“HE FEEDS AND GATHERS”
Saint Mark 8. 1-9
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity: 30 July Anno Domini 2006
Fr Watson
It’s a great story but it’s easy to miss the point. Your sinful nature makes a daily career about “missing the point.” Pagans also think it’s a fascinating psychological vignette; but they don’t even believe that it actually happened. “Higher critics” explain away the supernatural by pointing to the inner goodness and charity of man to share limited resources with the needy when properly motivated by a great moral teacher; works for the “United Way” as well. Sectarian Fundamentalists also get the “C-“ answer when they see this event as only demonstrable proof that “their God” is an “awesome God.”
But now, the sledgehammer of the Tablets and scalpel of the Divine Ordinances turns from heathen, heretics and heterodox to you my friends. You and your stubborn, petulant, doubting, ornery and antagonistic “old Adam” are right in the middle of this Gospel account. You are standing shoulder to shoulder with the 12 Disciples showing no more insight than “doubting Thomas,” “denying Peter,” “betraying and thieving Judas,” “vengeful John & James,” or the other 7 sinners. These soon-to-be Apostles had seen miracles, had heard wisdom from the Word of God, had been called, taught, and ministered to by the Rabbi from Nazareth. And when they were put to a “test,” when the time came for faith to seize on to the object of said faith the best they could come up with was: “How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?” This isn’t an innocent query by attentive assistants but rather a panicky, whiny and uneasy complaint from a group of men who know things will get ugly when 4,000 bellies don’t get fed. They shouldn’t have had to ask the Lord such a question. They should have been like the Blessed Virgin at Cana when her faith rested on, and pointed to, the Christ: “do whatever He says.”
You are the Galileans, only living here in a different place and time. You have been baptized. You have been brought to the Divine Service (many, ever since infancy). You have been catechized. And, even when you seek to blame a perceived inadequacy in your youthful instruction on some “liberal” pastor, you fail to admit that you have had the Small Catechism and Holy Scriptures available to you, at your fingertips. You have your own Book of Concord. You have been admitted to the Feast. You have been brought into the Savior’s presence no less than the “12.” And still, daily, your stuttering reaction to spiritual hunger, to spiritual isolation, to the multitudes in the wilderness of unbelief and sin that need compassion, is “How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?”
Yes, you show lack of faith with even “First Article” gifts from God: wheat bread, housing, fuel, clothes, daily health and all the rest. But that’s not the real point. Con-Agra gives more Wonder Bread and feeds more mouths than those 4,000 on the mount. The U.S. government has a bigger “soup-kitchen” than the parishes you have attended.
Questions and doubts about Who and What can satisfy your real needs, hungers and hearts show you to be the seed of Adam; the protégés of Eve. Repent ye of little faith. Repent that you look to yourselves. Repent that you look at the external situations with fear; be they crowds of famished bellies, roaring waves, family meltdowns, declining health, or worse. Repent that you fail to see with eyes of faith Who it is that stands in your very midst; in your very daily walk, in your body and spirit.
Dear children, for that is what you are…that is pure Evangel; dear brothers and sisters the Gospel isn’t how powerful this Teacher is, or how well He adorns your body, stomach and bank account; the Good News is that He is the true and real Bread. Jesus isn’t miracle worker and awesome power God. Jesus is Messiah; He is the “anointed one.” He is Christ not to perform feats that only feed the outside but He is the God/Man in flesh and blood to give you His Flesh and Blood. His God and Man Body went to perfect work in place of your sinful and corrupt body. His Body kept those Commandments that you break. His God and Man Body was given in exchange for your fallen and diseased body. His Body was nailed to the cross to wash away the smell, stain, and substance of your guilt.
How many loaves do you have in and of yourself? Zero. You have from your “old nature” only the lifeless rocks that litter the wilderness of death encompassed by the stone tables of Torah. But with the Rock of Life, the Rock of Defense, with you and for you, you have the Food of Immortality. With Messiah, you have the perfection of “Seven,” both the original six days of Creation plus the next day of the Old Covenant. But you also have the Six days of His “passion,” His “Com-Passion,” for you, plus the seventh day of His Resurrection unto eternity, for you. Only the “Four” Evangelists, that is the Word of God, preached and administered by the Servants of God, sustain the multitudes.
Again, this morning, the Gospel washes Jesus on to you and in to you. Take eat Christ, and take drink Christ, and be filled.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost