Man lives on bread, but not bread alone

Sermon for Laetare – Lent 4

Isaiah 49:8-13  +  Galatians 4:21-31  +  John 6:1-15

There’s an intentional focus on food during this Lenten season. Bread for the body. There’s also an intentional focus on demons. To fight against the demons and win, we need more than bread for the body. We need bread for the soul. On the first Sunday in Lent, Jesus had been deprived of food for 40 days and nights. And when the devil tried to get Him to turn some stones into bread, you remember His reply? Man does live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Bread for the body, and spiritual bread—the Word of God—for the soul.

In today’s Gospel we see God’s recognition that, yes, man does live on bread, and He graciously provides it. But we also learn that man does not live on bread alone, and yet, tragically, the people in our Gospel wanted nothing but bread from Jesus, who offered them so much more.

Jesus was trying to get away from the crowds for a little while. He got in boat with His disciples and crossed the sea to a deserted place. But the multitudes saw Him leave and left on foot to meet Him on the other side. It tells us why: Because they saw all the signs He was doing and they wanted to see more. Some of them arrived before Jesus did. Others kept coming. It says in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, wandering aimlessly, attracted by the signs Jesus did.

So the other Gospels tell us that Jesus spent the rest of the day teaching them and healing their diseases. When evening came, the disciples suggested that Jesus dismiss them so that they could go buy bread for themselves; they weren’t that far from town; there’s no indication that they were too poor to buy themselves a meal; they would have been all right. But Jesus had one more gift to give them. After all, as John tells us, Passover was near. Passover—and with it, the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

People’s minds should have been fixed on that important annual celebration, just as most of us think about and plan 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, and of Moses leading them through the wilderness where God provided bread for them every day in the form of Manna. 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 offers the true Bread from heaven: Himself as the one Mediator between God and man. There it is again: bread for the body and bread for the soul.

First, He tests Philip and the other disciples. Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat? He wanted Philip not to despair, but to trust with hope that the One who asked the question had the power and the desire to provide the answer Himself.

Philip admitted the simple truth. We don’t have the money. We can’t provide bread for all these people. Andrew then came and pointed out the extent of their ability. Five loaves of bread and two fish. Here’s what we do have, Jesus, but human reason says it’s not enough. Andrew does well to put the question back to Jesus. “What are they among so many?”

Then we have the miracle itself. The people sitting down in groups of 50 (which made it easy to count them and tell us how many there were). Jesus gave thanks to the Father and started handing out bread and fish to 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, “crumbs from the master’s table” with which to feed the poor afterwards.

Yes, man does live on bread. But who provides it? Where does it come from? It comes from God; it comes from Jesus, the Son of God who is true God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. It comes from God usually through parents or through hard work. But God can also rain it 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 the Giver. 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 the poor and needy.

But recognize that man does not live on bread alone. Go ahead and eat your bread. Eat it every day. Eat it for years to come. But you know very well that eating bread every day—taking care of your body, obeying every one of the doctor’s orders—still won’t keep you alive on this earth for more than a few more decades, maybe less. Your body is dying, no matter how healthy you are at the moment. You were conceived in your mother’s womb with an expiration date, known only to God, with death already programmed into your genes, not because of some evolutionary mechanism, but because of sin. Eating bread regularly just means prolonging the time until your death. It does nothing for your soul—for your eternal well-being.

Your soul lives only on “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” as Moses and Jesus said. God’s word is what keeps your soul alive. 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 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.

The multitudes in our Gospel today wanted bread alone, like most of the rest of the Jews, 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 instead of the Second Covenant of grace and of the Promise of forgiveness through Christ. The people in our Gospel believed that Jesus was the Prophet who was to come, but all they wanted from and expected from the Christ was an earthly king to feed their bellies, to fight their battles, to give them a pleasant and glorious 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. This is the kind of Savior we want! One who can give us bread for our bodies! And so, as we learn from the rest of John 6, those very crowds walked away from Jesus the very next day when He insisted on offering them Himself, not as an earthly bread-king, but as the Bread from heaven who would give His very flesh and blood to reconcile them with God and bestow on them, not an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly one.

Like those crowds, people today are happy to follow Jesus, if it’s the Jesus who feeds the poor, who gives us a better life, who makes us feel good. They’re happy to have a Jesus who didn’t create the world, who doesn’t demand an accounting for sin. They’re happy to follow a Jesus who makes people behave better, who works together with other religions to solve social problems, who doesn’t judge. Such a Jesus the people of this world might have for a king.

But the real Jesus appeared, teaching that He is the Creator and the Judge, the very Son of God, who came to call poor sinners to repentance, to recognize their sins and to be terrified by 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 through faith in Him. The real Christ calls people to repent and be baptized, and to sit at the feet of the pastors whom He has sent, 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 your souls and as the source of a life that’s so much bigger than what we can see here.

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

And so our joyful Gospel of Jesus’ compassion and providence for the 5,000 ends on a sad note, the note of a gift that was given and then squandered, a sign that was given and went unrecognized, a Savior who offered Himself to men who then turned away from Him because He offered more than they were willing to receive.

Be careful not to follow their example. Look to God for daily bread and receive it with thanksgiving. But even more importantly, look to Christ for something better than bread: 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 Sacrament. Then and only then will you be able to “rejoice with Jerusalem,” because the true Jerusalem is not below, but above, the home of all the blessed who are saved by faith alone in Christ Jesus. Amen.