“The Lesson of Loaves and the Fish” Mount Olive Lutheran Church Season Of Pentecost Sunday Sermon July 21, 2024 – Mark 6:30-44

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday July 21st 2024: Season of Pentecost / Mark 6:30-44 “The Lesson of Loaves and the Fish”

The apostles returned to Jesus and told Him all that they had done and taught. And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When He went ashore He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, His disciples came to Him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But He answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to Him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” And He said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then He commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish He looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And He divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends, “This is only a test, only a test, please stand by” ... There are all sorts of tests in life, you can have the test of an emergency broadcast service, which will save lives in the event of a severe storm or impending disaster; or you can have a multiple choice test where you pick A, B, C or D; or you can be tested in the School of Hard Knocks: Do you like being tested? Did you like having tests in school? Are you still being tested even now? Tests don’t just spontaneously happen all on their own testing is done to evaluate your grasp on a topic which you are being taught. For example you don’t walk into a French class and get a test of your German language skills and if you’re being tested—if you’re being taught something—you’ll be needin’ a teacher.

Today’s Gospel reading, on the surface, may appear to be about Jesus feeding the five thousand and the miracle that that was, but in the context of the whole Gospel of Saint Mark there is something bigger going on, this passage is about Jesus trying to teach His Disciples something, and by extension it’s about Him teaching you something too. Jesus’ classroom has no chalk boards or white boards or smart boards, Jesus’ classroom is the Sea of Galilee and the surrounding area, it is more like the school of hard knocks than anything else (yet it’s also like a parent teaching a child who to ride a bike, first holding on to the child, then guiding them with training wheels, then looking on at a distance but still carefully watching, until the kid can safely peddle the bike on their own). So today let’s let Jesus from the Gospel of Saint Mark be our teacher, and think about Him teaching the Disciples and Him teaching us too.

On the one hand you have Jesus in the midst of everything happening in the Gospel of Saint Mark as the very Corner Stone upon which faith is built, and on the other hand you have the disciples who were a bit slow to learn this and were filled of anxiety and worry: really it was The Twelve Disciples who were shifting as sand on a beach as Jesus remains steadfastly solid as a Rock working ever to teach them. Jesus was trying to teach them just exactly who He was, is and ever shall be and at the same time He was trying to teach them how to be good under-shepherds of the Good Shepherd for the sheep. He was teaching them to not be the kind of shepherds, who destroy and scatter the sheep of the LORD’S Pasture, like we hear about in our Old Testament Reading,[1] but rather The Twelve needed to be the kind who would care for the sheep, and give them what they need, Jesus was at work teaching them this lesson. They needed to be the kind of under-shepherds who were not just concerned with bread for the hungry belly of the sheep, but under-shepherds who were concerned with providing the Bread of Life to the people; they needed to know the difference between a loaf of bread and Jesus who is the Bread of Life and they needed to be able to trust Him.  

How does Jesus teach them this and how does our Gospel lesson fit into it? In the Gospel of Saint Mark chapter three Jesus calls His Twelve Disciples; then in chapter four Jesus starts teaching the people in parables and explains them to The Twelve and those nearest to Him; then they decided to cross over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and Saint Mark writes that as they were, “leaving the crowd, they took [Jesus] with them in the boat, just as He was.”[2] At first blush, this is a bit of a funny comment from Saint Mark, now I’d recently mentioned in another sermon that when they took Jesus with them ‘just as He was’ this, on the surface, refers to how after a long day of teaching and helping those in need Jesus was exhausted, so as they took Him into the boat that day He was in need of rest, but there is another layer to this so I’m going to ask you to hold on to that thought and we’ll come back to it, but right now you’ll just need to hold onto it because Saint Mark’s Gospel is fast paced and before you know it a big storm has whipped up on the water and the Disciples, you’ll remember, are all afraid that they will die in the storm, and looking to Jesus they find Him asleep in the stern of the boat. You’ll likewise remember what Jesus does, they come to Him in a panic, He then wakes up and calms the storm and says to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”[3] Meaning ‘Here I am in the boat with you; when I’m with you, you are safe.’ This is a big lesson. When you have Jesus with you, you are safe. You don’t have to worry about the weather.

By this point Jesus had healed many people and had cast out demons and preached and taught with impressive authority. And Jesus continues to give The Twelve more object lessons. He casts out a legion of demons from a man, and raises Jairus’ daughter from the dead:[4] Again showing them that in addition to the natural world, Jesus also has dominion over the supernatural world and over death itself: teaching them that if you have Jesus with you, you are safe, even in the face of demons or death.

