Sermon on John 6:22–29: Why we follow Jesus, and what true satisfaction means
Rev Harry Newton delivers a Sunday sermon at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church on the "Bread of Life" discourse in John's Gospel, chapter 6.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton preaches on John 6:22–29, situating the passage within the broader "Bread of Life" discourse that runs through the entire sixth chapter of John's Gospel. He opens by recounting the feeding of the five thousand and the walking on water, explaining why both stories appear across multiple Gospel accounts and what they reveal about the identity of Jesus from a Jewish theological perspective. The central argument of the sermon is that the crowd who followed Jesus across the lake did so for the wrong reasons — they wanted more food and more miracles, not a relationship with Jesus himself. Newton argues that this "misdirected desire" is not unique to the first-century crowd but is a persistent temptation for anyone who approaches faith primarily asking "what's in it for me?" He closes by presenting Jesus' own answer to the crowd — that the work of God is simply to believe in the one God has sent — as the starting point for a deeper, lasting satisfaction that experiences, spiritual highs, and material provision cannot supply.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Lectionary and the Bread of Life Discourse
Rev Harry Newton: We have a thing called the Revised Common Lectionary — all our readings set three years in advance. It's really interesting. One of the cool things about it is that you don't get trapped in the local minister's or pastor's pet hobbies, things they like to preach on. If I'm going for a social justice vibe, for example, I might only preach on social justice. But actually the lectionary forces us to preach outside of our comfort zone. The downside of it is that when you hear a reading like that, if you don't know your Bible very well, or if you're new to church, or even if you have been around for a while, it can just seem a bit random. Sometimes you hear it and you're like, what on earth is going on here?
So we're in the midst of something called the Bread of Life discourse. Anyone heard of it before? Almost no one. All right, cool. John — who's heard the Gospel of John? All right, a few people. Great. If you haven't, don't worry, we'll get on to that later. In John's Gospel, in chapter 6, which is where we're up to right now — not that far in, given there are 21 chapters — we have what's known as the Bread of Life discourse. It goes the entire chapter. It's really important, and it's pretty intense.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand
And it all kicks off a few verses before our reading this morning with the feeding of the five thousand men. Now, disclaimer: it says five thousand men, and we refer to it as the feeding of the five thousand. And yet we have on comparatively good authority that there were women there too, and probably kids. So does that mean there were five thousand people and we just refer to them all as men? Or does that mean there were five thousand blokes plus everyone else? Who knows? We'll just go with the five thousand for the time being. Forget about the gendered language — we're told that Jesus fed five thousand-odd people in the middle of nowhere.
John puts it this way: Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee. Pause. Galilee is this big area. Jesus spends a lot of his early time on the northwestern border of Galilee, walking back and forth. You might have noticed, if you've read the Bible, that Jesus turns up to people and says, "Follow me," and they drop everything and follow him. In the Gospel of Luke, which is one of the other accounts of Jesus' life and ministry, he actually spends three months in the area before he calls the first people on the shorefront to come and follow him. And they are fishermen. They live in Galilee on the shores of Lake Galilee. So it's their home territory. They hop on the boat together, they sail across.
And he says this: "A great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick." Skip ahead a little bit: "When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip" — one of his twelve disciples — "where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?"
There's a bit of a back and forth as Jesus' disciples talk about how unfeasible it is to buy enough bread for everyone. And the conversation culminates in Andrew saying, "Well, there's a boy here. He's got like five small barley loaves and two fish. They won't go very far." To which Jesus replies, "Have the people sit down." He then takes the loaves, gives thanks, and breaks the bread. He distributes it across the crowd — and it says here, as much as they wanted. So it wasn't like you get a tiny little bit each. They got a large amount. And then he did the same with the fish. And when they had had enough to eat, the disciples — his twelve inner circle — go around and fill twelve baskets with pieces of barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. Incredible, hey? Pretty awesome.
There's a bit of symbolism there in the twelve — twelve representing the twelve tribes of Israel. It's all very Jewish. John is a Jew writing for a Jewish audience, so there's all this symbolism inherent in here.
