The power to provide bread, but the will to do much more

Sermon for Laetare

Galatians 4:21-31  +  John 6:1-15

At the beginning of this Lenten season, we saw how Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry, deprived of bread by His heavenly Father. You remember what the devil came and suggested at the end of those 40 days? If You are the Son of God, then turn these stones into bread. Jesus didn’t do it, of course. Could He have done it? Well, we see in our Gospel today that He certainly had the power to do it. But, at the time, He didn’t have the will to do it, because even if, on some level, He, as a man, had the will to provide bread for Himself, He knew that His Father didn’t, and Christ’s will, above all else, was to do His Father’s will.

As we see in today’s Gospel, Jesus had the power to provide bread for more than 5,000 people at once, and He also had the will to do it, so He did. But He didn’t have the will to keep providing bread to the people, as they wanted. Instead, He had the will to do much more than that, but they were unwilling. Let’s learn the lessons the Holy Spirit wants to teach us in this account.

All four Evangelists record the feeding of the five thousand. But John records a few details that the others omit, so we should take special note of those. One of those details is that this miracle took place near the time of the Passover. This would be, not Jesus’ final Passover, but His second-to-last one. His popularity had been growing and growing for the first two years of His ministry, but this event would actually mark the beginning of a year of declining support and growing opposition, and we see the main reason why at the end of today’s Gospel.

At the beginning, all was well. The crowds had followed Jesus around the Sea of Galilee and had spent the day with Him, hearing Him teach and having their sicknesses healed. Toward the end of the day, Jesus decided to provide a meal for them, not only as a kindness, but also as another teaching opportunity. He started that teaching with His own disciples, testing them to see if what they had seen and learned from Him over the last two years would provide a good answer to the question, Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?

Now poor Philip had seen Jesus do all sorts of miracles over the past two years. He was one of those first disciples who was there to see Jesus’ first miracle of changing water into wine. But in the moment, when all he sees are thousands of hungry people, he forgets to look to Jesus’ power to help. He thinks only of what man can do. How can we come up with enough money to buy bread for so many? It’s impossible.

Andrew didn’t do much better. He, too, was one of those very first disciples who accompanied Jesus to the wedding at Cana. But all he could focus on was what man can do. What are five loaves of bread and two small fish among so many? Still, a question is better than an outright denial, because it left it up to Jesus to answer the question.

He would empower the disciples to do what they thought they couldn’t do. He would have them provide food for the people. They had the people sit down, as He told them to. They brought the five loaves and two fish to Jesus. Jesus blessed them and broke them, and miraculously multiplied them, but then He had the disciples distribute them to the crowds, as much as anyone wanted.

Jesus’ divine power is obvious. So is His compassion for the crowds that day and for all who trust in Him. There are also some obvious connections made in the text. The way John puts it, Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those who were sitting down, sounds very much like another meal Jesus would be instituting in one year’s time. A meal of bread and wine where Jesus would take bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And from then on, He would not personally distribute His body, but His disciples would do it, just as they did here with the bread and the fish. It seems impossible, that Jesus could actually be giving His body with the bread. But is it more impossible than multiplying five loaves and two fish to feed a multitude?

So the bread makes us think of the bread of Holy Communion, and the combination here of eating bread together with the flesh of the fish is another picture of how Jesus gives His flesh together with the bread. That’s true in a special, sacramental way in Holy Communion. But it’s also true in a spiritual way when we “eat the flesh” and “drink the blood” of Jesus by believing in Him, as He says later in John 6, Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. He’s not talking about Holy Communion there. He’s talking about receiving Him by faith and about the life-giving benefit of believing in Him. And the contrast is striking. Adam and Eve physically ate the flesh of a fruit and brought death on themselves. But Jesus offers Himself to us to eat in a spiritual way as the true Tree of Life who feeds us for eternal life.

That’s the real gift Jesus wanted to provide to the 5,000. He showed them that He had the power to provide bread so that they would recognize Him as their God and Savior who had the will to do so much more, to save them from sin, death, and the devil, and to earn for them the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, and to give those gifts to them by faith in Him.

But that isn’t what they wanted.

After the crowds filled their bellies, we’re told that they recognized Jesus as the Prophet who was to come into the world, as the promised Christ. But they didn’t worship Christ as their God. They didn’t bow down before Him in humility or in repentance. They didn’t ask Him what He wanted for them or from them. What did they do?

Again, John is the only Evangelist to reveal the motives of the people that day. He tells us that Jesus knew that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, so he departed again to the mountain by himself, alone. “This man, this prophet, this Christ has the power to provide bread. So let’s force Him to provide it over and over again. Let’s force Him to be our king, to set up an earthly kingdom where we don’t have to work, where we don’t have to suffer, where we don’t have any enemies. This man has the power to give us everything we want. So let’s make Him do it!”

The arrogance of it, the folly of it, is astounding! But not uncommon. Many people who seek God seek Him as if He were a vending machine that existed for the sole purpose of giving them what they want, when they want it. They aren’t interested in His will, or in His Word, or in His honor. We all have to be careful not to view God that way, but to seek His will, in His Word, for His honor.

And what is God’s will for you? It is His will to provide you with daily bread, though usually not in a miraculous way, to provide you with all you need to sustain this body and life. But He has the will to do much more than that. He has the will to bring you to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. He has the will to lead you safely through this earthly life into a better life after this life. It is not His will to give you Paradise on earth, or immediate deliverance from all sorrow or suffering. If that’s what you seek from Him—earthly pleasures and earthly fulfillment—then you’ll be disappointed in the end, as most of the 5,000 were, who began to turn away from Jesus shortly after He fed their bellies, because He began to make it very clear that He had come to be their Savior from sin and their King whose kingdom is not of this world, when all they wanted was a vending machine.

But you, you who call Jesus your King for the right reasons, with the right expectations, you have every reason to rejoice and be glad, because His will for you remains unchanged. Trust in His power to provide just what you need, no matter how impossible it seems. And trust in His will and His good purpose to give you something far, far better than a mini-Paradise on earth, to give you victory over this world and a place in the true Paradise above. Amen.