Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Manna. We call it bread, but it
wasn’t really bread – at least, not like we know bread. From Exodus, we know it
as a flaky substance with a slight honey-like sweetness that would be present
on the ground in the morning when the dew dried. In my mind, I imagine
something that looked like corn flakes or rice krispies. That doesn’t sound
like Mrs. Baird’s finest, does it, or a crispy crackly artisanal loaf sliding
out of the oven at the bakery, or even the little bread sticks you get at the
restaurant while you wait for your meal. The Israelites called it manna. Manna,
translated, doesn’t mean bread. It’s actually a one-word question, “What is
it?” It’s a question that answers itself: it is what it is: manna.
Every morning, the Israelites
were to go out and gather enough – just enough – for each person in the
household. They did this each day, except for the day before Sabbath when they
were to gather a double portion, because they couldn’t work, collect the manna,
on the Sabbath. Those who gathered more than enough, those who tried to
stockpile, those who tried to squirrel away a little extra just in case God
didn’t come through, that would turn and spoil by the next morning with maggots
and worms, so all that extra saving, that extra work wasn’t worth it. It was
work that came from worry fueled by distrust. Your work wasn’t wasted if you
gathered just, and only, enough.
Faith trusts that God will
provide. And every morning, for forty years, the Israelites woke up and
gathered their manna. It was simple, it was plain, it was the original survival
food, and that – coupled with the quail that landed in the evenings - sustained
the Israelites through forty years of wilderness wandering. Every day, just enough
to live; every day, enough for every member of the family, the tribe, the
people. Every day, day in, day out. Enough.
“Give us this day our daily
bread.” That’s what we pray every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. Luther, in his Small Catechism, expounds on
daily bread to include all the wants and needs of our bodily life. He included not
only food and water but also clothes, shelter, family, and even our vocational
work. We could understand this petition this way: Give us enough food and water
that we are not uncomfortably hungry; enough of a home that we are protected
from the weather and elements; enough of a job that we can provide; enough of a
family and friend-base that we are not alone. Give us today enough that we may live and show
love to our neighbor.
Give us this day enough daily
bread. We pray this. But, do we mean it?
Daily bread. Give us just enough. Daily? Enough? Do we trust that? Do we
believe He will provide? A dear friend told me, “You don’t realize the power of
that prayer until you can’t see tomorrow in your pantry. In that moment, with your
kids looking at you with fearful eyes, all you have left is faith that, somehow,
God will provide and He will give us enough.”
Enough. Enough is a powerful
word. It’s a word of contentment, a word of satisfaction, a word without
complaint or criticism. Enough is grounded in faith and trust in the Fatherly
goodness of God and His promises. Enough entrusts our daily bread needs to the
mercy of God and it surrenders our wants to His perfect will for us. When we
say there isn’t enough, it’s saying God will not provide, that we don’t believe
He will keep His promise, that daily bread will not be present.
Enough is a word that we do not
use well, especially when it comes to daily bread and First Article gifts. In
our country and culture of abundance, we’ve turn God into a commissary, a divine
vending machine that operates on prayers, not coins, an ATM of material,
earthly blessings, that spits out what we want. So we pray, not for basic bread
needs, but give us this day our daily filet and a glass of merlot; this week a
new truck and a better job; this year straight-A health, six-digit wealth, and
happiness to light up the night sky. We pray, not that He gives us enough, but
that gives it all to us in abundance so that our cups and our cupboards and our
counters all overflow. And, the irony is, if we don’t get what we ask for, or
as much as we ask for, with the quality that we ask for, then somehow we blame
God as if He is the bad guy, not our malcontent, discontent, noncontent
attitude toward daily bread.
Here’s a question: why did God provide the
manna? Most people would say, “because the people grumbled.” But grumbling is a
sin against God. It breaks the 9th and 10th commandments
and also the first – God, we know better! This was a crisis situation! Yes,
starvation is a problem. But, look further at what the Israelites were doing:
God had rescued them from the hands of the heathen Egyptians. He had shown His
might against Pharoah and his army. He had parted the Red Sea; He brought
Israel across on dry land. He demonstrated His power over creation and over
death. He was Israel’s God and they were His people, even in a foreign place.
