Text: Mark 6:35-56
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
“This is a desolate place,” the disciples point out to Jesus, “and the hour is late.” They rather abruptly tell Jesus to “send [the crowds] away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But our Lord replies back to them equally abruptly: “You give them something to eat.”
This little exchange sums up our fallen world, and how we are sustained in the midst of it. “This is a desolate place, and the hour is late,” dear friends. We are in the fallen world and in the last days. We are waiting for the consummation of eternity, and we are wandering around in the desert, in a world of want and starvation. But Jesus has given the church food with which to feed the starving world. And Jesus has ordered His ministers to hand out the Bread of Life. This saying of our Lord: “You give them something to eat,” could be read at ordinations. This is what our Lord told St. Peter: “Feed My sheep” (John 21:15-17).
Our Lord gives us food that doesn’t merely satisfy the body, but fills us, and even fulfills us – even unto eternity: His body and blood. And we will leave this desolate place, led by our Joshua, into the land of milk and honey, the promised land, our eternal Zion, the New Jerusalem – where there will be no more hunger and no more thirst. For “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Rev 21:4).
The Lord takes the scarcity that plagues our world, that causes poverty, that causes suffering, that causes death – and He removes it by means of His creative power: multiplying the loaves and fishes not merely to the point of satisfaction, but including baskets full of superabundance. And indeed, we “give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth forever” (Ps 107:1). For in the Lord’s Supper, He continues to multiply His grace by consecrating bread and wine in a multiplicitous blessing that has no end. Indeed, our Lord promises, just after commissioning the church to “make disciples” by sending out pastors to baptize and teach: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).
Jesus is with us here in this desolate place and at this late hour. Our crucified Lord continues to multiply His flesh and His blood among us with the ease with which He fed thousands from five loaves and two fish. He feeds all of humanity, starving for eternal life, thirsting for forgiveness, on the multiplied gifts of His very body, the Bread of Life, and His very blood, shed for the life of the world (John 6:51), for the forgiveness of sins (Matt 26:28).
And we are not only satisfied, dear friends, but there is an abundance left over, as generations yet unborn join us in this desolate place, and in this late hour. Jesus arranges us into groups of hundreds and fifties, Christian congregations of every time and place, gathered around His Word and His sacraments, looking to the shepherds, the ministers, who indeed, ordered by Jesus, give us something to eat. And in the preaching of the Word and in the administration of, and participation in, the sacraments, dear friends, we are indeed satisfied. Eternally satisfied!
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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