The feeding of the 5,000 is introduced with this context: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while, says Jesus.” The disciples had just returned from the sorrowful task of burying the body of John the Baptist. They were emotionally and physically exhausted. Jesus invites them to find some rest and join Him in a place off the beaten path. Everyone of us has known the same burden of a busy life filled with sorrow and pain. We just want a moment away, a moment for ourselves, to recover and recoup from it all. Jesus knows our hearts just as He knew what was resting so heavy upon the hearts of His disciples.
It does not always work. In fact, it seldom works. We plan vacations and then we find ourselves stressed by the prospect of getting away. We plan for days off and the jobs of house and homes will not be set aside even for a day. We plan a quiet night only to have it stolen by trouble and trial. It did not work for the disciples either. The troubles and burdens and needs follow us. They followed Jesus and His disciples. There was no rest, only people and more people and more people, aimlessly looking for meaning and purpose and answers. Like sheep without a shepherd, the Scripture says. But there Shepherd was there.
If you try to reduce this pericope to a story with a moral at the end, you will miss it all. Jesus is not trying to get you to do something – not even share your lunch with those in need. Jesus is telling you what He does and will do for YOU. Jesus does not send us or our problems away. He does not ask others to do what He has come to do. The problems are not about money – too much or too little. They are not about convenience or inconvenience. They are not about time to fix ourselves. It is all about Jesus and what He has come to do.
Jesus says that man does not live by bread alone but by the bread of God’s Word. That does not mean that Jesus does not provide bread for the body even as He provides the bread of His Word and the bread of His flesh in the Holy Communion. For the Lord it is not a choice between satisfying the needs of the body or the soul. He is Lord of the whole person. He has come with gifts sufficient for the body and for everlasting life. He is the God who provides it all not because we are worthy but because we are hungry, not because we are holy but because we are sinners, not because we know what we need but because He knows what we need and provides it all.
We live in a civilized world complete with our education and our jobs and our incomes and our investments and our health care industry and we presume that God is for emergencies – for the moments when all of these other things fail us. But everything is an emergency. That is what sin has done. Life is not safe or secure but risky and dangerous and the risk and danger are not simply unhappiness but death.
Like the people in the desolate place with Jesus so long ago, we too often fail to recognize how weak and fragile we and our lives our. We have no refuge or rest except in the Lord. From Him and to Him are all things – whether we realize it or not. Our lives depend upon the Lord from the cells that unite to become a child in our mother’s womb to the every breath we take to the hunger that lives in our bellies and the hunger that lives in our souls. We are all the lost and alone, sheep without a shepherd. We comfort ourselves with our things and presume our accomplishments will provide what we need but instead we are fooled by our things and our image of self-sufficiency. These are not our comfort but a false and misleading dream.
It might be understandable to those who have never known God’s comfort or the food of His Word or His care for our bodies and lives. But it is terrible when we who presume to know the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit ignore the truth. When we presume our sufficiency without God’s help or turn the Lord into a God for emergencies, we give into the idols that would destroy us and choose the convenient lies over the truth that saves. When we begin to believe that God’s mercy and grace are deserved or earned or needed only for the rare moments of a crisis, we no longer live by His mercy and become strangers to His love.
We are the starving for lack of what the Lord’s grace and mercy provide. We are not in need of money to buy our own bread or medicine to extend our lives. We need a Shepherd who has come for His sheep, a Shepherd who feeds the body and the soul. The Lord is not telling us what we can or should do for ourselves or for others. He is telling us what He has come to do for us, in the days when we appear to be in charge and in the days when we are lost and alone with nowhere else to turn. The Lord has come not simply for sins but for sinners, not for our souls and eternal life but for this life and for all the needs of these bodies. He has come so that we might find true and everlasting rest – not a respite for the moment but the rest of everlasting life that becomes our comfort in trial and our hope in death.
Mark says that they all ate and were satisfied. And there were a dozen baskets of leftovers for the dozen disciples to carry home. Ours is not a God of essentials but of mercy more than sufficient for all our needs. He gives us food for this body and the Word of God to guide us through the gauntlet of this mortal life. He gives us eternal food in His Word and Sacrament to sustain His new creation to everlasting life. He is our Good Shepherd, come for a lost and vulnerable sheep, but it does not mean anything as long we presume He is there for emergencies and the rest we can handle ourselves.
The reality is that people do not attend worship regularly simply because their lives are distracted or their schedules are busy. They have come to believe worship is not urgent and the things of God’s house not the most important things of life. They pray in emergencies but as a people who are strangers from God’s mercy and love. They are never quite at home within God’s House because their hearts are elsewhere. They do not get anything out of the service because their minds remain on themselves. Is this YOU? Is this ME? Don’t be comforted by a nice story and try to go home and be better about sharing or more diligent in prayer. Your comfort is in this. God knows your needs – all of them – and has sent His Son to fill you with the good things of His mercy and grace. And by faith you learn that this is really all you need and the only thing you can count on... Amen.
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