Proper 11B (Pentecost 9 2024)

Text: Both OT reading, that condemns the wicked shepherds of God’s people, promising that He, Himself, would come and shepherd His people, and the Gospel reading (feeding of the 5,000).

Let’s start by backing up to the gospel reading for last week. If we put last week’s Gospel reading next to today’s Gospel reading we’ll see something interesting. (They do come one right after the other in Mark 6, so we’re not taking things out of context and making them say things that they might not actually say.)

Last week, we heard Mark’s account of the fateful feast that ended up costing John the Baptist his head. Today, the center of the Gospel reading is Mark’s account of the feeding of the 5,000.

Between last week and this week we have two very different meals. It’s true that the headline, if you will, in last week’s reading was the death of John the Baptist. But when did his death take place? At a feast held by King Herod where, by the end of the meal, John the Baptist’s head was served up on one of the platters.

On the other hand, today we have Jesus feeding more than 5,000 people with a couple of loaves and fish. Let’s put Herod’s feast and the feeding of the 5,000 side by side. Among other things, these two meals teach us several important things about the physical blessings that God provides.

The first lesson is that you should, in fact, look to God both for spiritual blessings— forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation— but also for your physical needs as well. The compassion Jesus showed the crowd, breaking the bread and the fish— pulling it apart into pieces that never get any smaller. It is amazing. And it is a picture of God that should invite you to go running to Him for any physical need.

Let’s take the miraculous to the next level, though. As the eternal, second person of the Trinity, while He was feeding those 5,000+ people gathered in front of Him, He was also providing daily bread for every other man, woman, and child on the planet. We marvel at what He did with the bread and fish. But it pales in comparison to what He does, invisibly, day after day, week after week, year after year, all throughout history all the way to today. Again, the first lesson is that we should look to God not only for spiritual blessings, but for our physical needs as well.

The next lesson, though, is a harder one. It follows from the question: Is that necessarily a good thing? Take King Herod, for example. Herod, too, fed quite a crowd. We’re not told how many, but it was certainly quite a group. He, too, fed his guests with food that God had provided. And yet Jeremiah was surely speaking of leaders just like Herod when he wrote in our Old Testament reading: ““Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord.””

Does Herod have any claim upon his creator for the food and wine to feed a crowd of his friends and supporters? To feast the nobles, the military commanders, and the leading men of Galilee” (Mark 6:21) while many of those who were under His rule, who he had been made king to shepherd and care for, went hungry? Did he have any claim upon God to provide the food and wine to entertain his guests in order to try to win their support and, in the process, kill a man no less than John the Baptist for their entertainment?

Is it necessarily a good thing that God continues to provide our daily bread? As long as you and I persist in our sin, the fact that God still provides your daily bread only delays the day of judgment— causing you to actually heap up more and more judgment upon ourselves in the meantime.

Before you get too smug about what Herod should have been doing with all that God had given him, let’s consider ourselves. You take for granted that, as our creator, it is God who gives you your “daily bread,” as Jesus describes it in the Lord’s Prayer—everything that has to do with the support and needs of this body. Yet there is always something more that you want. That hunger is never satisfied, no matter how much you have. But, as it says in the book of James: “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly—to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3).

What do you do with daily bread that God gives you? It’s not only Herod who uses his wealth to win friends for himself. It’s not only Herod who uses daily bread for his own comfort rather than to care for those in need. “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly—to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3).

No. You have no claim upon God to use the daily bread He gives you in order to feed your appetites and lusts.

A pastor named Jonathan Edwards wrote in a rather famous sermon: “Were it not [for] the sovereign Pleasure of God, the Earth would not bear you one Moment; for you are a Burden to it; the Creation groans with you; the Creation is made Subject to the Bondage of your Corruption, not willingly; the Sun [does not] willingly shine upon you to give you Light to serve Sin and Satan; the Earth [does not] willingly yield her Increase to satisfy your Lusts; nor is it willingly a Stage for your Wickedness to be acted upon; the Air [does not] willing serve you for Breath to maintain the Flame of Life [within you], while you spend your Life in the Service of God’s Enemies. God’s [creation is] Good, and [was] made for Men to serve God with, and [it doesn’t] willingly [submit] to any other Purpose, and [it] groan[s] when [it is] abused to Purposes so directly contrary to [its] Nature and End. And the World would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign Hand of [God].” (Edwards, Jonathan, “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God”).

Yes, God has continued to cause His sun to rise each morning and give you light. And you have used the light He provided to serve whom? To serve your comfort? Your convenience? Your sin?

He causes the earth to yield its increase to provide you with daily bread. And that daily bread has strengthened you to do what? What wickedness have you used God’s good earth to act out?

To this day, all around the world, and even here in the Thumb of Michigan, God continues to provide for your physical needs. And the question is: Is that a good thing? Or would it be better if God allowed creation to spew us out rather than to pile up judgment for ourselves?

