John 6:1-15
Refreshment for the Journey
Fourth Sunday in Lent (Laetere)
March 26, 2017
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Jesus takes His disciples to the other side of the Sea of Galilee after an encounter with the Pharisees concerning Jesus' claims of divinity. While the religious leaders of the day reject Him and plot ways to get rid of Him, the crowds who have heard Him speak and perform miracles follow Him around. Five thousand men, not counting the women and children who were there, floceked around to see and hear what He would do next. And while the day had worn on, Jesus did not disappoint.
He looks around at the crowd, noticing their hunger and their need, and He meets it. As God had provided manna for His people during the Exodus when they were hungry, so Jesus provides food for those who follow Him into the wilderness so that they may rest and be refreshed in their journey with Him. From five barley loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus multiplies the food to feed them all, and that they would be left with more than what they started with. The Lord never gives just bread, never just the bare minimum. When the Lord gives, He gives in abundance.
This is not simply a record of a miracle. Our Lord makes the needs of the crowd, their weariness and their hunger, His own. He does even more. He relieves it, provides for it, He teaches us that He is the promised Messiah, and how we are to respond to His goodness and provision.
Zion, the Lord has met our needs of body and of soul in an abundance. Week after week, year after year, decade after decade, the Lord has delivered the goods. We had a $35k budget deficit at the beginning of our fiscal year, which has been met and surpassed by means of the church and the school. We have a beautiful building in which to gather to hear God's Word and receive His Sacraments. We have 5 generations of Christians in our congregation who worship side by side. We have musicians and singers. We have 100 years of history, of family history in this place as Zion Lutheran Church. Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is nothing short of a miracle! 100 years is a big deal! It is only by the grace of God that we are here. It is only because God took a handful of people in Nampa in 1914, He sent them a pastor from New Plymouth, Pastor Kahle, to feed them. And He did. He the Lord caused growth so that they might become a congregation in 1917, and then outgrow their church building, and having to build our currently church in 1948.
There's been ups and down here. Sin has run amok by both pastors and lay members. And by the grace of God in Christ, that sin has been forgiven. We have sometimes doubted and worried if we would have enough, just as the Disciples. We can sometimes feel as though all we have to offer is a small amount that wouldn't feed but a family, much less a congregation or a community.
In the wilderness of the world, we need refreshment. We need food for the journey of this life. We listen to our Lord and we follow Him where He goes. We try to keep up with our devotions and prayers. And it wears us out. It’s exhausting. The Christian life can take everything out of us, bringing us to the point where we don't know how we can continue on. In this, Jesus teaches us to rely on Him, to look to our Lord for the food that will gives life and energy and nourishment to continue on. Jesus would have us feel our hunger and our weakness in order that we might be driven to turn to Him for refreshment.
The Lord provides for us. 100 years we’ve been here, by God’s grace may be here 100 more. This will only happen if we’re fed by Him. It may not always look grand and filled with pomp and circumstance, but neither did 5 barley loaves of bread and 2 fish. But our Lord will continue to feed us for the journey to eternal life.
What is the food for eternal life? Word and Sacrament. The pastor is simply like one of the disciples, receiving what the Lord has to give so he can then distribute it to others. The Lord loves, welcomes, feeds, and eats with sinners. As He did it then, so He still does it now, and so He will throughout eternity. Fellowship with Christ as His table, on His terms, He feeds us the bread of life, His very body and His blood for the forgiveness of sins. It never runs out, indeed it leaves us without an abundance. We can never have too much of this life giving food. We can never receive it too often for our nourishment. Historically in Christianity, and Lutheranism, the Lord’s Supper was offered at every Sunday morning service. Because this is the food of immortality. The body and blood of Jesus provides nourishment for our pilgrimage here on earth.
He who supplied the bodily needs of the five thousand in the wilderness offers us an abundance of food to sustain the new life given in Christ. The faithful eating of the One who is the Bread of Life refreshes, strengthens faith, and gives new confidence and courage. For it gives life that not even death can steal. John 6:35, 51 “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst… I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.
This miracle teaches us that the Lord alone has the power to provide and satisfy the hungry heart. Nothing else can do this, not money or possessions, not knowledge and learning, not power and prestige and fame. Our Lord alone multiplies the bread of life to give to His hungry people. See the bread multiplying in His hands. He goes on breaking it and distributing it as long as the hearts yearn for Him. We shall find in Christ more than we ever expected to want, than we ever expected to find. If Christ blesses the meal, the supply will never run short. We have a foretaste of the feast to come and are refreshed for our journey through this wilderness and life into eternity with Christ.