Trinity 7 Service
Trinity 7/St. Mark 8:1-9
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.” And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” And he asked them, “How many loaves do you
have?” They said, “Seven.” And he 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.
On two occasions in the Bible Jesus fed large numbers of people; one time five thousand, and on the occasion of our text, four thousand. Through these miracles we get to see the glory of God on display in Jesus, certainly. That’s what’s most obvious, isn’t it? Who else could do such an amazing thing? Who else could take seven loaves of bread and two small fish (in our text) and multiply them to feed more than four thousand people? In addition to God’s glory on display, we see also God’s compassion (the word Jesus uses in our text, in fact; He says, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat).”
The next thing Jesus says after that sentence is what we want to talk about today. That next thing He says can be used to demonstrate something even greater that’s going on here. If I send them away hungry to their homes, He says, they will faint on the way. Now, He didn’t mean anything other than He said. He was talking about physical hunger like we experience in the morning, and midday, and evening. People’s bodies need to be fed on bread (and fruits, and vegetables, and meats) so they’re nourished. The people in the text had come a long way from home, and not had anything to eat for quite some time. They needed physical nourishment. That’s what Jesus was talking about when He said they would faint on the way home if they weren’t fed.
But another truth can be brought out of those words (and maybe even more meaningfully if we reduce it somewhat, to): If I send them away hungry…they will faint. So, we might look at this text this morning considering a theme like,
Jesus feeds the hungry
Those who otherwise would faint
Those who with His feeding are satisfied
Those who otherwise would faint
St. Paul says about his readers in our epistle lesson, that they have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God. The people in our text had left their homes and sought out Jesus because they were in need of more than food for their bodies. Harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36)—that’s how Jesus would come to describe them closer to His crucifixion.
According to the Bible, every person is in need of being—as Paul says in our epistle lesson—set free from sin. Guilt harasses us. We sin. We can’t help ourselves. We know that God is angry with our sin. Every person is in need of a certain sort of nourishment that must be put there by God Himself. The nourishment is the relief from this guilt that harasses us.
Jesus wasn’t a restauranteur in His earthly life. There wasn’t a neon sign that said EAT AT JESUS’S, pointing the way to where He was preparing food for people. They were going to Him for a different reason. Though these people might not have been entirely sure about this, their reason for coming to Him was related to the confession that Simon Peter would make one time: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life (John 6:68).” They were seeing Him in the same way the crowds did on Palm Sunday, who shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest (Matthew 21:9)!” They knew they were in need. They saw Him as the one who just might be the one talked about in that Old Testament quotation, the one God was sending to meet their need.
You bring your children for Baptism for the same reason these people had gone to Jesus like this in our text, don’t you? You know that the Bible demonstrates that every person is guilty—having inherited a sinful nature, and being him or herself a sinner. And you know that in Baptism God puts His arms of grace around that person. The Holy Spirit is working in that Sacrament—that means through which God gives His grace, putting faith in that person to recognize Jesus as the solution to guilt.
Those who with His feeding are satisfied
We've talked about those who otherwise would faint—noting that every person needs to nourished by God. We talk now, about those who with His feeding are satisfied. If we’re thinking of Jesus’ words from our text in this spiritual kind of way (If I send them away hungry…they will faint), we might say at this point that our children are nourished in this way in Baptism. Of course, we think similarly about the Lord’s Supper through which Jesus feeds us in this spiritual way along with our physical eating. Through the receiving of bread and wine that have have joined with His true body and blood, He nourishes us, strengthening our faith, comforting us, even—as He says—administering to us what removes our sins. Active in these Sacraments is God’s powerful Word through which the Spirit works. Even before He satisfied their physical hunger, Jesus was satisfying the spiritual hunger of those people in our text by preaching His Word to them.
You can imagine the relief it must have been to them to hear this Word of God’s grace from Jesus, because you deal with the same burdens they did. No doubt, someone in that crowd, for instance, had said something to her mother that was thoughtless and cruel. It had felt great in the moment. She’d really made her point! Her sinful nature loved it. But now she was very sad about it (which is what always happens). It’s like St. Paul says in our Epistle lesson: What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? She’d been lured into something by Satan, like her first mother Eve had been. But now that she’d done what promised such satisfaction and joy, she realized (like Eve did) that sin isn’t ever where we’re going to find joy that lasts; it will only ever be a path to guilt and regret. And in that regret, in that enslavement as Paul describes it, in that harassment as Jesus describes it, where does a person turn for true relief?
Part of the harassment that this crowd had been enduring was happening from what we might think of as an unlikely source. They were being led by religious leaders whose idea of how to inherit God’s kingdom (how to have this relief from guilt) was entirely opposed to the means God had established. They were the blind leading the blind, burdening people with the thought of earning heaven rather than receiving it as God’s free gift. Imagine if someone were telling over and over, that you just have to stop sinning. You have to be better than that. You have to somehow make up for that cruel thing you said to your mother, and make sure you never ever let anything like that happen again. And that’s the solution to being on the right side of God. Imagine the burden of that impossible exhortation! You’d be forever chasing the horizon. You’d be pursuing what can’t be had. And you’d be considering along the way, the consequence in store.
But in our text, we see the One Who satisfies more than physical hunger. This One Who’s miracle feeds the multitude sets free those who are enslaved to sin. He’s the One God sent for that purpose. There has never been any need for anyone to say to Him, you just have to stop sinning, because He’s the One Who is without sin. He can’t be better than that. There’s nothing for Him to make up for. His perfect treatment of His mother in this world stands in the place of the sin of that person in the crowd, and of yours and mine. Your harassment from guilt is put away in Him. You don’t inherit God’s kingdom by pursuing impossible perfection; you inherit it by having Jesus’ perfection placed upon you. There isn’t any more burden. You aren’t earning heaven. Jesus has provided it for you. In His righteous blood you have God’s forgiveness.
So, as you are sent away today, you need not be hungering as far as your relationship with God is concerned. You have been nourished with what God has provided—His Spirit-filled powerful Word and Supper. You need not faint under the burden of guilt. You need not languish under the harassment of Satan with his threats of the consequences to come from your sins. You have come to Jesus and had all of it removed as the free gift of God. In this spiritual way, you have received Jesus’ feeding. You have experienced God’s compassion in Him. Jesus will always be the solution to this need you have. To Him be glory, both now and forever. Amen.