First Reading: Isaiah 55:1-5
1“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 4Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.”
Psalm 136:1-9, 23-26
1Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. 2Give thanks to the God of gods, for his mercy endures forever. 3Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his mercy endures forever. 4Who only does great wonders, for his mercy endures forever; 5Who by wisdom made the heavens, for his mercy endures forever; 6Who spread out the earth upon the waters, for his mercy endures forever; 7Who created great lights, for his mercy endures forever; 8The sun to rule the day, for his mercy endures forever; 9The moon and the stars to govern the night, for his mercy endures forever. 23Who remembered us in our low estate, for his mercy endures forever; 24And delivered us from our enemies, for his mercy endures forever; 25Who gives food to all creatures, for his mercy endures forever. 26Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his mercy endures forever.
Second Reading: Romans 9:1-13
1I am speaking the truth in Christ — I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit — 2that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. 6But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. 9For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad — in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls — 12she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
Gospel: Matthew 14:13-21
13When Jesus heard {of John the Baptist’s death}, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. 15Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” 18And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Eat and Drink without Price
We’ve all heard the axioms: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. There are two unavoidable things in this life, death and taxes. And for those of a certain age – gas, grass, or … no one rides for free. For those who grew up in the 60s, I’m sure you can remember that bumper sticker. The point all these phrases are making is that nothing in this world is free. There are no free rides. Yet this isn’t the message of our First Reading for today.
Over the years, I’ve read and preached on our Old Testament passage strictly from its historical standpoint. When the prophet Isaiah uttered these words, the Hebrew people had been in captivity for several decades. As God had commanded them, they built homes, established businesses, and generally got on with their lives. As one scholar has noted, the only thing that distinguished the Hebrew people from the Babylonians was their observance of the Sabbath, their dietary laws, and circumcision. However, there was one more thing that differed between captives and captors, their desire to return to the Promised Land.
For the Children of Israel, the thought of someday returning to the land the Lord had promised Abraham was something that occupied their daily thoughts. This is why these words of encouragement through God’s prophet were so important: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1-2). When they heard these words, their minds went back to the original promise God gave to them through Moses, “And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:17). But for Christians today, we need to hear these words beyond the Babylonian captivity and hear them through the filter of Jesus’ statements found in St. John’s writings.
St. John recorded three statements Jesus made, and they are important as we read our first lesson. The first announcement comes from the 6th chapter, Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (vss.32-35).
The second important statement Jesus made was, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (7:37b-39a). The final announcement John records is from his vision recorded in the book of Revelation.
In the 21st chapter of Revelation St. John records Jesus as saying, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life” (vs. 6). Now there are two types of hunger in our world today, and in both cases, we are called to help feed the people. In our New Testament reading Jesus addresses the physical hunger in the story of the feeding of the 5000.
In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus challenges the disciples to feed the people before Jesus dismissed them for the day. We know the story well. The unbelieving disciples asked, “how can we feed so many, we only have 5 loaves, and two fish” (Matthew 14:17). We, of course, know that in the hands of the One through whom all things were created, this wasn’t even a challenge. Jesus blessed the child’s meal and divided it up so that all were fed and there were 12 baskets of leftovers. Today we still face these same challenges.
Anytime I think of physical hunger and the needs of our community, I can’t help but think of agencies like Dallas Christian ministries. Week in and week out, I see how generous you are, and I see the donations that come into the Ministry building, and I, along with the disciples, constantly ask, “how can such a small amount feed so many people.” Yet week after week, some 600 families, 35 or so homeless, and many senior citizens come to the ministry and are blessed with bags of food. I also know that God blesses what each of us gives and at the end of each week all these families have something for their tables. Indeed, today many are facing times of financial struggle.
Many in our communities face what is now being called food insecurity. Yet, despite how prosperous our country is, scores find it difficult to put food on the table. But because God is prospering the work of our hands in so many ways, the small amount we offer, when combined with the offerings of others, the needs are met and the hungry are being fed. Yet nothing is truly free, you and I pay the price for this ministry to happen. But there is another hunger that Jesus is addressing not only in St. John’s gospel, but also in our Old Testament reading, a spiritual hunger. This is a hunger that we need to address as well, just as much as we address the physical hunger being experienced in our world today.
I was reminded of a humorous experience one of the other pastors shared with me the other day. My friend was complaining about the “come-ons” that so-called quality restaurants advertise these days, he said it irked him and his wife. This friend shared that he and his wife visited a local restaurant that had an attractive advertisement, claiming the “best of everything” in town. The meals were offered for a new lower price – in actuality they amounted to more than 10-dollars each. He said the quality of the meals hardly measured up to the claims, and the service was terrible. He said they left this promised land of culinary excellence feeling let-down and taken.
