“MOUNTAIN MERCY MEAL”
Saint John 6: 1-15
Laetare: 27 March Anno Domini 2022
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
As God crossed the sea of Galilee—and a great feeding took place; so too The Lord crosses over the saving sea of your + eternal rebirth that He might feed you this day. Many followed Jesus because they saw, and heard about, the miracles. That was indeed one of the purposes our Lord had for doing them…the “signs” of God showing to those given by the Holy Spirit to receive them…that THIS Man was The Christ. But also, Jesus came to heal the sick—those that knew they needed a physician. Coming to faith by visually “seeing” The Word of God “doing” the works of God, is, well, sacramental. A diseased woman being healed certainly comprehends The Word attached to a human…thing.
“And Jesus went up into a mountain.” Jesus’ sermon, The Word in preaching, was given from a mount. This Messias would both be “transfigured” and would ascend from mountains. He gave The Law to Saint Moses from a famous mountain and would give the fulfilling of that Law; the payment for all the lawbreakers, from an even more famous mount, named “the place of the skull.” The Good News poured and given at Calvary is now The Good News drunk and eaten at the altar of Mt. Augsburg: The exact same, and truly bodily present, “Victim, Priest, and Sacrifice!” For Jesus always sits with His disciples. He teaches and then feeds.
That passover that Saint John mentions: “and the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh” [i.e., “was at hand,” a couple days away] was the yearly commemoration of The Lord’s deliverance (His Redemption & Salvation) of His people from Egyptian bondage and death. Every year all believing Jews were to remember God’s actions—the slaying of the lambs, the eating of the bread, and the daubing of the blood on the doorways. Forgiveness comes only by blood; this they were taught and this, the believing Jews, believed. Deliverance from all enemies (the world, [Rome, Greece, collaborating Sanhedrin], the “old-Adam” flesh, and the devil) comes only by blood.
But for the “12,” or any other faithful Jews “looking for the consolation of Israel,” the feast of passover was only remembrance; as highly symbolic or representative as the Reformed or Presbyterians would have it. Close but no cigar. A pretty meal and pretty sentiments but no real dangerous and present Jesus. Jesus dangerous? Oh yes. He is The Living God. Maybe one needs to “bone up” on their Hebrew Scriptures. He is dangerous, but He is Good!
So good that He did not want the “great company come unto Him” to go hungry—of just regular food.
Pastors just like parishioners are often weak of faith and not “fearing, loving, and trusting, in God above all things.” The Lord tests Saint Philip, “to prove him; for He himself knew what He would do.”
Feeding 5,000 people on five loaves of bread and two fish? Or even feeding all those people on nothing but the Word of God, The Power of Jesus’ creating Word? Both should have formed the inner faith and knowledge of Philip; of Andrew, of Peter, of all of God’s followers. You believe The Lord turned the water pots at Cana into pots containing fine wine? And you doubt, argue about, or fear rejecting our same Lord’s good words of consecration on the “night in which He was betrayed?” If Jesus is who you confess Him to be, then the change of bread and wine on this very altar into His true and real and bodily Flesh and Blood is no more “out of the ordinary” than believing John 3.16. The Holy Ghost gives you the faith to believe, receive, and cherish all of Jesus; all of His Words; all of His merciful miracles!
Then, as now, God uses His chosen and ordained men to facilitate and administer (distribute) His gifts which forgive sins.
No, there are no “words of institution” in this mountain meal; no “verba.” No, this is not “THE” Sacrament of the Altar as described in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Saint Paul’s letter to Corinth; this is not the 6th chief part of The Small Catechism as penned by the Reformer.
So. Does that diminish one whit, one iota, the mercy, love, and care, which Christ showers upon the people? No. Do these modest rooms in this modest building obscure the gifts of Eucharista, in, with, and under the modest wafers and wine, which Jesus gives you in His true Body and Blood? No. Is it not a mystery that “this prophet [this Man Who is God]…should come into the world?” It is. Is it not a sacramentum, i.e., a mysterious sign of a deeper, greater, reality? It is! This all points to Maundy Thursday.
Jesus created real belly food from 12 loaves, for the 12 Disciples, which would be gathered into 12 baskets of fragments. The 12 tribes of Israel are restored in an advanced way on that mount pointing to the full restoration of all Israel—both Jew and Gentile on the bloody Crucifix of our Lord’s passion and death for us and our trespasses. The two fish, are they not types of Jesus’ own two natures: Human and Divine, inseparably united, but without confusion, in His One Person? They are. Is Christ not the true fish—ICTHUS: Jesus Christ, God’s Son and Savior? You so confessed in the Nicene Creed!
Yes, this is Lententide. But even if it were not, Jesus knows that you too are hungry; that you are tired and weary; that you hurt from all sorts and types of diseases; and that you are fearful, lonely, and at great unrest. He invites you with tender words: “come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” [Mt. 11.28] He bids you all to “sit” here (or to kneel) on the green grass in this place. He gives you to eat and drink as much as you would. He is not mere mana but the very Bread from Heaven; Angel’s food, and the medicine of immortality. Like the fragments, you the lambs are so special that none will be lost, discarded, or treated as throw-away. Calvary, The Cross, is done and effectual. So, “draw near and take The Body of The Lord, and drink the holy Blood for you out-poured” [TLH # 307.1].
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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