Lent 4

John 6:25-35 - Laetare Sunday - March 15, 2015
Jesus is the Bread of Life

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Our introit this morning is where we get the name for this Sunday in the church year: Laetare.  Laetare means rejoice, as in that portion of the introit that is taken from Isaiah 66:

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all you who love her; that you may feed and be satisfied with the consolation of her bosom” (Isaiah 66:10-11). 

As I preached last Sunday, and as we heard in this morning’s Epistle lesson, Jerusalem is the Holy Christian Church.  She is our mother.  She gives us birth through Holy Baptism.  But like any mother who cannot give birth without there being a father, so also the Church cannot give birth to us apart from our Father in heaven.  The mother bears.  The Father begets.  St. Peter writes concerning the new birth of Baptism when he says that we have “been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).  The power of Baptism is the word of God.  What our mother gives us she first receives from our Father.  So likewise, we feed at our mother’s bosom by hearing and keeping the word of Christ, which he gives to his Church.   His word sets us free from our sin and ignorance.  St. Peter writes about this in the next chapter of the same letter:

“Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Peter 2:1-3). 

We taste that the Lord is gracious by hearing what our gracious Father has to say.  We live off everything he gives – both physically and spiritually.  But we cannot claim to enjoy a feast that our Father invites us to if we will not receive the feast from our mother.   God bestows his goods through her.  Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad with her all you who love her!  We love the Church because it is through her care that God loves us.  We cannot rejoice with our Father if we do not rejoice with our mother. 

In the same way, it is not possible to rejoice in Christ if we do not also rejoice with his Bride.  We cannot go to a wedding reception and tell the groom how happy we are for him if we do not have the same joy for his wife.  We cannot have a personal relationship with Jesus unless we are also personally acquainted with her to whom Jesus unites himself.  As a husband becomes one flesh with his wife, Jesus and his Church cannot be rent asunder. 

We see here two metaphors that God gives us to ponder:

(1) We are the Church.  We are the Bride of Christ.  It is we whom Christ adorns as holy and spotless with his own robe of righteousness.  It is we who are free from the damning demands of the law.  It is we who are united to Christ by the pronouncement of God through faith.  We are the Church, since we hear the word of God and believe it. 

(2) But the Church is also our mother.  How do you know that you are the Bride of Christ?  How do you know that Jesus binds himself to you in committed love and loyalty?  Simple.  You go to where the Church cares for you as a mother cares for her child.  You know that Jesus is devoted to you personally because he devotes himself to you through his word and sacraments.  He devotes himself to you through the care of the Church who is your mother.  You rejoice with her by feeding and being satisfied with the food she provides.

Jesus is the Bread of Life.  He gives himself for the life of the world.  So says Jesus.  But where do we find this Bread?  Where do we find this Life?  Where do we find Jesus giving himself to us?  God tells us in the next two verses of Isaiah 66 – right after he tells us to rejoice with Jerusalem and be consoled at her bosom:

“For thus says the Lord:

Behold, I will extend peace to her [that is, to his Church] like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream [that is, the Gentiles will flock to the Church and believe in Christ].  Then you shall feed; on her sides shall you be carried, and be dandled on her knees.  As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem’” (Isaiah 66:12-13). 

Here we find God’s devotion to us – both individually and as a body.  We see God’s tenderness toward us when he blesses the Church and gives her peace.  We see God’s love for us through the comfort of the gospel that he provides his Church.  He feeds us with the Bread of Life as a Father cares for his children.  He gives us his holy word and makes us his free children who can count on him for every good thing.  

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In our Gospel lesson, Jesus fed 5000 men, plus women and children.  It was a remarkable miracle.  By feeding a multitude, he demonstrated his power as God to feed all the people of the earth.  But he did more.  He also showed his compassion as God.  He fed not worthy men, but unworthy – those who were not inclined to give him thanks.  This is what God does.  In the 4^th Petition of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread.  As we know, God gives daily bread even to all evil people without prayer; but with this petition, Jesus teaches us to pray that our Father in heaven would lead us to know it, and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.  This was the same lesson that Jesus taught when he multiplied the bread and fish.  He fed everyone indiscriminately.  But his purpose was to teach them how to receive what they had in gratitude to him who gives it.  He wanted more than to feed their bellies.  He wanted to show them who their true Father was in heaven.  He wanted them to find in him the true life they needed. 

They could have gone to town and bought their own food.  But Jesus said, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”  Jesus asked the question he did in order to test his disciples.  He knew what he would do.  He would do what he had always been doing ever since he cursed the earth and told Adam to work the ground by the sweat of his brow.  He would be gracious.  Is it not God who causes the grass to grow, upon which these people reclined?   Is it not God who caused wheat and barley and every good thing to spring from the ground?  Is it not God who fills the sea and rivers and sustains their life?  Is it not God who gives strength and industry to man, who orders the affairs of humanity so that we might buy and sell and support ourselves?  Is this not God’s doing that we are able to provide for our needs?  Yes it is.  All that we have is God’s gracious providence. 