Now, if you find that story hard to believe, you are not alone. I once heard a Catholic priest preach on this, and he said the real miracle was that everyone actually had a packed lunch but was keeping it to themselves. And when the little boy brought forward his lunch, everyone was shamed into sharing theirs. It doesn't say that, but it might be true. I don't think so, personally. If you find it hard to believe, as I say, you're not alone — there's even a Catholic priest out there preaching that it didn't happen. But I think you'll find the people who were there also struggled to believe it happened. We're told the people essentially struggle to believe it. You think about it: you're out there in the middle of nowhere, you see these loaves, you see a couple of fish, and suddenly everyone gets fed and there are twelve baskets left over. Minds are blown.
And the people begin to mutter amongst themselves. And Jesus, realizing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew to a mountain by himself.
Walking on Water
Now, Jesus' disciples obviously had no idea where he went. Jesus was really good at sneaking away. And we're told that when it came to dark, they decided to head home across the lake in their boat without him. I have no idea why they left Jesus behind in the middle of nowhere in the wilderness. That's a bit of a stink thing to do. It'd be like if we all went somewhere no one likes to go — Gore! I hope no one's from there. Imagine we all go to Auckland and then go, "Oh, we're going to leave Harry behind." Either you really don't like Harry, or you're thinking, oh, he'll be right, it's Auckland, he'll be fine. A little bit like that. It's a bit weird that they leave him behind.
Now, they head off across the lake. They get about three miles across — approximately halfway. And then we're told a strong wind begins to blow and the water becomes increasingly rough. John doesn't give us many details of what happens. He kind of skims over them because to him the details don't matter. But we're given more detail in some of the other accounts. So if we blend the accounts together, this is what happens: the disciples, who are professional fishermen who live on this lake and know what they're doing, are straining at their oars. Suddenly Jesus appears. Peter — one of the twelve disciples we heard about last week, a bit of a dropkick — steps out of the boat onto the water to walk to Jesus. The first few steps go okay, then he sinks. Jesus catches him, climbs into the boat with him, and then the storm stops. Pretty epic, hey?
Why These Stories Matter: The Identity of Jesus
Now, this is obviously a very important story to the early church. We know this because it's one of the very few stories found right across the accounts of Jesus. We also know it's important because — who's been into a traditional wooden church? All right, cool. Have you ever looked up at the roof and noticed it looks like the hull of a boat? Yeah, intentional. Our old church in Greytown, where Amy and the kids and I were before coming here, is a huge church — way bigger than this room. The walls are curved. They start at the sides and curve up to a point almost three stories high. It's a really high ceiling, a beautiful laminated rimu curved roof, and they've ribbed it like a boat. The idea is that you would come into a church amidst the trials and tribulations and storms of life, come into the church, and be safe in the boat with the presence of Jesus amidst the storms of life. It's a beautiful symbolism, and it's something that's echoed down through the ages because we've been building churches like this for thousands of years.
Now, that's one reason we know the early church valued the story. But the other reason we know people really found this important is, as I say, it's found across the different Gospel accounts.
The Four Gospels: A Brief Overview
Just super quick. There is Matthew, there is Mark, there is Luke, and there is John — four accounts of Jesus' life and ministry, death and resurrection. They're referred to as Gospels. They're an ancient form of Hellenistic literature known as bios. They're the only four extant versions we have in the world in their entirety, though we have other versions from ancient Rome of other people which weren't kept in their entirety because we lost bits and pieces.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark was written by John Mark, dictated to him by Peter. Luke never met Jesus. Matthew did. They both have their own sources — in Matthew's case, eyewitness accounts by himself; in Luke's case, interviews with people. But they both use between thirty and forty percent of Mark. Copy and paste, literally word for word. Meaning large chunks of Mark are repeated across those versions. As a result, they are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels — meaning they tell the Jesus story in a similar sequence and with similar language.
John is unique. He's also very weird. John is a first-hand account. He is most likely Jesus' cousin. He refers to himself in the story as the beloved disciple, or as the disciple that Jesus loved — never refers to himself properly. And his account is distinct. Only eight percent of John's account is found in the other Synoptic Gospels, and they are not word for word the same. They're completely different. John's book operates and exists in complete isolation for at least fifty years, maybe a hundred years, before we see the Gospels brought together.
Now, why does this matter? Because of the very few stories that are found across the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John — otherwise known as the Johannine Gospel — two of the key stories that pop up are the feeding of the five thousand and the walking on water. That tells you these are very important to the early church. Because you've got eyewitnesses who are either being interviewed or writing down their stories. And if they're just caught in the Synoptic Gospels, fine, because they're kind of copying and pasting. But John reaffirms them and says they're important.
