The Seventh Sunday after Trinity – Sunday 23 July A✠D 2023
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 47:1, 47:3, 6-8;34:11, 5;59:1
✠ Lection: Isaiah 62:6-12;Romans 6:19-23;St. Mark 8:1-9
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Following Jesus in this life brings about many challenges. Those challenges wouldn’t exist if there were no devil, world, or sinful nature, but since those three are at constant work against God and the new creations into which He has made us, everyday struggles abound. This is sure to be true when we consider the places from which we have come, that is, being conceived in sin and being prone toward it since before birth. It is also true that such a sinful bent upon the mind and heart lead us to resist the Holy Spirit, the trials that refine us and our faith, and be tempted not to trust Jesus in the desolate and trying places into which He leads us. Our trust cannot be in what the world’s narrative demands us to believe and bow down to, but we’re to have only one God, and He the true one, trusting Him always for what is good regardless of our earthly circumstance.
The Lord Jesus has called you out of the nations, out of the places, out of the peoples that have turned their backs on God. Again, it is because of the curse of original sin that you were conceived and born directly into such a dark place and the sinful nature that you inherited was all too glad to have the chance to wallow in it. We know from the feeding of the four thousand that the Lord’s intention is not only to save His chosen people, descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel, but also those from the outside nations; from the mass of people that make up most of the population of the earth in any given era. The previous feeding of the five thousand, with its leftover 12 baskets of bread, is the indication that the Lord keeps His promise to redeem the House of Israel. Here in the feeding of the four thousand, we see a leftover seven baskets, which should then correspond in our minds to what the 12 meant previously. Indeed, you should think first and foremost of the power and goodness of God when you encounter the number seven in the Scriptures, for it was the Almighty One Who made the heavens and the earth and all that are in them in six days, making the seventh a Sabbath day of rest. Seven is the number of completion and fulfillment, and yet we find it elsewhere to here help us understand that out of which God has called us who are not of Jacob, Isaac, or Abraham’s bloodline.
In speaking of the Promised Land, Joshua chapter three says, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites.” These are seven nations that are the enemies of God’s Israel because they have made Him their enemy. They have rejected Him, turned their back on Him, and gone after other gods, worshiping the creation instead of the Creator. Sadly, this sounds too familiar to us. God’s judgment looms over such people, yet those who repent and fall upon the mercy of God indeed receive it. It is out of such places though that Jesus has come to call; not only from among the 12 tribes, but from among all the other dark places represented by these seven nations in the book of Joshua and by the seven baskets in Christ’s miraculous feeding of the four thousand. He has come for sinners, not for the righteous.
And in this feeding you can see for yourself that the journey is not one without risk, but we must ask ourselves by whom would we rather take a risk: God or man? For if we follow Jesus so that we may hear His word at all costs, receive His sacrament at all costs, stand upon His truth at all costs, and live or die by this faith at all costs, then we cannot deny that there are temporal risks at hand in living a life in Christ. Yet, all the risks of following Jesus, and not the world, are worthy, eternal, and good in all measures great and small. This great multitude of people risked hunger and even fainting just to hear Jesus say more to them. Their earthly foolishness isn’t one for us to imitate intentionally. It would be just plain dumb to go on a week-long camping trip without taking food, because you trust Jesus. It would be idiotic to work outside in July without taking and drinking plenty of water, just because you trust Jesus. We do not put God to the test in such foolish ways, but we do trust Him that when we do get preoccupied by the things that are on our minds, that He will provide for and take care of us because of Who He is and because of who we are to Him. What this means is that when we begin to worry about or become overwhelmed with all the things, whatever they are, that we can and should trust Him to lead, guide, and provide, even when we can’t gather our own thoughts enough to come up with an exhaustive list of all the things that we think we should be worrying about. Only He can see all. Only He can provide all.
And He gladly does and He takes care of our needs. He especially does it when He is the source of our distraction. These people were in a desolate place without bread to eat, because they wanted to hear Jesus. You could make no better a mistake. So, He had compassion on them and fed them bread in the wilderness, just as He graciously did in days of old, now while He was there in the flesh in the Decapolis, a desolate region among Gentile cities, after having Himself just come from another Gentile region, so that both Israel and all nations, both Jew and Greek, may know and receive Him as the Bread of Life. He calls. He provides true Food that satisfies and sustains for eternity even throughout all those moments our wandering minds forget to ask for our daily bread.
For you today, that means that wherever Jesus leads you, and notice He leads you by His truth and often at a cost of your very own angst of rebellious flesh, that wherever He leads you, you would not be there without following Him. Therefore, you will not be there alone. You will never be without the One Who provides for your every need of body and soul, goods and reputation, because it is this Jesus Who rescues you from all threats of evil that come against them. It means that you can pursue Him with your whole heart. It means that you can love Him with your whole heart, with your whole life, with your whole mind and give up the things of the world that tells you doing so will cost you in its eyes. There is risk with Jesus, but everlasting reward. You have the greater provision, the greater inheritance, the greater portion in Jesus Christ your Lord. No matter where He leads you, trust Him to tend to all your needs.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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