Lent 4

John 6:1-15 - Laetare, Lent IV - March 18, 2012 

Bread of Life

For 40 days, Jesus fasted in the wilderness.  He went entirely without food, and drank only water.  He was incredibly hungry.  This exercise was not intended to provide some sort of health benefit.  In fact, by today’s fitness-obsessed standards, this was physically reckless of Jesus.   Neither was this exercise of hunger intended to drive Him deeper into Himself for some sort of soul-searching journey.  No, but as Jesus says in John 4, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.”  In His hunger, therefore, Jesus sought the will of His Father.  He did not seek council in the wanderings of His human mind, but found solid refuge in the written word of God. 

And that’s what we do—because Jesus teaches us how.  At the end of these 40 days, when He was tempted by the devil to use His divine power to feed Himself, Jesus resisted by quoting from Deuteronomy 8: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  This was the lesson that God had given the children of Israel by feeding them manna as they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.  These events were recorded for our learning.  And so by the patience and comfort of the Scriptures, Jesus learned the same lesson Himself during His 40 days of fasting.  He hungered and thirsted for us.  And in His self-denial, Jesus fulfilled what we have left undone. 

It is Lent.  It is a time for repentance.  During these 40 days we give special consideration to the sin of which we ought to repent, and to our need for God to have mercy on us.  We do this first by solemnly listening to His word and consenting to its verdict of guilty; and second by seeking refuge in His word that pronounces us innocent.  We need to hear both words – both the law that exposes and kills us, and the gospel that covers and revives us.  Both words are necessary.  We live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. 

It used to be that during the 40 days of Lent, people would follow the example of Jesus and fast.  In fact, in German the word for Lent literally means “time to fast.”  Sometimes people will still give something up to commemorate the season.  But whether during Lent or not, whenever we do deprive ourselves of something for a time, we learn to recognize two things: how little we really needed it; and how much we seemed to depend on it. 

Well, we don’t need bread just a little; we need it a lot.  We really do depend on it.  Our desire to fill our stomachs with food is what helps keep us alive.  That and, of course, the fact that we need God to give it to us.  And He does.  God who creates also provides.  Although we typically attribute the preservation of our bodies to God the Father, we should be careful that our distinctions don’t divide the Godhead.  God is one.  Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity, is the very same God who gives us our daily bread. 

In our Gospel this morning, an enormous crowd of people, who were hungry for what they needed to survive, followed their God deep into the barren wilderness.  There’s something admirable here.  They didn’t fast for forty days, but they certainly gave something up!  These folks willingly followed Jesus far away from any source of nourishment in order to see His miracles and hear Him preach.  And unwittingly they followed the very source of life Himself. 

But how much did they know?  Perhaps they knew that He who healed the sick and gave sight to the blind was certainly able to give them food as well—or that He who showed mercy to the cast down and lowly would certainly have compassion on their hunger.  Perhaps they had even figured out that Jesus was God.  At least Jesus certainly made this clear once He fed them.  Only God can make something out of nothing, and that’s exactly what He did.  Jesus fed 5,000 men plus women and children, with more to spare than they originally had.  

In showing mercy, Jesus proved who He was.  His desire to feed these people found its source in two places: not only in the fact that He was God almighty who satisfies the wants of all creatures—but also in the fact that He Himself had learned as a Man what it meant to hunger.  God was moved with real compassion when He saw the crowds without food.  He had been there.  Here in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s gracious generosity toward all He has made, and His personal empathy toward you is found united in the same place.  This is the mystery of the incarnation.  Only in the flesh and blood of the almighty God do we find God’s mercy toward sinners revealed.  Sinners who need mercy need Jesus. 

This is what Jesus wanted the crowds to know.  “Man shall not live by bread alone; but listen to what I say.  I feed you so that you will know whose words I speak; I show mercy so that you will know the power and purpose of this word to save you.”  Jesus wanted them to know that He was God incarnate – God enfleshed – who had come to save His people from their sins.   

But this was not the lesson they wanted to learn.  People are generally more concerned about the stuff that they have and don’t have than they are about whether or not their sins are forgiven by God.   And so instead they wanted to receive the reward that so many have wanted — and that we have wanted too — the reward for having followed Jesus long and far, the reward for having given something up for the kingdom of God.  They wanted to make Jesus a king on their own terms.  They even tried to force Him.  “We have followed You so far; now use Your power to feed us more bread — to give us more stuff — with You as our king, we will never go hungry. What could be better, after all, than having God Himself providing for our every physical need – giving us our daily bread?” 