And is Jesus not God?  Yes he is.  God sends rain.  God shines the sun.  God feeds the world.  And just as certainly as Jesus was familiar with his Father’s usual means of feeding mankind, he was also familiar, as we are today, with the usual means by which people fed themselves.  “Go buy food,” the disciples suggest.  But Jesus would not have it.  He wanted to teach that all our material sustenance comes not by our working, but by his.  He wanted to teach that it came from his own compassion.  He wanted to teach how to receive daily bread with thanksgiving. 

So Jesus fed them.  He cut out all his usual middlemen, so to speak.  He used no means.  He did it by the power of his word alone.  Not that he doesn’t always.  But he disguises his blessings behind such things as weather and economy and human ingenuity.  But there was no disguising here.  Jesus fed them directly.  God bared his arm.  Jesus showed himself as the God behind it all. 

But should it surprise us that this miraculous feeding did not turn their hearts?  How easily do people despise God regardless of the many things he gives them?  How easily do people feed like swine on all the luxuries of this life with no thought as to where it comes from?  It’s not like it isn’t obvious.  God works through means.  It doesn’t take a genius to trace it all to God.  So when God suspends the usual means of his providence and feeds the people directly, is it such a surprise that the only thing that excites them is the prospect of more bread? 

The reason why people reject God is not because God is not good to them.  The reason they refuse to see God’s goodness is not because it isn’t obvious in the things that he provides them.  It is obvious.  Rather, they reject God because they are disinterested in the greater gift that God gives.  He gives it freely.  It also comes through usual means.  It is his word.  We receive it through the preaching of the gospel as we gather with the Church for our souls to be fed. 

Jesus fed the multitude free of charge with material food, and they wanted to make him king.  This was the salvation they sought. No more working, no more planting and sowing.  No more buying and selling.  But Jesus would not be such a king.  He himself knew how that turned out in the desert.  Did the Israelites’ satisfied bellies make them love or trust God more?  Or did they grumble?  They grumbled. 

What they needed and what we need more than God feeding us – and this is whether he feeds us with or without the usual means of putting food on our plates and clothes on our backs and stuff in our castles – what we all need more than this is for God to be merciful to us for our ingratitude.  We need God to forgive our idolatry.  This is what Jesus offered.  He who bypassed the usual means of feeding his people, by providing food directly, also bypassed the usual means of speaking.  God was not speaking through a mere prophet.  He was speaking to them with his own flesh and blood mouth.  He was offering true life by offering them what he as a Man would accomplish for their salvation. 

Jesus is the Bread of Life, the Bread come down from heaven.  He gives himself for the life of the world.  Whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood, as Jesus says, has eternal life.  Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died.  How much more will we die who work and strive to make a living?  But the bread that Christ gives us is his own flesh and blood.  This means that by believing his word and trusting in what he offers in the forgiveness of our sins, we have the life that he gave his life to win.  This is what it means to eat and drink his flesh and blood.  It is a spiritual eating.  It means that we trust in him who bore our sin on the cross.  We feed on his mercy.  Here is our king – not the God who feeds us miraculously.  No, he feeds us in the usual way.  But he is the God who teaches us to receive it with grateful hearts.  Because he is the God who took on our flesh and blood in order to live a perfect life in our place.  He is the God who suffered his own righteous condemnation against us as our Substitute so that we might be treated as sons and daughters. 

God does not fail to provide more than we need.  God could give us all perfect rations.  He could feed the world and fill every belly with perfect allocation.  But there is always more than enough.  So also Jesus made more than enough bread and fish.  12 baskets were left over.  12 is the number of the children of Israel.  It is the number of the Apostles.  It is the number that represents the Church.  God fills our material needs.  Sometimes we lack.  Sometimes he seems to withdraw the help we need. 

But he will always have an abundance of what we truly need.  His abundance is found where he gives us true food and drink.  It is found where we are put in the care of our mother, the Church.  Here he gives us what we need to live.  Here he delivers to us what he earned by his miserable suffering and dying.  Here he gives us not only to spiritually eat of his flesh and blood, but also in the Sacrament of the Altar he gives us to eat of his body and blood. 

We rejoice in the Bread of Life by rejoicing at the table where our Father feeds us.  We rejoice with the whole Church who lives by Christ and through whom Christ comes to us. 

We learn to give thanks for God’s fatherly care only by being cared for by our mother.  We honor her by regarding her commitment and submission to our Father.  We pray to him.  We commend ourselves to him.  We heed his word.  We fear his commands, love his goodness, and trust his promise to rescue us from all sin, from death, and from hell.  And he does.  Our mother is virtuous, not by virtue of her great deeds, but by virtue of her Lord’s compassion that teaches her and all her children to find our rest and confidence and all we need in life and death in our Father’s home – for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.