Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Mark
8:1-9)
I have
compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have
nothing to eat.
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.
I was once told a story about a
Catholic priest in France named John Vianney who had a parishioner who would
simply come to church early every morning and sit himself in front of a statue
of Jesus and sit there for a few minutes and then would walk out. One day the
priest asked the man what he was doing when he would come to church. The man
said, “I look at Jesus and he looks at me, and we’re just happy to be
together.”
There are so many examples of people
in the bible who have simply come to be with Jesus. Particularly there’s the
example of Mary and Martha. These two women welcomed Jesus to their home, and
Martha went to go and make Jesus some food in the kitchen. But her sister Mary
was listening to Jesus, sitting at his feet. This annoyed Martha, because her
sister wasn’t helping her in the kitchen, but was being lazy! But even though
Martha wanted to serve Jesus, it was her sister who was meditating about Jesus,
while Martha was meditating about her sister! And so Jesus says to her, “Mary
has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Today, people have so many
distractions. We have so many kitchens to distract us from Jesus. We have so
many mixing bowls and wooden spoons at hand – what we need most is to sit at
Jesus’ feet and listen to his voice. We need to come in to the sheepfold and be
with our Good Shepherd throughout the long watches in the night. What a
wonderful gift and privilege it is to join with our fellow Christians in the
divine service each Sunday and to sing together, to pray together, to listen to
the word of God together, to eat and drink the Lord’s Supper together! What a
wonderful gift it is to join in with Jesus himself in his own prayers – he
joins in with us in our prayers and we join in with him in his! What a
wonderful gift it is join in with all the angels of God, singing praises to
God! What a wonderful gift it is to join with all the tax-collectors and
sinners who have ever lived throughout the world and eat and drink with Jesus,
at the same table with them, feasting on the body and blood of our Lord!
But not only in church, what a
wonderful privilege it is to go to our room and shut the door and pray to our
Father in heaven who is in secret. What a wonderful thing it is to know that
when we pray to our Father in secret, we are never alone but that we are always
praying together with his Son, Jesus Christ.
What a wonderful thing it is to
begin the day with Jesus and to finish the day with him, to enjoy his company
and his presence, to ask him for help at the beginning of a new day and to ask
him for forgiveness at the end of the one past.
What a wonderful thing it is to
read the bible and to enjoy each word and each sentence and to think about
these things while we go about our daily work.
So many people avoid and neglect
prayer and bible reading because they think that they don’t have enough time.
Who said you need to say long prayers? Ecclesiastes 5 says: God is in heaven
and you are on the earth, therefore let your words be few. Nothing that you
do needs to stop you from praying. Your attitude towards prayer should be the
same as your attitude towards coming to church: you do it not because you’re so
perfect and good, but because you’re so desperate and you need it. God doesn’t
command you to pray without ceasing because he wants you to show him how
good you are and for him to thank you for it, but because he wants to show you
how good he is and wants you to thank him. You’re the one who needs prayer, not
God.
But let’s take a look at our
Gospel reading today, and take special notice of the crowd. We read: In
those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat,
[Jesus] called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the
crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat.
And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And
some of them have come from far away.”
The crowd had gathered together
around Jesus. And in some sense, they had been caught up in the excitement and the
awe and the magnificence of the event, to hear Jesus “live”, in public, up
close, that they had run out of bread. They probably had something to eat in
the first place, but because they had been there for three days, they had run
out of food. People don’t generally carry around with them three days’ worth of
food, especially if they are on foot! Some of them had also travelled a long
way from home to come and see Jesus, and if they were to turn around and go
back home, they probably wouldn’t make it home without becoming weary and
fainting. And the end of the reading we also read that there were 4000 people
there on this occasion.
Now some people mix this event up
with a very similar event in the Gospels where Jesus feeds 5000 people. There
were two different events. The Gospel of Mark records the feeding of the 5000
in chapter 6 and the feeding of the 4000 in chapter 8, which we are reading today.
Now, think about the devotion and
the love for Jesus that these people had. Think about the great effort they
made to come and see him and hear him.
Notice it says that the great
crowd had gathered. They weren’t gathered around nothing, and they weren’t
gathered for nothing. They were gathered around Jesus, and they wanted
to see him and hear him. This is so important for us today. It can’t be said
enough that the greatest mistake that Christians make is assuming that Jesus is
not on this earth, but is stuck up in heaven in such a way as if he isn’t here.
Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father.
But then the right hand of God is everywhere, and Jesus promises to be
everywhere where God’s right hand is. He says: I will be with you always to
the end of the age. God doesn’t hear your prayers because he has good ears
but is actually a long way off. (This is what the Mormons believe.) God hears
your prayers because he is with you. Also Jesus listens to your sighs and your
tears and your sufferings and shares them with you not like a faraway friend on
the other side of the world who feels sorry for you, but can’t come on a plane
and visit you. No—he comes to be with you in such away that he prays your
prayers to his Father as if they were his own prayers. When you shed tears
before the face of God, you are simply joining in with Jesus. The bible calls
him the man of sorrows who is acquainted with grief. He
understands it. He is intimately acquainted with it and feels it very deeply.
Jesus says in our reading today: I have compassion on the crowd. The
word for “having compassion” means he felt them in his stomach. We might say,
“His heart went out to them”—but more literally, it means, “he was moved in his
guts.”
And so, when we pray, Jesus comes
right next to us and joins in. When we gather as a crowd to come to church, he
comes himself to speak his words and to consecrate and distribute his body and
blood to us. This is what we often call the “real presence”. We could also say
that he is physically, bodily present. He’s not simply present in spirit, but
he’s present as true man and true God. He is here with us in his flesh
breathing out upon us the Holy Spirit, but also invisible. Remember, Thomas
when he wanted to know if his fellow apostles had seen the real Jesus, he said:
Unless I put my finger in his hands and my hand in his side I will never
believe. This is same Jesus who comes to be with us, and around whom we
gather. Jesus said to Thomas: Do you believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. The church
throughout the centuries of which we are a part are those blessed ones who have
not seen Jesus in our midst and yet have believed that he does come into our
midst.
If we don’t come and gather
around Jesus himself, we’re gathering around something else: a fake Jesus, a
pretend Jesus. Often this fake Jesus is one whom everyone presumes to be able
to know what he is thinking without the word of his clear Scriptures. Also,
when this fake Jesus sends out his spirit, it often is a spirit that thinks no
differently to us, and agrees with everything we think. The real Jesus reveals
himself to us through his living Word in the reading and preaching of the
Scriptures. And the real Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not
from you and me.
But also, the crowd gathered
around Jesus, and they were also hungry. The more they stayed with Jesus, the
more they shared in the cross. The more the people stayed with Jesus, the more
they became desperate.
The more we stay with Jesus, the
more the devil says to us what fools we are, what time wasters we are. People
mock the lady who pours expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet and say: Why was this
ointment wasted in this way and not sold for three hundred denarii so that we
could have given it to the poor? Martha comes roaring out of the kitchen, and
says to Jesus: Lord, don’t you care that my sisters lazing around in here while
I’m doing all the hard work? Or what about Job, when he had lost all his
children and was covered with sores, his wife said to him: Do you still hold
fast to your integrity? Curse God and die.
Then the devil comes and whispers
the same temptation as he did to Jesus: Turn these stones into bread. I will
give to you the whole world if you bow down and worship me.
So what does Jesus do? He is
finished teaching for the day and it’s time for everyone to go home. But the
people are left with a cross. They have no food and they need to walk home.
Instead of abandoning them,
instead of teaching them a lesson of how much hardship they have to endure,
Jesus has compassion on them. He stays with them in their cross, he stays with
them in their hardship. He blesses the little food that they have and he
increases it and multiplies it.
We read: Jesus directed the
crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given
thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people;
and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish. And having
blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. And they ate
and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets
full. And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away.
We often think that Jesus is
simply nothing more than a good teacher. But in our sinfulness, we forget that
he is also the one who gives us our daily bread, together with his Father. What
a wonderful friend Jesus really is to us! His words are true, but they are also
full of power and also full of love! Truth, power and love: these three things
always go together with Jesus. And these three things always go together with
Jesus in such a way that never happens with anyone else.
Jesus stays with us. He protects
us. He feeds us. And he sends us out with his blessing. Amen.
Lord Jesus, we thank you for
coming to be with us today as we gather to hear your words. Give us everything
we need to support our bodies and our lives. Increase our trust in you, that
you are our Good Shepherd, and that we will never be in want. Amen.
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