Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Luke 9.
We begin a new series this morning called Blessed, Broken, Given. The big idea for the series comes from a book by Glenn Packiam, a pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. I devoured this book this week, and as you can tell, so did my dog!
In Luke’s gospel, there are three different times when Jesus handled bread. The first was when he fed the five thousand, which is what we will look at this morning. The second was the last night He was with the disciples, in Luke 22; during what we now call the last supper, or the Lord’s supper. And the third was in Luke 24, after Jesus was raised from the dead, when he shared a meal with the disciples He met on the road to Emmaus.
And in all three instances, Luke records the same sequence:
Jesus blessed the bread.
Jesus broke the bread.
Jesus gave the bread.
So during the month of November, we are going to look at what it means to be blessed, broken, and given. Because I really believe that there is a connection between what Jesus did with bread and what Jesus does with us.
Everywhere you go in the world, there is some version of bread. The French have baguettes and croissants; Jewish cultures have matza. There are English Muffins. French toast. You go to Subway and you can get a sandwich on Italian bread. Mexico has tortillas. Greece has pita bread. In Malaysia, there’s roti. When I was in India, naan was served with every meal. In Kenya and Rwanda, we had ugali.
And Americans? Well, we have wheat, rye, barley, sprouted grain, multigrain, sourdough, pumpernickel, cornbread, potato bread, gluten-free bread.
And oh yeah: white bread.
And you know what? The variety of bread makes it a great metaphor for the church. Can you imagine how dull the world would be if all we had was white bread? How weird would your next pizza be if all you had was white bread? How bland would Taco Tuesday be if you just folded up a piece of white bread around lettuce and shredded cheese and ground beef and sour cream and salsa. Unfortunately, most of the time you come to church, especially in the South, and all you see is white bread.
But if the variety of bread makes it a good metaphor for the church, then the ordinary-ness (is that a word?) or the commonness of bread makes it the perfect metaphor for our lives. If we’re honest, most of what we do is ordinary. We get up, go to work, we play, we tinker at hobbies, we work in the yard, we shuttle our kids to ball games. We shop for groceries. For the most part, nothing about our daily lives sets us apart from the people around us. It’s just life. Like bread, it’s ordinary.
And maybe you’re saying, hold up. I get that Jesus is the Bread of Life. In John 6:51 he said, “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven.” And I get that God’s Word is compared to bread. When Jesus was being tempted by the devil, the devil tried to get Him to turn stones into bread. And Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on…” What? That’s right—“on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4).
So yeah—Jesus is bread. God’s Word is bread. But where do you get that WE are bread? Where do you get that the CHURCH is bread?
We will circle back to those questions. But let’s look at our text for this morning. At the beginning of Luke 9, Jesus sent out the twelve disciples to preach and teach and cast out demons and heal diseases. They go off and apparently have great success, but they are also pretty exhausted. So let’s pick up the story in verse 10:
Luke 9:10-13 (ESV)
10 On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing. 12 Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, “Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men.
We observe several things here. First of all, the disciples needed some nourishment. They needed rest. Another gospel account of this same story says that “so many people were coming and going that they didn’t even have time to eat” (Mark 6:30-31). So Jesus looks at His disciples and He knows that their souls need feeding.
But secondly, the needs of the people are overwhelming. The disciples were able to heal people, but clearly not everyone was healed, because there were still crowds of people that came to Jesus for healing. They had proclaimed the kingdom of God, just like Jesus told them to do, but Jesus still talked to the multitudes about the kingdom. So the disciples preaching mission wasn’t a once for all, check this box, put a fork in me because I am done kind of thing. Just like bread, no one says, “Oh no, I ate yesterday. I’m good.” We all need DAILY bread.
But third, resources are in short supply. Verse 12 says that they were in “a desolate place.” And after working the crowd to see how much food was there, all they could come up with was five loaves of bread and two fish. So the impulse to send the people away is not entirely uncompassionate; it is also practical.
If we’re honest, this is how we feel when we see the needs of our friends, family, and neighbors. It can all feel overwhelming. Turn on the news, and we’re bombarded by more tragedies and hardships. Scroll through Facebook, and you see the difficult doctor’s diagnoses or unexpected losses that people you know are dealing with. A simple ‘sad face’ emoji won’t cut it. You may reply and say you’re praying for them, but what can you really do? It’s just too much.
Then, we look at our own resources. Gas prices are up. Giving is down. Our stewardship committee looked at over a million dollars of requests, but only about $850,000 of receipts for the year.
But people keep coming.
So we say, “Send them away, Jesus, so they can get something to eat.” Maybe they should go to First Baptist. That’s a rich church. They’ve got resources we don’t have on our side of town. Or we say, “God do something,” because we are at a loss for how to respond to such a needy world.
And Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.” Seriously? Lord, weren’t you listening? You can’t give people food when your own pantry is empty, can you?
But Jesus won’t let them—or us—off the hook. And I want to show you how Jesus solves all three problems at once—the needs of His disciples for nourishment; the needs of the people for, gosh, everything else, and the scarcity of resources. Let’s see how He did it.
Luke 9:14-17
And he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 And they did so, and had them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.
Jesus blessed the bread. Jesus broke the bread. Jesus gave the bread.
And look how everything changed:
• A “desolate place” became a place of abundance.
