The Seventh Sunday after Trinity

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s Gospel text, Christ feeds four thousand men in the wilderness from nothing more than seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. However, this miraculous feat was not done merely for the purpose of revealing Christ’s power—although it certainly accomplishes at least this. Rather, this miracle has been recorded in Sacred Scripture for our learning, so that in seeing our Lord’s compassionate care and provision for the multitude, we might come to see our Lord’s compassionate care and provision for us as well. For in the same way that Christ provides for the needs of the multitude in the wilderness, He also provides for us. And make no mistake, it is not obligation or necessity which caused Christ to miraculously feed this multitude. He provided for them because of His deep compassion and love. In the same way, let us now consider how: Christ’s compassion provides all that we need.

The text begins with our Lord recognizing the bodily need of the multitude. He says:

“I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar” (Mark 8:2-3).

This crowd had been with our Lord for three long days. Undoubtedly, they had remained with Him so that they might hear the Word of God through His preaching. Presumably, they had brought provisions of food along with them, but these had run out long ago. If you have ever missed a meal, whether by intention or by accident, imagine that feeling, but increased over the course of an entire day or more. The crowd was past the point of being hungry. They were running so low on calories that it was unlikely that many of them could make the long journey home without collapsing on the way.

But notice the key word in our Lord’s statement:

“I have compassion on the multitude” (Mark 8:2a).

It is the compassion of Christ which drives His actions in this text, as is the case with all of our Lord’s actions. It was compassion that caused Christ to preach the Word of God. And it was compassion which drove Him to miraculously provide bread in the wilderness for this multitude. Our God is a God of compassion. Even though you and I so often wander away from Him on account of our sins, Christ looks upon you in compassion. He sees your needs of body and soul, and He desires to meet them. As a loving father delights to give good gifts to His children, Christ’s deep compassion is stirred when He sees your needs. His love for you knows no limits.

And so it is that Christ took the loaves of bread, He gave thanks, and He broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. The breaking of the bread was more than just a practical measure necessitated by the large crowd. After all, we know that Christ would have had access to a cutting implement if He desired to divide the bread more easily. At least two of His disciples carried small swords which would have made quick work of dividing the loaves of bread (cf. Luke 22:38). But the particular action of breaking the bread is important. For the breaking of this bread symbolizes how Christ’s own body would be broken for us upon the cross (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:24, NKJV).

Recall what sin does to us. When Adam and Eve first fell into sin, the Lord laid out the consequences of their sin. Among other things, He said:

In the sweat of your face You shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

In the Garden of Eden, food was freely available. The grace of God had made it so. However, in a sin-filled world, food is obtained only by great labor and pain. This is the case because sin has removed us from the grace of God. And it is only through great labor and pain that the grace of God can be restored to us again.

So it is that Christ’s breaking of the bread in the wilderness is a symbol of the great cost at which He has come to meet our human needs. For God is not like a genie in a bottle, whose miraculous power grants out of thin air whatever you ask. His grace is only ever extended to us at Christ’s expense. For it is Christ’s great labor and pain on the cross which restores us to the Father. His blood shed upon the cross alone atone for our sins and appeases God’s wrath over sin. It is by virtue of His body broken and His blood shed that we are granted to receive God’s grace in any form. And so it is that Christ’s miraculous feeding of the four thousand shows not only His compassionate provision for mankind. It also shows the great lengths to which He was willing to go so that He might meet all our needs of body and soul.

And so, dear friends in Christ, let us look to Christ and receive from Him all that we need in this life. For His compassion provides all that we need in both a bodily and a spiritual sense. And far too often, we lose sight of the necessity of provision in both body and soul. On the one hand, there can be a temptation to leave behind the things of this world, to become a monk, as it were, and to pursue spiritual things only, to the detriment and harm of our bodies. But to do so is a significant overreaction to the effects of sin in the body. Christ cares about your physical body. He demonstrates as much by meeting the bodily needs of the four thousand in the wilderness, and again by teaching us to pray the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Don’t make the mistake of thinking that spiritual needs are all that matter.

On the other hand, most of us struggle with quite the opposite. The weakness of our flesh often causes us to focus too much on the needs of the body. Frequently, this happens to the point where our belly becomes our God. Some take this to one extreme by over-indulging in the pleasures of food, eating the tastiest food they can find for the sake of maximizing pleasure, even when doing so is detrimental to one’s health. Others take this to the opposite extreme by becoming overly fixated on health and nutrition to the point where they only buy the highest quality organic products they can find, as if an idolization of one’s health will somehow prolong life beyond God’s numbering of your days. Neither extreme is helpful. We must seek the middle ground. We must not allow the flesh to rule over us, causing us to seek either pleasure or earthly life at all costs. Rather, we should seek to care for our bodies as good gifts of God—one which He cares for as well. And we should also enjoy what He gives us—eating and being filled with whatever He provides (cf. Mark 8:8). But we ought not seek after these things at all costs. Rather, we must gladly receive what the Lord provides. For in Him we live and move and have our being (cf. Acts 17:28). And apart from Him we are nothing (cf. John 15:5).

Dear friends in Christ, the compassionate love of our Lord Jesus Christ is most clearly seen in the cross, wherein He gave up His body to be broken so that He might give you all things (cf. Romans 8:32). And so: “If we adhere to the Word of God diligently and faithfully, there will be no want… For it does not depend upon how much or how little we have, but upon His blessing.” Christ’s compassion provides all that we need. By His grace, may we learn to trust in His provision for body and soul, and so learn to depend upon Him for all that we need.

God grant it.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.