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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text for today’s sermon is the gospel lesson appointed to be read this Sunday, the ninth Sunday after the Pentecost. When I was growing up on the East Coast, I was around 12 or 13 years old at the time. We had a member of the church who was a cordon bleu trained and certified chef who would make personal made-to-order omelets for all of the members attending Easter morning services. It was around 170 people. I asked Mr. Beshear, how are you able to serve so many people so effortlessly? His response was, I don’t start to get nervous until I serve around X number of people. That conversation took place over 40 years ago, and I’ve slept since then. If memory serves me correct, that number was somewhere between 500 and 1,500 people.
What the Bible refers to as the feeding of the 5,000, or there’s also the feeding of the 4,000, always fascinated me because of Mr. Brashor’s response to my question. I was always overwhelmed that Jesus could feed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. What I failed to pay attention to is the last verse that reads, “…and those who ate were about 5,000 men besides women and children.” If you were to say that each man brought his wife and their child, the number of fed is 15,000. Granted, each man may not be married, but also many families have more than one child.
The miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 is consistent with Jesus’ purpose on earth. The promise that God made to Eve was that her seed, or the offspring, would defeat the devil. God directed Abram, later to be renamed Abraham, go from your country, from your kindred, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of earth shall be blessed.
Jesus is the blessing to all mankind. In his healings, he healed both the Jews and the Gentiles. He also fed both the Jews and the Gentiles. Jesus provides all that you need to live. Matthew records in the previous chapter that Jesus was rejected at Nazareth, his hometown. Now, he headed away to say that this is his habit or his ritual to leave the crowds in search of some solitude is to oversimplify this event. During Jesus’ time on earth, his ministry consisted of two main components: one, preaching; two, healing.
When Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a distance of about 20 miles from the Sea of Galilee, and the sea separates Samaria and Galilee, which is more the Jewish area, from Galilee and the Decapolis, which is Gentile area. The sea is about 13 miles north to south and about 8 miles east to west at its widest points. Jesus, throughout his ministry, found it necessary to distance himself from the masses.
But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. After he landed the boat, the people following him may have walked somewhere between a couple of miles and up to 20 miles. It goes without saying that they more than likely didn’t take the time to pack food and water or to bring money for such a journey that day.
When I was in the Navy, I had the opportunity to go visit this region. I was in the very northern section of Jordan, and I actually saw in the distance the Sea of Galilee. It was about six miles away from me. At that time, the temperature was in the 90s and it was muggy. Thankfully, we had a vehicle and we had the ability to go get food. For the masses of people, they were watching and witnessing the healings that Jesus performed.
Many times when I am intently paying attention to some activity, like when we were transiting the Panama Canal or circumnavigating the island of Iwo Jima, and that’s just a big word for meeting, going around, I often forgot about food, water, or even sunscreen.
Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place, and the day is over. Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves, the disciples thinking in a purely pragmatic manner, meaning that they were concerned with practical considerations or consequences, having a practical point of view. They, the disciples, were concerned that they wouldn’t have enough money to feed all these people, and so everyone should fend for themselves. From the language, they were relatively close to some villages and should have been able to get something, but Jesus treated them as sheep at his hand.
But Jesus said, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. They said to him, we have only five loaves here and two fish, and he said, bring them to me. Here, Matthew records the scarce resources available to Jesus—five loaves and two fish. In St. Mark’s account, Jesus had them sit on the green grass in groups by the hundreds and by the fifties. He then ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. As usual, prior to Jesus sitting down to eat, he blessed the food which they were about to eat.
The language here resembles the Lord’s Supper in procedure and also in imagery. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. When he broke the bread, they must have loaded the bread into baskets to be delivered to groups of hundreds and the groups of fifties. The breaking of the bread and the delivery to all the people must have taken hours to complete the task.
This is not just giving them something to bite them over until they get home and there they can have a full meal. Matthew writes, and they all ate and were satisfied. Satisfaction means they did not hunger. This was an all-you-can-eat meal provided by Jesus. Not only did they eat and were satisfied, there were leftovers, and they took up 12 baskets full of the broken pieces left over.
This sentence gives us two pieces of information. First, the Greek word kofinos is interpreted as a basket or a handbasket. An approximation of that size basket would be a wicker basket sized somewhere between a picnic basket and a small laundry basket. And second, there were 12 baskets left over after all ate and were satisfied. This number would have significance in a Jewish gathering or a group of Jews that were following Jesus. It could represent the 12 tribes of Israel or it could represent the 12 disciples of Jesus.
