In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus had compassion upon the people. He looked upon their infirmities and their afflictions, and He healed them. And He healed them. And He healed them some more.
He healed them of their illnesses and their diseases. He drove out their demons. He made the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the mute speak. He forgave sins and proclaimed freedom to those held captive by sin, death, and the devil. He did all this out of compassion for their sorry state of affairs. And what did it cost the poor, bedraggled masses? Nothing.
Then it got late. It was a desolate, wilderness place, and the day was far spent. The disciples petitioned Jesus to tell the crowds to go away. “Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Go away and leave us alone. Find your own food. Can't you see that Jesus has done enough? You already chased Him all over hill and dale, all the way across the Sea of Galilee. Let the poor man rest, and go spend your own money for once.
“But Jesus said, 'They need not go away; you give them something to eat.'” Do not send the poor, bedraggled masses away hungry – give them what you have. St. John's account of this tells us that the disciples themselves had not even planned ahead. They had not brought any food, just like the masses they were shooing away. According to John, the five loaves and two fish came from a little boy in the crowd. In ordering them to give the crowds food, Jesus was exposing the poverty of the disciples at that moment. They had nothing to give.
The disciples respond with disbelief. Even if they had two hundred days' wages, they could not buy enough for all the crowd to have even a taste, let alone be sated. And that would assume that the surrounding villages even had enough bread to feed all these people. To give each man – not counting the women and children – two slices of bread would require 625 loaves of bread. And two slices of bread is not much of a supper when you have been running all over the countryside chasing the Messiah.
What does the Lord say about this dilemma? “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.” (Is. 55:1) Come to the Lord of Life, and receive that which refreshes life. Come to the one who Has, and He will supply what you need.
This is the Jesus people like. This is the Jesus that the mobs try to press into becoming their king. And who would not want a leader who magically generates bread for the hungry masses, who heals sickness with a word. This is better than ObamaCare, Food Stamps, or welfare! No means testing here. No filling out paperwork. No subsidies or premiums or worrying about losing your doctor or falling into the donut or whatever.
Jesus tells the disciples, You have bread, give it to them. This is how the Church operates, or at least how it should. You see a need, so you fill it. The early Church held all things in common, supplying the needs of her members out of the abundance of her members. Contrary to what some have argued, the Church is not a Socialist commune. However, the members of the Body of Christ hold all things in common for the good of one another and the good of the whole. It is the fruit of faith that you should give to support the needs of your neighbor and your neighbor likewise gives what he has to support your needs. One has bread, the other has fish, so they eat together. One has need, the other can pray, so the prays when the other cannot.
After all, this is what you pray for when you pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” O Lord, give us the stuff we need to get through today in this wilderness, in this desert, in this harsh and cruel world, where the ground is cursed and the weeds choke out the wheat. Give us bread, and fish and wine and milk and honey, and everything else that we need. Oh yea, and we do not have any money to buy it with.
The crowds who ran after Jesus all around the Sea of Galilee did not think about food or drink. They had not planned ahead and brought their picnic baskets and camp stoves. They simply looked to Jesus. “The eyes of all look to You, O Lord, and You give them their meat in due season; You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” (Psalm 145:15-16) And Jesus looked upon them with compassion, once again.
How unlike you Jesus is! You would begrudge your neighbor a cup of cold water or a crust of bread if it were not convenient to you. You look upon the poverty of your brother and assume that he must have done something stupid to get into that mess. You look upon the infirmity of your neighbor and say “Poor man! I'll pray for you.” and then go on your merry way. You send away the needy and cater to those who do not need your charity. And you think you are entitled to some recognition to the generosity you conspicuously exhibit when someone might be looking, or when it is advantageous to your taxes, or when it gives you some other benefit.
What about those who have fallen on hard times due to illness or disaster? What about pastors, who graduate from seminary with an average of $39,000 in debt in order to take some of the lowest-paying professional jobs in society? What about the children who are impoverished because of the choices their mothers and fathers make? The eyes of these look to the Lord, because they have nowhere else to turn, and He will provide for them. But consider that He might wish to use the gifts He has given to you to do so.
