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Text: Mark 8:1-9
(Gen 2:7-17, Rom 6:19-23)
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
“The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” our God reveals to us. “And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden.” The garden was a place of life. It was our home. And this garden home was oriented to the east – where the sun rises. And there were trees – good for food. There were two named trees: “the tree of life… and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The garden home was laden with rich gems and minerals – and lush with water. “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” There were some things missing from the garden: want and death. God also gave the man a woman to help him care for the garden. For he was to “work and keep it.” But the work was not like our work today. This work was not laborious.
Of course, we know what happened. The serpent convinced the woman to disregard God’s Word, and her husband agreed. Both sinned by eating, and they both were ashamed. They were cast out from the garden, and now there would be deserts. There would be want. There would be famines. People would eat scraps and not be satisfied. There would be draughts. And there would be death.
Delightful work was replaced by grueling toil. The harmony in the family became strife. Life became a struggle for food that ends in suffering and death. And all of this because of eating something that was not ours to eat. As the Russian thinker Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, commenting on the evil in our world, said: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
And this, dear friends, explains what happened when Jesus fed people in the desert. For the people knew they needed the Word of God. They risked life and limb to hear the Word in a “desolate place,” a desert, not knowing where the food would come from. But they knew that they needed the kind of food that was lost in Eden. They needed the food that would sustain them forever. They needed living water, so that they would never thirst again. And this, dear friends, is why Jesus came to this desolate place called earth, a place of scarcity and suffering and death, a place of sin, in which men and women feel the effects of want, and they hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Jesus had “compassion on the crowd, because they have been with [Him] now three days and have nothing to eat.” And taking this world’s meager scraps, our Lord was fruitful and multiplied food for these people who heard His Word. “And they ate and were satisfied.” This desolate place, this desert, became a garden on that day, dear friends, with miraculous food, with the lush Word of God forgiving sins and visiting vengeance upon, and taking revenge against, the serpent. “Did God actually say?” Yes, He did, dear friends. Yes He did! And He does.
This miracle was so much more than a demonstration of our Lord’s divinity. It was also a visitation of His divine compassion, a vindication of the divine image in which we were created. And it is a picture of the kingdom of God, this garden of the Holy Sanctuary that stands in the midst of the desert, this Most Holy Place of life that stands defiant against sin, death, and the serpent. For this is a place where the devil’s taunt, “Did God actually say?” is answered both with “This is the Word of the Lord, thanks be to God” from our lips, and the deathblow of the Seed of the woman upon the serpent’s head. For God didn’t just say, but “the Word became flesh,” dwelt among us, and kept the promise that the Lord God made to the serpent: “The Seed of the woman will crush your head.”
It was by eating in defiance against the Word of God that we sinned and brought death. And Jesus, the Word made flesh, invites us, by His gracious Word, to “take, eat… take drink… for the forgiveness of sins.” Jesus promises us: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”
For our Lord took up our curse: “You shall surely die,” by dying for us, in our place, crushing the hateful head of the beast by the love of the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the World” – who has compassionate mercy upon us. And His body was laid in a garden tomb, dear friends. A garden in the midst of death. And he emerged on the third day, the Son rising in this garden in the east.
And we who eat His flesh and drink His blood have eternal life. He will raise us on the last day – calling us out of the midst of our tombs, to bring us to the Most Holy Place of a new garden, a place where hunger and want are abolished, where draughts are no more, where suffering and death will be eternally undone, and the devil and his lies thrown into the lake of fire.
St. Paul reflects upon this Good News of Jesus Christ, reminding us that the fall made us “slaves of sin.” And the holy apostle asks: “What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” Yes, indeed, that was the fall. That was what threatened the crowds who came to hear Jesus. It is the serpent seeking to sever us from the compassion and mercy and the beautiful creation of God. But listen to how beautiful this is, dear friends! Listen to what Jesus has done for you: “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”
Indeed, Adam and Eve served God with joy in the garden, and we have been freed from our service to the serpent Satan in order to enjoy the eternal freedom of the service of the Lord God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – into whose name we have been baptized. The lush waters of the garden of Eden: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, looked forward to the lush waters of Holy Baptism: the water of life of which Jesus spoke, which is promised in the Book of Revelation (where we also learn that it is offered, “without price.” You can’t buy it because it is superabundant). It is ours by grace, by the tender compassion of our God, for Jesus says, “I have compassion on the crowd.” That is why He feeds us with the bread of life. And we eat, and are satisfied – even unto eternity.
Jesus has done it, dear friends. He has crushed the serpent’s head at the cross, and He continues to do so in compassion for us. Jesus fed the crowd, and He feeds this crowd. And if people really knew the treasure of the feast that we are about to join here in this Holy Place, there would be thousands risking life and limb to hear the Word, and to eat and drink the blood of the Lamb. So let’s tell them, dear friends. Let’s tell them the good news. Let’s tell them that “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Let’s bring them from the desert to the garden. Let’s bring them to the cross and the empty garden tomb. Let’s bring them to this Holy Place where the Word visits us and fulfills His promise, where Jesus multiplies Himself as the bread of life. Let’s bring them home again, to this garden in which the Son rises, shining the radiance of His face upon this altar that figuratively faces east. Let’s defiantly throw the waters of our baptism in the serpent’s face, joyfully singing the Word that makes it a baptism, believing the promise, and crushing the devil’s head with our confession: “This is the Word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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