And these stories are very important. But why, you've got to ask, would you bother to write these down? Surely there are more important stories to write down. They're important because they tell us something about the identity of Jesus Christ.
Jewish Context: What the Disciples Would Have Seen
To the Jewish disciples — remember, these guys are Jews — their education system was such that you would go along to the local rabbi's house or local religious leader's house, and they would teach you the Pentateuch and the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish scriptures and their law, off by heart. Learn them by rote. And if you had ability and you were smart, you got to stay in for longer. If you were a dunce, you got kicked out earlier and went off and worked at mum and dad's business. And as you went along, most boys around the age of fourteen would be taking on dad's job. Girls and boys would start getting married in their mid-teens, all that kind of stuff. However, if you were really gifted, a rabbi would take you onto his yoke and you'd become a student or a disciple. And then you would learn to live from them and learn their way — to the extent that in some cases, we're told, when a rabbi would walk, they would walk behind him in his footsteps, because they would literally learn to walk in the way of the rabbi.
Now, the point of this is that these young men were not the sharpest tools in the shed. They weren't the ones who'd made it far enough to be chosen by a rabbi. They're the ones who got sent off on the fishing boats. And then Jesus comes along and says, "I'll choose you anyway." And he becomes their rabbi and they're learning from him. They are deeply Jewish and they know their stories off by heart.
So when they see Jesus feeding five thousand people, they would see a connection between that and the prophet Moses, who led, taught, and fed God's people in the wilderness. Where's Jesus? He's in the wilderness. What happened with the Israelites in the wilderness a long time prior with Moses? They were starving. Moses prayed. God sent provision of manna — bread from heaven. Where's Jesus? He's in the wilderness. What does he do? He prays, and he provides miraculous bread from heaven, as it were. Do you see the parallel?
The second one — the walking on water — evokes Old Testament imagery of God alone walking upon or treading upon the sea. Who has ever read the book of Genesis? If you haven't, don't worry. It's a bit archaic. But the very beginning: the world is created. And it's actually created twice — has anyone else noticed that? It's in there twice. Another story for another day. But it tells us at the beginning it's chaos. It's a formless void. And the Spirit of the Lord hovered above the waters. Now, in Jewish symbolism, water and oceans represent chaos, evil, darkness, and all that's to be feared in the world. And who is the only one who can tame all that? God's Spirit, right back at the beginning. Who's doing it again now? Jesus. Does this make sense?
So these are two very powerful stories that speak to the identity of Jesus. Hence why they're included in the Synoptics and in John. In both stories, from a Jewish perspective, Jesus does what only God can do. They are not just bold or impressive miracles. They're claims about the identity of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Crowd Catches Up with Jesus
And so John, having made these bold claims about Jesus, continues on writing. This is part of our story from this morning. "The next day, once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there" — which meant they'd spent the night and hadn't even clicked that Jesus wasn't there; not the sharpest tools in the shed, but anyway — "they got into their boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, 'Rabbi, when did you get here?'"
Super quick: there are some people who say you can't trust the story because in the Synoptics it says three different places that Jesus went, and none of them is Capernaum. It's John who says he went to Capernaum. But it doesn't actually say he goes to Capernaum specifically — it's in the general area. And if you look at a map, you see they're all within walking distance of each other. So somewhere on that side of the lake, they head to Capernaum, they land, and they find him. They ask him, "When did you get here?"
And he responds — in the original text it's amen, amen, I say to you, which in our version reads very truly, I tell you. It's an old Hebraic saying, a way of placing a lot of emphasis on what follows. "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me not because you saw the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill."
Misdirected Desire
And right there we see the culmination of our story. Because these people have seen Jesus do the impossible. They've seen Jesus do all sorts of things that push the bounds of credulity — things that, from a Jewish perspective, they would recognize as things only God can do. They've heard him preach with authority. Now, you might think that's a weird thing to claim. But back in those days, you wouldn't preach with authority. You would say, "Well, the scriptures might say this, and we might interpret it this way" — like an academic would. That's how they preached. Jesus instead just says things like, "No, this is what God's like. This is what you're going to do."
