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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Three years ago during the congregation’s extended vacancy, I had the privilege of preaching here at Pilgrim for the first time, on this same Sunday and on its same Gospel Reading, with its report of Jesus’s feeding more than five‑thousand people. Jesus’s feeding more than five‑thousand people is an important miracle: so important that it is the only ministry miracle reported by all four Gospel accounts, although we hear of the miracle only twice in our three‑year series of Gospel Readings. As we again hear of the miracle from St. Matthew’s Gospel account today, we concentrate on Jesus’s main action in the miracle itself: His blessing the loaves and fish and His giving them to the disciples and thus to the crowds. And so, today we consider the miracle and its relevance for us under the theme “Blessed and Given”.
Before we can more-directly consider the loaves and fish being “blessed and given”, our placing today’s Gospel Reading in context is helpful. You may recall that last Sunday’s Gospel Reading gave us the conclusion of Jesus’s so‑called “Third Discourse” in St. Matthew’s Gospel account, which Discourse itself largely consisted of seven parables, including one about leaven miraculously multiplying as it worked its way through flour (Matthew 13:33). In bringing us from the end of that Third Discourse to “The Feeding of the 5,000”, our series of Gospel Readings has skipped over both details of Jesus’s return to Nazareth, where He taught but did not do many miracles because of their unbelief (Matthew 13:53-58), and details about the death of John the Baptizer (Matthew 14:1-12).
Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading, having heard about the death of John, withdrew by boat to the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee, only to be followed on foot by a crowd that swelled as it passed through each town. When Jesus came out and saw the great crowd, He had compassion on the people, and He healed those who were sick or weak in any way. As St. Luke reports, Jesus also spoke to them about the Kingdom (Luke 9:11), and apparently together His teaching and healing took them past the time for dinner. After discussing the crowds’ needs with His disciples, Jesus, acting as a head of a household, performed the miracle. Having ordered the crowds to sit on the grass, having taken the five loaves and the two fish, and having looked up to heaven, Jesus said a blessing. And, having broken the loaves, Jesus gave them to the disciples and the disciples to the crowds. The original Greek makes clear Jesus’s main actions: He blessed and gave the loaves and their fish-condiment, and in doing so they were multiplied to an abundance—an abundance that not only satisfied five‑thousand men and their wives and children (seated separately according to Jewish customs of eating in public) but an abundance that also left over enough broken pieces to fill twelve baskets, well beyond the five loaves and two fish with which they started.
Make no mistake! “The Feeding of the 5,000” was a genuine miracle, as were the other miraculous feedings of the Old and New Testaments. Their accounts and all the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, inspired by God, and therefore without error. We should see the various feedings neither as needless repetition, nor mistaken in details, nor explainable by anything other than the supernatural action that they report. We ought to be like the people of the great crowd, who one commentator suggests believed in Jesus so much that they ran after Him without worrying about their provisions (Theophylact, 124). But, instead, we are often like Jesus’s disciples and those in the accounts of other miraculous feedings, who seem not to believe enough, in this case not believing that Jesus, Who had been healing those who were sick and weak in any way, could multiply the five loaves and two fish in order to meet more than five‑thousand people’s need for food.
You and I need food, too. Our bodies need all sorts of support. The Small Catechism teaches us to confess that our “daily bread” includes “food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout [spouse], devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self‑control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like” (Small Catechism III:14). Despite a history of God’s providing us those things, we nevertheless sometimes doubt that He will continue to meet our needs of the body. And, more than needs of the body, we have needs of the soul. Since we are sinful by nature and so deserve death here in time and for eternity, we need the forgiveness of our sin and so life and salvation. There is also a history of God’s providing us those things; we should never doubt that He will continue to meet our needs of the soul. When we repent—when we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning—then God forgives our sin. He forgives our sin of doubting that He will meet our needs of body and soul; He forgives our sin whatever it might be. He forgives all our sin; He forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake.
“The Feeding of the 5,000” assures us not only that Jesus is aware of and meets our needs of the body but also that Jesus is aware of and meets our needs of the soul. Jesus had compassion on the great crowd, and He has compassion on us—body and soul. His compassion is that of God, Whose love and mercy moved Him to “bless and give” His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. The five loaves and two fish were not the only things that were “blessed and given”! The blessing and giving of the five loaves and two fish and the miraculous feeding that resulted showed Jesus to be the long‑prophesied Messiah, Who is Himself “blessed and given” and Whose free banquet brings life, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 55:1-5). Jesus is “blessed and given”—to death on the cross—in order to earn us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—and Jesus is “blessed and given” with bread that is His body and wine that is His blood—in order to give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
At the meeting of the Kilgore Rotary Club this past week, a therapist from one of the local nursing homes demonstrated a new high‑tech tool that they use for occupational, physical, and speech therapy. (Our English word “therapy” comes from the Greek word used in today’s Gospel Reading that is translated as “heal”.) In the Church, there is no need for new high-tech tools for healing, as God does not change the ways He gives us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. God’s Word is always effective in all its forms—preaching, baptism, absolution, and communion. As Jesus in the Gospel Reading first healed and then fed the great crowd, so also He first heals and then feeds us. In Holy Baptism, God gives birth to us from above, making us His children and rescuing us from death and the devil. In individual Holy Absolution, God through pastors forgives those who privately confess the sins they know and feel in their hearts. And, in Holy Communion God in the greatest way possible gives us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Miraculous feedings like that of the five‑thousand point us to this greatest miraculous feeding of all, where God not only has fellowship with us sinners but also Himself is the bread multiplied for the great crowd, which crowd consisted of every believer of every time and of every place. God Himself is “blessed and given”, distributed by His called and ordained servants, so that the crowds who receive Him not only are satisfied but also themselves might be “blessed and given”.
In the Gospel Reading, the crowds all ate and were satisfied, and the same goes for us. Truly, as the Small Catechism, drawing on a psalm, teaches us to pray before meals, the eyes of all look to the Lord, and He gives them their food in due season; He opens His hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing (SC VIII:7; Psalm 145:15-16). Where greed and anxiety do not prevent satisfaction, all of God’s creatures have received enough to make them joyful and of good cheer (SC VIII:8). We who are satisfied in body and soul acknowledge His gifts, give thanks for all His benefits, and serve Him in willing obedience. Like St. Paul in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 9:1-5), we have “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” in our hearts for all who are not yet a part of Christ’s fellowship here, and we reach out to them in word and deed.
In today’s Gospel Reading, five loaves and two fish were “blessed and given”, and the Creator of earth and sea in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ multiplied them so that they satisfied more than five‑thousand people and that the broken pieces left over abounded to more food than was there when He started. That same Creator of earth and sea Himself was “blessed and given” for us, and we, in turn, are “blessed and given”. Here that same Creator of earth and sea meets their and our own needs of body and soul. The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ will strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +