Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Rev. Shemwell
Matthew 14:13-21
08/06/23

Homily for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear brothers
and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, hear these words once more: “Then Jesus
ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, He
looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then He broke the loaves and gave them to the
disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied.
And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.” Here endeth the
Gospel. Now friends, if I were to ask you all what the most important aspect of this miracle
narrative is, or where you might find the true significance and deepest meaning in the story
of the feeding of the five thousand, I wonder what you would perhaps say.
Well, my guess is—and I think it’s a pretty good guess—you would probably tell me
that it has something to do with the very nature of the miracle itself. You might bring up the
fact that this Gospel narrative speaks to the power of our God, it attests to the ability of
Christ to work wonders and to feed thousands with such an insignificant quantity. And you
all very likely already know that many, many more than just five thousand were actually
fed, right? The five thousand number only refers to the men in attendance. Scripture tells us
there were women and children there as well though. So for all we know, this story should
maybe be called the feeding of the twenty-thousand. That many hungry mouths fed with
five loaves and two fish, an exceptionally meager portion, to say the least. So, chances are
you’d mention all that stuff. And I’d get your point. For sure. The miracle itself seems, on
the face of it, to be what matters the most here. The taking and breaking of five loaves and
two little fish and turning them, by preternatural and divine means, into a meal for the
equivalent of nearly a third of Johnson City, TN. That is extraordinary, miraculous,
genuinely inexplicable and simply wondrous.
But… I would not agree with you. No I do not believe that that is what is most
important about this text. It is important, crucial even, but it’s not what really matters
foremost, above all else. Really, friends, the most noteworthy feature of this story is bound
up with a single solitary word. Verse 20, in the ancient Greek text, ἐχορτάσθησαν.

In the English translation, it boils down to three little words in the whole of the lesson: “they
were satisfied.” Satisfaction. What a heavy word, friends, a word with so many
connotations. But you know what, really, this word satisfaction, as broad and loaded with
plenty of meaning as it is, it does not even begin to fully convey what that Greek word truly
means.
A better translation for ἐχορτάσθησαν would probably be: “they were satiated.” Or
better yet: “they were fattened.” That’s what the word usually means. It refers to one being
filled to the point of overindulgence, being gorged even. It means one is maximally
satisfied, comprehensively gratified, and straight up fattened up like a grazing beast of the
field or French foi gras goose. That’s what it means, dear faithful. And that is what matters
the most here. Not only does our God work wonders, miracles, feats that contradict and
supersede the very laws of nature, not only does He demonstrate His power and might in
this marvel, but He moreover provides through it in an over-abundance. He did not just feed
the twenty-or-so thousand. He satiated them. He fattened them. He supplied them with more
than they needed or even asked for. And remember, there were twelve whole basketsful left
over. His bountiful providence is nothing short of overflowing. My cup runneth over, as the
psalmist says, right? And baskets, too, floweth over in our Gospel reading this morning.
That’s the real miracle if you ask me.
Of course, this is not the first time we see our Lord lavishing excess and plentitude
upon His creatures in extra-ordinary ways. There was the wedding feast at Cana, remember?
The very first miracle. Do you guys recall in that Gospel narrative what the governor of the
feast—the so-called feastmaster—what he says after he tastes that wine Jesus miraculously
furnishes? He says this, according to the New King James Version, anyhow, he says: “Every
man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the
inferior wine. But you have kept the good wine until now!” He exclaims this in utter
surprise. But here’s the thing, friends, again we have a little word that, for whatever reason,
is unfortunately softened in translation. μεθυσθῶσιν in the Greek does not merely denote
and indicate that one has “drunk well.” It means instead—more clearly and with all the
provocative implications considered here—that one has become a little intoxicated, a bit
inebriated. Frankly, it means, at the very least, that one is sort of buzzed.

