Hungry?
Text: Mark 6:30-44
To
Him who loves us and has washed us from our sins by His blood and made us a
kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever
and ever. Amen.
It
is easy for us to get tied into knots about our material needs. The reason being, we are hard-wired to
survive. It is one of our basic
instincts. When our tummies get hungry,
we want to fill them with food. When the
air gets cold, we want to cover ourselves with clothing. When we get tired and threatened, we want to
sleep in safety. Hunger, coldness, and
tiredness cause us to seek out a solution that will satisfy these needs.
But
what happens when these needs cannot be satisfied or fulfilled right away? Well, naturally, uneasiness sets in. Fear and worry can end up consuming us.
All
this stated, we need to pause for a moment and be honest with each other. That is to say, most of us here in North
Dakota cannot comprehend what it is like to truly go hungry or to not have
clothing or shelter. Frankly, the
poorest 10% of the people in America are still better off than the richest 10%
in Mexico.
I
don’t say this to lay North American guilt upon you, but rather to simply point
out that here in America we are very blessed by the Lord materially speaking. We rarely go hungry more than a day, there
ample opportunities for job assistance, and there always seems to be housing
support.
Consequently,
as Americans it is easy for us to take for granted that the most ordinary
blessings, those blessings without a hint of the miraculous, are actually the
Lord’s loving hand for us. Even though
we are so used to these things being available, they are still the Lord’s gifts
to us. Otherwise stated, the $1 candy
bar, the 90% ground beef at the grocery store, the shirt you are wearing now, and
the bed that you slept in last night, are all gifts from the Lord to you. They are from the Father who showers us with all
sorts of material gifts.
Indeed,
our problem of hunger, our problem of sleep, and our problem of being cold at
night are solved by the Lord working to supply you and me with food, food
stamps, food pantries, apartments, houses, blankets, sweaters, t-shirts, and
jeans. Through the various vocations of
farmers, construction workers, seamstresses, grocers, humanitarian volunteers, and
so forth, the Lord solves our problems of hunger, coldness, and fatigue by
supplying gifts to and for us.
Now,
is this the point of today’s Gospel reading though? Is the phenomenon in our Gospel reading the
fact that the Lord Jesus Christ filled a bunch of hungry stomachs with bread
and fish? Is today’s Gospel reading
merely about Jesus providing for the physical needs of the people and that we
should seek to do the same?
There
is no doubt about it that Jesus did miraculously multiply five loaves of bread
and two fish; however, what we need to realize is that this miracle was a
sign. It was a physical, tangible, and
real miracle that not only fed a bunch of tummies, but also signaled that Jesus
was the Son of God. In other words, all
the miracles of healing the sick, exorcising demons, and multiplying the food, which
were recorded in the New Testament Gospels, were to serve as Jesus’
credentials, the proof that He was who He claimed to be—the Savior of the
world. These miracles were signs that granted
faith to the people.
However,
as the Gospel of John shows us, this crowd lacked faith. Instead of these signs drawing the people
closer to Jesus and His teachings, the people became fascinated with the
miracles themselves. In a nutshell, they
had essentially forgot the giver and marveled at the gifts. They did not necessarily want Jesus; they just
wanted the gifts that He dispensed.
Unfortunately
in our day and age, things have not changed.
The church is literally infected with what is called the prosperity gospel,
which is no gospel at all. This awful
theology—most often found in the sermons of popular TV preacher—focuses on the doctrine
that financial and material blessings are the will of God for the Christian.
Two
points of caution for us in regard to this prosperity theology. First, we can get so fixated on getting the
gifts—getting health, wealth, and prosperity—that we fail to recognize the
giver of the gifts. “Give me bread, give me fish, give me health,
give me wealth, and give me prosperity… oh, and I will take Jesus too if I need
to.”
Secondly,
we can get so fixated on health, wealth, and prosperity that we fail to
recognize the Lord’s gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. “Just
give me money, answer my prayers for good healthy, and make me happy, but I
don’t need all that talk about the forgiveness of sins and life after
death. That stuff is just too scary and
too irrelevant to my everyday life. Show
me the money. That’s what I want and
what I was promised.”
What
the prosperity gospel teaching fails to realize is that sometimes, instead of solving
our problems and giving us our wildest dreams, the Lord may allow our problems to
remain. He may choose to have you suffer the hardship for a time, even as He
supplies you with the strength to endure. This, also, is the Lord’s loving
hand. Or instead of supplying what you
need for your problem, the Lord may choose in His wisdom to remove you. In
other words, He may take you to Himself in heaven, where all troubles cease.
The
point being, the Lord may not always help you in the way that you want. He may
supply miraculous help, as He did with the five thousand hungry individuals in
our Gospel reading or He may give you a miracle even if you do not recognize it
at the time. Or instead, you may experience something that seemed like a
miracle, even though it may have only been God using natural resources to solve
your problem. That is how the Lord works at times, He organizes and
orchestrates events in exactly the right way and at the right time to help
you.
Dear
friends, God gives us our daily bread, that is to say, food, drink, clothing,
shoes, home, money, goods, good weather, friends, and so forth. And the Lord also gives us forgiveness, life,
and salvation, for we are given the true bread of Heaven. Indeed, God not only provides our physical
needs, but more importantly He provides our spiritual and eternal needs by
giving us Jesus.
The
crowd that followed Jesus did not see Christ correctly, even though they saw
Him. Their reaction to Jesus is
debatable. In other words, they saw
“something” in Jesus; however, something is not everything. Their faith was misplaced.
You
see, to believe merely that the Lord cares for your daily needs is good, but
frankly, it is not saving faith. Any pagan can believe that. That is why the Holy
Spirit's main work is to show you and me that we are sinners and then turn our
eyes upon Christ, the Savior. The Holy Spirit gave you first the Kingdom and
His righteousness. All the other things will follow after.
What
this means for you is that you are safe and absolutely secure, no matter what
happens around you, because you have Christ. Because you have Christ through
your baptisms, the Word, and the Holy Supper, let the world threaten you. Let
demons surround you. Let your houses be taken, your pillows snatched, and your
food spoiled. Let family, friends, and
even your life be taken away. If all these things happen, you are still forever
founded upon Christ and His life. You cannot be destroyed, whatever may come.
You have been marked by the Name of this holy Lord whose death has made you
alive by the bread of heaven. Even if
the Lord’s material gifts to you are snatched away by pirates, looters,
thieves, and tyrants, your Lord surely never stops giving, for when these old
tents, our bodies, finally wear out, He promises us in His Word to clothe us
with a perfect body on the Day of His return.
The
Lord has come to you with the forgiveness of sins in the Word and Sacraments. This is bigger than all your sin and His
forgiveness is indestructible; it is stronger than any death you’ll ever
face. His Word of forgiveness is that
which is sure and constant whether you have much or little, whether you are
rich or whether you are poor, whether you are healthy or sick, dead or
alive. His promise of forgiveness places
you with Him forever.
Come,
then, and feast with Christ - here’s food that by His Words and promise will
keep alive in you the life He freely gave you at Your Baptism.
Here’s
food that will keep you breathing the sweet air of the resurrection and make
the moment when your body stops breathing no big deal; no big deal at all - not
to any who trust His Words and promises, not to any who are in Christ.
The
Lord indeed, gives everything that has to do with the support and needs of the
body and the soul. All pure gift:
nothing deserved, all given—for you.
The
peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.
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