July 25th
A Need as Common as Hunger,
A Christ as Universal as Bread
Bread. A common thing. A common need. A common custom. Bread is part of every culture. It is everywhere the staple of all staples. So much so, that extremely meagre living, the bare necessities of life, that which is often given to prisoners – is bread and water. And that’s exactly what this text gives us. It gives us bread, the multiplying of the 5 loaves to feed 5 thousand, and we have Jesus walking on water. But God hasn’t gathered you here so that you could receive a meagre living of bread and water. But He came to you through these things, through bread and water… Baptism, and communion… to give you eternal and abundant life, to give you Himself.
We begin with a problem. With a need really. That common need, the need for bread. The need that comes to all, not once, but 3 times a day. Hunger. You see, all these people had come to hear the teachings of Jesus, they had come to receive the healings and see the miracles. And in a moment of such excitement, when the prophet comes to town, and you’re dying, or your loved ones are dying and you need a miracle, packing a lunch is not high on your list of priorities, you are focused only on getting there. Which leads us to that all too common problem – people were hungry.
This is the problem that is set before us, just as the problem of a lack bread was set before Elisha and set before Philip. And when we’re given a problem, our common response to is to go and find or create the solution by ourselves and by our own means. And so of course, in the face of such troubles as feeding 5+ thousand at the drop of a hat, we’re going to run into unbelief, fear, and doubt. How could Jesus expect us to buy enough bread to feed over 5000 people, Philip thought, why not just send them into town to go and feed themselves. And when the 5 loaves and 2 fish are brought forward, well, this is just blatant insanity, how on earth do you expect to feed that many people with such little food?
How often is that how we act in our own circumstance? See, every week we come back with that common need, that need that everyone has, more common than hunger, deeper than thirst. And we come together as Christ’s church, week after week, bringing our 5 meagre loaves, and our two little fish, in the faith that although we do not have it takes to feed ourselves, to forgive ourselves, to save ourselves, that the one who does will come to us through these things. And we so we come, bringing our meagre elements of bread and of wine, and through them Christ comes to us to deliver His body and His blood, in the Lord’s Supper. True food and true drink to nourish our souls unto eternal life. And yet again we come, bringing water for Baptism, and through it, Christ is resurrecting the dead from among us and naming them as His own. We bring here the ancient text of the Holy Scriptures, simple ink on simple paper, and silly written sermon upon that ancient text. And through them we are brought from death to life. Through them we receive the bread of life Himself.
This text is not about encouraging us to give of ourselves in the hope that God can make mountains out of our molehills. The bread and fish are in this text not to teach us that God requires or even desires our cooperation or invitation before He begins working in our lives. For this reason alone does Jesus ask Philip where they would buy the bread for the people gathered – to illustrate to Philip that the bread needed to feed these people cannot be bought. For this reason alone does Jesus use the 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed over 5000 people – to show that human contribution is as useful to Jesus’ feeding of His people as is 5 loaves and 2 fish in feeding thousands of people.
The key to all of this is to realize that we do not create the solution to any of these problems. The food that Christ fed the 5000 with didn’t come from those 5 loaves and 2 fish. Just in the same way, the body and blood of Christ, does not come from the bread and wine that we bring to the communion table. And the grace of God, does not come from the words I speak? Yet according to Christ’s own promise to us, He never the less comes through these things, which on their own, can do nothing for us. There is no reason to believe that any of this works the way the Lord says it does, except that the Lord Himself has promised that it does. The use of so few loaves and so few fish does not show how we help along God’s promises to us or His serving of us, but show merely that His gifts to us are freely given without our help or cooperation. Even the faith needed to receive these gifts – is freely given. As Paul says; faith is not your own doing, but a gift from God (Eph 2:8). When we come together to pray for daily bread, it is not our prayer which brings what is needful, but God’s grace even before we thought to pray for it. When we are converted and turn to Christ in faith, it is not because we made a decision to do so, or correctly received the gospel, but because when God speaks the good news of forgiveness, life, and salvation over you there is no force in heaven or on earth that can stop God’s Word from being true, though the voices of men and of Satan may rebel against it constantly in unbelief and futile rejection.
This text does not call you to be the Christ who multiplies the bread to solve everyone’s problems and meet everyone’s needs. Neither does it call you to be Philip and hand out the solution to everyone. Still neither does it tell you that you must be the little boy who brings the meagre supplies that his mother packed for him in his lunch box. This text proclaims to you that you are the hungry and needy sinners in the crowd who need to be fed, and it grants you the promise that Christ, the eternal food, has been brought to the table of your hearts this very morning. It is Christ who is the bread, and it is the holy spirit who will feed Him to you. I am merely here to ring the dinner bell. The only option left is to simply believe that it is so and to receive Christ Himself, the Bread of Life. For while the need for grace, mercy, and forgiveness is as common as hunger, Christ who grants all these things in Himself, is as universally present to all of us as is the bread on all our tables, all that is needed, is to take, eat, and be filled. Amen.