Apart from Jesus Christ, it would be better if God allowed creation to spew us out. But thankfully we are not apart from Christ. He has come to do more than keep you alive for another day so that you can work to keep yourself alive for another day in order to work to keep yourself alive for another day….

Herod’s hall was full of the finest food and wine. Yet it became a desolate place. In fact, it became a place of death.

Jesus, on the other hand, was preaching and teaching the crowds in a “desolate place.” And there, the desolate place becomes a place of plenty. The Good Shepherd made them lie down in green pastures so that He could feed them in abundance.

He does preserve you. He holds back wind and storm. He causes the sun to rise each day and shine upon you. He feeds you, giving you daily bread day after day. Not in order to delay the day of reckoning for a little while, but in order to also save you.

If He were to leave you in your sins, simply giving you your daily bread would not be a kind or loving thing to do. It would only allow you to continue to heap up God’s wrath upon yourself for the shameful things you do with all that He gives you.

Thankfully Jeremiah promised even more than just full stomachs: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).

The earth rejoiced at the chance to give its increase to sustain Jesus during His earthly life, to give Him a stage for His perfect righteousness to be acted upon. The sun gladly shone on Him each day in order to enable Him to serve His Heavenly Father perfectly by serving everyone around Him perfectly. When He fasted on other occasions and when He fed 5,000+ here, He did it all in perfect righteousness.

There could be no greater antidote to the record of that horrible feast held by King Herod than the feeding of the 5,000. Not just because Jesus is feeding people that King Herod neglected; not even because He used just a few loaves and fish to feed them; but because, instead of a wicked shepherd who scatters God’s people, He is the Good Shepherd who has compassion on them. Because the bread and fish they ate that day came from the very hands that would be pierced by nails for them and for you. Because the one who lifted up the bread as He broke it and gave thanks would, Himself, be lifted up to pay the full price for your sins and, in exchange, to give you His righteousness— to become “The Lord your righteousness.”

He continues to give you daily bread because, in Christ, He has taken your sin and clothed you with His perfect righteousness so that you can now serve Him and the people around you in that same perfect righteousness.

You may not have noticed it in your catechism, but Luther teaches you to approach your dinner tables with the same sort of reverence that you approach this altar in order to receive His body and blood. He really does. In the catechism there is a section on daily prayers. I think we’re familiar with the morning and evening prayers. But Luther includes prayers for meal times, also (and no, the prayer he teaches is not “come Lord Jesus.”) He suggests that we gather at the table reverently and recite two verses from a psalm: “The eyes of all look to You, [O Lord,] and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing” (Psalm 145:15-16). Then Luther invites us to pray the Lord’s Prayer, then ask God to bless what He has given us in His bountiful goodness. Afterwards there is another psalm, we pray the Lord’s Prayer once again, and we give thanks for what we have received.

As a pastor named Wil Weedon puts it: “Do you see the parallels between the way the Lord’s table is blessed in the Divine Service and the way our tables are blessed at home? We gather around both tables to receive God’s gifts. While we are there, the Word of God is proclaimed, telling us who is giving us what. The Lord’s Prayer is prayed. Then we pray additionally for a worthy reception of the gifts. And then we simply ask Him to bless us and the gifts we receive through our Lord Jesus.”[1]

God provides for your physical needs every day. And that is not only a good thing, it is a holy thing because Your Good Shepherd has entered this world of desolation and has transformed it into green pastures.

And then He makes you His hands and His feet. He sends you out into this desolate world to have compassion on the poor and hungry. Is there any question that so many around you are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd? He fills your heart with a reflection of the compassion He still feels for them.

“When people possess these earthly things, we say, “They have had good fortune.” But they are really gifts of [God’s] grace. Nothing is more blessed than to use these gifts in service to others and to give them away. [He has] made [you His] partner in this happy matter of giving gifts by granting to [you] a greater share of earthly possessions. [He] sowed in [you] the seed of [His] grace so it may grow to become a harvest of kindness toward others. [He has] committed to [you] great wealth in earthly possessions so [you] have the means to do good to [your] fellow servants” (Gerhard, Johann. “Thanksgiving for All the Goods of Soul, Body, and Property,” Meditations on Divine Mercy.”).

And if that were not enough, He also sends you into this desolate world with the Words of eternal life. It is a beautiful thing to be able to help provide for those in need. You get to do more. You get to assure him that God has not abandoned Him. In fact, God cares so much about what you is suffering that He gave the life of His beloved son.

God provides for your physical needs every day. And that is not only a good thing, it is a holy thing because Your Good Shepherd has entered this world of desolation and has transformed it into green pastures. And He makes you His hands and feet to continue to do the same today.

For all this it is your duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.

[1] Excerpt From “Thank, Praise, Serve, and Obey: Recover the Joys of Piety” by William Weedon https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/thank-praise-serve-and-obey-recover-the-joys-of-piety/id1301071660?mt=11