Then he challenges the corrupt religious authorities and calls them out on their corruption and hypocrisy. He heals children. Just in the chapter prior to this, he brings a little boy back from the dead. He turns water into wine — his first ever miracle. My wife did the math on this: 720.5 bottles of wine. That's a lot of wine. Amy was bored. She was pregnant at the time and very bored. He made a paralyzed man who'd been bedridden for thirty-eight years walk again. He miraculously fed over five thousand people in the wilderness, just like Moses.
And yet, rather than seek this Jesus out because of who he might be, Jesus said, "You are looking for me not because you saw the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill." In other words, they've sought him out simply for what they can get out of him.
And right there, I think we see the issue at the heart of this passage. Misdirected desire. The crowd was chasing after Jesus not because they grasped or cared about who he was, but because they wanted more of what he could do for them. They wanted more food, more miracles, more experiences, more immediate help — whatever it was. But the point is, they missed the point of his actions altogether. These signs were not just miraculous displays of divine power breaking into the world. They were invitations to belief. But instead of looking through the miracles to see who Jesus really is, they fixated solely on the benefits. And their vision shrank — shrank to focusing on the material and the immediate in front of them instead of the eternal and the relational.
The Challenge for Us Today
And I think that is a challenge that those of us who say we follow Jesus face today. Because, like it or not, we are not that different from the crowd. So often we approach faith, church, prayer, spirituality — whatever it is you want to call it, religion with a small R or a big R — we approach these things with a mindset of what's in it for me. Which makes sense. Because since the deregulation of the economy in the 1980s, it's all been about individualism and the rise of the individual as a consumer — how I rule supreme as an agent of self, able to make my own self-determined decisions without having to reference anyone else. But actually, that's not true. Because despite what the ACT Party might say, you do not live in a libertarian vacuum. You live in community, connected to other people. And at the end of the day, what's in it for you is not always the key driver.
We often want God to fix things. We want God to bless things. We want God to sort things. We turn to God because we're hurting, we're in crisis, or we're desperate for something to change. And we hope he'll fix it. Now, at one level, there's nothing wrong with that. Jesus does care, and it's okay to go to God with our problems. In fact, Jesus says to do so. But what he wants more is your heart. He wants you and me to follow him not just for what he gives, but for who he is.
Because here's the risk. When your faith is built solely on the back of what Jesus can do for you, rather than who he is, it won't hold up when things don't go your way. Our Gospel readings this morning, as I said, are based on the lectionary. The New Testament reading outside of the Gospel is from the book of Revelation — the last book in the Bible — and it's talking about the martyrs, the people who die for their faith, the people who suffer terrible things. And it's talking about how, in time, they're brought into God's presence and God envelops them in a loving embrace. The point there is that the writer is not saying, "Hey, we follow Jesus, we're not going to have suffering." He's saying, "We follow Jesus, we might have just as much suffering — we might even have more. But the reality is that God is who he says he is, and he will be with us in our suffering, and when we die, we will get to be in his loving embrace."
If our faith is built on believing that Jesus should only ever be there to do things for us, it will not hold up under pressure, because that kind of faith is fragile. It will falter in suffering, and we will walk away when Jesus doesn't meet our expectations. But the kind of faith that Jesus invites you and me into is deeper and is grounded in relationship. As cheesy and as clichéd as that is to say, it's true.
What Are You Looking For?
So here's my question for you today. If you consider yourself a Jesus follower — if you don't, you get a free pass on this one — what are you looking for in him? Don't have to tell me, but what are you looking for? Comfort? Answers? A spiritual high? Good vibes? A moral code? Like the crowd, do you want something, or do you want him?
Or look at it this way. If you are here today and you're not really a church person, you don't really know where you stand on the whole God thing — you're interested, maybe you're not, maybe you got dragged along — can I ask you why you don't follow Jesus? What holds you back?
Because those people we heard about in that crowd that morning, two thousand years ago — this was the moment the majority of them tapped out. There were over five thousand of them following Jesus. They tried to forcibly crown him king. There was every natural impulse for him to go with the crowd, wasn't there? They could march on the local Roman garrison, take up arms against the Romans. He's got the will of the people behind him. Or at the very least, he could say things that they wanted to hear, and people would go, "Wow, Jesus, you're so cool, man. Awesome, dude. You really spoke to me. Made me feel so good." He doesn't do that. He speaks the truth into their lives, regardless of the fact that he knows it will probably lead to some of them leaving — and most of them do. They've seen the miracles. They've heard the teaching. They've eaten the bread. But when Jesus starts speaking about those deeper things — belief, eternal life, surrender, suffering — they walk away.
