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If God were your Father, you would love Me.

By the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts ,we cry out “Abba Father.” This is the Spirit of Adoption, adopted in Christ. For Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to deliver to us by declaration what He Himself possessed – “He will take what is mine and declare it to you.” – and among the many things that Jesus possesses, the top of that list would be His very status, “Son of God.” This status He gives to us. What He has by nature we have by grace.

Every time we pray “Our Father” – the Abba Father – we testify to this truth. And we would love Christ.

What does it mean to love Christ? Simply based on the Gospel for this week alone, we could make a list that would include (1) listening to and understanding Jesus, or hearing God’s Word; (2) believing Him; (3) honoring Jesus, which means to attribute high status to; and (4) keeping Christ’s word, which means to take note of it or keep it in view.

The focus is clearly on the Person of Christ, the one who is from God, who took on flesh, whose words are outlined in the Gospel. There’s no suggestion here, that anyone who loves embodies the “Cosmic Christ,” and we shouldn’t get caught up into names and doctrines. There’s no suggestion that we can abstract “ideas of love” from the Person of Christ, for instance, and claim that fulfills what it means to love Christ. So, for instance, many non-Christians may claim God as Father, and so long as they do as Jesus did, loving others, they demonstrate that they “love Christ” even if they don’t name Him.

No, once Jesus is revealed by proclamation, everyone who is worthy of the Gospel will respond to Him and love Him, His Person, His flesh and blood Person. They will honor Him, attributing a high status to Him. They will take every one of His words seriously, keeping them, not editing them according to the world’s standards.

Many people are rejecting Christ’s Church in favor of sentiments like, “I don’t go to church. I think it’s more important what you do. It’s more important to live out His teachings than go to church.”

But the Church’s entire purpose is to formalize what it means to love Christ. It’s where people are called out of the world to listen to Jesus (Gospel), understand Him (sermon), hear the Word (readings), believe in Him (creed), and honor Jesus (Gloria in Excelsis; Sanctus). Also, if the “Me” of “love Me” is a flesh and blood Person (and it is), then the Church can’t do more loving of Jesus than to be the place where believers come to His flesh and blood and do as He commanded be done: eat and drink His body and blood.

Someone cannot claim to love Christ and not love His Church. And if the response is, “I honor Christ on my own; I read the Bible on my own and say my prayers alone,” then they’re ignoring what Jesus says, that if you love Him you will also keep His commandments, which is to love one another, to give up one’s life for another.” That means bearing with each other’s sins. So enough of this, “I don’t go to church! It’s just a bunch of hypocrites and sinners. I worship Jesus on my own.” No, if you love Christ, you are drawn to where sinners congregate, just as He did.

Because that, after all, is why we love Christ. He is the antidote to our sin and death. Where He is present, there we will be also, because we love Him. If, as we approach Christ, we run into other sinners (um, like ourselves!) then love of Christ teaches us to love them as well.

We love Christ because we love our Father, and we love our Father because He is the source of our life – that’s what a Father is – the active agent getting our life going. Christ restores our life, the one lost through Adam.

All the attacks on this basic teaching – all the attacks on the Church, on the Fatherhood of God, on the Person of Jesus Christ as a flesh and blood Person – should be expected when the Devil’s theology is sought and embraced.

If God were our Father, we would love Christ. Very simple. God is our Father, and therefore we love Christ, the flesh and blood Person with specific words and teachings. And therefore we embrace the Church, which formalizes what this love means.

After our Laetare reprieve in the wilderness, sitting on the green grasses while our Shepherd feeds us, we return to another Gospel that has reference to demons and Satan in it. And this week gets to the heart of the issue. The contest between Jesus and the Jews is really a surrogate war between the fathers of each, between God the Father and the father of the Jews, Satan.

Jesus lays down a lot of teaching about His role in the Holy Trinity. He came forth from God the Father. He had nothing to do with this sending. He does not honor Himself. And the Word He teaches is God’s Word, not His. And this Word He brings gives life, even as He said in another place, “For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself.” And this life is in His flesh and blood, for He is the “Word which became flesh and dwelt among us,” and “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” And it’s the Holy Spirit who delivers this by proclamation, for “He will take of what is mine and declare it to you.”

