The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10th, Year of Our + Lord 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s
Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Bread King, or Eternal King?
Exodus 16:2-21, Acts 2:41-47, John 6:1-15
Audio of Sermon available HERE.
Jesus could be your Bread King, but His goal is to be your Eternal King. Which is to say, our relationship to bread is complicated.
like bread. But not many. Certainly in many places in the world still today, and everywhere a century ago, not liking bread would seem suicidal. Ever since the LORD expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden, we have been raising grain to make bread. “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
God connects bread to death, but also to life. No longer could Adam and Eve simply walk around the Garden, pick yummy fruit, eat, be filled, and live forever. Now staying alive would be sweaty, frustrating work, a reminder that starvation and death are never that far away. And yet, bread is wonderful, evidence of God’s great desire to bless us. For along with the struggle for daily bread comes the delight of bread, the way it tastes, the joy of being filled with baked goodness. A Pharisee once rejoiced to Jesus: “Blessed is he who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:15) What seems more heavenly than freshly baked bread? So comforting and delicious, by itself, or serving as the foundation for some almost miraculous meal. Bread makes pizza possible. And cinnamon rolls. Rueben sandwiches, and honey toast.
Fresh bread is wonderful. But it’s wonder fades, quickly. A slice of bread, no matter how good, quickly becomes hard and disgusting if left out in a hot, dry place. Too much moisture, and nasty mold ruins your appetite quickly. Bread plays a leading role in the Bible, certainly in the passages assigned for this Sunday. Today is called Laetare Sunday, which means “Rejoice!”, the first word in Latin of our Introit: “Rejoice!” But the Israelites in our Old Testament reading weren’t rejoicing.
Just rescued from bondage in Egypt, the first pang of hunger in the wilderness leaves Israel grumbling, complaining against the LORD. God had just freed them from slavery under Pharaoh, redeeming them by His mighty arm, performing through Moses never-before-seen wonders and signs. Despite this, their grumbling stomachs quickly made them long to be slaves again: better to be well fed in captivity than face starvation in freedom, they whined. Didn’t it occur to them that the Mighty One, who had made a dry path through the Red Sea and struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, might also happily provide food for them? But instead of praying humbly and faithfully, Israel grumbled. Which angered the LORD.
I think we would be better off if our desire for God were connected to our stomachs, instead of our hearts. Sinners do desire God. Despite our fall, their remains in the human heart a question, an interest, to find and draw near to God. But this good urge, this conscience, this God-shaped-hole in our hearts, fails us. Our desire for God is weak, and easily overcome by other bodily appetites. But imagine if, when we had not heard the Word of God for a few hours, we felt hunger pangs in our stomach!
Despite His anger at His people, God responded to their grumbling with the Manna, bread from heaven. Both a blessing to fill their hunger, and a test, a daily discipline to teach them faith. God would send manna every morning, daily bread, to fill their bellies. Israel was to collect just what they needed for each day, then double the amount the morning before the sabbath, the day of rest. Storing up bread because you doubted that God would give the manna tomorrow was forbidden. A daily reminder of God’s providence and faithfulness. And a daily test of obedience and attention to the Word of the LORD.
Man does not live by bread alone, but on every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. (Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4, Luke 4:4) But the threat of hunger is more than our hearts can resist. Jesus, the Word made flesh, knew his guests. The congregation of Jews who had followed Him out into the wilderness, seeking His teaching and His healing, would soon lose heart. They might even faint on the way home, for lack of bread. So, the same God who had compassion on Israel, back when Moses led them in the wilderness, now has compassion on the crowd. There’s a lot going on in the feeding of the 5,000, not least that the wonder-working God of Exodus now revealed Himself to be the Man, Jesus of Nazareth.
God usually gives the gift of daily bread through a long process of sowing seed, raising grain, harvesting, milling and baking. Jesus short-circuits this process, and delivers a bounty of fresh-baked loaves, in an instant. The Creator-King of the Universe, the power behind all the good things we receive, is more than capable of achieving the same blessing in a moment. The One who created the laws of Physics shows Himself to not be bound by them. Yes, Jesus could easily have been their Bread King. But His goal was to be their Eternal King.