From what we can tell based on what is documented in St. John’s Gospel chapter 2 and the
nature of wedding feasts at that time and location, some of the guests were more than likely
already good and soused when Jesus provided them with more wine. And that, in my view,
is again the point of the miracle: not that Jesus can turn water into wine, as remarkable as
that is, but that He does so in an excessive, overabundant, even exorbitant way.
That’s our Lord though, a God of sheer extravagance. Now, this interpretation, this
reality, I mean to say, I am sure that it upsets many of the Baptists and other semi-legalists
in our midst. But it is nevertheless true, according to Holy Scripture. It is fixed in the
inspired, inerrant Bible alongside, to be sure, strict admonitions against consistent
drunkenness and being consumed by the bottle with all the debauchery that entails. So
obviously moderation on the part of the recipient of the gift is just as critical to keep in
mind. But the point here is this: God incarnate fattened the five-thousand men along with
their families that day on the grassy lawn with just five loaves and two fish. And He gave an
already-tipsy matrimonial drinking party approximately one thousand bottles of an
otherworldly wine with which to continue their merriment and chase their cheer. That is
what really matters. That Christ, our God enfleshed, lavishes His care and concern and His
benevolent, beneficent, bounteous and unsparing consideration upon His creation. And
don’t we even here similar language today in our Gospel lesson? Again it reads: “When
Jesus went ashore He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them.” He went on to
heal their sick, but more than that, He thereafter gratified and gorged them, overfilled,
overindulged them, to the tune of twelve basketsful leftover, you know, the first century
equivalent of a Southern grandma’s fridge filled to the brim with Country-Crock butter
containers overflowing with all variety of leftover meals ready for warming over. What an
authentic and profoundly meaningful miracle.
And as you all well know, this wasn’t a one-or two-time thing either. Jesus satiated,
satisfied many during His earthly travels and ministry. And He still does so today, all these
centuries later. What do you think the means of grace are all about?

The mysteries over which I have been called to be a steward, per St. Paul’s words in 1
Corinthians 4 – and words proven out in our text this morning by the fact that the disciples
themselves distributed the meal that evening long ago on the grassy lawn – these mysteries
are the epitome of a satisfying feast. This satiation and spiritual fattening is still going on
right here, right now, in Christ’s holy church. But bear this in mind, beloved: He does not
just feed us spiritually. But He does so through physical, fleshly, material means, through
concrete, actual, tactile things, through real bread and real wine which you can touch and
smell and taste and see. And think about that bread for a moment, brothers and sisters, that
bread which is, when consecrated up here, the very bread of life, on which our Lord says we
are to feast for the sake of abounding life in John chapter 6. And don’t forget, as well, that
that exhortation in John 6 was made in the context of – guess what? The same miraculous
feeding of the thousands. And so our Lord continues to furnish us with this precise bread of
life – and with wine, not unlike at Cana. So what I am trying to suggest is this: there is a
clear connection between the feeding of the thousands—and even that wedding party in
John 2—and the Blessed Sacrament of this altar.
And I ask you: have you wondered why in the feeding of the thousands it was five
loaves of bread? It is entirely rare in Holy Scripture that a number has no apparent meaning
at all. Now I’m not suggesting we ought to go overboard with numerology or anything like
that, but numbers in the Bible often do carry quite a bit of significance. And our Lord fed
the thousands, maybe even twenty-thousand, with five loaves of bread. Five loaves – kind of
like the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. As far as I am concerned, that is
the significance of the number of loaves – they signify the senses, they stand for the very
senses through which our God satisfies, sates, and satiates us, His children. We are not
Puritans, dear faithful. Neither are we Pietists, nor Gnostics or enthusiasts of any sort. We
recognize and confess the goodness of this creation and that God works salvation through
creation. I mean, God Himself so condescended to become a part of creation for our sake,
right? For our redemption. The flesh is not altogether evil and solely a hindrance, but it is,
when so ordained by God, no less than the vehicle for our deliverance. And this is made
abundantly clear in how grace comes to us now: through the senses, through water, through
the Word spoken into our ears, though bread and wine witnessed, consumed, and digested.

