Sermon manuscript:
Jesus said, “The things which are
impossible with man are possible with God.”
In our Gospel reading today we are told about an impressive
miracle. There is a very large crowd. Maybe we can use our imagination to get a
mental picture of this crowd. The crowd would have been about the size of all
the residents of Fairmont. Our town has about 10,000 people. At the end of our
reading it says that there were about 5,000 men, not counting the women and
children. So if you took every last person who lives in our town, and maybe add
a little bit more, then you’d have an idea of how large this crowd was.
The occasion for Jesus’s dealings with this crowd is that
they heard Jesus was able to do miracles. They heard that Jesus was able to
cast out demons, give hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, preach the good
news to the poor, and so on. So although Jesus had taken a boat on the Sea of
Galilee, to go to a deserted place to pray, the people had followed him, going
great distances so that he could help them.
So, maybe we could get a picture of this in our mind’s eye:
It would be like the whole town of Fairmont were to leave their homes and walk
out to a deserted place. Just so that we have the same place in mind, let’s imagine
all of Fairmont walking east of town on the highway until they got to the
Fairmont airport. There you have a nice, big stretch of grass. The whole town
is gathered out there. When Jesus comes and sees the crowd with all their needs
he has compassion. He begins to heal and help the people gathered there.
It seems that this went on for many hours. The disciples can
see that there are too many people and not enough time. Night was coming and
the people needed to walk back that distance to get home. So they told Jesus
that it was time for the town of Fairmont to walk back home. They had to have
been hungry. Once they got to town they could stop at Arby’s or Taco John’s.
Jesus must have surprised them when he said, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
What could Jesus possibly be referring to? You’re out at the airport. There
isn’t any food out there. There aren’t any stores out there. There’s just a
bunch of grass. “You give them something to eat,”
Jesus said. Ok. How?
In John’s Gospel the apostle Philip says, “Two hundred denarii wouldn’t buy enough bread so as to give each
of them even just a little.” To put that into today’s terms, “$20,000
wouldn’t be enough to give them all just half a sandwich.” And that’s quite
right. There’s not just the lack of available food. There’s also the lack of
funding. Tens of thousands of dollars would need to be spent for even something
meager.
As it turned out, though, they did have something meager.
They had five loaves and two fish. When Jesus heard that they had this, he was
satisfied: “That’ll work. Bring me the bread and the
fish.”
Then Jesus ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. They
were going to have supper. The people probably were as baffled at that idea as
the disciples were. Where’s the food? Then Jesus took the five loaves and the
two fish and he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. We are not told the
words of that blessing, but this is not something unfamiliar to us. Our table
prayers are blessings. Essentially a blessing is asking for God’s goodness to
be present. Jesus blessed the bread and the fish.
Then the miracle happened, and it isn’t perfectly clear to
me how it happened in my mind’s eye. It says that “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.” It doesn’t sound like
$50,000 worth of bread and fish suddenly showed up so that there was a mountain
of provisions that were then distributed. It sounds like Jesus broke the
loaves, giving pieces to the disciples, and that when they came back to Jesus
he always was able to give them more to distribute.
In a way the miracle is quite humble. The actions involved
are quite humble. A mountain of food doesn’t suddenly appear. There’s only
breaking and giving, breaking and giving, until everyone has had more than
enough. On the other hand, this miracle is arguably grander than anything that
Jesus had done up to this point. Jesus had already done miracles for this
individual and that individual. The feeding of the 5,000 was for a huge crowd, the
whole town of Fairmont and more.
Having gone through what happened, what can we learn from
this? This shows that Jesus has power and authority in his creation. We all
know that it is not in the nature of bread or of fish to spontaneously
multiply. In physics there is a law called the conservation of matter. The law
says that if you start out with a certain amount of material, you are going to
end up with the same amount of material no matter what you do to it. You might
change it from one thing to another, but you can never make something out of
nothing.
