It's Who He Is. (Proper 13A, Pentecost 10 2023)

Text: “20 And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.” (Matthew 14:20-21)

It has become fashionable, in our time, for atheists to actively preach that religion is evil. One famous atheist insisted that, if he suddenly found himself face to face with the God whose very existence he had denied for all this time, he would want nothing to do with Him. He would want nothing to do with a so-called divine being who would permit children to get cancer, who would allow famine to kill millions, who would allow every variety of evil in this world.

You would disagree with that sentiment, but you’re not immune to that sort of doubt.

It’s easy to shake our heads at the Children of Israel who had seen plagues in Egypt, then were led through the Red Sea on dry ground, only to get out into the wilderness and complain to Moses, demanding to know: “Were they running out of graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die?” In other words, “Does God care that we’re hungry and thirsty?”

It’s easy to look down your nose at their lack of faith. But, they are not the only ones who wonder if God knows what you need. And, if He does, if He cares. Isn’t that how you pray? You pray as if you had to convince God to act; as if He has been holding back the things you need and you have to pry them from His hands.

But let’s remember where we are and why. This world is not a wilderness because God is stingy with His gifts, because He is withholding something from you. It is our sins that has made this world a wilderness— full of famine and drought; full of poverty and weariness; full of sickness and death.

This miracle speaks to you about who God is. The crowd, in our Gospel reading, were in a desolate place. It was too late for them to seek out what they needed and, since it was a desolate place, there was nowhere for them to look if they tried. Jesus looked at the crowd, had compassion on them, and fed them. In the process, He points them and you to who God is.

When you are in need; when the hour is too late for any chance at recovery, for any opportunity to gather or produce what you need on your own; when you are far from the help of anyone else, He is right here. He looks at you and has compassion on you. Yes, it’s true that there are times when He allows you to hunger; times when you pray to find a job that will finally make ends meet and He seems silent; times when you wait for healing that never comes; times when He doesn’t remove the fear and anxiety. But He has compassion on you and done something much harder and much greater than multiplying loaves to feed thousands.

“He had compassion on them.” That statement sums up His entire life, doesn’t it? He is, indeed, the living bread that has come down from heaven. Before He fed the thousands that day, He was willing to fast and feel gnawing hunger eating at His human flesh.

He was tired, yet he went lightly over the sea, rebuked the winds and waves, and rescued sinking Peter.

On occasion He was overcome by sleep, and yet He is the rest of the weary and the burdened.

He was willing to be sold for 30 pieces of silver— the price of a slave— in order to buy back the world at the mighty cost of his own blood.

He was willing to cry out from the cross, “I thirst,” so that He could also proclaim, “Whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

He was willing to drink vinegar as He hung there so that He could set before you the richest food and the finest wine at the eternal feast in His Kingdom.

He was willing to be led, as silent as a lamb, to the slaughter so that He could proclaiming the day of God’s grace and favor to all people.

He was willing to be nailed to the tree of death in order to transform it into the tree of life that restores you.

He would not come down from the cross and save Himself, but He rejoiced to save the thief crucified with Him.

He surrendered His life, yet He has power to take it again. He dies, but He makes alive and, by death, destroys death.

He was buried, yet He rises again. He descended into Hell, yet he ascends to heaven and seats you with Him in the heavenly places so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace (Ephesians 2:6-7). (Adapted from Gregory of Nazianzus, “On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two letters to Cledonious.” Page 87.)

He was willing to subject Himself to such agony that He sweat blood as He prayed to His heavenly Father about what was about to come to pass. And He was willing to endure it so that He could be the One who hears your prayers.

He is right here. He is here because He has had compassion on you. He has allowed you to hunger and waits for you to ask Him so that He can feed you.

He makes you recline in green pastures and He feeds you. And He hasn’t just come to just give you a few crumbs. He provides more than enough— baskets full of extra. And He isn’t offering meager rations of bread and water. He invites you: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3  Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live...” (Isaiah 55:1-3).

Before you were even aware of your need, He gave His servants the bread from heaven— His very body and blood— to give it to you that you may eat of it and never die. And no matter how many thousands of saints are gathered on any given Sunday, that Holy Meal will never run short. No one will ever go away hungry. Your Lord Christ will provide baskets full left over. His grace is that abundant.

After you’ve eaten your fill, you are still in this wilderness, of course. You will be until He leads you across the Jordan River of death and into the Promised Land. You will continue to be surrounded by every kind of need. But you live, now, in the knowledge of who God is— that “His steadfast love endures forever” (Psalm 136).

That repetition in Psalm 136 seemed kind of silly to me for a long time. But we need that assurance just that frequently, don’t we?

You lay in weakness, despairing of life, itself, and He is there to assure you that He will raise you up on the last day because “His steadfast love endures forever.”

You agonize because your child is suffering. He is there, assuring you that He cared enough about your child’s suffering to give the life of His Son for yours because “His steadfast love endures forever.”

You stand, weeping, at the grave of someone you love and He is there to assure you that, because of His resurrection, death is swallowed up in victory because “His steadfast love endures forever.”

Seeing not just your needs, but the needs of those around you, He says to you, His disciples: “You feed them.” Give literal food to the hungry. Give clothes to the needy. Give hope to the hopeless. Give justice to the oppressed. Give comfort to the grieving. Give eternal life to the dying. Even though their needs far outstrip what you have to offer, you will look back in the end and see that, “20 they all ate and were satisfied. And [you have taken] up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over” (Matthew 14:20). That is who He is. His steadfast love endures forever… in Jesus Christ.