I.N.I.
a sermon to be preached on the 8th Sunday after Pentecost, 22 July 2012, at our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, Virginia; the Gospel for the day being St. Mark 6:30-44
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord,
[read text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
It's been styled as a grand outdoor picnic. It's been called a spiritual retreat that got derailed. It's been used as an example of snowballing generosity, and proclaimed as a miracle of astounding proportions.
The miracle of the feeding in today's Gospel is, or should be, familiar to all of us. There are 2 crowd feeding miracles in the Gospels: one with 7 loaves feeding 4,000 people that appears in Matthew and Mark; and this one with 5 loaves and 2 fish that feed 5,000 people in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For you Bible trivia fans, you will take note that this feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle of Christ that appears in all four of the Gospels. It doesn't take much reflection to come up with the idea that these feedings, and this one in particular, are important. Why else would God cause them to be preserved for us so many times?
Trusting that the miracle story is familiar to you, I want to look with you this morning at an aspect of it that might not have been emphasized in other sermons and Sunday School lessons based on these verses that you have heard. Some of you who know me well might think now that I will dwell on verse 32, "So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place." Since God has given me the gift of being an introvert, there is some appeal in that. But that's not where I want to turn your attention. Rather, I'd like us to start with verse 34, "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things."
In a place and time of great need - such as the Holy Land was when Jesus walked the earth - He met that need with His teaching. There were people there with debilitating and disfiguring diseases. There were people there out of work. There were orphans and widows. There were the divorced and and about to be divorced. There were depressed people and alcoholics; thieves and abusers. There were all sorts of people with all sorts of needs (including some who were hungry!), and when Jesus saw them, His heart went out to them. He had compassion on them.
This crowd of hungry people were hungry for more than food at this point. Whether they realized it or not, they hungered and thirsted for righteousness (Matt. 5:6). And, boy, would they ever be filled! Jesus met their varied needs by teaching them "many things." We don't know the exact content of His teaching on this occasion. We do know that it met their needs, particularly their core, central need.
Jesus had identified the whole crowd's need for direction, for a leader. They were clearly "sheep without a shepherd". Now chances are that few if any of us have enough direct personal experience with flocks of sheep to catch the real drift of this phrase. I know I don't. But I know enough about sheep to know that they're pretty much given to wandering. This past spring the little lambs at Mount Vernon learned how to escape from their enclosure and repeatedly took to wandering aimlessly, once (I'm told) even into the Mansion itself. Sheep just don't have focus and direction when left to themselves. When people are acting like sheep they, too, get quite lost.
So Jesus began as He always does, right where the need was the greatest. Everyone in that large crowd was at a different place in their spiritual lives, just like all of us in this smaller crowd are this morning. For one person in the crowd Jesus offered his pure words of forgiveness and comfort. Another got challenged with God's Law, before he got the grace he didn't know he needed. Surely, the Lord's teaching many things reached different people differently. Some already knew the condemnation of the Law. But some still needed to hear it. As it was then, so it is now.
And when it comes down to it, we the Church too often still have the initial reaction of the Lord's disciples. What was their response to this crowd? What did they suggest be done with them? Did the disciples share in the way that Jesus "had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd"? (Mark 6:34) Did the disciples teach the whole crowd the whole counsel of God, rightly dividing Law and Gospel so that the many people heard the "many things" each needed?
Well, not really. "The disciples came to Him, 'This is a remote place,' they said, 'and it's already very late. Send the people away....'." (Mark 6:35) Send the people away, they said! Jesus, we came away by ourselves in the boat to get away from the world. And here You are teaching them. Send them away, Lord! Please!
Do we ever stop to think that in the 21st century Church we are often those disciples? We want to be off by ourselves with Jesus where we can report to him everything we've done recently (Mark 6:30). Yes, that's good. We should spend time alone with the Lord, probably more that any of us regularly do. Whether it's by going off into a closet to pray (Matt. 6:6), or by going away on a group spiritual retreat as the disciples thought they were doing at the beginning of today's Gospel (Mark 6:30), or even by going off by ourselves into the hills to pray as Jesus Himself did after finally dismissing this crowd (Mark 6:46) ... whatever our method or setting (and it should really be some combination of them) we all need to spend more time with God.
But, again, I fear that today's Church -- just like the nascent Church there on the shores of Galilee -- all too vociferously pleads with Jesus to "send the [crowd] away." It seems that a lot of times we don't want to deal with them. We don't want to deal with their needs. We don't want to deal with their sins. We're okay with different kinds of people from different backgrounds and classes and nationalities in the Church (most Christians today seem to welcome other brothers and sisters in Christ who arrive freshly washed by Baptism, all clean and shiny, ready to be active in the local congregation). What we aren't okay with are the people in the crowd who have needs.
We're afraid of what they'll do to us. We're afraid they will contaminate us. We're afraid that because they are spiritually in a real different place from us, that they will somehow "be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:39) But you know from the end of Romans chapter 8, that no such thing could happen. All these fears we have about the crowds are paper tigers, with no power to harm us. These fears need to be thrown out and left behind. "Perfect love casts out all fear" (I John 4:18).
What Jesus is calling His Church to do is to welcome in the crowds of misfits and sinners and arrogant people, the weak and the broken, the lost and those who think they know their way but are depending on a broken spiritual GPS unit. Jesus said to His disciples and He says to us, "You give them something to eat."
Maybe some need food for their bodies. Maybe they need some intellectually satisfying food in the way of sound teaching. Some may need more in the way of emotional sustenance. Jesus would have us sit the world's crowds down in our midst and feed them from what we have. And surely the thing we have that everyone can benefit from is a spiritually sustaining fellowship.
This is how the prophecy in today's Old Testament lesson is fulfilled, where the Lord says that "they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing" (Jeremiah 23:4). Jesus is the long-promised righteous Branch who sets up shepherds to take care of His scattered sheep.
All "who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13) as we heard in today's Epistle. Everyone is brought to God through the cross of Christ. Jesus brought this about "by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances" (v. 15), reconciling "us [all] to God in one body through the cross" (v.16). Now "you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone" (vv. 19-20) This is the message of peace that Jesus extended to those crowds on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. While the disciples (who should have known better) wanted to send the crowds away, Jesus wanted them brought near. He wanted them brought close so badly that He was willing to die for them.
Our Church today needs to reflect this wide, welcoming gesture to the world. God's love is for everyone, for all people. It isn't just for people who look and think like us. It's not just for people who act and react like us. We dare not beg Jesus to "Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages" (Mark 6: 36). We dare not remain under the accusation spoken in Jeremiah that "you have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them." (Jeremiah 23:2). Rather, we want to respond positively to Jesus when He tells us "you give them something to eat" (Mark 6:37). By the power of the Holy Spirit that washes over us in our Baptism, and by the forgiveness that consumes us when we receive Holy Communion, we are able to welcome and care for the world's crowds that today still appear like sheep without a shepherd.
S.D.G.