“TRINITY 7 2024”
Saint Mark 8: 1-9
7th Sunday after Trinity: July 14 Anno Domini 2024
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
In those, “those” days God saw everything that He had made, and “it was good.” Herbs, and fruit trees, berries, and vegetables, all beyond our ability to understand how delicious and satisfying. Eden—it was the Garden of earthly delights.
But their appetites turned from their Father and His table to their own prideful desires for independence and power. The original sin—pride—or as Saint Augustine called it “libido dominandi,” the will to dominate/control/rule.
They lost the food from God and were thrust out into a deadening world of dust and sweat and thorns and thistles.
But no words about carnivores versus herbivores; no castigating vegetarians or keto/primal diets.
Adam and Eve, and their future descendants had been made to enjoy all of God’s provisions which He had made in the first six days, starting on the seventh day unto eternity. But their sin and your sins obliterated all that.
“In [these] days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat…”
What did it mean for that crowd surrounding Christ; what does it mean for this very group surrounding Christ?
The large crowds which had been listening to The Lord’s teachings (and many who may have witnessed or heard about His healings) had been fasting for three days (or part of three days). They needed food “meat” as the AV usually refers to all foodstuffs. Our table prayer unto this very day: “The eyes of all waiteth upon Thee, O Lord, and Thou givest them their meat in due season; Thou openest Thine hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing.” All! Everyone; the Jew and Greek, the Pharisee and Publican, the believer and unbeliever. All! Today; the Lutheran and the non-Lutheran, the atheist and the agnostic, the Muslim and the Hindu. “…Your Father… maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” [Mt. 5. 45]. It was due season and Messias fed His creatures.
Today it IS due season.
Everyone knows about rising food prices. You may not be able to purchase “meat,” actual meat and all food from Price Chopper and Dillons the way you were able to in 2019. But you still live in a land of abundance and not Haiti, Gaza, Calcutta, or Yemen.
And you are both thankful for your daily bread and grateful that it is God who feeds you and not really grocery stores or farmers.
But you, even the followers of The Christ, are hungry, hungry all the time. Why is that? Sin. Your sin. The devil constantly attacks your “old nature” and lures you to an appetite for not just junk and empty calories, but to all sorts of spiritually damning offal—Satanic sweets that poison and kill.
As a follower of The Lamb that takes away the sin of the world—and your sin—you believe that you desperately need Christ’s food—His Word (His Sacramental Word) daily, as you pray in The ‘Our Father.’ But your “old glutton,” your “old miserly Scrooge and Midas,” yes, your “old Adam” daily transgresses not only your + Baptized “new man” but God as well. You covet sinful delectables which are indeed swill and damning poison. And then you murder, slander, lie, cheat, steal, fornicate, blaspheme, and focus on idols—“your own will” and entertainments that are against God. You are what you eat; either gluttonous globs of death leading to death (and eternal death) or God’s mana of mercy and light leading to life and eternity.
Jesus knows this. He knows, as He (again) had Augustine write in his famous ‘Confessions’: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” To which God adds: “our stomachs—our being—is hungry and malnourished until it feasts on You—The Bread of heaven!”
Yes, Jesus fed the multitude (about four thousand) actual and real bread and fish. But Jesus’ paltry miracle then in far surpassed by His miracle this morning wherein He feeds you His actual and real Body and Blood. Only by ingesting, eating, and drinking God, do you become like unto God. Reject the fruit of the tree of knowledge (of good and evil), i.e., reject the consumption of self-righteous reason, rationality, scientism, and ego, and banquet on The Righteous One Himself—Peace enfleshed which lets your heart, soul, mind, and yes, body, rest in The True Seventh Day—The Rest of Christ your Sabbath Savior. Today you eat from The Tree of Life—the cruciform feast of forgiveness for all your sins, and from the original sin itself.
The miracle itself? Well, it was truly supernatural and supra-natural (above our understanding of nature). But Jesus is Nature—all of creation, for He is creator. He makes the wheat which makes the bread. He created all the teeming fish of the sea. It is not so much that He was using divine super-powers to keep bread fragments (or entire loaves) and fishes “popping into” wicker baskets, as that He was simply with His always creative and life affirming hands, reaching into Himself, and serving all that He had made—a shimmering and saving “portal” to the ever present and merciful gifts of earthly life and sustenance and everlasting and fortifying satiety. The God/Man who was, and is, and will ever be, is always present with all His gifts.
The number seven? Beautiful, meaningful, and symbolic to be sure. He started with seven loaves and ended with gathered (broken ‘meat’ that was left) bread in seven baskets. The love and mercy of Christ is never diminished, never less than total filling.
Saturday is the seventh day. Today, Sunday, is the both the third day—the day that The Crucified Lord was resurrected from the dead—but also the 1st day of the new week and of The New Life for all of you; also correctly denominated at the eternal 8th day.
The Bread of Life, Jesus Christ, feeds you The very Body, born of The Virgin, that obeyed The Father’s Law to fix your disobedience and bad, unhealthy eating habits. The true and real Blood of forgiving atonement, Jesus Christ, waters you with the life-giving Blood of The Trinity, the Blood Jesus shed for you from The Tree of Life, to bring you home in peace to this holy, celestial, foretasting feast of victory. While you are not four thousand, you and all your fellow dining royal priests of The Church of all ages is the true multitude; a very large family that will never be sent away, only gathered by Grace, forever!
In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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