And, now, Israel was grumbling. They grumbled about a lack of food. But, more
than that, they grumbled about how things were – as if they were better off in
Egypt as slaves. It’s as if they were saying, “God, we were better off before
you got involved, before your servant, Moses, stirred things up.” Psychologists
refer to this as “memory bias,” when we look to things in the past, see them
through rose colored glasses as being better than they really were, in order to
paint the present tense in a more negative way.
For that matter, why does God
provide daily bread for us? Not because of grumbling, that’s for sure. He does not
send daily bread to merely silence His critics. He did it to Israel and He does
it for us because He was their God, they were His people; He is our God and we
are His people. He does it out of His Fatherly love and His ever-present
inclination to show mercy. He did it for forty years of literal daily bread. Once
a day, two quarts per person; six days a week for a total of 12,400 morning
collections of manna. Manna, three meals a day, twenty one times a week, 1122
times a year, just under 45,000 manna and quail meals during their wilderness
wanderings. He does it for you through your vocational work, through your spouse,
parents and children, through your grocer and physicians and home builder and
your neighbor, daily bread provided daily.
More than that, out of His Fatherly
goodness and mercy, and out of His faithfulness to His promises, He also
provides bread into eternity – bread that does not spoil or fade or perish. He sends His Son into the World
That’s why the crowd was so
enamored with Jesus. He could provide daily bread in abundance. As long as they
could keep hold of Him, no one would be hungry. Starvation would be a thing of
the past. Grumbling, rumbling bellies would be satiated and the people would
all be happy. By extension, then, they wouldn’t have to work so hard to put
food on the table. It would be trickle-down economics of the first order! A King like that could upset the whole balance
of power in the world. They tried to seize Jesus, to make Him king. Jesus
avoids the crowd, giving them the slip, only to call them out, identifying that
as the only reason they were following after Him. They wanted daily bread to
fend off the hungries.
Jesus redirects them, instead, to
His true purpose. Jesus wanted to give bread of a greater kind to the crowds –
not a daily, just-enough, bread, but in abundance, not just a loaf that would
fill the tummy today, but bread that satisfies into eternity. “Do not labor for
the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which
the Son of Man will give to you.” (Jn. 6:27). He is teaching the crowds that
followed to stop following Him because of the miracles and the baskets of
bread. Receive daily bread with thanksgiving, yes, but also follow Jesus to
receive the gift that lasts into eternity. “I am the bread of life,” He said. “Whoever
comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Christ
satisfies the hunger of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus
said. Jesus is manna for sinners - those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness. You, in all the ways that sin has left you empty and
hungry. There is food that endures forever. A Bread that gives life
forever. A drink that quenches your thirst and soothes your parched
soul. Not “chicken soup for the soul,” but bread of life for your
life. The gift isn’t earned by going to work each day. This is a food
that’s given you free, gratis, from the Son of Man, from Jesus, marked in His
Baptism as the Son of God and Source of salvation.
It’s been said that there’s no
such thing as a free lunch. Know that while He gives it freely, it was at great
cost. The price for this bread was His own life, suffering greater agony than
the hottest ovens. This is the sign: not changing a boy’s lunch into a
all-you-can-eat bread buffet, but His own death and resurrection. That’s how
this Bread of Life is baked - in the fiery furnace of God’s wrath against our
sin and in the burning heat of His passion to save His fallen creation.
Like wheat ground up by the mill and put into the fire, Jesus endured the cross
bearing our sin in order to be our Food, the Source of life.
As there were 12 baskets full of
leftovers after feeding the 5000, you never have to wonder if there is enough
of this life-giving bread for you. His righteousness, His holiness, His forgiveness,
His mercy fills completely. The bread overflows. This is Jesus Himself - Jesus
in the Word, Jesus in your Baptism, Jesus in the Bread and Cup. Jesus,
for the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins. Eat and drink, trust in
Him, and you will filled with life forever.
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