And those who ate were about 5,000 men besides women and children. As I stated in the beginning of the sermon, we come to the number of people that were served that day by Jesus. A conservative estimate would be to place that number somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 people with a realistic number being more like 15 to 20,000 people fed.
Now that we are all finished with the understanding of the reading, how does this apply in our lives? Just as Jesus said in the Temptations, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. It was God that fed the children of Israel in the desert for 40 years. When Jesus fed the 5,000 and 4,000, what did He do first with the bread? He gave thanks to God. Again, during the Last Supper, in the words of institution, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to the disciples, saying, and you know the rest.
Some of what I’m about to say comes from a bygone era, but it would be a good thing to resuscitate. Committing to a family dinner every night with the TV turned off and no electronics at the table, sitting together as a family in church, along with other planned family outings. These are the things that are in keeping with Jesus’ ministry.
My father was an avid Redskins fan and a season ticket holder for over 60 years. And yet he never missed church on game day. If the game was an early game, he would go to another Lutheran church, one that had an early service. After that, he would go to the game. Aside from those Sundays, he was with his family in church, sitting in the second pew on the lectern side at the front. On family vacations, whether we were visiting our family in the Northeast or visiting our family in Texas, or even camping with friends, we went to church on Sundays.
When we were visiting our family in Texas, Grandpa Heckman, along with all of Mother’s brothers, and they were all pastors. So we would go to their churches. We would also attend Aunt Hilda’s church when we were visiting that family. Church was a constant in our lives growing up. Following the pattern of Jesus in our personal lives, giving thanks for all that God provides us is a good thing.
Giving thanks for health, our families, our food, our homes, our careers, good neighbors, our city, state, and federal governments that work to keep us safe and secure, the people who serve us in the armed forces, the police, the fire department, and even the people who serve us or whom we serve in the public and private sector. All of these things are gifts from God, and life without them would be a miserable lot.
Beginning each day with a quick devotion followed by the Lord’s Prayer and Martin Luther’s morning prayer is a good way to start the day, along with praying before and after meals. In the evening, after dinner, a quick family devotion followed by prayers and returning thanks to God for the food and for all else that God provides. Even right before bed, it might be good to incorporate Martin Luther’s evening prayer into your routine.
Now, it’s not my intent to give you a checklist of things that you should do every day. Rather, throughout all of my different jobs I worked in my lifetime, working in retail, the food service industry, the direct sales industry, the United States Navy, and even in the high-tech industry, the people that I worked with and interacted with had less of a negative effect on me when I was steeped in God’s Word.
Pastor Knuckles, along with most every pastor, refers to the church as an ark. For any who may not have heard this before, if you look up in the sanctuary at the roofline, it resembles the bottom hull of a boat, a ship, or even an ark. God protected the faithful, both Noah and his family, in the ark, along with all the animals on board. The church does the same for us today.
While there are many things that we believe the pastor must do, and it can all be neatly packaged into one sentence. The pastor is to faithfully preach the gospel in its purity and also properly administer the sacraments. We here at St. Paul have been abundantly blessed with pastors of that like. I remember Pastor Newman back when I was attending Concordia Lutheran College. More recently, Pastor Knuckles, Pastor Shilke, Pastor Mitt Witte, and now Pastor Wolf Mueller have kept us in God’s Word.
We also have been blessed and are continually blessed with church leaders who serve as elders and board members, who lead Bible studies here at church or in-home Bible studies. One of the biggest blessings to the church, in my mind, are the little children that sit up here in their families every week to listen to God’s Word. I would also be remiss in forgetting the contributions of all of the musicians, the Children’s Choir, the Adult Choir, and all the instrumentalists who assist the Director of Music, both Mr. Mueller now and Mrs. Octoburg in the past.
Normally I wouldn’t want to use a pop culture reference in my sermon. However, with the way things are going in these days, the title of Cinderella’s hit, Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone, seems appropriate. Back when I was in the Navy, I didn’t have an LCMS chaplain on board. There were no LCMS services offered. So every third week or so I would go to my brother’s church in order to receive God’s Word and the sacrament.
Now this situation is not limited to people that are in the military. It’s just as easy to find an LCMS church or even an LCMS church here in Austin that preached some sort of prosperity gospel rather than the gospel. Most importantly, the proper distinction between law and gospel should be the goal of every pastor.
While this virtual worship style that we’re experiencing now is a necessity during these times of COVID-19, I cannot wait until God’s kingdom is able to come together as a family and worship together to hear the Word of God faithfully preached and receive Jesus’ body and blood. This is the gift that God gives us. We fill up with God’s grace here in the pews and at the communion rail. Then throughout the week, we are able to share some of that grace with others whom we come in contact with in our normal daily lives.
Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