Jesus took the boy's lunch and, looking up into heaven, blessed, and after breaking gave the bread to the disciples, and the disciples to the crowds. There is a common notion that Jesus blessed the loaves and fish, and thereby multiplied them. However, if you look at the text, it does not say that. It simply says that Jesus blessed. What or whom did He bless? I would argue that He is not blessing the bread, but blessing God for the gift of bread. This is a long-standing tradition among the Jews, dating back to before Jesus' time. In fact, the traditional Hebrew table blessing for bread is this: “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
The bread that Jesus gives the crowds is nothing special. But the God who gives it is pretty darn exciting. After all, when was the last time you spontaneously generated a stalk of wheat? Or willed a loaf of bread to become two loaves? Or made the sun come up or the rain come down? The Lord our God does all these things, and all the other zillion things that make the world run as it should, so that our daily bread comes to us. Blessed are You, O Lord our God, for giving us all the things that You have promised to give us, and then some!
In the same way, Jesus also will take bread, bless, break, and give it to His disciples again at the Passover. There, He will not be feeding a crowd of thousands, but a few scraggly men gathered around a rented table in a borrowed room. And again, the bread itself will be nothing spectacular. In fact, it will be the most boring, ordinary bread of the whole year, made without any of the usual things that make bread taste good. But the blessing offered with it will make that bread to be more than a boy's lunch or a traditional meal. The blessing offered then will make the bread to be the Body of Christ, given for you for the forgiveness of sins.
There, in the upper room, Jesus gives His Body as bread for those who will believe in Him, who will receive Him by faith.
He blessed the Lord God, the King of the Universe, for giving this bread, not just of barley, water, and salt, but the Bread of Life which will satisfy the deepest longing of the hearts of men – the longing for the forgiveness of sins, for communion with God, and for reconciliation with your brothers and sisters.
Jesus takes the bread, blesses God, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples and to the crowds. But notice also what He does not do: He does not take anything else and make it bread. He is consistent here with what He said to the devil in the wilderness: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” There, Jesus would not take stones and make them bread, and neither will He here. He takes bread and makes it into more bread.
The Lord made His creation good, and not even sin could totally destroy that. Bread is good. Rocks are good. You cannot eat rocks, but you cannot build a house out of bread. The Lord does not destroy one thing to make another, no matter how good the idea seems. God is in the business of perfecting His creation, not destroying it and starting over. Because that is what He promised to Noah all those years ago. No more cataclysmic destruction.
But the Lord does feed the crowds. He has compassion on them, and His compassion spills over into action. He takes the boy's lunch and gives it to the masses, and they eat to the full, with twelve baskets of leftovers afterward. Their need is met out of our Lord's abundance, not out of our adequacy or poverty.
Likewise, He feeds His people with the abundance of the Bread of Life. Only this bread is not made by hands and baked in an oven and broken by fingers. This bread is made of flesh and Spirit and proofed in a womb and broken by nails and spear. This bread is not sold in the marketplace, but given as the redemption price for the sins of the world.
This bread is not eaten with tears, but with glad hearts and rejoicing lips. For this bread is not the fruit of the field, but the fruit of the accursed tree whereupon our Lord Jesus Christ hung for our transgressions, and where the record of wrongs against us is still nailed, forgotten and erased by blood and water.
Just like our Lord did not destroy stones to make bread for Himself, so also does He not destroy sinners to make saints for Himself. He takes those precious children whom He has lovingly created and washes you clean. He refines you like wheat so that you may be made into the one blessed loaf, made of many grains but knit together with the holy leaven of our Savior.
He does not require your life, but He fills you with His own eternal, immortal, incorruptible life. You have been put to death in the Holy Font, and you are a new creation. But you are not a different creation – you are you, only declared righteous, for Christ's sake. Just as He took the bread in His hands, looked up to heaven, blessed God, and gave it to the crowds, so also has He taken you up into His arms, blessed the God who created you and blessed you His beloved child, and given you into the hands of your brothers and sisters.
He gives you to be consumed in doing good for one another, so that you may come to rely on Him who continually fills your body and soul with the Bread of Life, the springs of Living Water, and the Wine of immortality. In this way, you may give generously to support your neighbor, your congregation, your pastor, your community, and your family – without thought to the cost. There is always more bread where that came from. You are blessed by God, but not destroyed. Your sins are removed, not destroying your humanity but perfecting it.
Come to the Table of our Lord. Come, eat and drink what our Lord has provided for you without price or cost to you. Eat to the full and drink deeply, and never hunger. And come back again and again, until you come to that eternal feast.
