Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Hands of the Savior: Hand that Provide

Pastor Phillips’ Sermon

Lenten Service, March 12, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The basis for our meditation was the scripture lesson from Matthew 14 that was read earlier, the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. What a great story.

It reminds me, though, of a man who wanted to get closer to God so he could have a conversation so he journeyed over to the Middle East and he climbed to the top of Mount Sinai and, as he stood on the top, he looked toward heaven and he said, “God,” and God answered, “Yes?” “God, what does a million years mean to you?” And He said, “A minute.” “God.” “Yes?” “What does a million dollars mean to you?” “A penny.” “God, can I have a penny?” “In a minute.”

Going to God with our needs isn’t always entertaining or humorous. A lot of times it’s in great anguish that we call out to God, that we finally come to the end of ourselves, the end of our resources, the end of our finances and talent and employment and things like that before we call out to Him, searching desperately for His help and for an answer.

In our story, Jesus has been all over the place helping everyone. And everywhere He goes, the crowds follow but He is worn out. He has absolutely had it. So they get in a boat and they go across the Sea of Galilee and He is thinking, “I’m going to go as far from these people as I can get so I can get some rest.” But the people got word of where He was headed and these masses that had been following Him everywhere continued to follow Him and they made their way around the shore of the lake. And you can imagine the shore of a lake has many places where small streams and rivers come into it. Imagine the crowd had to get through all those to get all the way around to where Jesus was going, but they did. They were successful. And Jesus could see them desperately waiting on shore as His boat approached. And the scripture says, as it often does, that He was moved with compassion. His heart went out to them and so, as He stepped onto shore, the bible simply says, “He healed their sick.” Now we later know the crowd was about 5,000 plus women and children. Imagine how many sick they had brought along knowing that Jesus had been healing people, how they had hoped against hope that somehow their child or their mother or their father might find healing at Jesus’ touch.
And as Jesus gathered them all there, He taught them as well, not just physical healing but spiritual healing, words of love and grace and mercy just flowed out of Him and went through the ears to the hearts of the people He spoke to. And as they listened, they were so transfixed. They lost all track of time. Finally, it was late in the day and the disciples were getting kind of nervous. The crowd had not budged. They were all standing where they had stood when He arrived. No one was leaving and they came to Jesus with kind of a practical consideration. “It’s late. It’s late in the day. These people are hungry. They need something to eat. Send them away. Send them away to the villages and the surrounding communities so they might buy something for themselves to eat.” Jesus gives them that classic response, “You give them something to eat.” They didn’t have anything. They had a little bit of money that they collected and saved for whatever they would need along the way but they really didn’t have enough to feed a crowd. They even calculated how much it would cost to feed 200 of them. It was way beyond their means.

But Jesus’ words just cut to their hearts and when He said, “You give them something to eat,” they looked around for resources. All they could come up with were six barley cakes of bread. Now, we always think loaves, right? The loaves and the fishes and all that kind of stuff. Well, I read in my commentaries and it said they weren’t actual loaves. They were more like round, flat bread, kind of like a pancake. So I went over to Hy-Vee and I found pita, as close as I could possibly get to being authentic in this story. But, as you can see, six of these still doesn’t amount to too much, not enough to feed you guys or all of us or anybody else. It’s not much. And I also tried to get really authentic with the fish. I went to the deli counter where those guys are with the meat and all that and wearing those white robes and all that stuff. They didn’t have fish. So I thought, “This is Hy-Vee. They have to have everything.” So I thought and I thought and I got it. Fish. Jesus had fish, right? Six loaves and two small fish, it says. These are small. I know you’re getting hungry now. They were hungry, too, that crowd. And the disciples were just like, “Five loaves, two fish. There’s nothing we can do.” Jesus said, “Bring them to me.”

So Jesus took the bread and looked up to heaven and gave thanks and He broke it. And from His hands, they went to the hands of the disciples and from their hands, they went to the crowd. Now He had them seated in groups of 50 and 100, I guess so they could count out how many were blessed by that miracle. And as they were passed out, you know how it went. All those fragments of six barley cakes and two small fish fed 5,000 men plus all the women and children who were there, an incredible miracle.
The disciples brought this impossible problem to Jesus. They were wringing their hands over what they were going to do and fretting over their lack of resources and how they were going to fall short if they even attempted to buy enough. And all the time, Jesus knew. He knew what He was going to do and He knew it would turn out great. And at the end of passing all that food out, it says, “Everyone ate and was satisfied.” Everyone. And they gathered up twelve baskets full of six loaves. That’s a strange kind of math. But that’s the kind of math God is good at, taking our small amount and multiplying it to satisfy all the needs we have.

And that’s kind of the message tonight. In the midst of our struggles, God is still there. And as we go through this challenging time, our economy’s in bad shape and as we look in our bank accounts and calculate the bills that are coming in and think about what’s coming down the road financially and the challenges, we start to worry and wring our hands. “How are we going to pay for college and health care?” “Our mortgage since we just lost our job?” “The utility bills that are rising?” “The numbers don’t add up. There’s just no way we’re going to make it.” All the time, as we’re fretting, Jesus knows exactly what to do. And just as with the loaves and the fish, He invites us to bring these worries and troubles to Him, present Him all our resources. After all, they came from Him to begin with, right? All that money we’ve been saving that’s disappearing with the stock market plunge? Bring it to Him. Give it to Him. Give our worries and our concerns to Him. And then, as Jesus did, we can look to heaven. Think about how God has provided for us and give thanks. And know that we’ve put it all in His hands and, in His hands, we will be provided for.

But God goes beyond the physical, doesn’t He? Most often, the physical jumps out at us. What are we going to eat? What are we going to wear? Where are we going to live? All those physical things that we think we can’t live without, they jump out at us but God abundantly supplies them all. He gives everything to us. And He goes beyond the physical. That was the whole mission of Jesus. So as we walk through this life burdened by the guilt of our sins, reflecting on what we’ve done today or last week or way back when we were teenagers, we can come to Him with those things.

Remember that night when He was with His disciples, it was another meal, wasn’t it? It says He took the bread, gave thanks and broke it and placed it into the hands of His disciples. And He took the wine and gave thanks and gave it to the hands of His disciples. From His hands, to the disciples hands and now to our hands every time we gather and celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we receive something wonderful, the body and blood of Jesus, forgiveness for our sins and strength for our faith. All we have to do is bring our troubles to Him. He gathers them up, blesses them and gives them back as blessings, multiplying and satisfying all the needs we have.

There’s a song that I just like to hear the words of the song, not necessarily sing them. But there’s a song that just pounds home this theme tonight, thinking about God’s hands providing for us. If you have your Lutheran Worship open, it’s number 408, I am Trusting You, Lord Jesus. Listen to these words written by a brother Christian. “I am trusting you, Lord Jesus, trusting only you. Trusting you for full salvation, free and true. I am trusting you for pardon. At your feet, I bow. For your grace and tender mercy, trusting now. I am trusting you for cleansing in the crimson flood. I am trusting you to make me holy by your blood. I am trusting you to guide me. You alone shall lead, everyday and hour supplying all my need. I am trusting you for power. You can never fail. Words which you yourself shall give me must prevail. I am trusting you, Lord Jesus. Never let me fall. I am trusting you forever and for all.” Amen? Amen.