Jesus, broken, is sufficient for all.
Pentecost 9, Proper 12
July 25, 2021
The Rev. Timothy C. Nunez
You’ve hopefully noticed we’ve hit a little detour. We’ve been cruising along through Mark’s gospel all year. This week we’re beginning a 5-week excursion into John’s gospel. We are going to spend today and the next four Sundays exploring this entire chapter, chapter 6. Why? Mark’s gospel also records the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus walking on the water. But John’s gospel alone records Jesus’ extensive teaching that follows after this moment. And this is a big moment, an important moment.
How important is it? Even one account of a miracle is important, but Jesus feeding the 5,000 is the only miracle that is in all four gospels. Further, it has always been formational for the church. The earliest symbol for Christianity wasn’t the cross, it was a fish. And the earliest Christian artwork most commonly depicted the loaves and the fishes. This story was key to their understanding of Jesus, its impact was vital to the early spread of the Gospel.
It’s about sustenance. We should identify with that. How important are our feeds? How much did we miss them and how great was our Pentecost picnic?
There is a ready lesson here about Jesus providing great abundance out of very little. And it does replicate, although on a much grander scale, the feeding God performed through Elisha that we read earlier. We should also note that it has echoes of Israel in the wilderness during the Exodus. Jesus is also providing as God provided through Moses.
That is all true. Jesus can and may provide our needs, just as he may heal our infirmities. The people recognized it. That’s why afterwards they hailed him as a mighty prophet like Elisha and wanted to make him king like David who provided for their ancestors. But this isn’t just about Jesus doing a miraculous thing.
It runs much deeper than Christ’s capacity to provide for our needs. This passage leads directly into the main theme in chapter 6, that will continue throughout John’s Gospel, about Jesus as the bread of life. Today I want to share just two points illustrated here about Jesus and the bread, then a point about what this means for us.
First, Jesus isn’t just sharing the bread. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) If all we were meant to be about was our next meal we would be no different from every other living thing on the planet. But we are different. Our lives are about meaning and purpose, most often worked out in relationships but in our work and recreation, too. God’s Word is that creative light that shines in the heart of all people. (John 1:4)
Jesus is that Word made flesh. He is the bread of life. He is illustrating what will happen with himself. Taken as whole loaves, five are laughably insufficient to feed thousands. Yet broken, and broken again and again and again they are not only sufficient, but there is an abundance. Jesus is sufficient for the multitude, indeed the entire creation, once he is broken – broken on the cross for our sin.
Here the abundance fills 12 baskets – symbolic of the 12 disciples who will carry this bread of life to the whole world. As they tell the story, he is broken again and again symbolically in the breaking of the bread. The sacrifice was once, but the remembrance goes on and on and never runs out.
It continues with the early church, under persecution and it continues to this day when, just after we pray the Lord’s prayer, we break the bread, just as he instructed. “This is my body, do this in remembrance of me” he said.
Before I get to my second point we should note that this is highly nutritious bread. These are barley loaves; low gluten, complex carbohydrates, high in fiber, protein and essential nutrients. It’s really healthy, really good for you. Delicious and nutritious. Add some tilapia and you have quite a meal. Eat your fill of that and you are good to go.
But it doesn’t do you a bit of good unless and until you eat it.
Jesus works in much the same way. I will not deny God’s grace appearing in unexpected ways, but in order for us to obtain the benefits of Christ Jesus we have to take him in – to our hearts, to our minds, to our souls. That most often gets worked out in faith and obedience, of course.
But there is something more to this that speaks to the very heart of the sacrament of Holy Eucharist. The outward visible sign is indeed that bread, but the inward spiritual grace is the real presence of our Lord and Savior. He promised to be with us in the breaking of the bread. The physical act of taking the bread, and the wine, in brings him inside.
Which brings us back to, well, us. We are at once to break that bread and share it. But remember about those 12 baskets left over being the 12 disciples. By sharing the bread, they become the bread to be shared.
And we are also that loaf that must be broken again and again in order to bring about the abundance Christ intends to work through us. We must be broken with regard to the ways of this world. Broken from greed. Broken from anger. Broken from lust. Broken from envy and resentment. Broken from everything and anything that is a stumbling block between us and Christ. Breaking our own will and subjecting it to his will is the great struggle of faith.
It is terribly hard, but it must happen in order for Christ to work in and through us.
So we take him in. Those first Christians quoted Jesus as saying that when two or more gather in together in his name he will be in the midst of them, and that by eating the bread (his body) and drinking the wine (his blood) you shall have his life within you.
Those together yield the abundance of grace. The breaking and submission of self to your king and taking him in, body mind and spirit enable him to do quite a lot through you. This prayer, shared by St. Paul to the church at Ephesus so very long ago, is my prayer for each and every one of you:
16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit,17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
So that you may be filled with the fullness of God, like a basket full of bread and fish, to be passed to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, be it the opportunity to live and strive or to find true meaning and purpose in their lives. The abundance that God can work through us if we just ask him is astounding. Listen again to the promise Paul.
20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine,21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
And it all starts with being broken.
AMEN!