Fed By The Word
Mark 8:1-9
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Mark 8:6-8 6 So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude. 7 They also had a few small fish; and having blessed them, He said to set them also before them. 8 So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… For the disciples, the numbers don’t look good at all. They are miles from the nearest town. There’s at least 4,000 people. The food supply looks bleak: seven loaves and a few fish. This is not just a major inconvenience; it is quickly turning into a humanitarian crisis.
Remember the days, not long ago, when some basic food stuffs and other things like toilet paper were unattainable? People stocked up on things they thought they needed. Same thing happens when monster snow storms are forecast – and do they ever really live up to the hype? Bread, milk, eggs, and other basic staples disappear from store shelves in mere hours. A full grocery store gets cleaned out pretty quickly and stays that way for days when there are no trucks to replenish the shelves.
For Jesus and the disciples, it is a real problem. The people are hungry; they’ve already run out of food. They are quickly approaching the point of exhaustion. In the face of that seemingly dire situation, Jesus tells the disciples that food will be available for all.
Apparently, Jesus isn’t very good with statistics. Seven loaves, a few fish, 4000 people. Do the math – it ain’t gonna work! It is simply too little food to address the enormous and getting-bigger-every-minute problem. It really isn’t enough to even help a dozen people let alone the rest. Yet Jesus knows it is enough to help them all.
The disciples, of course, don’t believe it. I mean, who would? They see the numbers and they know that there is no earthly way to solve this problem. And they are right; there is no earthly way. And if they were with an earthly teacher, then it would be a problem. But Jesus is not an earthly teacher.
Even though they are in a desolate place, even though the people are faint with hunger, and even though the food supply list is meager at best, Jesus is not worried. He is not worried because He knows what He will do. God has a reputation of making things out of nothing, with nothing more than a word. He can certainly multiply food as He wishes.
Jesus has compassion on the multitudes. There have been three days of listening to Jesus teach. That’s quite the church service; that’s quite the sermon, certainly quite a bit more than my 16-18 minutes. The people have been there three days. It isn’t that they didn’t bring enough food to eat, but they didn’t prepare for three days, and now there isn’t much left. They could have left earlier: “Well, I’m getting kind of hungry, so I better be on my way.” But they don’t leave; they stick around well after they are hungry. Apparently, they don’t want to miss even one word. That is a faithful crowd of churchgoers!
In the feeding of the 5,000 we are told that the people only followed Jesus to see the miracles. Here, the 4000 go out to the middle of nowhere to hear the Word of God spoken. And, as Saint Paul tells us in the Epistle reading – Jesus is giving them life in that Word. “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So, we have a crowd with no food, weak with hunger, yet receiving the very word of Life. That is what is given by Jesus. That is what He gives His church – not just any old words, but His words.
Jesus gives more than just moral improvement to make you a better person. He knows that the Old Adam, the sinful flesh, cannot be improved or reformed. Rather, it needs to be killed. According to Baptism, your old Adam must be killed and indeed is killed: “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death,” St Paul wrote.
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Jesus has compassion on the people. They have been hungry to hear the word of God, and He has fed them with that word. They have hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and He has given them His righteousness. Now, they are faint with physical hunger, and He will feed them for that as well.
In every account of a miraculous feeding, Jesus takes the loaves, breaks them, gives thanks, and then gives them to the people to eat. And you will notice that it is the same formula that is used for the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Of course, Jesus does not declare that the bread in our Gospel reading is His body. Had he done that, it certainly would have been. But He doesn’t; His hour has not yet come. His time to die is not yet come.
But this does bring to mind the Lord’s Supper. And in that blessed gift Jesus gives His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. Here, the people have been taught by God according to His holy Word. Now He has compassion on them, and feeds them so that they can return safely home.
Jesus isn’t establishing an earthly kingdom. If he were trying to do that, He would be going about it the wrong way. He has them ready to listen and to learn. Some might say that He should have started feeding them after two days, for then the third day, and every day after, they would be His. And yet, instead of setting up a community in the desert, powered by his miraculous food, Jesus waits until they are faint, then saves them from it, and then sends them home. They have been taught and they have been fed. The time to return to their callings and vocations has come. They must now continue according to the places God has given them in life. He did not come to just dole out food and money so we could sit and get fat, as if he were Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. He gives us work to do in this world.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that He doesn’t feed us. God did give this world as His creation, to feed us and sustain us. The curse of sin is that it now feeds us only grudgingly. It produces thistles and thorns as we read in Genesis 3 after the Fall into sin. Our lives are not without difficulty.
Thankfully Jesus came to undo the curse of sin. And He accomplished that perfectly, completely, and for all – including you and me – on His cross. There He took to Himself all of our sins, all of our weaknesses, all of our misdeeds, and all of our failings. He took them into Himself once and for all, so that, through God-given faith and trust in His work for us, we are forgiven and free to live for Him through our neighbor. He made it so that, even when we have fears and concerns, He calms our hearts and minds by His unending love.
Jesus feeds us with his Word by which we are given strength for our daily walk in this life. That, by the way, is the blessing after receiving the sacrament – that it would strengthen us in the true faith, unto life everlasting. Not that God would take away the troubles of this world – but that we would be strengthened to hold onto Him ever more tightly as we face those troubles.
Dear fellow redeemed, God has absolutely promised to take care of us; of that there is no doubt. That doesn’t mean that we never face trials; of coursed we do, and of course we are. This nation is in upheaval; political unrest is all around us. Cities, businesses, and churches in our nation are being vandalized in the name of oppression by hateful Marxists, unruly mobs, and do-nothing elected officials. Politicians on all side are posturing for the upcoming election. Major cities – including Denver – are being allowed to be trashed. People are virtue-signaling on both sides of the mask debate. Fear and uncertainty surrounds us. The situation seems desperate. What do we do?
Simply put, we cling to Jesus all the more. We run to the Sacrament of the Altar where Jesus intimately, personal, really puts His body and blood into us to sustain us and give us strength to go on. To put it quite bluntly, none of us dares even to think that we can do without the Divine Service and the gifts Christ feely gives there – remembrance of our Baptism, Holy Absolution, the preached Gospel and Christ’s Supper. None of us dares to think that we can do without our regular gathering together in this place. It is simply indispensable, and no governing authority may take that from us. Things may look completely out of control, but Jesus has this.
In our Gospel for today, Jesus fed the people as the final thing before He sent them on their way. This will not create a kingdom on earth, but it will get them home. Jesus isn’t remotely concerned about creating a kingdom on earth; He created the earth, it is His anyway, and we are told it will melt away on the last day. Jesus returns the people so they can fulfill their callings, now fed with the Word of God, now forgiven of their sins, now strengthened in their faith against the attacks of Satan as they life out their daily lives.
And that is what He still does to this day each and every time we gather here by God’s invitation and command. It is why He gives us His Church as a place we can go to be fed with the word of God, be forgiven of our sins, and be strengthened in the true faith by worshipping together as His family. Here is where we will not starve spiritually, but are regularly fed and nourished for however many more days we have. God is good. He’s got this. We are fed by His Word. Don’t ever forget that.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