Maybe you did the same. Maybe you prayed and felt let down. Maybe you got, as it's sometimes put, church hurt. Maybe you've got doubts. Maybe you've got questions. Maybe you just never really saw the point of this whole God thing in the first place. But maybe I could just gently suggest something. Maybe, just like the crowd, you've missed what was in front of you. Maybe you've misunderstood what Jesus came to do and what he comes to offer.
What Jesus Actually Offers
Because Jesus did not come to promise a magic fix to our problems. He does not simply offer fast results or spiritual highs. What he does offer is himself. And that changes everything.
Because if there is a God — Thomas Aquinas, my old mate, one of the church fathers, I reference him a lot — he defines God as the essence of being itself. That means that God is completely other to us. Now, if you think about it, everything in the world is in competition with everything else, isn't it? Me and this lectern — we can't exist in the same space because we're physical beings. And you can't take on another form without changing. Could this become ash? Sure, but you'd have to burn it and it ceases to be a lectern. God himself — ipsum esse subsistens — is not a being contesting against another being the way we do.
The reason I mention that is when God — this other, this strangeness, this being that is completely other to our lived reality, and that's not an offensive term, that's a theological term referring to God as wholly distinct from our lived reality — when God entered the world in the form of Jesus, he did so without negating the humanity of Jesus, but also without negating the divinity. In the Old Testament, there's a story of the burning bush. Moses sees it. He walks up to it and it's burning and blazing away, but it's not being consumed by the fire. There's an image for God coming in human form: he comes in the form of fire, and he's able to coexist with the plant without consuming it. No other being can do that. God alone can do that because God is other.
The reason I mention that is because it explains how Jesus can be God and yet human. And the reason that matters is when he offers himself, it is the creator and the sustainer of the entire cosmos offering to connect with you relationally, in a way that means that you matter to him. That's epic. And please don't get caught up in the gendered language — I'm just using "him" because it's easier. God is obviously not gendered. But the point is that when he offers himself to you relationally, that is powerful.
Food That Endures
Now, when he responded to the crowd that morning and they caught up with him, Jesus said, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." In other words, stop chasing after those things that won't last, things that leave you hungry and unsatisfied.
And I think that's true for us today. You can do yoga, you can meditate, you can attend worship services or great conferences or whatever until you're blue in the face. And they're not bad things to do. But the spiritual vibes in those things will not last. In fact, research shows us that if we continue to engage in spiritual high practices, the parts of our brain that light up are the same parts that light up when we take cocaine. And over time, the brain ceases to light up as much each time, so we need to seek a higher and higher spiritual high. Experience does not satisfy. Relationship does.
And Jesus is not about simply sating our felt needs, as important as those are. He's about offering something far deeper, something that will truly satisfy, something that will provide that soul satisfaction that you can't buy, fake, or manufacture.
The Work of God
And so when the crowd responded to him by saying, "What must we do to do the works of God that God requires?" — which is a roundabout way of saying, "What does God actually want from us then?" — Jesus' answer is about as brilliant as it is simple. He says, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." That's it. That is the starting point of finding true, everlasting satisfaction in life. Simple belief in the one God has sent into the world so we might know life in all its fullness.
Closing Challenge
So, bringing this all together, I want to leave you with this really simple question. Why do you follow Jesus? Is it for what he can do for you? Or is it because of who he is? Because that was at the heart of Jesus' challenge to the crowd that morning two thousand years ago. And I think it's the challenge he's placing before at least me, if not all of us, this morning.
They followed him because he met their immediate felt needs. But they missed a deeper invitation to know the one who gives more than bread, more than miracles, and more than temporary satisfaction.
And to those of us this morning who don't believe, my question for you is equally important. Why not? What's holding you back? You might have some genuine reasons — that's absolutely fair. But here's the thing: if Jesus really is who he says he is, if he's not just a wise teacher or some guru, but he is the Son of God, the bread of life, the one who truly satisfies, then knowing him is worth everything.
Today is not about earning. It's not about being perfect. It's simply about believing in the one God has sent. Not just when life is good, not just when you get what you want, because he alone can satisfy in a way that nothing else ever will.
So whether you've followed Jesus for years or never really started, here's my invitation — the same invitation to all of us. Come to him, not just for what he gives, but for who he is. Because when you do, you'll find that Jesus is enough. More than enough.