But how foolish.  God has always provided daily bread – to everyone – even without our prayer – even to the very evil.  It is God who makes grass to grow on the mountains, who gives to the beast its food, and to the young ravens that cry (Ps. 37).  Surely it is God who gives you what you need.  But Jesus was not born of the Virgin Mary in order to do what our gracious Father in heaven has always been doing.  No, God became man in order to save us from our sin.  And by doing this, Jesus would reveal the true reason that the Father has always fed and continues to feed His creation: He does so for the sake of His Church, the bride of Christ.  God continues to feed our life and all life for the sake of Christ who redeems the world and gives eternal life to those who believe. 

Just as Jesus in His temptation did not appeal to His status as the Son of God to get some bread for Himself, so we do not appeal to our status as the children of God to get the stuff we want.  Instead we listen to God’s word because it is more important.  

It’s a good practice to give things up once in a while.  When we deprive ourselves of something, we teach ourselves to prize the One who gave it more highly than the thing itself.  This is especially true because we know that the One who gives it is also the One who gave His life for ours.  So then, what do we give up?  

…We don’t really fast, do we? … But how then will we ever learn that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God?  God will teach us.  That’s how.  These words that Jesus took from Deuteronomy 8 when He fasted in the desert for 40 days were originally spoken to the Israelites who had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.  They had learned the hard way to trust in God for their life bread every waking morning.  In a manner of speaking, they also fasted—but not by their own choice.  But even while they grumbled about it, God knew what they needed to learn.  And He taught them.  Soon after this quotation from Deuteronomy, God also reminds His people, and teaches us, “Know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you.” 

How do we learn that we do not live by bread alone?  How do we learn to find our life instead in the words He speaks?  God chastens us.  That’s how.  That’s how He teaches us.  He disciplines us.  He doesn’t command us to fast or give anything up, although it may certainly be helpful.  But in order to teach us the same lesson, He still takes things away from us.  He allows our money to be spent away.  He allows cancer to destroy our bodies.  He allows friends and family to forsake us, and the injustice of the world to oppress us.  He gives us so many good things.  But then He gathers the fragments away from our safe keeping so that we can’t trust in the things we have, or in the things that we are able to save.  But instead we must look to God alone who has compassion on the hungry.   Our good things must always be found with Him. 

When we suffer want, when we lose things that we regarded as valuable and that we would never have willingly given up had necessity not taken it from us, when God takes the spice of life away and leaves us bitter, we discover not just pain and sorrow over our loss, but we discover idolatry in our hearts.  We discover what we had been relying on.  We discover what we thought we had deserved from God for being such faithful followers.  And here it is that we discover our need for the mercy that we have not earned. 

And this is the work of Jesus for you.  Just as He led thousands far into the wilderness where He once fasted and starved as their Substitute, so He leads us to suffer with Him and to see where he suffered for us.  He leads us to know and confess our own sinful mortality and weakness, and to hunger for a righteousness that we cannot produce.  In the midst of death, as thousands were surrounded by nothing but withered grass, Jesus made bread to give them life.  So in the midst of our dying flesh that withers like grass when the breath of the Lord blows upon it, Jesus the Bread of Life give us Himself; he gives us the righteousness that only He can give—because He suffered for us to win it. 

He directs us gently by His word, and compels us firmly by the crosses He gives us to bear, to see our true need that daily bread cannot satisfy – and to see it fulfilled where Love was perfected for us on His cross.  There He died as the bread-worshipper.  There He died as the one who sought carnal pleasures.  There He died as the presumptuous sinner trying to earn something from God.  But as the sinless Son of God took upon Himself the sins of the world He earned everything for us.   Where we see God the Father deny all the necessities of life to His own eternal Son as He hangs abandoned on the cross, we see also where He denies us nothing, but gives us eternal life and salvation by forgiving us all our sin. 

We see our need most clearly when we see our need most fully met.  And your need is met for you this morning as your God comes to you by the food that feeds your deepest hunger.  Jesus is the Bread of Life, your righteousness.  We can go without bread for a while; but we cannot live without the life that He offers us from His cross.  And this He will never take away.  Even in the midst of your sorrow and anguish and deepest loss, God will never deprive you of the promises He makes through the blood of Christ His Son.  He who died for you now lives for you to give you here in His word, and in bread and wine what He fasted and suffered and died to earn.  Here He fills you.  Here He gives you peace with God your Maker.  Here He never runs out of what we need. 

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”   God’s word gives you life because it forgives you your sin for Jesus’ sake.  And so in true faith we feast on every word our God speaks.  He will not deny you what He has promised to give. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.