Lent 4 [John 6:1-15] (10-Mar-2013)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (10am, lay reading), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (2pm) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (4pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (John 6:1-15)

Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

In Exodus 16, we read about how the Israelites grumbled against God, and how God rained down bread from heaven for them to eat. In the evening they gathered quail to eat, and in the morning there was manna. The manna was a fine, flake-like bread which tasted like wafers made with honey.

God had done wonderful things in the presence of the Israelites. He had send destructive plagues to the Egyptians so that Pharaoh would let the people go. He led them through the Red Sea. And still after all of this, the people started to grumble against God to Moses because they were hungry.

And the same God that was able to rescue them was also able to feed them. He sent them manna and quail. This is such an important thing for us to remember: The same God that was able to rescue them was also able to feed them.

And the same thing happens in our reading today – Jesus is the God who rescues us. He is the only God who dies on the cross for us. He is the only God who rises from the dead for us. And the same God who is able to rescue us from sin, death and the devil, is also able to feed us.

In rich societies such as ours, this teaching is often the one that is forgotten. People are quite happy with the fact that Jesus has died for them and rose again for them, but people think that they have to provide their own food, that they have to build their own lives. Psalm 127 says: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.

The only reason why you have your daily bread to eat is because God himself provides it. The psalms say: All the earth looks to you, and you give them food in due season. You open wide your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

But there is a special teaching in our reading today, and that is that Jesus is sitting at that same right hand of God that feeds all the creatures on the earth. It’s not simply God the Father, by himself, who feeds his creatures, but he does this together with his only Son, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, flesh and blood, and also together with the Holy Spirit. And so, this man, this human being, who is sitting in front of these 5000 people in our reading, is the same God who has been giving them their daily bread every day.

So let’s never forget about this fact: that God provides our daily bread for us. In fact, Jesus Christ himself provides our daily bread for us.

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The God who is able to rescue is also able to feed us. This teaching is expressed in our liturgy every Sunday in the confession of sins, where we say: “I said, I will confess my sins to the Lord, and he forgave the guilt of my sin.” We confess together that God is able to rescue us, and in fact, more than that: he promises to rescue us, and actually does rescue us through the cross of Jesus, and through the forgiveness of sins which is spoken to you in the church.

But before that, we say: “My help is in the name of the Lord. He made heaven and earth.”

We confess that God helps us, and that he is our Creator. We say that he is not just the one who rescues us from sin and forgives us, but he is also the one who looks after us day by day, who formed us and shaped us, and gives us food and drink every day, who gives us place to live, who gives us family and friends, and everything that we need. He made heaven and earth.

So each week when we say the confession of sins together, we speak these two psalm verses together: My help is in the name of the Lord: he made heaven and earth. I said, I will confess my sins to the Lord: and he forgave the guilt of my sin.

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So in our Gospel reading today we read:

Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.

We read that the people were following Jesus because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. The people weren’t necessarily following him because they were listening to his teaching and were devoted to his words, but they saw with their eyes what he was doing. They were impressed with what he was doing, and they followed him.

But this was no ordinary crowd. Jesus went up on a mountain a bit with his disciples and together they could look and see all these people.

We read:

Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”

There’s a great problem here. There are so many people! Never for a moment would any of Jesus’ disciples probably thought that he intended to feed them all! And nevertheless, Jesus says to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

In our Christian life, many times we will find ourselves in impossible situations. Sometimes, we will find ourselves in situations which we would never expect. And yet, we read: Jesus himself knew what he would do.

How many times have we found ourselves in the most extraordinary coincidences? How many times have people escaped death by such a close shave? Maybe you’ve been in a car accident, or there was some other thing that happened and everything just worked out in such a way that your life was spared. Jesus himself knew what he would do.

But sometimes, we might feel that God requires of us such a heavy task or such a heavy duty. We examine our lives, and our place and station in life. We might be a mother or a father, a son or a daughter, a worker or an employer, or a husband or a wife, or a teacher, a student, a tradesperson, a politician, or a office worker, cleaner, doctor, we might be a pensioner, or unemployed, or whatever. Each person is placed by God in a unique situation. And God calls us to shine his light into the world. Then we read the 10 commandments: You shall have no other gods. Honour your father and your mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.