So, in a nutshell, at Holy Communion, we come face to face with the Lord God Almighty, our Father, and delivers eternal life to us. Who rejects that? In John 6: 66 – ahem, the only 6: 66 in the Bible – we learn who rejects that. John 6 is the “bread of life” chapter we heard from last week. After Jesus taught how His flesh and blood is the true bread of life, and that we must eat and drink His body and blood, many were offended at this and could no longer follow Jesus. Like Gnostics throughout history, they were offended at the notion that flesh could deliver anything, even if, as Jesus clarified, it wasn’t just flesh, but flesh animated by the Holy Spirit.

In any event, this is the last verse of John 6: “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father. [And here’s verse 66] From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.”

It’s the battle of two fathers. God the Father is the fount and source of all life. He’s the creator. He’s the Actor, the Agent, the Doer of His creation. He sends forth Jesus. He grants that the true disciples come to Jesus. He causes who will be “of” Himself.

The devil too is a father, the source of something else. If the Heavenly Father’s watchwords are “sent [Jesus],” “honors [Jesus],” “one Who seeks and judges,” “never taste death,” “granted by the Father,” the devil’s watch words are “desires,” “liar,” “murderer,” and “no truth in him.”

It’s Jesus, Truth, grace, and life vs. Satan, lies, desires, and death.

Similar to the Gospel two weeks ago, when the Jews accused Jesus of casting out demons by Beelzebub, here again they accuse Jesus of operating by Satan. They would put Jesus on the side of the lies, desires, and death worked by Satan.

But the Jews showed their hand when they declared to Jesus, “Abraham is dead.” Really? Then how does God reveal Himself as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Is God not the God of the living and not the dead? Of course He is, as Jesus taught elsewhere, proving the resurrection. The Jews cannot fathom this, forgetting something they claimed they believed in. They’ve given in to the lie and deceit, that death is “just the way things are.” Their words put their own father to death. They show themselves to be on the side of lies, desires, and death.

Jesus has no problem saying Abraham is alive. Abraham rejoiced to see Jesus’ day of triumph. Abraham lives. And the one who keeps His word, as Abraham did, will never see or taste death. Jesus’ words resurrect what the Jews’ word put to death, their own father.

But that is the operation of Satan, that is his work, to normalize death, to get us comfortable with death, even to sanctify death and make it seem like an escape. The Jews had too willingly given in to that lie.

Jesus’ work is to infuse His life back into a creation cursed to return to the formlessness and void. He is the “I Am” the creative Word of creation, the “Let there be.” If Adam undid God’s original “Let there be” and caused it to become a “Let it not be” – everything returning to a state of dusty non-being – Jesus came to be the one part of creation (Him being human) that could not return to non-being, and therefore the source of life for the rest of the dying creation, if they received Him.

Let’s try a rather esoteric analogy. If you saw the whole history of western art from the days of the icons to now in, say, a twenty second segment, you’d see the objective centrality of Christ (Gothic/Romanesque) and the distinction of beings (Renaissance) slowly disintegrating into subjectivism (Mannerism/Impressionism) and finally into non-being (modern/post-modern art). Today we’re at purely political agitprop, not a reflection on being but the affirmation of its disintegration and, therefore, our need to create something in its place. For our subjective desires must trump being. (Remember Jesus’ statement about “desires” being Satan’s work in the Gospel.)

But in general, like working the “blur” function in photo software, you’re seeing the distinction of beings – rooted in the first, primary Being – fuzzify into a blurry nothingness replaced by the subjective interjection of individual “wills to power” through art, agitprop which but for an echo chamber of the like-minded doesn’t engage a single normal person.

Well, I see here a parallel to what’s going on in the creation. If nothing else it’s honest! The creation is returning to the formless void, even as we all are.

Now, imagine that history of art with one small change. Imagine the icon of Christ there in the beginning, in the Gothic period, and now imagine as history progresses that icon stays central, but everything around it is slowly dissolving. All through history Jesus can’t be touched by whatever perverse psychological motive is motivating the subsequent artists. The Renaissance artists can’t pry off his halo as they try to humanize him more. The Mannerists have to leave Him put as they try to stretch Him out and suggest movement with their gimmicks. When the Impressionists try to fuzzify the borders between Him and the rest of the world, His flesh says, “This far you may come and no further. Quit dabbing and delineate.” When the Abstractionists and Expressionists attempt to do…whatever it is they do, Jesus says, “nope.” And finally when the agitprop crowd tries to marshal Jesus to the movement, they find an immovable Lord.

