still be able to find some God-truth in it? What might that truth be?