St. Mark 6:30-44
Divine Service
Pentecost 7 (Proper 11) 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

We have been called a "throwaway" society – and indeed we are!  Each week we gather bags of waste and refuse and put it in the dumpster for the garbage truck.  And anyone who has ever visited a local dump is aware of the tremendous amount of waste in America – and in other parts of the world as well.  Yet iron and steel, paper, aluminum, glass, and much of our plastic can all be used again.  Some people, some communities, are more involved in getting these materials to where they can be recycled than are others.

Not surprisingly, our lesson shows that Christ our Lord wastes nothing.  Above all, he never throws us out on the garbage heap or gives up on us.  Instead, every opportunity, every blessing, everything he himself is and everything that He has, He uses for us and for our salvation.  He uses every resource for us.

First, we can see how Jesus uses every opportunity to test and teach us.  In our Gospel lesson, Jesus had told the disciples that He was taking them away to a place of solitude, where they could be by themselves; a place where the disciples could get some much-needed rest after returning from their stint as missionaries.  Jesus and the disciples traveled by boat, but the crowds ran ahead and actually beat them to their landing site!

A great multitude showed up, eager to see and hear Jesus and to receive the benefits of his healing miracles.  It was a solitary place, and the crowds had not brought food.  The typical response would be – and it’s the response of the disciples – was to send this huge crowd away so that they could fend for themselves in getting something to eat.  This is a deserted place – the nearest town must be MILES away!!  Subway™ is NOT just around the corner here!

Jesus questioned the disciples to test them.  And such testing was not reserved simply for those first disciples.  It continues!  It’s meant to build faith in God's care and in His provision for all people.  God often tests us with various difficulties and problems.  We read in Hebrews chapter 12 “My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves.”  (5b, 6a)  His intention is to build us up in our Christian faith and life (Gen 22:1; 1 Pet 1:6-9).

The disciples think that the situation is hopeless. This could be a whole lot of money they’ll have to shell out!  It would cost a small fortune to feed a crowd this large – our NIV text translates it to approximately 8 months wages – 200 denarii!  The disciples either cannot fathom spending that much, or else they just don’t have that much in the treasury to spend – and many scholars figure that the disciples underestimated the cost of just bread for that many men.  Let’s think about it.  Conservatively, if you spent $5.00 on a simple lunch for each MAN, the cost would be $25,000 for 5,000 men!  And the crowd almost certainly included women and children – in fact, John tells us that a boy provided the bread and fish that Jesus distributed! 

How often are we tempted to think a situation is hopeless?  We look at our finances and despair.  We talk to the doctors about our health, and we feel helpless.  We see our children doing the exact opposite of what we tried to teach them, and we silently rage against their actions.  Let us here remember the words the angel spoke to Mary: “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).  Even a situation that looks completely impossible to us – beyond hopeless, may be God using it for our benefit – using it in the strengthening of our faith by testing, ultimately intending to save us and provide for us.

Yes, Jesus uses surprising blessings to provide for us.  The disciples searched the multitudes and found that small boy willing to share five barley loaves and two small fish.  Even if we have little, God can make it go a long, long way.  “Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass.  So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties.”  This is a HUGE crowd!  They sat in groups not of two and three, but in groups of hundred and fifties!! 

Then Jesus begins the distribution with a prayer of blessing.  Mark calls it a “blessing,” John refers to it in his Gospel as a thanksgiving, a “Eucharist,” to God for his blessings.  The early readers of these Gospels could not have missed the suggestion of the thanksgiving that accompanies the celebration of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Altar.

The loaves first, then the fish, are distributed to over five thousand people.  Everyone is provided with enough.  In Jesus' hands the bread and fish miraculously multiply.  Nothing is wasted; every leftover piece is finally used as a blessing, now for the twelve disciples.  “The disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish.”  Those five small loaves and two fish had filled the stomachs of over 5,000, and the leftovers filled another 12 baskets!  Baskets that are now believed to be about the size that we would consider them lunch bags!!

In this same way God daily blesses and cares for all of us sinners.  Though we sometimes we don’t return that care, that love, as much as we could, when we refuse to make available to him what we can, He has withheld nothing from us. 

God uses his miraculous power to provide for us because his Son, by dying for the sins that separated us from God, has reconciled us to the Father.  Having been reconciled, then, the Father provides “clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all [we] have.  All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in [us]” (Luther's Small Catechism with Explanation, p. 13-14).  He provides for all of His children, those who believe and those who do not believe, as He sees fit.  He distributes earthly riches and glory at His pleasure.  For we know that the price that was paid by Jesus on the cross was sufficient for all, and God provides for all.

For those who have been given faith by the Holy Ghost, we know that Jesus uses his very life to feed us for eternity.  The multiplication of the loaves and fish and gathering of the leftovers is a sign pointing us to God's ultimate purpose.  God desires that we who have wasted our lives by sin, becoming prisoners of the devil and destined to eternal ruin – should instead partake of the true bread that gives life to the world: Jesus Christ himself!  John reports that Jesus makes the statement, “I am the bread of life. ... If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever”  (John 6:35, 51).  God richly provides for our temporary needs because he also gives us the bread that nourishes us to eternal life!

Not a measure of the bread of life was wasted.  Jesus used the full measure of his devotion, his life given on the cross, to pay for the sins of the whole world.  We partake of him, the living bread, as we listen to God's Word preached and taught and as we receive his true body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine in Holy Communion.

While our world, marred by sin, is noted for its wastefulness, its throwing away of leftovers, God uses every resource for us in time and in eternity. He gives us Jesus, the bread of life.  Let this bread not be wasted!  Regularly partake of him who comes to us again and again in Word and Sacrament.  As we receive grace upon grace from God, let us share with a world that has been wasted by the evil one.  In the joy we have in our salvation, let us point all people to the provision of salvation God has given in his Son.  Nothing of the precious Gospel is wasted, for God has used it as his power for salvation!

Through His shepherding of us, we will not be among the waste of lost souls for eternity.  Through the faith given to us, we will spend eternity by the still waters in the New Jerusalem.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

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