In the 4th petition of The Lord’s Prayer, we are taught to pray the words “Give us this day our daily bread.” Our Gospel reading for this morning is a great illustration of how our Lord goes about answering this petition. And while we usually focus on how Jesus miraculously meets the physical need of hunger by feeding several thousand people, this reading also shows us how our Lord and Savior is our Good Shepherd, in that He provides for not just our physical needs, but how He provides for our spiritual needs as well.
The first thing we recognize this morning is the simple fact that we all have basic needs. First, we have our physical needs, and we’re reminded of that as see two of them in the Gospel reading. You’ll remember in our Gospel reading a couple of weeks back, Jesus sent the disciples out two by two into surrounding towns and villages, where they “went out and preached that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.” (Mark 6:12-13) As our reading for today opens, they have returned to Jesus from their missionary journeys, and they are telling Him everything they did and taught. Needless to say, as exciting as all that activity was, they had to have been exhausted after their journey, so Jesus, knowing that they needed rest, says to them “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” (v. 31) In fact, we’re told so many people were coming and going that these guys didn’t even have time to sit down and eat! So they get into a boat with Jesus, and head off to a remote place where they can get away from it all and rest.
Just as the disciples needed a time of rest, we need that too. Especially today, with as busy as our schedules are, and how people are trying to fit in more and more into each day, going from work, to this activity, to this commitment, and so on. This kind of a lifestyle takes its toll on us and we need and treasure our time of rest and renewal. It’s a basic human need.
The other basic need we see comes up once Jesus and the disciples get to their destination, and the crowds they were trying to get away from had anticipated their next move and met them on shore. While Jesus is teaching this crowd, it’s getting late in the day, and they turn to Jesus and say “This is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” (v. 35-36) Everyone needs to eat, right? The disciples see the situation, thousands of people, out in the middle of nowhere, it’s getting close to suppertime, and there’s no restaurants or catering services available. Their question is, essentially, “how are we going to feed these people, Jesus? They have to eat!” Or to put it in language similar to that of the 4th petition of The Lord’s Prayer: “These people need their daily bread. How are we going to supply it?” And, that’s a question we face on a daily basis, too, isn’t it? Especially when we lose our source of income, we wonder “how are we going to eat, have a roof over our heads, and clothes on our back, basic stuff we need to support this body and life?
While we all have physical needs, and they are very important, our text reminds us we have spiritual needs as well. Those crowds that were following Jesus and the disciples were described as “Sheep without a shepherd.” (v. 34). And left on our own, we’re the same way, spiritually speaking. But why does Mark use this image to describe the people who were following Jesus and the disciples in our reading, and us today? Well, think about sheep for a moment. They’re pretty needy animals. To start with, they’re not very bright. Not only that, they have absolutely no sense of direction, they need someone to direct them into the safe way they need to go, or they face danger or death. If you leave sheep on their own, they are going to wander off, and be a sitting target for a hungry wolf to snatch them up and eat them.
From a spiritual standpoint, our sinful nature leaves us like wandering sheep, just waiting to be devoured. In John 14, Jesus says of Himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). In other words, spiritually speaking we have to confess that left to our own, apart from our Savior, Jesus Christ, we’re sheep without a shepherd. We’re not very bright, spiritually speaking. What we do know is saturated with sin, and inclined toward evil. Jesus himself even said “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” (Matt. 15:19) David reminds us in the 51st Psalm “surely I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” If you think you are somehow exempt in all of this, just to give you a common example, in Confirmation class, you learned the following about the 8th commandment from the Small Catechism: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.” Yet, how many times at coffee, or with friends, do we hear a rumor about someone, and assume it’s true, and don’t even offer to defend that person’s reputation? Or hear a piece of gossip about someone, and then pass it along, without checking out the facts first to find out if there is any truth to it, or try to undo the damage done to that person’s reputation once you found out what you had been passing along is false? How many times when we have a problem with someone, instead of following Matthew 18, do we instead go to someone else, talk behind that person’s back, and expect that this third party will fix the problem for us? I know this kind of stuff goes on quite frequently, especially in smaller communities; in fact, there’s probably people you know that you just excuse that type of behavior as “they way that person is.” And that’s just with one commandment, folks, and we haven’t even talked about the other 9.
