Bread with a higher purpose

Sermon for Laetare – Lent 4

Galatians 4:21-31  +  John 6:1-15

A lot of people are giving up bread these days as part of their diet. And not just those who have a gluten allergy or an intolerance for wheat. A lot of people are giving up bread altogether, because of potential contamination with harmful chemicals, or because of all the starches and carbs it has, or because some of them hold to a paleo, evolutionary view that man was never meant to consume grains or the breads that are made from them.

From a Biblical perspective, bread itself is a good thing, a gift of God, something for which we are taught to ask for in the Lord’s Prayer, something for which we ought to give thanks to God, even if there’s something wrong with some people’s bodies that makes it impossible for them to eat it.

But, bread can also become harmful if a person consumes too much of it. It can even become an idol, if a person becomes too focused on it, if he becomes more interested in acquiring bread for his body than he is in serving God with his body, or than he is in feeding his soul. As Moses said to the Israelites, as Jesus later said to the devil, Man does live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Here “bread” represents food of all kinds. The body needs food. It has a purpose for sustaining our bodies. But man is more than the body. We’re body and soul creatures, and the soul needs to eat, too. And in today’s Gospel, we see a higher purpose for the bread that Jesus provided, although that purpose was not fulfilled for everyone who ate.

The feeding of the five thousand took place at a time when Jesus was trying to get away from the crowds for a little while. He had gotten into boat with His disciples and crossed the sea to a deserted place. But the multitudes had seen Him leave and had left on foot to meet Him on the other side of the lake. John tells us why they pursued Him: Because they saw all the signs He was doing and they wanted to see more. And they wanted to have their bodily illnesses healed. Mark’s Gospel tells us that Jesus had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, wandering aimlessly, attracted by the “flashing lights”—by all the miracles Jesus was doing.

So, as the other Gospels tell us, Jesus spent the rest of the day teaching them and healing their diseases. And when evening came, Jesus had one more lesson to teach, both to His disciples and to the crowd—a lesson that centered on bread. After all, as John tells us, Passover was near. Passover—and with it, the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

People’s minds should have been wandering over to that important annual celebration, just as most of us think about and plan ahead for Christmas, and (hopefully) also Easter, weeks in advance. Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread—a reminder of God’s physical providence in redeeming Israel from slavery in Egypt, of the unleavened bread they ate in their haste to leave, and of Moses leading them through the wilderness where God provided bread for them every day in the form of Manna, teaching them to rely, not on their own strength to provide for themselves, but only on God and His Word, for everything. But the Passover was also a reminder of God’s spiritual providence in His promise to redeem Israel by the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, the Prophet who is greater than Moses, who would offer the true Bread from heaven, the sustenance that mankind needs most of all: Himself as the one Mediator between God and man. There it is again: bread for the body pointing to a higher purpose for the soul.

First, Jesus tests Philip and the other disciples. Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat? They looked to their own ability to buy bread and they knew immediately that they couldn’t possibly provide it. All they found was a boy who had five loaves of bread and two small fish, but, “What are they among so many?” They’re nothing, in the hands of men. But in the hands of the Son of God, they’re more than enough.

Jesus had His disciples seat the people on the grass—5,000 men, plus women and children. Then He took the boy’s bread and fish, gave thanks to the Father for providing this good food, and then started handing out bread and fish to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitudes, and the food just kept coming. All 5,000 ate their fill, with twelve baskets of broken pieces left over, enough to feed still others when they got back to town.

Yes, man does live on bread. That’s how God designed us. But who provides it? Where does it come from? It comes from God the Father; it comes through Jesus, the Son of God and the Word of God. It comes from God usually through parents or through hard work. But God can also rain bread down from heaven or multiply what’s in the pantry, if that’s how He has to keep His promise to provide for His people. Recognize God as the source of your bread. Recognize Jesus as the Giver. And receive your daily bread with thanksgiving. Receive it with gladness. Enjoy it while you have it, and share the leftover pieces with those who need it.

But recognize that bread has a higher purpose than just sustaining your body. It sustains your body so that you can stay alive long enough to be brought to faith in Christ Jesus! It sustains your body so that you may have the chance to hear God’s word, so that you can receive God’s teaching about sin—your sin, and the sin of everyone else, and the sin that has corrupted even nature itself, the sin that will result in the death of your body and the destruction of this earth. Your soul needs to feed on God’s teaching about His grace—His gracious plan of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, His gracious acceptance of all who believe in Christ, His gracious gift of His Holy Spirit to begin a new obedience in the Christian, His gracious help in bearing the cross each and every day, until you reach the goal of the undying life.

Tragically, the multitudes in our Gospel today fixated on bread for its own sake, most of the Jews at that time did, who wanted to stick with Hagar, if you recall the Epistle today from Galatians 4. They wanted to stick with “Jerusalem below,” with the First Covenant of the Law, focused on a living a good life here on earth, instead of the Second Covenant of grace and of the Promise of forgiveness and eternal life through Christ. The people in our Gospel believed that Jesus was the Prophet who was to come, but what most of them wanted from and expected from the Christ was an earthly king to fill their bellies with bread, to fight their battles with political opponents, to give them social justice, a pleasant and comfortable earthly life. As it says at the end of the Gospel, the people who ate the bread were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king. And so, as we learn from the rest of John 6, those very multitudes pursued Jesus to the other side of the lake on the next day, and then quickly abandoned Jesus when He refused to give them more bread, when He insisted on offering them Himself instead, as the living Bread who came down from heaven who would give His very flesh and blood to reconcile them with God and to bestow on them, not an extended earthly life, but an eternal heavenly one.

Like those crowds, people today are happy to follow Jesus, if it’s the Jesus who gives away free things—material things, who gives them a better life, who makes them feel good. They’re happy to have a Jesus who didn’t create the world, who doesn’t demand any sort of obedience or worship. They’re happy to follow a Jesus who does only the things they think He should do, who works together with other religions to solve social problems, who would never pass judgment. Such a Jesus the people of this world might have for a king.

But the real Jesus appeared, teaching that He is the Creator of all, and the Judge of all, the only true God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the One who came to call poor sinners to repentance and to terrify the impenitent with the fiery judgment that awaits. The real Christ came to suffer the judgment we deserved for our sins and to offer forgiveness of sins and eternal life to the penitent and believing. The real Christ calls people to repent and be baptized. He calls them to sit at the feet of the pastors whom He has sent, just as He didn’t distribute the bread and fish to the people directly, but through the hands of the apostles. He calls Christians to be active in a church that teaches His truth purely, to receive His very body and blood in His Sacrament, and to recognize His Word and Sacraments as the true food for the soul and as the source of a life that’s so much bigger than what we can see here.

That Jesus was not accepted then, and He still isn’t accepted now—not by most of the world, even by most of your neighbors, even by many churches that bear His name.

But, by the grace of God, you know better, don’t you? Look to the Lord Jesus for daily bread and receive it from Him with thanksgiving. But remember that the bread He provides serves a higher purpose. Look to Him for the higher things, for the things that last: for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation which He earned for you through His suffering and death, and which He now hands out for free in His Word and Sacraments. Then and only then will you be able to “rejoice with Jerusalem,” not with the earthly Jerusalem that rejects Jesus’ word, but with the Jerusalem above, which is the home of all the blessed who are saved by faith alone in Christ Jesus alone. Amen.