Year 8, Day 254: John 6

Theological Commentary: Click Here

It’s true what they say.  No good deed ever goes unpunished.  You can have the best motivations.  You can even have a plan that succeeds.  Even with the best plan that succeeds, someone will get upset and they will misunderstand or manipulate things until the good deed suddenly looks worse.

For example, take the feeding of the 5,000.  What an incredible miracle!  How many thousands of people eat their fill on a miraculous dinner made from five loaves of bread and two fish!  It should have been a miracle remembered for the ages.  It should have been an inspiration for people to turn to God and worship Him.  Unfortunately, neither of those things happened.

Look at the recipients.  Jesus leaves, and they continue to look for them.  We don’t know how, but Jesus Himself tells us why.  They come because they ate their fill.  They come because they got hungry again.  They come because Jesus was a cheap meal ticket.  What should have led to awe and worship leads to greed and self-centeredness.  Jesus’ good deed is misunderstood, misconstrued, and misrepresented.  They make Jesus out to be a means to a physical end rather than a spiritual model for godly living.

Furthermore, take the religious leaders.  They could have celebrated at the miracle of God.  They could have used it as a springboard to talk about the greatness of God’s provision.  It could have been an incredible moment of spiritual community.  Instead, it is the means to religious argument.  The Jewish leaders get upset at Jesus’ teaching.  They don’t want Jesus to be from God.  They don’t want Him to be from heaven.  They deny the greatness of the miracle because it doesn’t fit into their box.  What should have been a great moment mutates into the worst kind of alternate: angry spiritual debate.

This angry spiritual debate has more communal consequences.  Many of Jesus’ own followers grumble against Jesus about His teaching.  Instead of being a moment when people turn to God and His incredible provision, the argument turns the miracle into a time and place where Jesus actually loses followers! Many people turn aside from Jesus and no longer follow.

Good deeds, indeed.  It should be a great moment.  It turned out quite the opposite.  Don’t get me wrong, Jesus still uses the moment to teach and train His disciples.  God still is in control and He still uses the moment.  Yet the people don’t see God at work.  They turn away.  The seeds of confusion and anger are sown in the presence of the greatness of God’s provision.  It is all too often the way of humanity.

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