Jesus had compassion upon the people. He looked upon their infirmities and their afflictions, and He healed them. And He healed them. And He healed them some more.
He healed them of their illnesses and their diseases. He drove out their demons. He made the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the mute speak. He forgave sins and proclaimed freedom to those held captive by sin, death, and the devil. He did all this out of compassion for their sorry state of affairs. And what did it cost the poor, bedraggled masses? Nothing.
Then it got late. It was a desolate, wilderness place, and the day was far spent. The disciples petitioned Jesus to tell the crowds to go away. “Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Go away and leave us alone. Find your own food. Can't you see that Jesus has done enough? You already chased Him all over hill and dale, all the way across the Sea of Galilee. Let the poor man rest, and go spend your own money for once.
“But Jesus said, 'They need not go away; you give them something to eat.'” Do not send the poor, bedraggled masses away hungry – give them what you have. St. John's account of this tells us that the disciples themselves had not even planned ahead. They had not brought any food, just like the masses they were shooing away. According to John, the five loaves and two fish came from a little boy in the crowd. In ordering them to give the crowds food, Jesus was exposing the poverty of the disciples at that moment. They had nothing to give.
The disciples respond with disbelief. Even if they had two hundred days' wages, they could not buy enough for all the crowd to have even a taste, let alone be sated. And that would assume that the surrounding villages even had enough bread to feed all these people. To give each man – not counting the women and children – two slices of bread would require 625 loaves of bread. And two slices of bread is not much of a supper when you have been running all over the countryside chasing the Messiah.
What does the Lord say about this dilemma? “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.” (Is. 55:1) Come to the Lord of Life, and receive that which refreshes life. Come to the one who Has, and He will supply what you need.
This is the Jesus people like. This is the Jesus that the mobs try to press into becoming their king. And who would not want a leader who magically generates bread for the hungry masses, who heals sickness with a word. This is better than ObamaCare, Food Stamps, or welfare! No means testing here. No filling out paperwork. No subsidies or premiums or worrying about losing your doctor or falling into the donut or whatever.
Jesus tells the disciples, You have bread, give it to them. This is how the Church operates, or at least how it should. You see a need, so you fill it. The early Church held all things in common, supplying the needs of her members out of the abundance of her members. Contrary to what some have argued, the Church is not a Socialist commune. However, the members of the Body of Christ hold all things in common for the good of one another and the good of the whole. It is the fruit of faith that you should give to support the needs of your neighbor and your neighbor likewise gives what he has to support your needs. One has bread, the other has fish, so they eat together. One has need, the other can pray, so the prays when the other cannot.
After all, this is what you pray for when you pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” O Lord, give us the stuff we need to get through today in this wilderness, in this desert, in this harsh and cruel world, where the ground is cursed and the weeds choke out the wheat. Give us bread, and fish and wine and milk and honey, and everything else that we need. Oh yea, and we do not have any money to buy it with.
The crowds who ran after Jesus all around the Sea of Galilee did not think about food or drink. They had not planned ahead and brought their picnic baskets and camp stoves. They simply looked to Jesus. “The eyes of all look to You, O Lord, and You give them their meat in due season; You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” (Psalm 145:15-16) And Jesus looked upon them with compassion, once again.
How unlike you Jesus is! You would begrudge your neighbor a cup of cold water or a crust of bread if it were not convenient to you. You look upon the poverty of your brother and assume that he must have done something stupid to get into that mess. You look upon the infirmity of your neighbor and say “Poor man! I'll pray for you.” and then go on your merry way. You send away the needy and cater to those who do not need your charity. And you think you are entitled to some recognition to the generosity you conspicuously exhibit when someone might be looking, or when it is advantageous to your taxes, or when it gives you some other benefit.
What about those who have fallen on hard times due to illness or disaster? What about pastors, who graduate from seminary with an average of $39,000 in debt in order to take some of the lowest-paying professional jobs in society? What about the children who are impoverished because of the choices their mothers and fathers make? The eyes of these look to the Lord, because they have nowhere else to turn, and He will provide for them. But consider that He might wish to use the gifts He has given to you to do so.