That’s exactly what Jesus is to the creation. While everything about Him dissolves back into formlessness and void, He ain’t going anywhere. Why? Because He’s the I Am. He died but didn’t corrupt. Beelzebub tried to make Jesus fly-meat, but when his troops, the flies, tried to bite into Jesus, they butted up against a non-nourishing, non-corrupting God, the I Am. They had to leave Him alone and find some real corpses to feast on.

He is the I Am. The one who keeps Him –for He is the Word – will neither see nor taste death. Abraham saw Him, and lived. And Abraham’s children likewise live. We will not see or taste death. No, we will only sleep. That’s the truth faith clings to: when Jesus is around, it’s only a sleep.

“Therefore when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone.”

We’ve had a bit of a break from tracking the scent of Gnosticism. This week’s Gospel has so much rich biblical material, so we’ve taken a break to rejoice simply in the beauty of what Christ gives us. Of course, lurking in the background has been a lot of good theology that’s anti-Gnostic, namely, how Jesus’ flesh and blood are our “bread from heaven” through which we have our Sabbath rest and avoid God’s wrath. But we haven’t really addressed specific Gnostic teaching.

Not so today. The fact is, today’s words from the Gospel set up among the most anti-Gnostic teachings in Scripture. But let’s set up the background.

Gnosticism generally would abhor any political component of its teaching. It’s a teaching of ignoring this world, after all. Politics if anything is all about this world.

But there is a more practical Gnosticism, something political philosopher Erik Voegelin recognized and warned against. This sort of Gnosticism looks at the ruler of this world, the Demiurge, the chief Archon, and says, “What if we overthrew the God of this world and took the reins, so as to rule ourselves?” We could make the world actually a good place, not a place oppressed by various networks of power structures.

This is the “long march through the institutions” approach of the new left. The goal is not to overthrow “the system” but to take it over. We’ve been witnessing this take over for the past 30-40 years, the takeover of academia, media, and politics.

Fundamental to this ideology is the belief that they are “on the right side of History,” that their goals have been deemed by some sort of divinity to be the future.

Ground Zero for this theology is a Medieval monk named Joachim of Fiore, who believed there were three ages in world history corresponding to the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Father’s age was the age of Law and sacrifice, the Old Testament Age. The Son’s age was the post-Pentecostal age of the Church, sacraments, the ministry, and doctrine. The Spirit’s age, beginning in his day, would be a day when there would be no intermediary between God and man. The Holy Spirit would work directly upon the souls of the Elect, so that no Church, ministry, or sacraments would be needed. “Book-learning” would be replaced by direct knowledge from God. Finally, the Lord would inaugurate His kingdom on earth through these elect saints.

This is known as millenarianism. It’s the belief that God is using His Elect to inaugurate His kingdom on earth. After Joachim, many millenarian cults flourished. Each of these movements ran their course pretty much the same way. A charismatic “prophet” would arise claiming enlightened understanding of the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit. He’d gain a following by bolstering their pride, telling them they are the “Elect” on the right side of history, that is, in accord with where the Lord was leading history. The movement would flourish for awhile, as the cult attempted to live communally, share everything, cancel debts, and live only by “love.” Usually the movement began to be tyrannical in its puritanism – they are the Elect after all! There can be no tolerance for error or impurity! Finally, the movement fizzles out as reality sets in.

The philosopher Hegel attempted to secularize millenarianism, demythologizing it and reconstituting it through political movement. He spoke of a spirit, a dialectic of History moving things in a certain direction. This is where the phrase “the right side of History” comes from. Marx and others followed Hegel, and according to Erik Voegelin, thus began the modern totalitarian movements. It’s the belief that, in accordance with some magical “History,” as one conscience after another is awakened (woke anyone?), we will have a political order that effects everything Jesus promised would happen with His kingdom: peace, no disease, no poverty, etc.

What does this have to do with Gnosticism? Again, Gnosticism proper eschews politics. But there is a practical Gnosticism, sometimes called “proletarian Gnosticism,” known as Hermeticism, that allows for the political realm to reflect the ideal of unity and collectivism that is the Gnostic goal.

