“Fed Until We’re Full, Plus Left-Overs”
Matthew 14:13-21
8/3/08
In today’s Gospel text St. Matthew focuses in
on the giving nature of Jesus. Here we are given to know what
motivates Jesus to give, whom He uses to give, what He does with what
He takes into His hands to give, how much He gives, and to whom He
gives. In the end we see that Jesus is no stingy giver, but a
generous giver, who gives from a heart of compassion to all, giving to
them until they’re all full, with left-overs besides.
Let’s take a look first, then, at what
motivates Jesus to give. Verse 13 begins by saying that
“when Jesus heard this, He withdrew from there in a boat to a
desolate place by Himself.” The “this” that
Jesus heard was the news that John the Baptist had just been
beheaded. And so, you can imagine what kind of an impact this sad
news had on Jesus. It had such an impact that Jesus just wanted
to get away by Himself with His disciples alone to grieve for a
while. In doing this Jesus sanctifies grieving. Often
times, Christians exhibit a very casual, less than serious attitude
towards death. This may be either because they’re so
focused on the resurrection to come or because they feel it’s
some sort of sin to mourn the loss of a loved one. But while we
have the sure promise of the resurrection of our bodies on the Last
Day, there is still a place for grieving at the death of a
Christian. Of all people, Jesus certainly should have been the
last one to grieve over the death of His friends, knowing as He did
that He was going to raise them from the dead. And yet, His
grieving shows that He takes death seriously. He knows that death
never should have been, that it’s not natural, and that
it’s a result of sin. And so He mourns the passing of those
who are His. The Apostle Paul, too, tells us that there’s a
place for mourning and grieving when a loved one dies in the Lord, but
he also tells us that a Christian’s grieving is unlike the
grieving of a non-Christian, who has no hope of the resurrection of the
body and the life everlasting. There’s a time and place,
then, for mourning when a loved one dies, because we are parted from
them for a time, and sometimes we just like to get away by ourselves
and grieve for a while.
Here Jesus was intending to do just that. But
Matthew tells us that when the crowds found out where He was heading,
they followed Him there. Now, you can imagine how you’d
feel if you wanted to be alone to grieve but were prevented from doing
so by a huge crowd of over 5,000 people, who were flocking to you only
because they wanted something from you. Any other person would
have probably been annoyed, but not Jesus. Instead, seeing this
great crowd Jesus had compassion on them, and it’s this
compassion that motivated Him to heal their sick and to feed them.
It’s with this compassion that Jesus gives us
to know the heart of God. He shows us that He is not a
begrudging, stingy kind of God. He’s not annoyed or angry
with us. Nor is He motivated to give His gifts to us because of
anything that we’ve done to deserve them. Jesus
wasn’t coerced or cajoled into having compassion on these
people. He simply saw them in their need and had pity on
them. He has the same attitude towards you. He sees you in
your need - your need for forgiveness, for healing, for food, for life
- and He has compassion on you, which moves Him to give you everything
and even more than what you need.
It’s this compassion for you that moved Him to
come in the flesh and give His life on the cross for you as the
sacrifice for your sins, the benefits of which He now gives you through
the called and ordained servants of His Word. In the Gospel text
we see that Jesus used His disciples to distribute the bread and fish
to the crowds. Later on He would use them and the pastors who
came after them to distribute the food of His Word and Sacraments to
the crowds of people who would be drawn to Jesus through their
witness. Here we are given to see that it’s not the
disciples or the pastors who are really doing the giving, but that
Jesus Himself is giving through them, only using them as His
instruments to deliver His gifts to His people. Pastors get both
themselves and their flocks into trouble when they lead people away
from Jesus to go find and purchase food for themselves from someplace
else, rather than leading them to Jesus to simply receive the gifts
that He gives for free where His Word is being proclaimed and His
Sacraments are being administered. The disciples here suggested
that Jesus send the crowds away that they might go into the villages
and buy food for themselves. “Into the villages,”
however, was not where Jesus was present, giving out His gifts.
For a pastor to preach that you must earn God’s compassion and
gifts by your good works and behavior is a kind of sending people away
from Jesus to the “villages” to purchase what they need
themselves, instead of simply receiving from Him what He gives for free
through His called and ordained servants in the Church.
Now, it’s interesting that in order to deliver
His gifts to the crowds Jesus didn’t just speak some food into
existence out of nothing, but that He used what they had on hand.