Our God is not a God of asceticism and austerity but one of extravagance. That is our
teaching – and let us give thanks for it. We are not only filled but downright stuffed. Our
faith is a faith of bountiful promise and providence, of grace upon grace, and of
thanksgiving – and by all means, do draw a connection between that fact and the indulgence
we partake in every fourth Thursday in November. It is, after all, a fitting connection to
make.
Now it goes without saying though that the Christian life is not always an easy trip. It
ain’t a perpetual party, so to speak. The feast is not all that we face here below. We suffer,
too, don’t we? We suffer like all other sinners suffer, from the ramifications of the Fall in
this present life, from hunger, deprivation, and want. We are not immune to the pains of this
earthly existence. There is enough heartache to go around, as well as hurt feelings, there is
cancer and Alzheimer’s, betrayal and divorce, loneliness, anxiety and depression, confusion
and a sense of aimlessness in both youth and old age, and there is loss. But the church is not
a place of perfection, and neither is it a club for those who have it all together and figured
out. This church, Christ’s body, it’s a hospital, a ward for the wayward. We come here not
to prove ourselves to the world nor to anyone else but to lay out flat on a gurney in our
weakest, darkest moments before the Great Physician Himself, the very Son of God, the
only begotten Son of God. We cannot neglect the fact that our Gospel reading today begins
with our Lord’s compassion pouring forth in the healing of the sick, the distressed, the
diseased and demon-possessed. But here’s another fancy old Greek word for you, as I might
as well give them to you in threes, which is a holy number. ἐσπλαγχνίσθη. That’s the word
we find in verse 14 in the original text for our Lord’s being moved to compassion. Yet
again, the translation does not do justice to the fullest meaning here. This word means,
rather viscerally, that Jesus was moved in His inward parts, literally perturbed in His
intestines, with pity and with love.

In other words, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, was sick to His stomach, altogether
nauseous, with an aching deep down, at the suffering of the sick. He was sick from the
reality of the sick. He was punched in the gut by witnessing the consequences of sin on His
beloved creation – witnessing what was never meant to happen from the first day of
creation. And so, He healed them that day, out of love, pity, and compassion, He returned
them to wholeness. And He heals us still. But here’s the beauty of it all: now, for us, today,
our healing and our being satiated and satisfied and overfilled in feasting on mercy, these
once separate things are now made one, they are united – they happen through the very
same means, the exact same means of grace, Word and Sacrament, preaching, teaching,
baptizing, forgiving, and consuming the flesh and blood of our God, these are what heal us
and what satisfy and feed and gratify us. Jesus says in John chapter 6: “I am the living bread
which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the
bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” This flesh
was offered up at Golgotha, that vile place of the skull, and it is still handed out, handed
over, two-thousand years later, delivered into your begging hands and onto your needful
tongues, at this altar right here in the hills of Tennessee.
It is a miracle that Christ turned water into wine, over a thousand bottles worth, and
that He fed thousands upon thousands with a mere five loaves and two fish. But an even
greater miracle is His continual presence with us and His constant, unrelenting providing for
us, particularly in this magnificent mean. This is the feast of victory for our God. A victory
over sin, death, the devil, the world, ultimately, it is just as much a triumph over cancer and
Alzheimer’s and sadness and sorrow in the consummation of the age. But most importantly,
it is a victory for us, for our sake, for our forgiveness.
In a few moments, our Lord’s own words will be chanted over common bread and
wine, the same kind eaten and drunk every day all over the world. But this bread, this wine,
is so much more. That is why we elevate it in the service. To lift it high and show you that
in this bread and in this wine God really and truly and undeniably dwells. I elevate the host
and the chalice so that you might gaze upon them with faithful adoration, knowing that soon
this meal will satisfy your senses, and fill your belly, and nourish your soul forever.
Lutheran churches across the globe celebrate this same meal this morning.


We commune with them, with the whole church on earth and in heaven, with all the sainted
and faithful departed. Therefore, it is entirely correct to say that Jesus, our Lord, is still
feeding thousands, millions even, surely billions by now, every single Sunday.
The miracle continues. The mystery remains. So come now and kneel, dear flock,
take and eat, take and drink, the bread of life, the Sacrificial Lamb of God Who takes away
the sins of the world, including and especially your own. Be forgiven of your failures and
your faults in this supper. Be satisfied by this here sumptuous spread. Be enticed, lured,
charmed to pure Christian merriment by Your loving yet justly jealous God. And be
strengthened unto life everlasting, I invite you. All thanks and praise for this most
providential banquet of deliverance and meal of mercy be unto God, with all the glory, forever and ever. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.