You see, left on our own, we’re just like sheep without a shepherd, we try to excuse our sin, or cover it up, instead of following the commandments in the first place, or confess when we sinned. We try to justify ourselves and our actions, or work them off by doing good things to try to even the scales. Isaiah 64 tells us that “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags”. (Is. 64:6) And apart from Christ, left on our own to do this, we’re left wandering in our sin, and we know that “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23a) Both physical death and eternal death, permanently separated from God and His gracious care, facing an eternity in hell as the punishment for our sin.
But, thanks be to God that Jesus has compassion on us. He had compassion on the crowds that followed Him and the disciples in our Gospel reading for today, seeing them as sheep without a shepherd. The Greek word that’s used for compassion here tells us that Jesus’ compassion for these people is very deep within himself, literally a deep aching for them. He doesn’t want these sheep to be lost. He tells us that He is the Good Shepherd and The Way and the Truth and the Life. He knows these people have physical needs and spiritual needs. And being the Good Shepherd that He is, He goes about meeting those very needs.
The most obvious need He meets is their physical need of food. While the disciples are worried about how they are going to feed these people, and want Jesus to send them into nearby towns and villages and fend for themselves, Jesus tells them “You give them something to eat.” (v. 37) He asks them what they have, they take an inventory of the food they have, and it’s five loaves of bread and two fish. At first, it doesn’t seem like enough to feed a few people, let alone several thousand. But, Jesus tells the disciples to have the crowd sit down in groups by hundreds and fifties, he takes the five loaves and two fish, looks up to heaven, says a blessing, breaks the loaves of bread, and gives it to the disciples to give to everyone there, and they also divide up the fish. And what happens? We’re told not only did people get enough food to get by, we’re told that “they all ate and were satisfied.” Nobody left this meal hungry. In fact, they ended up with more leftover food by far than what they started out with. Jesus fed 5,000 men, not counting women and children who may have been there, with just 5 loaves and 2 fish, and used those to provide daily bread for everyone who was present.
In the explanation of the 4th petition of The Lord’s Prayer, Martin Luther writes: Give us this day our daily bread. What does this mean? God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving. What is meant by daily bread? Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.” Whether we realize it or not, our everyday physical needs are met because God is a gracious, giving God. He doesn’t give us more or less because we believe in Him, or do certain things to trigger His giving hand, He gives to us because that’s what He does.
But not only does Jesus provide for our everyday physical needs, He also provides for our spiritual needs. In the Gospel reading, He did this for the crowd that day by teaching them. He does it for us today through His Word and Sacraments. Through these means, your Good Shepherd is with you today, speaking His life-giving Word to you. He’s telling you of your sins, and your need for a Savior, and He tells you “I’m the Good Shepherd because I saw where your sin would lead you. So I did something about it. I took your sin onto myself, and suffered the punishment you deserved for it on the cross. And now, I’ve risen again so that you won’t die to sin, but that you’ll be raised up to eternal life, free from sickness, death, and the power of the devil. I continue to visit you through My Word and Sacraments to remind you of this, to call My sheep to myself, so that you will stay away from the ravenous wolves of sin that seek to snatch you away from me and back into the wages of sin.” That’s why what we do here in worship isn’t about ourselves, that’s why I don’t focus on your feelings and emotions in the sermon, because left to yourself, you’re a sheep without a shepherd. Your Good Shepherd is here to speak to you, to call you to repentance and life, not sin and death. That’s why in a few moments, you will hear Him say to you at this altar rail “Take and eat, this is MY body, take and drink, this is My blood, given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of all of your sins.” Through this hour or so we are here each week, Jesus is providing for your spiritual needs, he is providing your spiritual daily bread. That’s why I can’t encourage you enough to get into the Word of God on a daily basis. Study it, read it. This morning, we’re distributing the “Faith Comes By Hearing” CD’s so you can listen to it on a daily basis. This Word is the voice of your Good Shepherd.
So just as Jesus Christ is our Good Shepherd, we recognize this morning how He goes about doing that by meeting our needs. He first meets our physical needs by providing for our basic needs to support this body and life. We recognize that we don’t deserve it, but that He provides for them, and we give thanks to God for doing so. But we also recognize that our Lord provides for our spiritual needs, most importantly, the need to be saved from sin, death, and the power of the devil. And just as the disciples were the means that Jesus used to distribute physical daily bread to the people in that desolate place that day in our Gospel reading, He uses His Word and Sacraments to deliver your spiritual daily bread to you here today. Thanks be to God that we have a Savior who provides for all of our needs, as a Shepherd does for His sheep. Amen.