Jesus took the boy's lunch and, looking up into heaven, blessed, and after breaking gave the bread to the disciples, and the disciples to the crowds. There is a common notion that Jesus blessed the loaves and fish, and thereby multiplied them. However, if you look at the text, it does not say that. It simply says that Jesus blessed. What or whom did He bless? I would argue that He is not blessing the bread, but blessing God for the gift of bread. This is a long-standing tradition among the Jews, dating back to before Jesus' time. In fact, the traditional Hebrew table blessing for bread is this: “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
The bread that Jesus gives the crowds is nothing special. But the God who gives it is pretty darn exciting. After all, when was the last time you spontaneously generated a stalk of wheat? Or willed a loaf of bread to become two loaves? Or made the sun come up or the rain come down? The Lord our God does all these things, and all the other zillion things that make the world run as it should, so that our daily bread comes to us. Blessed are You, O Lord our God, for giving us all the things that You have promised to give us, and then some!
In the same way, Jesus also will take bread, bless, break, and give it to His disciples again at the Passover. There, He will not be feeding a crowd of thousands, but a few scraggly men gathered around a rented table in a borrowed room. And again, the bread itself will be nothing spectacular. In fact, it will be the most boring, ordinary bread of the whole year, made without any of the usual things that make bread taste good. But the blessing offered with it will make that bread to be more than a boy's lunch or a traditional meal. The blessing offered then will make the bread to be the Body of Christ, given for you for the forgiveness of sins.
There, in the upper room, Jesus gives His Body as bread for those who will believe in Him, who will receive Him by faith.
He blessed the Lord God, the King of the Universe, for giving this bread, not just of barley, water, and salt, but the Bread of Life which will satisfy the deepest longing of the hearts of men – the longing for the forgiveness of sins, for communion with God, and for reconciliation with your brothers and sisters.
Jesus takes the bread, blesses God, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples and to the crowds. But notice also what He does not do: He does not take anything else and make it bread. He is consistent here with what He said to the devil in the wilderness: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” There, Jesus would not take stones and make them bread, and neither will He here. He takes bread and makes it into more bread.
The Lord made His creation good, and not even sin could totally destroy that. Bread is good. Rocks are good. You cannot eat rocks, but you cannot build a house out of bread. The Lord does not destroy one thing to make another, no matter how good the idea seems. God is in the business of perfecting His creation, not destroying it and starting over. Because that is what He promised to Noah all those years ago. No more cataclysmic destruction.
But the Lord does feed the crowds. He has compassion on them, and His compassion spills over into action. He takes the boy's lunch and gives it to the masses, and they eat to the full, with twelve baskets of leftovers afterward. Their need is met out of our Lord's abundance, not out of our adequacy or poverty.
Likewise, He feeds His people with the abundance of the Bread of Life. Only this bread is not made by hands and baked in an oven and broken by fingers. This bread is made of flesh and Spirit and proofed in a womb and broken by nails and spear. This bread is not sold in the marketplace, but given as the redemption price for the sins of the world.
This bread is not eaten with tears, but with glad hearts and rejoicing lips. For this bread is not the fruit of the field, but the fruit of the accursed tree whereupon our Lord Jesus Christ hung for our transgressions, and where the record of wrongs against us is still nailed, forgotten and erased by blood and water.
Just like our Lord did not destroy stones to make bread for Himself, so also does He not destroy sinners to make saints for Himself. He takes those precious children whom He has lovingly created and washes you clean. He refines you like wheat so that you may be made into the one blessed loaf, made of many grains but knit together with the holy leaven of our Savior.
He does not require your life, but He fills you with His own eternal, immortal, incorruptible life. You have been put to death in the Holy Font, and you are a new creation. But you are not a different creation – you are you, only declared righteous, for Christ's sake. Just as He took the bread in His hands, looked up to heaven, blessed God, and gave it to the crowds, so also has He taken you up into His arms, blessed the God who created you and blessed you His beloved child, and given you into the hands of your brothers and sisters.
He gives you to be consumed in doing good for one another, so that you may come to rely on Him who continually fills your body and soul with the Bread of Life, the springs of Living Water, and the Wine of immortality. In this way, you may give generously to support your neighbor, your congregation, your pastor, your community, and your family – without thought to the cost. There is always more bread where that came from. You are blessed by God, but not destroyed. Your sins are removed, not destroying your humanity but perfecting it.
Come to the Table of our Lord. Come, eat and drink what our Lord has provided for you without price or cost to you. Eat to the full and drink deeply, and never hunger. And come back again and again, until you come to that eternal feast.
In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
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