In this case it was five loaves and two fish. By doing this Jesus
shows us that He likes to use earthly things to give heavenly
gifts. Here in this place, and all around the world where
Christians are gathered together in His Name to hear His Word and
receive His Sacraments, Jesus uses the earthly elements of water,
bread, and wine to give you His body and His blood, the forgiveness of
your sins, life, and salvation. Such elements have been
sanctified by Jesus, blessed by Him for the purpose of delivering His
gifts to you. In the Gospel account here, Jesus set the loaves
and fish aside for His purpose by taking them into His hands, looking
up into heaven and blessing them, breaking them, and then giving them
to the disciples to give to the people. Again, this is an
illustration of what is going on in the divine service, as Jesus with
His blessing sets aside these earthly elements to deliver His gifts to
you as they are distributed by the servants of His Word.
And with His blessing and the distribution from His
hands we see that Jesus is more than capable of multiplying the food He
gives, to the point that everyone has enough to eat with left-overs
besides. One of the objections that some people have to the
teaching of the Lord’s Supper that Jesus gives us His true body
and blood to eat and to drink in this meal is that Jesus has a finite
body like ours which can’t be everywhere at once.
It’s not possible, they say, for everyone who’s celebrating
the Lord’s Supper today to be eating and drinking Christ’s
body and blood, because Jesus’ body just isn’t big enough;
there just isn’t enough of Him to go around. And yet,
it’s not in the nature of a few loaves of bread and a couple of
fish to be able to feed 5,000+ people. But in Jesus’ hands
and with His blessing they can and do feed the entire crowd with more
left over. And if Jesus can do it with bread and fish, He can
certainly do it with His own body. There’s more than enough
Jesus to go around, so much so that Jesus can say that He (the whole
Jesus) is with you always, even to the end of the age, and that this
bread and this wine, set apart and blessed in His holy Supper, is His
true body and blood, given you to eat and to drink for the forgiveness
of your sins.
After the crowds had their fill, we notice that the
twelve disciples picked up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces
left over. Interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus caused there
to be exactly one basket of left-overs for each disciple. What
was He trying to teach them? Maybe one lesson was that Jesus
always provides more than we need. Maybe another lesson is that
the disciples would always have more than enough to give to God’s
people, that the wells of God’s gifts would never run dry, and
that this ministry of delivering His gifts to people would continue
until He returns. Either way, Jesus feeds us with the food of His
Word and Sacraments until we’re full, providing us with even more
than enough to satisfy and sustain us until He comes again.
And you here in this place are among those who are
on the receiving end of the Lord’s gifts today. Those who
ate from the Lord’s hand in today’s Gospel text were those
who followed Him to the place where He was, in order to hear Him and
receive from Him what He wanted to give them out of His
compassion. Jesus turned no one away. He fed all who were
there. It was only those who refused to come who missed out on
the feast. And so today there are many who refuse to come to the
place where the Lord is giving out His gifts of Word and Sacrament, and
as a result they don’t receive those gifts for themselves.
Something more important to them has lured them away. Perhaps
they think they can purchase the gifts of the Lord or get them in some
other place. Still, there might be others who come but refuse to
eat. Or they come, but they want to eat something else.
They don’t want the food that Jesus has to give them; they want
Him to give them the food that they want to receive from Him. And
so, some are turned away from the Lord’s Supper, not because
Jesus doesn’t want them there, but because they are coming for
something else, and they reject the gifts that Jesus intends to give
them at this altar.
But you here today, who come to eat what the Lord
wants to give you, are being fed with the food that gives you the
forgiveness of your sins, life, and salvation. This food is Jesus
Christ Himself and His Word. Eat of this Bread and be
filled. In His compassion for you Jesus gives you more than
enough of Himself to satisfy you. As He provided more than enough
manna for His people in the wilderness, so He provides more than enough
of this true Manna to fill you to the point where there’s
left-overs besides. He has more than enough forgiveness to give
you. His sacrifice was more than sufficient to atone for all your
sins plus more. You can’t sin beyond His forgiveness, and
there is not one of your sins that hasn’t been forgiven and
cleansed by the blood of Jesus. He is more than able to
strengthen and comfort you with His Word during your times of grief,
stress, temptation, and testing. He is more than capable of being
with you always to the end of the age, causing His grace and mercy to
abound to you until your cup overflows. And He is more than able
to take the dust of your body from the ground on the Last Day and
fashion it into a body like His, fit for eternity, when you will eat
and drink with Him face to face at the heavenly feast to come.
So, eat and enjoy the food which the Lord multiplies to you. He
more than fills you with all that you need to sustain you in the faith
until the end. With Jesus you will never go hungry again.
Amen.