Jesus’ goal was that the crowds, and the
disciples, and you and me, would hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness. He is more than happy to provide our daily
bread and every need of the body. If
only we would understand that having righteousness is better. Indeed, if we have righteousness, if all that
went wrong in the Garden of Eden, and all that has gone wrong since, were set
right, then all the needs of the body would always be satisfied as well. God our Heavenly Father will not let His holy
children starve.
But our appetites, for food and other bodily satisfactions, preach much louder than even the miracle of bread in the wilderness. God, in the Man Jesus of Nazareth, had come to His own people, in order to give them the righteousness that is truly the first need of every descendent of Adam. But the people can’t see past the loaves. Whatever hunger for righteousness Christ may have stirred in them is overwhelmed by the possibility of filling their stomachs with endless, bountiful bread. So Jesus, perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.
Jesus withdraws because the blessing of eating bread in the Kingdom of God is not a matter of supply and demand. Rather, gaining entrance to the eternal feast is a matter of sin, and satisfaction. Of sacrifice, and trust. The ingredients for this righteous loaf are not in our pantry; the only thing we have to offer to the recipe is our sin. Plenty of sin. Sin so pervasive in us that the Creator can appear, right in front of us, and we still quite naturally ignore Him. Jesus can be standing right in our midst, and yet we are still prone to bow down to worship the created things He gives us.
Our greatest need is to receive God’s forgiveness, His guidance and correction, His grace and mercy. Along with these gifts of righteousness, the LORD promises also to provide for our bodies. Jesus promises: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and then all your worldly needs will be filled as well. But how do we divide our time?
How faithfully do we seek God’s righteousness? How much hunger or want, or simple boredom with the things we have, how much does it take does it take for us to ignore God’s Word and the righteousness He offers? How quickly do we forget the Spirit’s voice, and instead expend all our energy satisfying our earthly appetites?
We could learn from our friend Kim. His cancer has damaged his body’s ability to receive nourishment. Lately, it has taken away his appetite, for food. But His appetite for God’s Word, his hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ has never been stronger.
The crowd of 5,000 didn’t hunger and thirst for righteousness, and we continue to struggle in much the same way. Jesus, knowing us better than we know ourselves, and yet still loving us, filled this need as well. God’s-Son-made-man spent every moment of His life seeking righteousness, for us. Forty days He went without bread, in order to reverse our enslavement to Satan, relying perfectly on His Father’s Word, trusting that all His needs would be fulfilled in due time. Thirty-three years He journeyed steadily toward His goal, a Cross of Wood, a dead tree, where He would re-open our access to God’s Tree of Life. Knowing that earthly bread could not feed our greatest need, He gave His own sinless body to be the True Bread from Heaven, that we might eat it, and never die.
See your Savior’s hunger and thirst, for you. See His love, and hear His promise, the menu He has prepared for you and me, the heavenly sustenance that reverses the curse, which has plagued us since Adam’s fall. Hear the Word of Life, the Apostles’ teaching, which reveals all that God has done and continues to do to give you the righteousness, the holiness, the forgiveness that brings you into God’s Kingdom.
Rejoice in the simplest meal, the breaking of the bread, earthly bread and wine, transformed by Christ. Satisfy your hunger and thirst for God, by receiving His body broken and His blood shed, for the forgiveness of all your sins. Take, eat, take, drink, and God’s meal will fill your conscience with peace. Confess your sins and come to the table of Jesus, so that He can feed you for life. Be fed with the love of God, in Word and Sacrament, so that in you and through you, God can love your neighbors, in body and soul. Ponder the mystery of the Bread of Life, so that you will be ready to give an answer to those who will ask you the reason for the Hope that is in you.
Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God. And so we are. We are blessed to eat the Bread of God, trusting in our Creator and Redeemer, invisible, but truly present for us, today. He transforms our hearts and minds, to be reminded of the heavenly banquet every time we sit down for an earthly meal. And so, we give thanks for daily bread, and for the Bread of Heaven, our forgiving Savior and Eternal King, Jesus Christ, who is the same for you, yesterday, today, and forever and ever, Amen.
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