This got me to thinking, in contrast, the bread Jesus offers is indeed free, it is predictable and nourishing, and it can satisfy even the most demanding soul. It’s that kind of quality bread of life Jesus was talking about in our Isaiah reading and in John’s writings. Later in chapter 6 verse 51 Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Then 2 verses later Jesus continued, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever” (vss. 53-58).
As you can imagine, this started an argument as we read in verse 52. Now we might imagine the people would have been grateful for Jesus. Afterall, He had fed them with 5 loaves and two fish, He had taught them as one with authority. He had healed the sick and even raised three from the dead. One would think that they would be thankful for His presence, for His revelation of God to them, for His good-news offer of a bread that will end hunger forever. Instead, they ask the rather ungrateful question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
In a way, the question begs for an answer. But even more, this question raises additional questions, some that many have asked. Questions like: How can all of God be present in a single person like Jesus? How can Jesus be present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist here this morning? And at the same time, how can Jesus be present in thousands of other celebrations of this Sacrament today at churches all around the globe? Indeed, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Questions like these have been debated in theological circles for hundreds of years, and they are still being asked by inquisitive Christians today. But when we ask these kinds of questions, the truth is, we’re probably asking even deeper questions, the questions about our faith. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” When we ask that, as did these folks of old, we are joining those searchers who want to know whether there is any such thing as true faith. Does God really touch our lives in concrete ways, or have most of us merely been trained to say that God is important to us? Where is God truly present in our world? Have we not merely claimed that He is present amid certain poignant circumstances of our lives?
I read about a Christian man who had narrowly escaped a serious automobile accident. He was driving down a busy street that was unfamiliar to him. He came to a congested intersection but failed to see the traffic signal at the corner. Blindly, he ran a red light and, just as he cleared the intersection, a car coming from the cross street whizzed by, narrowly missing his car. He concluded by saying, “Praise the Lord! God was really present to help me through my own carelessness.”
The question some might ask is, was God really present? Is our faith in God so real, that we can claim His presence amid selected dramatic incidents in our lives? And what if there had been an accident? Would God then have been absent from the scene? It’s questions like these that cause some to ask, “how can this man (Jesus) give us His flesh to eat?”
I suspect that the people there that day asked this question because in fact they didn’t want an operative God that close, a God that was that real in their lives. The claims on them would then be too great! If God were so close as to be “consumable,” to be eaten, then He would be close enough to shape their thinking, to mold their motives, and to guide their words and actions. That would be real faith, and they didn’t seem ready to give up that much of themselves! The cost of discipleship became real. It’s a price they were unwilling to pay. They would rather have a God that was only around when they needed Him. A free God; a God that never asks us to take up our cross and follow Him.
So maybe the real bottom-line question is, do I want a God in my life that is a living reality, One who prompts my every word and action and thinking, or do I prefer to merely practice religion, and, at that, practice it at a distance? Am I willing to accept a commitment on my life? Do I welcome the presence of God’s Spirit in my life? The ones who ask, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat” fail to recognize the mystery of God’s omnipresence in our world today.
Far too many refuse to accept the mysteries of God in our world today and only practice their religion at a distance. Oh, they may not stay away from church – from the Word and the sacraments. But they do keep their Christian commitments at a proper distance! They are ready to comment about the Word of God they hear, sometimes criticizing and dismissing the passages that make them uncomfortable.
But as faithful disciples, we need to partake of the Word – to eat it, to ingest it, to allow it to strengthen us so that we grow and mature and change as called and sent people of God. Our questioning of the mysteries of God such as “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” just may be a camouflage of the real question, do I really want to eat and drink the body and blood of Christ? Or do we simply want to keep Christ at a proper distance, so that we never have to really accept the cost of discipleship?
Our everyday life just might betray us. On Sunday, do we simply go through the liturgy, but never really think about what we’re reciting? How often do we share the gospel with others? What do our words and actions during the week really say about our walk of faith? We partake of bread and wine here, but is Christ in our home, and is He truly present in our everyday lives? The call of the Gospel is that we ourselves become the healing and nourishing presence of Christ for those who hunger in both body and spirit. For those in need of spiritual refreshment, the presence of God in their lives is a mystery. They do not experience God’s saving presence in their lives, and you and I are called to illuminate that mystery.
Each time we gather around the Table, we not only eat and drink of the One who gave Himself for us, we also affirm the mystery of His presence. We may not fully understand this mystery, but we’re nonetheless strengthened by it. And in the strength of this sacrament, you and I are being sent to share the living Christ with those around us to feed them both physically and spiritually for the glory of God our Father.
Amen