“Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’ Now there was much grass in that place.” – John 6:10
What does Jesus see when He sees this crowd coming towards Him? We could say that they are people who are simply following Him because He’s being doing miracles. Or that they don’t understand yet that He’s the Savior. And even when they do figure out that He is the great and promised Prophet, they’ll only want to make Jesus king by force. Jesus will have to run away to keep this from happening. In fact, by the end of this chapter, most of the folks here will be flat out mad at Jesus – that’s the rest of the discussion in John 6.
So what does Jesus see when He looks out over that crowd? Is it people who are foolish and troublesome? Is it the failure of generations worth of teaching? Is it a bunch of greedy and needy people who view Him not for who He is but just for the stuff He might give them? While those might be the things we’d be most inclined to see, Jesus sees something else. He sees people to love. The Good Shepherd sees His (often wayward) sheep, and He makes them to lie down in green pasture. And He will care for them now. And He will care for them upon the Cross. Jesus sees people to love.
So often the way that we view the world, life, ourselves, and certainly other people is dominated by sin. We see, we assess, we judge and categorize people on the basis of their sin and how annoying their particular sins are to us. These folks are just mildly annoying, but these over here are too much trouble. And we easily and readily write of people and discard them (especially in these days of rising tribalism).
That person you disdain; that’s just another person Jesus actually and truly loves. That’s another person Jesus loves and died for. And you know what? Those times when the person you disdain is the one you see in the mirror, those times when you are disgusted with yourself – well, guess what? You still are a person Jesus loves. Still a person Jesus died for. Still a person whom Jesus washed in the waters of Holy Baptism and made holy and blameless without spot or blemish.
Jesus sees you truly as His own beloved. That’s the truth, that’s the highest reality. He went to the cross to make it real. God grant us more and more to see this truth!
