From Meager to Miraculous

In Nomine Iesu
St. Matthew 14:13-21
August 6, 2017
Proper 13A

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

Free food. Free food has a way of getting our attention. Especially if you’ve been to Miller Park this year, where a hotdog and a beer will run you about fifteen dollars, the idea of free food sounds especially appealing.

But free food is a myth. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always has to pay—somewhere, sometime, somehow—whether

it’s the father of the bride or the American tax payer. “Free food” is really a misnomer. Free food went out the door in Genesis chapter 3 and the fall into sin. Before that, food was indeed free—all the nuts and grains and fruits and veggies you could eat. But ever since then—in this fallen world we know so well—food is not free, but costly. Sweat and toil, thorns and thistles, dollars and cents—that’s what’s needed to put food on the table.

This is part of what makes the feeding of the five thousand so astonishing—free food, food in abundance, all you can eat and more—at no cost to you. But let’s take a moment to set the stage for this miracle: It was getting to be evening. Earlier in the day Jesus had been told about the execution of John the Baptizer. That solemn news had led Jesus to withdraw to the wilderness. But the crowds followed him. Five thousand men were there; but add in the women and children and you’ve got yourself a Whitefish Bay-sized crowd.

The problem was: no food. They were in the middle of nowhere, after all. The disciples were both concerned and probably tired. They proposed a sensible and logical solution to Jesus: Dismiss the crowds and send them into the nearby villages where they can buy food for themselves. The disciples knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch. Bread doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. In fact, you may recall how Jesus was tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread in the wilderness—at a time when Jesus was on a forty-day fast. But Jesus refused. That’s not the way Jesus does things.

“They need not go away,” Jesus told His disciples, “You give them something to eat.” They protested immediately that they had only five loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus must be joking. How can so little feed so many? But hear what Jesus says about that meager amount of bread and fish: He says, Bring them here to me. This is how Jesus operates. He receives our meager offering and does something miraculous with it.

This is a teaching moment, both for the disciples and for us. Jesus wants to work with what we have. Jesus wants to use us—our time, our talents, our treasure, our loaves and fish. Oh, He could have fed the crowd out of thin air. He could have raised His hands to heaven and conjured up a bounty of bread and a feast of fish—without involving the disciples and their meager, paltry provisions. Instead, Jesus received into His hands what His followers could scrounge up.

Jesus takes the five loaves and two fish. He raises His eyes to heaven from whence He came, where His Father is, and He thanks His Father for those loaves and fish. 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. Notice that even though the loaves and fish came from the disciples, Jesus thanks God, from whom all blessings flow. Then Jesus breaks the bread. He distributes the loaves and fish to the disciples, and His disciples distribute them to the people. And this distribution goes on and on and on.

Meager portions are miraculously multiplied. Jesus equipped His disciples to do the very thing that had minutes earlier seemed impossible. The disciples gave the people—all of them—something to eat—generous portions that fully satisfied every last man, woman, and child. In the hands of Jesus, what was very little—what was obviously insufficient—became more than enough. Paltry provisions became plentiful. Scarcity became abundance. The meager became miraculous. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch where Jesus is concerned?

Free food and drink are what the Lord seems to be talking about through the Prophet Isaiah this morning: 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. It sounds like the Lord announcing a really great deal for you. Free food and drink. Wine and milk without cost. Bread for nothing at all. Why, it sounds like if you play your cards right, your bread and fish will never run out, your wine and milk will overflow, not to mention your bank account and your stock portfolio. That’s where TV preachers like Joel Osteen would take a text like this—God as a vending machine dispensing favors to the favored, blessings to the blessed, prosperity to the prosperous.

But we need to hear a few more sentences from Isaiah: Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live. Listen diligently, incline your ear, and hear. This feast is one that you consume through your ears, not your mouth. This free feast is a feast of words—a Divine Service of Words—words received in the ears, but aimed at the heart. It’s good news of free forgiveness for all those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—all of it lovingly served up for us from the nail-scarred hands of our Savior.

By feeding the five thousand, Jesus wasn’t trying to launch a war on poverty or show us how to combat world hunger—or to reveal the hidden keys to a prosperous life of wealth and riches. But Jesus does want us to see that He comes to bring us something unimaginably wonderful. He’s bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And yet He comes as true God, bearing precious gifts that we neither desire nor deserve nor expect. But what is free for us was costly for Jesus. The forgiveness, life and salvation we enjoy as children of God came only at a great cost to Jesus. He laid down His life as our sacred substitute to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness. Our greed, our selfishness, our lust to hoard and grab and accumulate all we can—Jesus carried these sins away on a Roman tool of torture, where He made Himself nothing and poured out His life blood for the forgiveness of your sins. Free forgiveness for us, but oh so costly to Jesus.

You can trust this Jesus. Even when you find yourself utterly alone in what seems like a desolate place—even when good news seems scarce and your own resources seem to be lacking. Jesus will provide. You can trust this Jesus when death draws near. If He could multiply morsels of bread and fish into feast for thousands, what can He do with our bodies—temples of the Holy Spirit, created by Him—and commended to Him until the day of resurrection?

You can trust this Jesus with your paltry possessions, with your measly monies, with your trivial talents. In faith we can place them joyfully into Jesus’ hands. We can trust that He will use the wealth we call our own to bless others in ways we could never do on our own. Every offering you give is kind of like those loaves and fishes placed into the hands of Jesus, where something miraculous happens. You can’t see it; you can only believe it. But unless you believe it—unless you believe that the offerings you give are given right into the Savior’s hands, you will never know what it means to be a joyful, thankful giver.

The disciples entrusted Jesus with the little bit they had—not as a scheme to enrich themselves—not as a strategy to enjoy the best life now—not even knowing what would happen next. But Jesus worked things in such a way that His followers were able to become generous givers—servants who could serve others with the abundance Jesus had placed into their hands. Jesus received their meager offering and then had them distribute to others the resulting abundance. The impossible became possible. What was out of the question one minute, was perfectly viable and doable in the next minute. That’s how it is for us—for us who have been baptized into Christ, for us who eat the bread that is His body and drink the wine that is His blood. We become His hands, His feet, His mouthpiece to a world that’s just starving for good news.

We have so much to learn and take to heart in the feeding of the five thousand. But an even greater miracle takes place here, now, for you. The feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness happened only once. But today and every Lord’s Day Jesus feeds millions, including you—serving up heaping helpings of good news from pulpit and altar. Without cost. All by His grace. Without even one of your works. Received simply by faith. Here He gives. Here you receive. Free for you. Costly for Him. And more than enough to satisfy.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.