The big point is this. At root of both Gnosticism and Hermeticism what I like to call the “fuzzifying” of the borders between God and man, due to the denial of Christ’s flesh as the border of God. Joachim fuzzified the borders when He said Christ’s age was over, and the Holy Spirit’s age was at hand. Where with a healthy understanding of Christ’s incarnation, you have a clear point at which God ends and you begin – that being Christ’s flesh and blood! – in the age of the Spirit you don’t have that clear point. Now there’s a fuzzy line where God ends and you begin. Now you take on the responsibility of God, because you believe you are the Elect whom God is moving to bring about His kingdom. Where the Lord’s prayer’s petition “Thy kingdom come” suggests a clear line between suppliant and Lord – we’re not praying to ourselves! – this isn’t the case in millenarianism. You answer your own prayer!

Well, in the feeding of the 5,000, originally Jesus was the main actor. He was clearly doing all the action. He had the people sit down. He blessed the bread and caused it to multiply. He directed His apostles to distribute the bread. He caused there to be extra baskets for His New Sabbath.

But then, after He was finished, the people decided to make things happen on their own. They wanted to make Him king. They wanted to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth on their terms. They wanted to answer the petition, “Thy kingdom come.”

But Jesus would have none of it. He slipped from their hands and went back up the mountain. Likewise today, whenever people want to “make the kingdom of God happen” on earth, believing they can eradicate hunger, famine, war, disease, and all evils through government action, Jesus will slip out of their hands as well. Jesus is Lord, and He alone is the holy one. He will do His kingdom His way. We are along for the ride.

This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.

Who is this “the Prophet”? This was the one Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18 the Lord would raise up. As he said, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.” The early Church understood Jesus as the fulfillment of this prophecy. There are two allusions to it in Acts, and this week’s Laetare Gospel clearly invokes the prophecy, talking about Jesus as the “Prophet who is to come.” Finally, the Lord’s words at the Transfiguration, testified by Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, and John, “listen to [Jesus]” could be seen as God’s affirmation that His Son, Whom “you shall hear,” is the Prophet.

Now, what of this Prophet? Why was he needed? What was the context of Moses’ words about him? Moses’ words in full are, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the LORD your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die.’”

Moses was referring to the time just after God gave the Ten Commandments. Horeb was full of lightning flashes, thunder, the sound of trumpets, and it was smoking. Israel begged that only Moses go into the “thick darkness where God was.”

So, Israel would rather have Moses speak to them than God. God is terror-inducing. God is a destabilizing “thick darkness.” Read Psalm 18 and you learn this is the “dying” part of our baptism! “He made darkness His secret place; His canopy around Him was dark waters. And thick clouds of the skies. From the brightness before Him, His thick clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire….He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters.” (“Drawn from waters” was the name of Moses actually, which, if Jesus is the prophet like Moses, makes Moses’ rescue from the Nile a type of Jesus’ baptism, and ours. We are drawn out of the waters of the wrath of God’s thick darkness, in Christ.)

Jesus fulfills Moses’ role of speaking on behalf of God. Rather than facing God face to face, we face Jesus. Jesus is the face of God, or as Jesus led Philip to learn soon, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (Nothing in Scripture is accidental! Philip must have been the theological type, and Jesus pushed him into the more sublime aspects of His nature.)

In any event, this truth that only through Christ do we truly see the Father leads us to Martin Luther’s comment, something to the effect of, “He who will not seek God through Christ will find the devil.”

Now, here we have to introduce some subtle theology. On one hand, in Israel’s case, if they would have sought God outside of Moses, they would have found a fearful God of thunder and lightning. This is why they begged for Moses to assume the role of Prophet, the “face of God” for them so they could avoid the terror. Jesus assumes this role for us.

So why does Luther say you find the devil outside of Christ? Is it God’s wrath or the devil you find outside of Christ?

To answer this question, simply look to the Old Testament episode of David doing a census. Look at these two accounts of it, one from II Samuel, and one from I Chronicles.

“Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.” (I Chronicles 21: 1)

“Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’” (II Samuel 24: 1)

So, is it the wrath of God or Satan? The only way to understand this is to understand Satan as an instrument of God’s wrath. Satan is not some independent actor doing His own thing, frustrating God’s plans. No, he’s a tool in God’s toolkit. Either God’s almighty or He’s not. If He’s not, then yes, we could say Satan roams around doing as he wills. But God is almighty, therefore we understand Satan to be under God’s management.