In their classroom on the Sea of Galilee the disciples spent a lot of time in boats being taught by Jesus, in Saint Mark’s Gospel there is often danger at sea: but the danger, while frightening, is intended to direct their focus away from their fears onto Jesus. There is a kids song you may remember, “With Jesus in my boat, I can smile at the storm, smile at the storm, smile at the storm, with Jesus in my boat I can smile at the storm, while I go sailing home.” The Disciples “took [Jesus] with them in the boat, just as He was,” but were they smiling as the storm hit? No they weren’t doing a lot of smiling at the storm. The second time that they were in the boat in the storm was immediately following today’s gospel reading: “[Jesus] made His Disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side [of the Sea of Galilee], to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd [the five thousand men and their women and children whom He had just fed, the ones who were like sheep without a shepherd, the ones Jesus told His Disciples to feed]. And after [Jesus] had taken leave of them, He went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat [with the Twelve Disciples in it] was out on the sea, and [Jesus] was alone on the land. And He saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. (This is like the parent with the child – the first time the storm came up and Jesus was right there with them in the boat, this time Jesus is carefully watching them from afar, seeing if they’ll pass the test), [and as they were still struggling in the storm, at] about the fourth watch of the night [Jesus] came to them, walking on the sea. [Saint Mark tells us that] He meant to pass by them, (sort of like He just wanted them to see Him so that they knew He was with them, and hopefully remember that He had dominion over the sea and then fixing their eyes of faith on Him and take heart and not be afraid, if they did this they would have passed the test) but when they saw [Jesus] walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw Him and were terrified. (Again they failed the test) But immediately [in their distress Saint Mark tells us, Jesus] spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” And He got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves,”[5]

They weren’t utterly astounded by the fact that Jesus was walking on the water, Mark says that the thing that utterly astounded them in that instance on the Sea, in their classroom out on the waters, in the school of hard knocks, with the wind and the waves and the storm, as Jesus got into the boat, was the events of day preceding this. Yes what utterly astounded them was previous day’s lesson about the feeding of the five thousand: Again a lesson where they had failed. By this point Jesus had sent them out two by two as His under-shepherds and they had been able to exercise Jesus’ authority in their work, healing the sick and casting out demons; yet when Jesus had told them to feed the people who had gathered to hear Him teach in that desolate place, the disciples couldn’t conceive of how they could do it. Because their focus had gone onto themselves and they forgot who it was who was with them. They were concerned that there was not enough bread, they were concerned that they didn’t have enough money to buy enough bread, so just as they had been concerned that the storm was too great and that they were going to die, they were again concerned about maybe dying: with all these concerns whirling around them, there was Jesus, their teacher, trying to teach them what Saint Paul taught the Romans when Paul wrote, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[6] Dear ones when you have Jesus with you, you are safe. You don’t have to worry about the weather, or sickness, or food, or money or death because ultimately these things have no power to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All along in the Gospel of Saint Mark Jesus is trying to teach the disciples this: Now I asked you to hold onto this funny comment Saint Mark puts in to the account of the disciples earlier their trip out on Sea of Galilee with Jesus when, as Mark puts it, “they took [Jesus] with them in the boat, just as He was.” A little later in Mark chapter eight they are all in the boat again, after another miraculous feeding, the feeding of the four thosand, when the Disciples discover that “they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And [Jesus] cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven [loaves of bread that I broke] for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And [Jesus] said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”[7] Saint Mark uses the same words to say that they had only brought one loaf with them into the boat as he had when he said the disciples had brought “[Jesus] with them in the boat, just as He was.” Here we see that the True Bread they had brought with them was not the one messily loaf they had brought with them into the boat, it was not even the five loaves at the feeding of the five thousand or the seven loaves at the feeding of the four thousand but rather the True Bread who is with them is Jesus Himself. They would not fully learn this lesson until the resurrection of Jesus after His crucifixion and death for their sin.       

In John’s Gospel Jesus clearly say to them, “I Am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst... I Am the Living Bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever. And the Bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”[8]

Jesus still gives us His flesh to eat; Jesus still gives of Himself for us; Jesus still provides that Bread of Life, we receive it in Holy Communion and we trust that He is with us daily in our baptism; we are built up in Him as we read the Bible and study His Word; and when we Have eyes to see, and have ears to hear the lessons we are being taught in our lives then the dark storms we weather in our boat, the gut gnawing times of hunger we face in the desolate places, these become our own school of hard knocks too. But remember Jesus was right there with the disciples every step of the way, even when He seemed far off He was right there with them, and He is right there with you while you are being tested in life, (When you are diagnosed with cancer, when you’re having marriage troubles, when you’re depressed, when you’re grieving, when you find yourself homeless or with not so much as a dime to your name, when your children are in trouble). Keep in mind that Jesus forgave the disciples for not passing those various tests of faith,  He was administering to them with flying colours and He will forgive you, He didn’t abandon them because of their failure to trust Him and He won’t abandon you; and while it appeared that at times Jesus was losing patience with them He truly had compassion for them and wanted them to learn to trust Him so that they would be good workers in their vocational lives as under-shepherds of the Good Shepherd, just as He wants you to learn to trust Him too; to trust Him in all circumstances, in your work life, in your retired life, in all things, in every emergency and in every joy.

Dear ones Jesus says to you “do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”[9] In all of these things Jesus is right there with you, and like the Disciples you have Him with you just as He is crucified, risen, ascended, watching, teaching and caring for you in all things. Have you learned this lesson? Are you learning it still? Amen

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy, Lord Have Mercy, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Jeremiah 23:1
[2] Mark 4:36
[3] Mark 4:40
[4] Mark 5
[5] Mark 6:45-52
[6] Romans 8:38-39
[7] Mark 8:14-21
[8] John 6:35-36; John 6:51
[9] Matthew 6:25

Photo Credit: Main Photo detail of John Martin's - Feeding the Five Thousand from wikimedia commons.