Proper 11 RCL B

Proper 11 RCL B

St. Peter’s Lutheran Church

John 6:1-21

A Need as Common as Hunger,

A Christ as Universal as Bread

bread. A common thing. A common need. A common custom. Bread is in every culture. It is everywhere the staple of all staples. There is a term for severely meagre living – it is; to live solely on bread and water. And with the exception of the fish, that’s exactly what this text gives us. It gives us bread, the multiplying of the 5 loaves (and two fish) to feed 5 thousand (not including the women and children), 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, 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.

When we’re given a problem, just as Philip, our common response to is to go and FIND or become or work 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 some trouble, some fear, some doubt. No of course we can’t do that, we don’t have enough MONEY.

Are we going to trust God to work ith what little we have? (which he has given us Himself all that we have anyway) or are we going to remain skeptics, saying oh, IDK, im not sure if God can do anything with this its just bread its just water its just wne its just words, a silly book, ansilly sermon, silly prayers.

Every week we come back with that common need, that need that everyone has in ever culture, it may look a little different from place to place, but at root it is as common to us all as hunger. And we come here bringing our meagre elements of bread and of wine, and through them Christ comes to us to deliver His body and His blood, true food and true drink to nourish our souls unto eternal life. We come here bringing water, and through it, Christ is resurrecting our children from among us and naming them as His own.

And so Our Lord instructs us to pray, give us this day our daily bread.

The key to all of this, is that Christ’s presence for us, the solution to the problem, isn’t coming from the meagre elements we bring forward, of bread, or of wine. And that food that Christ fed the 5000 with, it didn't come from those 5 loaves and 2 fish.