Put your body and soul in God’s hands

Sermon for Laetare – Lent 4

Galatians 4:21-31  +  John 6:1-15

You remember just a few weeks ago, when we began this Lenten season—seems like a whole different world today from what it was then—we heard about when Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. The devil’s first temptation was to get Jesus to turn some stones into bread, to focus only on His immediate bodily need, which was to eat after fasting for 40 days. He was very hungry. Now, if He had simply been committed to following the best recommendations of proven science on how to care for the body, He would have fed it if at all possible. In fact, He wouldn’t have deprived it of food for 40 days in the first place! But these were the words Jesus threw back in the devil’s face: It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. What does that mean? It means you can’t focus only on the body, for as much as the devil wants you to. Eating bread and supplying the needs of the body aren’t all that’s necessary for life. You have to listen to what God says, believe every word that God says, do what God directs you to do, even if it seems to deprive you of the needs of the body for a time. Why? Because God is the Maker of our bodies. He knows more about them than we do. He knows how to preserve them better than we do, both by natural means and by supernatural means, if necessary. And He also knows that we are body and soul creatures—that if the soul is unhealthy, if the soul is unfed, if the soul is far from God or fighting against God, then it will have both temporal and potentially eternal effects on the body, too.

How does this apply to us right now? Well, the whole world is laser focused on the goal of preserving people’s bodies from one particular threat, to the extent of pretending that all the other needs of humanity must fall in line behind that singular goal, including the needs of the soul, which is why many states have resorted to ordering churches to close. The devil would love more than anything to have Christians ultra-focused on the body, thinking about nothing other than how many germs might be in the room, or on your hands, or in your bodies, or in the bodies of the people around you. And while he has you focused there, he is more than happy to have you believe that the lives of 70 million people or more are in your hands, to save by doing enough, or to doom if you fail to do enough to keep your germs to yourself.

But Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We simply cannot live to preserve these bodies at all costs, as our only or even as our primary goal. We cannot live at the mercy of unseen contagions and potential contaminations. We cannot let the devil put such a burden of the Law on us, as if man’s fate were in man’s hands, as if we sinned against God and our neighbor every time we forgot to cover our cough, or gathered with 11 people instead of 10. God knows our weakness. God knows our frailty. God knows our susceptibility to illness because of the sin that infects our race. He knows that we’re all dying from the moment we’re conceived. And His solution wasn’t to send His Son into our flesh to teach us better hygiene or even to give us better medicine. His solution was death—the death of His only-begotten Son on the cross, and our baptismal death into His death, through which we receive the forgiveness of each and every one of our sins, together with God’s love and favor and promise of protection from earthly and from spiritual danger. All guilt is removed, and eternal life for both body and soul is guaranteed.

But no one should conclude from that that God doesn’t care about our bodies here and now or doesn’t see to it that we have the things we need for our bodies when we need them. That’s what today’s Gospel is all about, and it’s a refreshing Gospel for us to consider this morning, with its own applications to our times.

Jesus had spent the day healing the diseases and sicknesses of those who came out to Him on the other side of the lake. They had heard how powerful He was over sickness and how willing to heal. They had “seen the signs,” John says, and so they went out to Him to see some more and to have their own diseases healed, and the diseases of their loved ones.

By the end of the day—just the one—the people were surely getting hungry, but they weren’t focused on that, or at least we’re not told they were. You know who was focused on their bodily needs? First, it was Jesus’ disciples. Matthew’s account clarifies that they first came to Jesus, out of concern for the bodily health of the crowds and suggested that He send them away so that they could go take care of themselves. They genuinely cared about the people’s bodily well-being and suggested what they thought was best. Nothing wrong with that.

But what man thinks is best, even what Christians sometimes think is best, is not always God’s idea of what’s best. Jesus had better plans. He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do. Jesus had another lesson to teach at the end of the day, and it became a pretty famous lesson.

Philip and the other apostles needed to learn it, too. They couldn’t imagine how they could fulfill the bodily needs of so many people—5,000 men, plus women and children. Philip simply concluded, it can’t be done. Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little. Andrew wondered how it could possibly be done. There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many? The math just didn’t add up. It was clear: human efforts were useless. No matter how much those well-intentioned apostles wanted to help, man didn’t have it in his power to provide for the needs of so many bodies.

But the Man Jesus did. No problem whatsoever. Five loaves of bread and two small fish defied all the laws of science and of nature. They multiplied at the word of Jesus to fill the bellies of over 5,000 people, with 12 large baskets of pieces left over. Everybody received more than enough.

Now, the lesson the crowds were supposed to learn was that Jesus cared for their bodies just as much as He cared for their souls; that He was the Almighty God who was powerful to provide for their bodies and for their souls; that they should put their bodies and their souls in His capable hands and trust in Him to be their Savior from sin and all its consequences.

It isn’t what they learned, though, unfortunately. John is the only Evangelist to tell us what happened at the very end of the day. But Jesus knew that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, and so He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone. Why would they do such a thing? The rest of the chapter tells us why. They followed Jesus to the other side of the lake and found Him and asked Him why He left. He answered, Truly I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

They wanted Jesus to keep providing miraculously for their bodies, but they weren’t interested in having Him care for their souls. They didn’t believe in Him as the One sent by God to bear their sins, to earn forgiveness, to give them eternal life. They didn’t want to hear or live by His Word. They only wanted an immediate solution to their physical ailments.

It doesn’t work that way with God. He insists on being the God of both your body and your soul and promises to take care of both. He has already taken drastic measures to redeem you, body and soul, and Christ will continue to run the universe from the right hand of the Father to see that you end up safe with Him, body and soul. Trust in Him to do what’s right for you at all times, to work all things together for your good, because that’s His promise. And don’t get so focused on taking care of the needs of your own body that you forget all God has done and all God has promised to do to care for your body and soul, including the help He promises right here in His house.

Now, as I told you all in the e-mail I sent this week, I’m offering you no guarantees that you will not get sick if you come to church during this time of pandemic. I don’t think you will, but you may. I’m not telling you that you must come, even if you feel uncomfortable coming. I’m simply telling you that, if we all die tomorrow, it’ll still be OK for all who trust in Christ Jesus. I’m simply telling you that you’re not tempting God by coming to hear His Word, and you’re not sinning against your neighbor by being here (unless you know you’re contagious or have good reason to suspect that you are). I’m telling you that, even if you die because of it, it’s a good thing to be in the presence of Jesus. Where two or three are gathered in His name, there He is in our midst as we come together to receive His gifts, to seek His help, to praise His name, to worship Him, to honor Him, and to confess Him. Put your trust in Him, not in your own safety precautions. Put more trust in Him than you put fear in a disease that is ultimately His to control.

And finally, in the midst of it all, don’t forget to rejoice in the Lord, O Jerusalem, children of the promise, because as we sang today, As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His people from this time forth and forever. Amen.