Lent 4 – Mark 6:32-44
Please listen with me to a reading from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Mark, beginning at the 32nd verse. This is a parallel text to today’s appointed Gospel from St. John.
And [Jesus and his disciples] went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.
So far the text.
“You give them something to eat.”
Have you ever been told by a boss or a supervisor to do something that you knew you could not do? Have you ever been asked by someone whom you did not wish to displease, to use your meager resources to accomplish some great achievement that simply could not be accomplished with only those meager resources?
Have you ever felt the frustration, the discouragement, and perhaps the fear that would be associated with an order to carry out an impossible mission? If so, then you can sympathize with the plight of our Lord’s disciples on the occasion that St. Mark is describing in our text.
A crowd of 5,000 men, and an uncounted number of women, had gathered together to hear Jesus preach and teach. They were all in an isolated place, where it would not be easy to find enough food for all those people.
But at the end of the day, those people were hungry. The disciples suggested that Jesus send them away so that they could begin the process of finding something to eat.
The disciples were trying to be realistic about the situation. But Jesus replied by telling them something that bewildered them: “You give them something to eat.”
The disciples were able to scrounge up only five loaves of bread and two fish. And even if there would have been a place to go, to buy the necessary food, they were not even close to having enough money to do that.
But in spite of all this, Jesus did not retract his words. “You give them something to eat.”
How could this be done? How could so many hungry stomachs be filled by such a limited supply of food? How could the apostles fulfill such an impossible task, with such meager resources? Well, to quote Jesus in another context:
“With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”
We read that Jesus took the loaves and fish, blessed them, and then instructed the apostles to distribute them to the crowd. And as St. Mark tells us, “they all ate and were satisfied.”
Everyone received a generous portion of food. Everyone ate until he was no longer hungry. By the power and blessing of God, what had been an impossible task became a possible task, and a completely fulfilled task.
The disciples of the Lord did what they previously were sure they could not do. Jesus had said, “You give them something to eat.”
And through the Lord’s gracious intervention and supernatural empowerment, they did in fact “give them something to eat,” as they passed out bread and fish that kept multiplying until all that was needed had been distributed.
People in this world are often still hungry – people in our own community, too. We care about that.
And so we help to alleviate that hunger, as an expression of our gratitude to God that he has allowed us to have more than we need. As I speak, a drive is now underway among us, to benefit the Food Shelf in Princeton.
But at a deeper level, humanity is also in need of something much more important than physical food. There is an emptiness in the soul of sinful man that is much more problematic than the emptiness in the stomach that the people in today’s text were feeling.
Sinful man – even without fully realizing what it is that he needs – hungers for the true God, for his grace and forgiveness, for salvation and eternal life. This is a deep and hopeless starvation, from which all who do not know Christ suffer.
And no one, by his own human efforts, can even begin to fill this desperate inborn emptiness.
But as Jesus sent his disciples out into the world, after his death and resurrection, to confront humanity’s deep spiritual hunger, he once again said to them, in effect, “You give them something to eat.”
Literally, he said, as St. Matthew records it:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
The disciples had meager resources indeed for the fulfillment of such a profoundly important task: words and water, bread, and wine. But with these resources, and seemingly with nothing more than this, they were sent out into the world to alleviate the spiritual hunger of lost humanity.
They were sent out to feed the human soul with God’s grace and forgiveness. They were sent out to bring salvation and eternal life to those who were lost and spiritually dead.
How could this be done? How could words and water, and bread and wine, be sufficient for the accomplishment of such a task? Again,
“With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”
When Jesus gave the Great Commission to his apostles, he also spoke these words: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Jesus, with his divine and heavenly authority, continually blessed the words that he had placed on the apostles’ lips; and with those words, he also continually blessed the water, the bread, and the wine, that the apostles administered in the sacraments that Jesus had commanded them to observe.
Jesus continually filled these humble acts with his own boundless power. In the ministry of the apostles, through these appointed means of grace, Jesus fed his church.
