The Seventh Sunday after Trinity – Sunday 14 July A✠D 2024
✠ 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.
From whence does your help come, all your help? Do you fear that the bounty, the provision, the health upon which you’ve grown to depend has or is depleting and you worry what shall you be able to do when certain conditions no longer exist for you in life? Indeed, challenges do come to us all, yet we are to trust not what we have in this short life, but the One Who grants it all or wisely and mercifully withholds or takes away. Where will your bread, your food, your water, your shelter come, if you find yourself in a desolate place of a crashed economy or nation if looking to such earthly things takes priority in how and from whom you expect good in each day that comes? There is no savior that we may elect this November for Our Savior has already elected us to everlasting life in His death and resurrection that we remain steadfast in Him even when this brief time is threatened. Fear not for you are worth more than the sparrows of the air and the lilies of the field yet look at how your heavenly Father provides for them. Be wise in your daily preparations. Be neither foolish nor fearful in dealing with an evil world that seeks to build its house upon the sand of possessions, wealth, fame, entertainment, power, and lust. Place your trust not in princes and the products they peddle, but trust always in the One Who provides all things, especially to His beloved children, hoping that they but trust Him and not think that godly efforts are in vain or fruitless. Just because we have little to work with, as a congregation or in our individual lives and vocations, does not mean that noble efforts and faith in using what He does give to us is worthless. No, He gives what He desires to give to us by divine wisdom and love, always seeking out good in how we respond to him with the resources that we have personally and corporately.
Like some in the great crowd that gathered around Jesus in Mark, chapter eight, we all have come to Him from afar off; Christ drawing us near to Him from the greatest distance of our spiritual graves by His own great intentionality, compassion, care, and cost, desiring that we seek Him first, that is above all else that can be sought. He always leads where we need to go, even if we find ourselves in a desolate place standing alone with just Him. If He takes much away so that we see and hear Him more clearly, then this is a gracious, much-needed gift to right our eyes and ears. He is sufficient and His feeding of the 4,000 is but another proof of this truth to which you are to cling and not let go, trusting in Him alone, regardless of how good or bad your surroundings become.
He has proven Himself as faithful to each and every one us more times than we can count, yet our flesh still desires worry, doubt, and anxiety instead of trust in Him, because we regularly forget the goodness of the Lord no matter how many times, no matter how many lessons He’s used to remind us. Such is our way that He is gracious enough to suffer long to help us overcome and eventually obtain the eternal prize. Even the great, and sinful, Disciples shared this problem, for it was only less than two chapters earlier in Mark that our Lord Jesus fed 5,000, in a desolate place, in the Disciples’ presence and with their very own assistance in distributing what began as just five loaves and two fish. O, how quick we are to forget what He has done when new trials, even of the same sort, come along again. He will teach us as much as we need to learn, therefore let us do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, rejoicing that He always receives the contrite, repentant heart in forgiveness for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Praise be to God that He is long-suffering, compassionate, and patient beyond all human measures and hindered abilities, otherwise He would’ve withdrawn His merciful hand from our lives long, long ago. He does not forsake the work He seeks to complete in us, carrying it out with great care, urging us on ourselves into every good work, for the benefit of our neighbor and ourselves.
And we learn from the Scriptures that even work itself was given in the Beginning as a blessing and as a part of God’s good Creation. We’ve grown to loathe it and to seek ridding ourselves of it as soon as possible, but that’s only because our viewpoint of work has been so skewed by the riches and pleasures of life. Before the fall into sin, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” (Gen. 2:15) Working and tending the life that He has given us is a good gift and a way of this life, both before and after the Fall, even in its toilsome state, even when we either feel or actually do have very limited resources to use in our work, in our vocations as others are served by them. If you want to see just how true man being built for work is, ask a now-bored-out-of-his-mind fresh retiree who can’t figure out what to do with himself now that his daily vocation is gone. Retirement isn’t a sin, but treating work only as a burden robs us of the gratitude for being able to work, for being able to provide for ourselves and our family’s daily needs, and it counters the command to do everything as unto the Lord, meaning that the jobs that this greedy world say are low-class, peasant-like, and glory-less are actually the greatest opportunities for the ordinary people of God to live out the blessed lives of quietness and provision the He gives. And in that, regardless of how little or how much we come to possess or have in our midst by which to be pampered or distracted, the Lord is good in that He gives to fulfill our needs.
Many have worked, and risked, following Jesus out to a desolate place, whether the aridness is without or within. The key is to discover the value simply of Him; to see that what we spend of ourselves in the orders of life into which we each have been uniquely placed, is never a waste of effort This, too, is your calling, it is your comfort, knowing that wherever you go in this life to follow your Lord in keeping His Word, in living a life led by and focused on Christ is always worth it All the risk, all the work, all the forsaking of this world and its toys, lies, and temptations, forsaking it all is worth it, and it is necessary, for whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will find it, because this is what Christ gives. Your life in Him is more than just one miraculous meal in even the worst of desolate places. Take heart. By your Savior’s hand, you will always have what you need, so press on, for Jesus will never stop feeding you. He alone is trustworthy and sure.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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