God, on the other hand, is well acquainted with making
things out of nothing. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
This means that he made them out of nothing. In fact, the laws that we have in
physics or thermodynamics or what have you were created by God too. The Creator
of these laws is not bound by these laws like we are.
When Jesus creates more bread and fish than what was
originally there, he is making use of power and authority that belong to God
alone. That which is impossible with man is possible with God. There are other
passages that are applicable here too.
When Jesus rose from the dead and before he ascended into
heaven the apostles met him on a mountain in Galilee. Jesus said to them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore, go and make disciples, and so on.” The part I want to
emphasize is that first part: “All authority in heaven
and on earth has been given to Jesus.” This is also what is important
with Jesus reigning and ruling at the right hand of God the Father. The right
hand of God the Father is not so much a physical location. It is the position
of authority, God’s right hand man, so to speak.
Paul in his letter to the Colossians talks about the extent
of Jesus’s power and authority. Jesus created all things, visible and
invisible. He is the creator of thrones, dominions, powers, and authorities. He
is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is the first-born
from the dead so that he might be preeminent over all things.
It is good that Jesus has this power and authority. It has
always been good for him to have such power and authority. God already and
ordinarily uses his power and authority in such a benevolent and life-giving
way. Think of how he sustains life ordinarily and regularly. He’s like
clockwork. He causes the seasons. He gives us our rain. He gives us our daily
bread. In his ordinary way he provides for all the needs of body and soul for
not just 5,000, but for billions.
What Jesus’s miracles reveal in addition, though, is that he
can also circumvent the laws that he has put in place if he should so will it. It
seems to us that the laws of physics are pretty well set in stone, but Jesus
can alter them. Bread and fish spontaneously multiply when Jesus so wills it.
He altered the laws involved in order to feed this great crowd of people.
Jesus can also do this for us, if need be. That’s something always
to keep in mind. If we should be in need we can lift our eyes to heaven and ask
him for help. We should especially be confident when we pray to him for the
things we know he wishes us to have. If we pray the words of the Lord’s Prayer,
for example, we should have no doubt that our prayers will be heard, because he
himself taught us to pray in this way and promised to hear us. I can’t be as
certain about being able to feed the town of Fairmont or the other things that
Jesus did. If the need was there, though, that might be a different matter, as
we see miracles being done by God for his people throughout the Bible. Laws can
still be circumvented today if Jesus should so will it.
But we might not experience the kinds of miracles that we
hear about in the Bible. Realize that the people who lived in Bible times did
not always experience the miracles you hear about in the Bible. Sometimes many
generations would pass, hundreds of years, when the Bible doesn’t record even a
single miracle. It’s not the miracles that are important, but the relationship
we have with God that’s important.
But regardless of whether we experience the kind of miracles
you hear about in the Bible you should know that greater things lie in our
future—especially in the end times. The Scriptures say, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the
imagination of the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.”
Jesus has the power and authority to feed the 5,000. We can imagine that. You
will experience much greater things—things beyond our imagining.
For example, you will experience Jesus breaking the law of
death for you. Things that are dead are supposed to stay dead. That’s a law. Things
that are dead do not have life, they have the opposite. The decompose and decay
even further. Jesus, however, has the power and authority to give life to the
dead. Scripture says that when he comes he will change our lowly bodies to be
like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subdue all things to
himself. He’s going to use his power and authority to make our worn out,
crumbling, sin-infested bodies to be like his glorious, holy body.
In summary, it is right to consider Jesus’s miracle of
feeding the 5,000 to be impressive. It is impressive. It was impressive to
those who ate and were satisfied. They were all astounded, just as we would be
too if we were gathered together with him at the airport. But better and more
unusual things lie ahead for us in our relationship with Jesus. What seems to
be unchangeable, inalterable, unredeemable, is not impossible with God. The
dead will rise. The perishable will put on the imperishable. The mortal will
put on immortality. The power that Jesus used with the 5,000 will be used in an
even greater way on each of you and to your eternal benefit.
Jesus said, “The things that are
impossible with man are possible with God.”
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