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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.
This morning you may be here at Pilgrim for any number of reasons. I pray that, among your reasons, is your seeking and receiving God’s forgiveness of your sins through His Word and Sacrament! In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus withdrew from where He was, in a boat, to a desolate place, by Himself, apparently at least partly because Jesus heard either that King Herod was suspecting Jesus was John the Baptizer raised from the dead (Matthew 14:1-2) or that King Herod had John beheaded (Matthew 14:3-12). And, Jesus may also have had other reasons as well, potentially including bringing about precisely what happened: His having compassion on the people in the crowds and so also His using His supernatural power to heal their sick and feed them. Jesus had compassion on those crowds, and He also has compassion on us. That compassion moved Him to use His supernatural power to heal and feed those crowds, and that compassion also moves Him to use His supernatural power to heal and feed us. This morning in considering today’s Gospel Reading, we consider “The Lord’s compassion on and supernatural power for you”.
First is the Lord’s compassion for you. The Divinely‑inspired St. Matthew tells both how, when the crowds heard that Jesus withdrew from there in a boat, they followed Him on foot from the towns, and how, when Jesus saw the great crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick. You know how something can happen and we can feel it so deeply that it makes us physically sick to our stomach? That is sort of the idea behind the Greek word for Jesus’s “compassion”. Jesus was moved inside of Himself to do something to help the people in the crowds. The Greek word used for their “sick” can also refer to those who are “weak” and “without strength”, and, whether or not the people in the crowds all realized it, even if they all were not without strength physically, they all were without strength spiritually. And so are we all! By nature we are estranged from God and can do nothing about it. Our physical weakness may be more obvious to us, but certainly more serious in the long-run is our spiritual weakness. As Jesus’s disciples arguably let their preoccupation with the crowds keep them from trusting Jesus to provide for them, we also may even let our concerns about our or others’ physical needs get in the way of our faith.
If we all do not sin in that way, then we sin in other ways, for we all are sinful by nature. Sin brought into the world sickness and death, both temporal death and eternal death. And, on account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we likely will experience both temporal death and the eternal torment of eternal death, unless, enabled by God, we repent of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin. In sorrow we turn from our sinful nature and our actual sin; we trust God to forgive us; and we want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sin of letting our concerns about our or others’ physical needs get in the way of our faith. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 136:1-9, 23-26; antiphon: v.26), the Lord remembers us in our low estate, for His steadfast love (His “mercy”) endures forever.
We also may have compassion on others, but oftentimes it seems that we are powerless to help, but not so Jesus. Second is the Lord’s supernatural power for you. In today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 9:1-13), the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul said that Jesus Christ is God over all, blessed forever. Jesus’s physical healing of the crowds’ sick in the Gospel Reading demonstrated that He was true God, working His supernatural power through His human flesh. Arguably the disciples all the more should have recognized that Jesus was capable of providing food for what—with the husbands, their wives, and their children—may have been some 20-thousand people. Yet, more important than the physical healing and the subsequent miraculous feeding of the crowd with five loaves and two fish is Jesus’s in that same human flesh, on the cross, dying in our place, the death that we otherwise deserved. As true Man, Jesus could die, and, as true God, His death atoned for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and my sins. So, by His supernatural power, He freely offers us spiritual healing connected with His miraculously feeding us and our families with His Body given and Blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:26-28). In working out His plan of salvation in history, God may have preferred specific lines of descent, but His love and earnest invitation to salvation goes out to all. His Word does not fail, though some reject it. In today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 55:1-5), God through Isaiah said, Come to the waters, come and eat, incline your ear and come to Me, hear, that your soul may live. When we respond to His enabling invitation in faith, then He forgives us!
Isaiah mentioned first coming to the waters and then coming and eating, and at least one notable Church Father thought that the Gospel Reading’s sequence of Jesus’s healing the crowds before feeding them significantly pointed to Holy Baptism’s bringing us into God’s family and the Sacrament of the Altar as the family meal (Theophylact, ad loc Matthew 14:19-21, p.125). In between, of course, are the instruction and examination of private Confession and individual Absolution that clear one’s way to the Altar Rail. As Jesus in the Gospel Reading used His disciples to give the crowds to eat, so He uses their successors, pastors today, to feed His Church bread that is His Body and wine that is His Blood and so to give His Church the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. No matter how much or how little of the bread or the wine we might receive, we receive the whole of Christ’s Body and Blood and so we receive also the blessings that come with them. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther wrote, we do not regard the Sacrament of the Altar as a harmful thing from which we should flee (Large Catechism V:68, 70), but we regard it, as the Church Father Ignatius of Antioch apparently first called it already in the second century, as the medicine of immortality, the antidote to prevent us from dying eternally and that which, received in faith, causes us to live forever in Jesus Christ. As we sang in today’s Psalm, the Lord gives food to all flesh, for His steadfast love (His “mercy”) endures forever.
Regardless of your reason for being here at Pilgrim this morning, on the basis of today’s Gospel Reading, we have considered “The Lord’s compassion on and supernatural power for you”. Jesus is not indifferent to your physical and spiritual needs, but He is compassionate, and He is not powerless to help, but He uses His supernatural power for you. The people in the crowds of the Gospel Reading whom Jesus healed and fed still died in this world, as may we. Yet, God, Who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will also with Him graciously give us all things (Romans 8:32), including the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. As we did in today’s Psalm, so, now again and always, we give thanks to the God of heaven, for His steadfast love (His “mercy”) endures forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +