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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.
Give a person a fish, and he or she eats for a day, the saying goes, but teach a person to fish, and he or she eats for a lifetime. In general, we want people to become more independent, not less, and so young adults’ moving out of their parents’ homes and taking care of themselves is generally regarded as good, and older adults’ moving into their children’s homes and needing their children to take care of them is generally regarded as bad. Yet, in today’s Gospel Reading, when Jesus’s disciples tell Him to send the crowd away to buy themselves something to eat, Jesus tells the disciples to give the crowd something to eat, and ultimately Jesus feeds them Himself. This morning as we consider today’s Gospel Reading, we realize that “Jesus Christ feeds us Himself”.
You may recall from the Gospel Reading two Sundays ago that Jesus had sent out the Twelve with authority, and that they went out and proclaimed that people should repent and that the Twelve cast out demons and healed the sick (Mark 6:1-12). Then, picking up where the previous one left off, the Gospel Reading last week told how “King” Herod heard of what the disciples were doing and said that John the Baptizer, whom Herod had beheaded, had been raised from the dead (Mark 6:14-29). Then, picking up where the previous one left off, the Gospel Reading today told both how the Twelve apostles returned to Jesus and told Jesus all that they had done and taught and how Jesus Himself did some teaching and “doing”, including feeding the crowd Himself.
As you heard the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark tell it, many were coming and going, and they—perhaps the disciples and the crowds—had no leisure even to eat. When Jesus and the disciples tried to go away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves, many saw them going and recognized them, ran there on foot from all the towns, and got there ahead of them. When Jesus went ashore, He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. That expression—sheep without a shepherd—goes back to when the Lord was about to gather Moses to His people and Moses asked the Lord to appoint a man over the congregation to lead them out and bring them in, so that they would not be as sheep without a shepherd (Numbers 27:12). Later, when King Ahab was about to die in battle, the prophet Micaiah described seeing all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep without a shepherd (1 Kings 22:17; 2 Chronicles 18:16). And still later, when the prophet Ezekiel prophesied against the shepherds of Israel, he described the sheep as scattered because there was no shepherd (Ezekiel 34:5, 7). Now, in the case of Ezekiel’s prophecy, there certainly were shepherds, but they were bad, unfaithful shepherds, like those against whom the Lord prophesied through Jeremiah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 23:1-6). In Jesus’s day, they also were bad, unfaithful shepherds, shepherds like “King” Herod, who beheaded John the Baptizer, and shepherds like the Jewish leaders so often opposed to Jesus.
A bad, unfaithful shepherd by himself might not be such a problem if not for the sheep who love to wander. Like God’s sheep of Old and New Testament times, we all go astray, every one has turned to his or her own way (Isaiah 53:6). Sure, bad, unfaithful shepherds have a part in it at some point (Jeremiah 50:6), but to begin with we by nature are turned away from God, lost and injured, deserving of being food for the wild beasts who come after us. Even we whom the Good Shepherd has brought into His fold do not always heed His voice and follow Him perfectly as we should, we might ignore the good, faithful under-shepherds He places over us. Yet, as we are enabled by God, we do at times heed the Good Shepherd’s voice and try to follow Him.
Like the great crowd in the Gospel Reading that, apparently in response to Jesus and His apostles seeking them out by preaching repentance, eagerly and desperately pursued them around the lake—like them, at one time we were straying like sheep but now return to the Good Shepherd of our souls (1 Peter 2:25). That Good Shepherd has compassion on us. The Greek verb for that “having compassion” more‑literally relates to being moved as to one’s bowels, thought to be the seat of love and pity. Though our literal bowel movements may be good or bad for us, such figurative movement of our Lord’s bowels in compassion is always good for us! In fact, His compassion characterizes Him as the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior, the Lord as Shepherd—Prophet, Priest, and King. Better than shepherds‑turned‑leaders Moses and David, He Who is called by the name “the Lord is our Righteousness” saves us and makes us to dwell securely. As we heard in the Epistle Reading (Ephesians 2:11-22), He Himself is our peace, reconciling us to God through the cross. When we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God forgives our sin. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin through His means of grace.
Jesus’s disciples told Him to send the crowd away to buy themselves something to eat, and Jesus told the disciples to give the crowd something to eat. They thought He meant they should go and buy two-hundred-denarii worth of bread, although they had just been out performing miracles not unlike those they had seen Jesus do, such as miraculously turning water into wine (John 2:1-12). They apparently did not understand or appreciate what Jesus could do through them, and so Jesus Himself fed the crowd through them. Jesus could have just miraculously made food appear before every person, but instead He uses means: saying a blessing, breaking the loaves, and giving them to the disciples to set before the people. What a contrast from “King” Herod’s grisly feast we heard about last week! There is so much Old Testament background to this feeding of the five-thousand: such as the Garden of Eden, the Passover and Exodus, the right amount of manna when all the fish of the sea might not have been enough for the people of Israel (Numbers 11:22; Psalm 74:14), their eating with God on Sinai, Psalm 23, Elijah and Elisha’s feeding miracles, and the like. And, at that time, so much was yet to come: such as the institution of the Lord’s Supper, our receiving it, and the Marriage Feast of the Lamb in His unending Kingdom.
The Lord has compassion on us, but we are not sheep without a shepherd. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our great Good Shepherd, and He ordains under‑shepherds over us. The Lord being willing, they are good, faithful under‑shepherds, but, like the disciples, they are not without their faults. Nevertheless, the Lord works through them to read and preach His Word, with its rod of His law and its staff of His Gospel that comforts us; the Lord works through them to lead us to the still waters of Holy Baptism and thereby restore our souls; the Lord works through them not to send us away to fend for ourselves but in individual Holy Absolution to send our sins away from us; and, so absolved, the Lord works through them to prepare a table before us in the Sacrament of the Altar, where Christ’s Body and Blood are present and His cup of blessing overflows for us with the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
The popular saying may suggest that teaching to fish is better than giving a fish, but, we might say, our Lord does both: He teaches and He gives. Considering today’s Gospel Reading we have realized that “Jesus Christ feeds us Himself”. Jesus Himself feeds us on Himself, and so we are saved—neither saved only for a day, nor saved only for an earthly lifetime, but saved for eternity. A one-time pastor, not without his faults, such as ill-health that after six months forced him to stop so serving, Thomas Taylor wrote the words of today’s Closing Hymn during his final struggle with tuberculosis before his death in 18-35 at the age of 27 (Pollack, #660, pp.468, 587; Precht, #515, pp.520, 780). He recognized the shortness of his and our pilgrimage on the desolate place that is this earth, and we will be encouraged as later we sing together these words of his:
Therefore I murmur not, … Whate’er my earthly lot, … Heav’n is my home;
And I shall surely stand / There at my Lord’s right hand;
Heav’n is my fatherland, / Heav’n is my home. (Lutheran Service Book 748:3)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +