The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
About the Loaves Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! In today’s Gospel, God’s Christians felt shock and awe—“*they were utterly astounded*”—when the Lord Jesus walked upon the sea and calmed the raging storm. Why were they so flabbergasted by the miracles of Jesus? “*They were utterly astounded because they did not understand about the loaves; their hearts were hardened*.” Dear Christian friends, In the Holy Communion, your Lord Jesus gives you a number of different gifts every Sunday. · One gift of Holy Communion is the forgiveness of your sins. Jesus so dearly wants you to live and dwell in His forgiveness that He does more than *speak* forgiveness to you. Yes, Jesus forgives through His spoken Words. But Jesus wants you to have more. Jesus also layers forgiveness into bread (like a sandwich) and He stirs forgiveness into wine (like a mixed drink), so that you actually receive into your mouth the same forgiveness you hear spoken into your ears. “*My body… My blood… for the forgiveness of sins*,” says the Lord (Matthew 26:26, 28). · Other gifts of the Holy Communion can be found in the Word “*is.*” When Jesus says, “*This IS My body; this IS My blood,*” He is speaking about His own true, bodily presence in the bread and wine. When you eat the bread and drink the wine, you receive Jesus Himself, crucified and resurrected. When you receive Jesus, you also receive everything that belongs to Jesus, including His Spirit, His undying life, His freedom from sin and temptation, and His death-defying resurrection from the dead. In bread and wine you get to receive everything Jesus is and you get to go where Jesus goes. It is all packed into these Words: “*This IS My body; this IS My blood.*” In today’s Gospel, Jesus wants you to know that He has yet another gift for you in His Holy Communion. Today’s Gospel connects us to the Holy Communion by mentioning the loaves: “*They were utterly astounded because they did not understand about the loaves*.” This phrase, “*the loaves*,” refers us back to last Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 6:30-44), where Jesus fed 5,000 men with only a few loaves. Deliberately using the same Words that we hear every Sunday in the celebration of the Holy Communion, Jesus “*looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people*” (Mark 6:41). Why were the disciples so “*utterly astounded*” in today’s Gospel? “*They were utterly astounded because they did not understand about the loaves*.” Stated another way, if these men had grasped the significance and importance of last week’s meal-miracle, they would NOT have felt so astounded and surprised when they saw Jesus walking on the water and calming the storm in today’s Gospel. The loaves were meant to give the disciples perspective. The loaves were meant to give the disciples a way of thinking about and understanding the other things they experience in life (compare Mark 8:17-21). If it is true that “*they were utterly astounded because they did not understand about the loaves*,” then it is equally true that, if they DID understand about the loaves, then they would NOT have been surprised by our Lord’s miraculous power over water and storm. Today’s Gospel also explains why the disciples “*did not understand about the loaves*” and I think this point is especially helpful to you and to me. The disciples did not understand because “*their hearts were hardened*.” We must be careful to understand this point well: · When today’s Gospel says “*their hearts were hardened*,” it does NOT mean that these disciples were stony unbelievers who rejected the Words and promises of God. They had heard and believed. They themselves had participated in the powerful miracle of the Gospel (Mark 6:7-13). They had already witnessed many miracles of Jesus (Mark 1:29-35), including that earlier time when He had calmed a different storm (Mark 4:35-41). · When today’s Gospel says, “*their hearts were hardened*,” these Words describe the way I very much am—and perhaps you also. The disciples “*hearts were hardened*” in the sense that they did not fully understand; they could not grasp the full importance of Jesus in the midst of them. The faith of these disciples—like my own faith; perhaps also like your faith—the faith of these disciples still needed to grow in its trust and in its understanding. That is why I said earlier that today’s Gospel is showing us another one of the many gifts Jesus gives to us in His Holy Communion. As you already heard, today’s Gospel connects us to the Holy Communion by mentioning the loaves from the Feeding of the 5,000: “*They were utterly astounded because they did not understand about the loaves*.” Stated in another way, · if these men could have grasped the significance and importance of the loaves, they would NOT have felt so astounded and surprised when they saw Jesus walking on the water and calming the storm. · if you and I can wrap our minds more completely around our Lord’s miracle of Holy Communion in our midst—if we can grow in faith concerning the Holy Communion Jesus serves us—then very little will ever make us feel astounded, surprised, overwhelmed or dismayed. 1. What if we were to see our Lord’s Word make a terrible thunderstorm end instantly, as happened in today’s Gospel? What if we watched the sun stand still, as happened for Joshua (Joshua 10), or an army of angels shining in the darkness, as those who sang our Lord’s birth (Luke 2:13)? UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE LOAVES. Today’s Gospel wants us to think that spectacular miracles in the sun and sky are small and inconsequential and essentially nothing compared to the miracle of the Holy Communion in our midst. 2. Do you think this world is getting worse and never better? Does the growing popularity of vile and abhorrent things make you worry about the sort of future your children will have for raising their children? UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE LOAVES. Help your children to understand about the loaves. Even if the entire ship of the earth might sink beneath the waves (as it happened in Genesis 6-8), all God’s Christians shall nevertheless float, so to speak, with the bread upon the waters (Ecclesiastes 11:1). As it is written in the Psalm, “*The Lord sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters*” (Psalm 18:16). 3. No one likes to hear about this, but our “almighty American dollar” could one day collapse so far that it becomes worth less than Monopoly money. What if each of us gets left nothing but unpayable debt and indescribable hardship? What if we should lose everything, right down to clothing and shoes, food and drink? UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE LOAVES. The Holy Communion stands among us as our God’s steadfast assurance that all is not lost and it never shall be! He provides forgiveness, life and salvation—all upon a tiny morsel of bread. He is more than able to provide the morsel itself! Again from the Book of the Psalms, “*The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing*” (Psalm 34:10). Today’s Gospel is a very important Gospel for us Christians to hear and to cherish. A bad thing happened to the disciples: “*They were utterly astounded because they did not understand about the loaves; their hearts were hardened*.” · First, this Gospel uses the miracle feeding the 5,000 in order to teach us what we should think concerning the Holy Communion—that the Holy Communion is a far greater miracle than all other miracles combined. · Second, this Gospel calls upon us to soften our hearts and to grow in the faith that God has so graciously given to us, in order that we may comfortably trust our Lord through all events and in every circumstance. · Finally, this Gospel also teaches us to use the Holy Communion as a way of thinking about everything else we experience or encounter in heaven and on earth. Why? Because Jesus comes to you and into you through the Holy Communion. Through this miraculous meal, Jesus makes you able to look at all things without fear, so that you may say with confidence and joy, “*The One who is in* [me] *is greater than the one who is in the world*” (1 John 4:4).
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