And then we might find ourselves in an impossible situation. For example, what about a doctor? Victoria has the worst abortion laws in the world. If a woman goes to a doctor in this state, and wants an abortion, even up until 40 weeks, but the doctor is against it, he is required by law to refer her to a doctor who will approve an abortion. Now a doctor doesn’t have to be a Christian to believe that the person in that woman’s womb is a true human being with rights, and consideration needs to be given to the health and well-being of both people. If the doctor writes a referral to another doctor, he is a party to the killing of that child and has approved the murder, even if the state doesn’t call it a murder. But if the doctor doesn’t write a referral to another doctor, he or she could go to court. So, what to do? What are conscientious doctors supposed to do? Should they just leave the medical profession altogether? Once upon a time, doctors used to have to uphold the Hippocratic Oath, which included a part which said that a doctor would refuse to give a drug that ended a person’s life, including an abortion medicine, let alone to perform a life-ending operation. Now, a doctor’s career is threatened if they do uphold the Hippocratic oath.

You can see that this is not easy. Recently, there was a situation in China, where a 2 year old girl was run over by a truck and no-one stopped to help her for hours, until a garbage lady picked her up. No-one did the right thing, because the Chinese courts had often blamed people who helped people who were hurt, as if they were the ones who did the crime. And so people were afraid—but the child died. Now, I could give all sorts of case studies, but there are things like this that happen all the time. We are caught between the world in which we live, and remaining faithful to God and his word.

You see, we as Christians are always called to do what is right, to abide by the 10 commandments, no matter what the consequences. Sometimes we are simply called to say “yes” and sometimes we are simply called to say “no”. Sometimes we will fail, and not say what we should have said, and when that happens, let’s pray that just as when Peter denied Jesus three times, that Jesus would look right into our eyes from the other side of the room and send us a rooster to crow to pierce through our conscience and cause us to run outside and weep bitterly. And let’s also pray that Jesus would also encourage us with his precious gospel and call us to stand up and follow him again.

But we read in our reading: Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

Philip must have thought: Jesus, you’re asking what? You want us to feed these people? What an impossible task! But we read: He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.

Think of all those people who were put in impossible situations. Think about Abraham when he was asked to sacrifice his son. How his journey to Mount Moriah with Isaac must have been a bitter one! What a relief it must have been that the Lord did in fact provide a ram caught in the bush for Abraham to offer instead.

Think about Joseph who kept his integrity when Potiphar’s wife in Egypt tried to seduce him, and then he ended up in prison. But then God brought it about that Pharaoh was able to hear about his ability to interpret dreams and then made him the prince of Egypt and saved the country, and his own family too.

Those crosses only lasted for a time, and Jesus himself knew what he would do.

In all these situations of impossibility, God comes and he walks with us and shares our load with us and he says: Nothing is impossible with God.

In fact, he sends to us his only Son, whose whole life is marked by these words: “nothing is impossible with God”. The angel Gabriel spoke these words to Mary when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

And so Philip says to Jesus, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to eat a little.”

In the parable of the workers in the vineyard, you might remember that each of the workers, even if they started work at the eleventh hour, gets one denarius. A denarius is a day’s wages. So when Philip talks about 200 denarii, he means 8 ½ months’ wages. In Australia today, that’s probably something like $45,000 or more. The people who were sitting there could not be fed with $45,000.

And that’s probably right. We read: So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. The Greek word for “men” here means men, not women. And the reason why they counted only the men, was probably because it was a short way of counting how many families and households there were. Now take into consideration that many of the men would have had wives, and that there may have been other women there, and people could have had any number of children. There could have been well over 20,000 people there in total. $45,000 for 20,000 people is only $2.50 per each person. You can’t even buy a meat pie for that!

And now let’s read the description of the miracle: Jesus then took the [five barley loaves], and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the [two] fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, than nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.

Do you see? Jesus himself knew what he would do.

And the same goes for us. Jesus wants us to trust him not only as our Saviour from sin—which is the most important thing—but also to trust him as our Maker, our Creator, the one who provides for us, who sits at the right hand of God, and who feeds each creature in the world.

God knows what we need even before we ask him. And he works all things together for good for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

For a time, we may experience the cross, especially if we are called to speak and confess into an impossible situation. We may experience the impossibility that Philip experienced in front of him with all those people.

But Jesus wants to encourage us. He comes and walks into the impossible situation with us, he encourages us through it, and he brings us out the other side.

Jesus himself knew what he would do.

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, there are so many times where each of us finds ourselves in an impossible situation. We know what your word says, and we sometimes like to find an easy way out, but we try to escape with a bad conscience. Come and stay with us and walk with us, and give us everything we need. Amen.