• A story that began with “not enough” ended with there being more than enough.
• A crowd that came hungry were satisfied.
• And disciples who believed there was no way had their faith restored in the God who makes a way in the desert.
This is what happens when Jesus takes something that we think is just ordinary—bread!—and blesses it, breaks it, and gives it.
I think those three words can change the story for you too.
Jesus took bread, blessed it by giving thanks to the Father, broke it, and gave it. Bread in the hands of Jesus is blessed, broken, and given. And so it is for you. Your life, as common and ordinary as bread, in Jesus’s hands becomes something more.
In the hands of Jesus, your life becomes blessed.
This blessedness is not about accumulating or achieving more. Blessedness is about having your true identity recovered and your true calling revealed. It is to be given a new name. Once you were a sinner; now you are a saint. Once you were far off; now you are a cherished family member.
The Eastern Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote:
“God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and the means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation. . . .” (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World)
In the hands of Jesus, your life becomes broken.
But in a new way. There are several different kinds of brokenness—and we will talk about that more in Week 3 of this series. There is a brokenness that comes from our frailty—our finiteness, our limitations. There is a brokenness that comes from our own failure—our sin, our participation in the spread of wickedness. And, there is a brokenness that is the pain of living in a fallen world—our suffering and pain. But all these kinds of brokenness can be placed in Jesus’s hands.
When you place the brokenness of your failure, frailty, and suffering in Jesus’s hands, you become open to the grace of God. This brokenness is not about wallowing in your sin or fixating on how miserable you are. To be broken is to allow the grace of God to humble you, to lead you into vulnerability with others, and to transform your heart. Brokenness becomes openness in the hands of Jesus.
After all, bread that is not broken cannot be shared.
In the hands of Jesus, your life becomes given.
You realize you are not here for yourself. Life with Jesus is deeply personal but never private. The openness that comes from being broken is meant to lead you outward. There is a hunger in the world around us, a deep groan for something more. When your life becomes blessed and broken in Jesus’s hands, He gives you out for the life of the world. You become the way others find the Bread of Life. But to be that way, you must first experience the blessing and embrace the brokenness—only then will you be consecrated to bring change in powerful ways.
Look again at verse 16
16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
One of the remarkable things about this story is that Jesus gives the bread back to the disciples. If He did the miracle of multiplication, surely He could have done the miracle of distribution? Why involve the disciples at all?
Because that’s what God does. From the beginning, God chose to involve humans as His collaborators.
Jesus had told the disciples to give the people something to eat (Luke 9:13). They wanted to send the people away. The disciples saw the crowd as the problem; Jesus saw the crowd as the disciples’ responsibility.
And now, because of Jesus’s miraculous blessing, what was not enough has become more than enough. And weary disciples who were willing to be the bearers of bad news to hungry people now become the carriers of good news to those same people.
That's what Jesus does: He blesses us and takes our brokenness and turns it into something that can be for the good of someone else. Purpose is restored! The calling is back on track.
Blessedness and brokenness are for the sake of givenness.
[GOSPEL]
The thing that we must not miss in this whole text is who the hero of the story really is.
Ultimately, this is not about a boy who gave up his lunch. Nor is it about disciples who learned a valuable lesson. This is about Jesus the generous host.
The text opens by showing us how Jesus respond to the crowd following Him to this remote place.
Luke 9:11
11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing.
Jesus is the Host.
Jesus welcomed the people.
Jesus taught the people.
Jesus healed the people.
Jesus fed the people.
And when he got done feeding the people, He made sure the disciples were taken care of as well.
Luke 9:17 (CEB)
‘17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.
Do you see what Jesus did here? We started off the story with the weariness and burnout of the disciples. But they found that when they were meeting the needs of others, their own needs were more than provided for. Twelve disciples. Twelve baskets of leftovers. Duh!
Don’t miss the lesson: When we allow God to work through us to meet the needs of the community, there will be more than enough left over for our own needs. I get how nervous you all are about money. I get that we are about to present a budget that is for more than what we are taking in this year. And that on top of that, we are going to ask you to give over and above throughout this next year in order to retire the debt and free up dollars to bless other people around the world. And it’s a big ask.
But do you believe that when God tells His people, “You give them something to eat,” that He is going to provide for them as well? I think that’s the point of twelve baskets of leftovers.
This is all Jesus’s work! We don’t have to be epic. We don’t have to be flashy or spectacular. We don’t even have to be all that creative. Just as bread seems common and ordinary, but is actually crammed full of glory, so your life is actually miraculous and holy. That’s what happens when Jesus takes us into His hands.
The transitive property of mathematics is, if A = B, and if A also = C, then B = C.
What does that have to do with our conversation this morning? It has everything to do with our conversation this morning.
Jesus says, I am the Bread of Life. He said, “This bread, is my body, broken for you.”
Jesus also said, through the Apostle Paul, “The church is the body of Christ.”
The bread is His body. The church is his body. Therefore, the church is the bread for the world. Ordinary, everyday, but also diverse and varied. Every flavor from every culture being brought into service for the sake of the gospel.
[INVITATION]
Place your life in Jesus’s hands.
Your ordinary can be crammed full of glory.
Your not-enough-ness can become ‘more than enough’.
Your everyday can become full of purpose.
Let us pray together.