Therefore it could truly be said of everyone who, in repentance and faith, received what the apostles gave: “They all ate, and were satisfied.” Jesus himself declares in St. John’s Gospel:
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
The task that Jesus gave to the apostles is the task that he gives today to all who, like them, are called to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments.
Jesus, through the voice of his church, sends today’s pastors and ministers into each town and city, to confront humanity’s deep spiritual hunger. And as he does so, he also says to these called servants: “You give them something to eat.”
With the seemingly meager resources of words and water, bread, and wine, they, too, are sent to alleviate the spiritual hunger of lost humanity. They, too, are sent to feed the human soul with God’s grace and forgiveness and to bring salvation and eternal life to those who are lost and spiritually dead.
How can they do it? How can we do it?
When a pastor preaches the gospel, there is a supernatural power in that preaching that is not put there by the pastor himself – through his verbal artistry or oratorical skill. That power is put there by God’s Spirit.
The gospel itself “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,” as St. Paul reminds us in his Epistle to the Romans.
And when a pastor speaks the words of institution for a sacrament, he is simply a mouthpiece for a divine speaking and a divine working, since his words are actually God’s words.
What a pastor gives to you, when he administers a sacrament to you, God is giving to you. Things that a human minister has no power in himself to do, are nevertheless done through him.
In the words that he speaks – as these words are proclaimed from the pulpit, or attached to earthly elements of the Lord’s designation; as these words are preached to believers or to unbelievers – God’s called preachers “give them something to eat.”
Christ, the bread of life from heaven, is given. Sins are forgiven. Faith is engendered and renewed. Souls are saved.
And what pastors are called to do publicly, all Christians within their callings are also authorized to do in their personal interactions with other people: in the words of comfort and consolation that they speak to their friends and coworkers, to their relatives and neighbors.
And so Jesus says to all of us: “You give them something to eat.”
You can give them Christ, who died and rose again for them. The people you know, with whom you share the saving truths of God, can thereby be enabled to die to sin in repentance and to rise in Christ by faith in his promises.
They, too, can eat, and be satisfied. And yes, you can give them this, by giving them the gospel of a crucified and risen Savior.
In your baptism, a human pastor did something humanly impossible for you. What that pastor did, using words and water, resulted in your becoming a child in God’s family and a citizen in God’s kingdom.
He was able to do this because Christ has put his own divine power and authority into those words; and because God’s Spirit used that water as his instrument in washing, not only your body but also your soul.
That’s why the Epistle to the Hebrews invites us to draw near to God “with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
And in your baptism, you were also given a commission, as a believing and confessing Christian, likewise to do humanly impossible things: to renew faith and hope in the hearts of other people, by speaking and singing words of faith and hope to other people.
St. Peter, in his First Epistle, reminds you that you are “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God’s] own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
And so, for example, when we are singing good, doctrinally sound hymns, with each other and to each other – hymns that are filled with biblical content, and that teach the faith – that’s what we are doing for each other.
But also, when we look beyond the church at the world around us, and see how many people in this world are still starving for the forgiveness, life, and salvation that they so desperately need, we might wonder: can anyone do something about this?
Can anyone bring light to the darkness of their souls, and peace to the agony of their consciences? Can anyone, spiritually, “give them something to eat?” The answer is Yes.
You can. We can. God’s people, each according to his or her vocation, can publicly and privately speak God’s words to them – words that God has filled with his hidden yet very real power. We can “give them something to eat.”
In his miraculous feeding of the multitude, Jesus could have zapped bread and fish directly into the hands and mouths of the people in the crowd. He could have bypassed his disciples and dealt with the people’s hunger directly.
But he didn’t. And that’s because God’s ordinary way of working in this world is to use people to reach other people.
He touches people who are hurting through the compassionate embrace of other people. He is a companion to people who are lonely through the caring friendship of other people. He protects people who are in danger through the watchfulness of other people.
He preaches the gospel to people, not through angels, but through other people. He feeds people who are hungry, in both body and soul, through other people.
And so God, in Christ, tells his redeemed and chosen people – he tells all of us – “You give them something to eat.” Amen.