+ + + 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. (Amen.)
Both of our country’s major political parties are campaigning on the issue of affordability, essentially whether people can buy such things as housing, healthcare, and groceries without using all of their money. Some politicians are promising universal free publicly‑funded housing, free at the point of service healthcare, and at least price–controlled discounted groceries. Some voters are quick to say that the government does not have any of its own money but that the government uses taxpayers’ money. Into the context of such contemporary controversy come today’s Readings. For example, in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 55:1-5), the Lord through Isaiah calls out, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price.” In today’s Psalm (Psalm 136:1-9, 23-26; antiphon: v.26), we gave thanks to the Lord “Who gives food to all flesh, for His steadfast love endures forever.” And, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus miraculously multiplied five loaves and two fish in order to feed about five thousand men, besides women and children. They all ate and were satisfied, and they still took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over, well more than that with which they had started. In its parallel passage, St. John’s Gospel account says a boy had the five loaves and two fish (John 6:9), and at least one commentator reads into Jesus’s telling His disciples to bring the loaves and fish to Him the order that the disciples should purchase the food from the boy (Lenski, ad loc Matthew 14:18, p.566). Regardless, at least to everyone else, the food was free.
We have moved to hearing about Jesus’s miracles, from hearing about Jesus’s teaching. In the last three Sundays’ Gospel Readings, we heard Jesus in parables liken Himself and the Kingdom of Heaven, or rule of God that He brings, to such things as a sower who sows seed (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23), to a master of a house whose enemy sowed weeds in his field (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43), and to a merchant who gave all that he had to acquire a pearl of great value (Matthew 13:44-52). For today’s Gospel Reading, our Lectionary Series skipped forward in St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, skipping over Jesus’s going away from where He taught the parables to His hometown of Nazareth, where He did not do many mighty works because of the people’s unbelief (Matthew 13:53-58), and skipping over also Herod the tetrarch’s hearing about the fame of Jesus and thinking that Jesus was John the Baptizer raised from the dead, after Herod had beheaded John for condemning Herod’s adulterous “remarriage” with his brother Philip’s wife (Matthew 14:1-12).
As today’s Gospel Reading told us, when Jesus heard about Herod’s martyring John the Baptizer, Jesus withdrew by boat to a desolate place by Himself (confer Mark 6:32), but the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. And, when Jesus had come out, He saw a great crowd; He had compassion on them; and He healed their sick, those without strength, who may have been brought there by others only with great difficulty (Lenski, ad loc Matthew 14:14, pp.563-564). Their physical sicknesses and weaknesses, like our physical sicknesses and weaknesses, are reminders of their and our greater spiritual sickness and weakness, namely, sin. We all are sinful by nature, and our sinful nature leads us to commit countless actual sins, for even one of which actual sins we all deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, apart from the Holy Spirit’s leading us to repent! With the Small Catechism, we believe, teach, and confess that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts, sanctifies, and keeps us in the true faith.
As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 9:1-13), not a line of physical descent from Abraham but spiritual descent by the true faith of Abraham saves one from sin and the eternal death that we deserve. Somewhat surprisingly, God chose Isaac’s younger son Jacob over Isaac’s older son Esau for the line of the human nature of the Savior, Jesus Christ. But, just as any physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can fail to repent and so be damned, so any non‑physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can repent and so be saved. Out of God’s great love and compassion, the Son of God was born of Jacob’s son Judah’s line. That Son of God in the human flesh of Jesus in the wilderness fasted forty days and nights and was hungry but resisted the devil’s temptation to command stones to become loaves of bread, in keeping with God’s Word through Moses that people do not live by bread alone but also by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (for example, Matthew 4:1‑4, with reference to Deuteronomy 8:3). That Son of God in the human flesh of Jesus ultimately defeated the devil, sin, and death with His death on the cross, in our place, as our substitute. So costly is our redemption! We are redeemed not with gold or silver but with Christ’s holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. When we are sorry for our sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us: God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us through His Word and Sacraments.
Jesus’s feeding of the five‑thousand and Jesus’s resurrection from the grave are the only two miracles that both are reported by all four Gospel accounts, which tells you how important both of those two miracles are! The two miracles also are related! In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus told His disciples to give the crowds something to eat, and, in the end, Jesus’s disciples did give the crowds something to eat, as angels arguably ministered to Jesus after His temptation in the wilderness (for example, Matthew 4:11). After Pentecost, Jesus’s disciples‑turned‑apostles miraculously fed—and their successors, pastors today, miraculously feed—the baptized and absolved crowds in the church with bread that is the resurrected Jesus’s Body and with wine that is the resurrected Jesus’s Blood, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
As we prayed in today’s Collect of the Day, though we do not deserve God’s goodness, still He provides for all our needs of body and soul. God created us as body and soul; He redeems us as body and soul; and the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting, when, in glorified body and soul, we will be with the Lord forever. Until then, we pray, as we did in today’s Collect of the Day, that we may acknowledge His gifts, give thanks for all His benefits, and serve Him in willing obedience. Politicians may like to spend what the voters remind them are their tax dollars, but how many of those voters remember that their tax dollars and everything else ultimately come from God? Certainly, with daily contrition and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins, and, in turn, we extend our forgiveness of sins to one another. Similarly, in the Lord’s Prayer, after we pray that God would give us this day our daily bread—everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, not to mention the soul—then we pray that God would forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. So forgiven, in Christ, already now, we have peace and joy.
Today’s Gospel Reading this morning led us to consider “Free food, costly forgiveness”. Our forgiveness truly cost God a great deal, but He gives it to us freely, as a gift, with such things as bread and wine. We remember that 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). For all that we receive, in the words of the antiphon of today’s Psalm, we “Give thanks to the God of heaven, for His steadfast love endures forever.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
