A good Master who gives gifts in the end

Sermon for Trinity 7

Romans 6:19-23  +  Mark 8:1-9

Slavery is the picture St. Paul uses in today’s Epistle. But the picture he uses isn’t humans enslaving other humans by force. It’s a picture of two “masters,” and everyone serves one of the two, although St. Paul also admits that this analogy is far from perfect; he uses it only because of our human weakness and inability to grasp how things really are. Still, the Holy Spirit chose to use that picture, and, according to the apostle, there are some comparisons to be made. The fact is, everyone is slave, either of sin or of God.

Like the rest of mankind, we were all born into sin’s slavery, unable to serve the true God, unable to truly love Him, unable to truly love our neighbor. Adam and Eve willingly and foolishly chose this slavery, and now their children are born into it, bound with spiritual chains to sin, unable to free ourselves. We could do things that outwardly appeared good, but everything was tainted by selfishness on the inside, and very many things were evil on the outside, too. It’s an ugly slavery, and the worst part of it is, people who are slaves to sin don’t even recognize it as slavery, don’t even want to be rid of it, but on the contrary, Paul says, You presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness. You offered, you volunteered your mind and the parts of your body to unclean thoughts, words, and acts. Paul asks, What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? How did you benefit from presenting your members as slaves to uncleanness? What benefits did you reap? Maybe some immediate pleasure, some instant satisfaction, some temporary relief, popularity, fulfillment, the love of the world. But the end of those things, Paul says, the end or the result of that slavery of sin, is death, which paid out like wages at the end of the day by sin, the slave master. And it’s a death that doesn’t end when your heart stops beating or when your body decays. After your body dies, it only gets worse for those who die in sin’s slavery.

But, Paul says to the Roman Christians, you have been freed from sin and made slaves to God. You were freed from sin, justified from sin, through faith in the Son of God who has set you free. As we saw last week, you were baptized into Christ’s death, baptized out of sin’s servitude and into God’s. It wasn’t a choice you simply made or could make, to leave sin’s slavery. It was God’s Holy Spirit working through the Gospel, turning your will, which was enslaved to sin, toward Christ, the Deliverer from sin. In that sense, by the conversion worked by the Holy Spirit, you willingly entered God’s “slavery,” which is much more like freedom than like slavery, because, instead of a whip cracking over your back, instead of threat after threat after threat, it’s the word of God that calls on His believing, forgiven children, to present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to holiness. Now, the immediate results of this slavery may not be pleasant—the cross, self-denial, the world’s hatred, the devil’s attacks. But the end of this slavery, the slavery to God, is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord, as the gift of God.

Now, what kind of master do we have in the Lord Jesus, and is there any relief at all before that final gift of Paradise at the end of our service? Those questions are answered very simply in today’s Gospel of the feeding of the four thousand. Jesus a kind, good, and compassionate Master who gives good gifts to His people after they’ve suffered with Him for a little while in the wilderness.

Remember, it wasn’t all the same people who followed Jesus around Galilee and Judea. The crowd of 5,000 men, plus women and children, who were fed by Jesus on a previous occasion were a much different crowd. They went out to Jesus to see signs and wonders. They went out for healing and for entertainment, not for listening. They were slaves of their boredom. Slaves of their bellies. But the 4,000 were a different group, a different crowd. They didn’t run out to where Jesus was to see signs and wonders. They didn’t follow Him out there to get their sicknesses healed. They went to hear Him preach the Word of God, to learn from Him, to “remain with Him.” They were faithful followers. They had become slaves of righteousness.

But that came at a cost. In order to follow Jesus, they had to go far from their homes, out into the wilderness, into the desert, where food was scarce. And they remained with Him for three days. Would you spend three days out in the desert listening to sermons all day long? Not a “revival” meeting. No music. No dancing. No band or music playing to keep you entertained, and certainly no food vendors. Just Jesus and His Word.

After those three days, Jesus saw that they had no food, and He had compassion on them. Notice, the people weren’t complaining. It was a very different group of people from those Israelites who followed Moses in the wilderness east of Egypt. These people weren’t complaining or grumbling. They had found contentment just in being there with Jesus, content with whatever He provided. But Jesus saw their need.

He sees yours, too. Each one you. He knows before you do what you need in your life right now. Sometimes He leads His people out into the wilderness, as it were. He takes us to a place, into a situation that’s difficult, even painful. Presenting our members as slaves to righteousness often involves hardship, without any instant gratification. But His compassion for you who have been baptized into His death is surely no less than was His compassion for those who spent those days with Him in the wilderness. His love for you is real, and so is His help.

Jesus saw those thousands of people before Him and said to His disciples, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have already remained with me for three days, and they have nothing to eat. And if I send them away to their homes without eating, they will faint on the road, for some of them have come a long way. This is how the Master views His slaves, not as tools to be used for His own good, not as worthless creatures for whom He cares nothing, although our sins have earned nothing but wrath. No, He views His slaves as precious and has compassion on them, always.

He mentions this the people’s need to His disciples, giving them a chance to exercise and show their faith. They didn’t. They forgot about Jesus’ power. They forgot about the feeding of the 5,000 and how easy it was for Jesus supply what was needed. And we have to be thankful for the disciples and their forgetfulness, because it affects us, too. So weak we are because of sin, so incapable of saving ourselves, we could never believe in Jesus or keep trusting in Him if we hadn’t been born again of water and the Spirit, if we weren’t constantly preserved by the Holy Spirit’s power as He works through preaching and the Sacraments to stir up our faith again, to remedy our forgetfulness and remind us to look to Jesus in every need.

This time, instead of five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus blessed seven loaves of bread and a few fish. He gave thanks, gave them to His disciples, and had them feed all the people with so much food that, again, there were baskets of leftover pieces that would be shared with still more people later on. Such is the power and the providence of the Master toward His slaves who have suffered a little while in order to remain with Him.

As we said, the slavery of sin often gives immediate rewards, and those rewards can be enticing. But in the end, it’s a brutal, ugly slavery, and it ends in death. On the other hand, the slavery to righteousness can be hard, and not much reward is seen at first. But eventually, Jesus, the gentle slave-master, rewards those who are in His service with a demonstration of true love and compassion and with abundant blessing. The Lord will provide relief when He knows it’s needed. And until He provides it, He is still sending out His disciples, His ministers, to distribute the Word and the Sacraments, to nourish our souls and to give us the strength we need to endure until the promised relief comes.

It’s a very different kind of slavery, isn’t it?, this slavery to God, this slavery to righteousness, where the slave-master loves His slaves so much that He gave His only-begotten Son into death in order to save us from death and bring us into His service, which means being adopted as His children, which includes His loving care and providence along the way, and which ends with the gift of eternal life. Whenever the burden of this slavery seems too hard to bear, whenever the wilderness of this life seems too desolate, remember the words of the good Master: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. Amen.