This goes hand in hand with the truth that God works all things for the good of those who love Him. Satan attained his power in the earth because of Adam, and this displeased God, but God didn’t resign His authority on account of this.

In any event, that’s a bit of a detour from the bigger point. If you seek God outside of Christ, you will find God’s wrath and the devil, which is to say, you will find the “deep darkness,” the accusation of your sin, His wrath, His abandonment, and fear. Is it God’s wrath? Is it the devil? Um, I don’t care – I just don’t want to face it!

But how many would seek God outside of Christ, and His ordained means through the Church. And then they wonder why they live in fear, or doubt, or why God seems to fail them all the time. They haven’t come to Jesus, the Prophet, the one like Moses, Who speaks to them instead of God.

At the Transfiguration, the apostles fell down on their faces when they heard the Lord in His naked glory. They were terrified. And then Jesus – just Jesus – spoke to them saying, “Stand up.” If you’re wondering why we stand up at the Gospel, there’s your answer. It’s because of Jesus the Prophet. At the announcement of the Gospel – the Voice of God – we should run for the doors in terror, or fall on our faces. We don’t. We stand.

“Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost.”

There’s no doubt Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, as recorded in the Gospel of John, is intended to invoke Israel’s wandering in the wilderness and living off the manna which came from heaven. Of course, Jesus is lifting the meaning of the feeding to something new, bursting the old wine skins of the old event, and making something wholly different.

He reveals Himself as a newer and more powerful Moses, the “prophet” Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18. He teaches the true bread He gives doesn’t just satisfy hunger, but the true hunger we have, the hunger and thirst for righteousness, satisfied only by His flesh and blood.

With this in mind, we need to use the episode of Israel in the wilderness to guide us in understanding all the other details of John’s account. This is especially helpful in understanding the “fragments that remain.”

Those who know the “rules” for gathering manna in the original account know that typically nothing was to remain. God was teaching Israel to trust each day that He would give them their daily bread. “Let no one leave any of it till morning.” There were no “fragments that remain.” And those who disobeyed this rule woke up to stinking, rotting bread.

However, on Friday the rule was relaxed, because the Sabbath was at hand when no one would work. The Lord provided enough for everyone to collect for two days. On this day, then, they would in fact of “fragments that remain” for the Sabbath.

Understanding this, interpreting Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 falls right in place. What were those twelve baskets of “fragments that remain” intended for? Clearly, for a Sabbath Day. If Jesus is truly the “bread from heaven,” and this bread is His flesh, more interesting details fall into place.

Was there a Sabbath Day on which Jesus, the bread of life, did not decay, but became the “bread of life” for His people? This sounds a lot like Jesus resting on the Sabbath in the tomb, about which St. Peter on Pentecost says, “nor did His flesh see corruption.”

Jesus is inaugurating a new Sabbath on which His flesh would be distributed to a “new twelve,” for there were twelve baskets of “fragments that remain.”

Especially in the Gospel of John, there are suggestions of a New Sabbath to cap off a New Creation. Consider the following verses:

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (But if it was declared by Moses that God finished His work on the sixth day, why continue working? Clearly Adam did something to undo God’s work, and God had to “come out of retirement” so to speak.)

“My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” (Yup, because Adam undid His first work. Notice Jesus assumes the nature of the One who works, God. For He is of one substance with the Father.)

“For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.” (Ah, a clue about what work needed to be done. “Dust to dust” undid the work. Jesus raising from the dead undoes that.)

“I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.” (Clearly a reference to the creation account; God stopped working when day was over.)

“I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.” (Jesus “finished” the work when He said, “It is finished.” But by this point He had instituted the Lord’s Supper, which is the cross administered in time prior and after the cross, of which “we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” He was administering “It is finished” at the Last Supper, even as He administers “It is finished” at Holy Communion for us today.)

“It is finished.” (Yes, this is the true completion of the creation. And given the previous verse where Jesus says He “had” finished the work – and that this was an administration of the completed event in time prior to the actual act – might we consider that when it was said God finished the creation on the sixth day, this was in lieu of Christ’s proclamation from the cross, “It is finished, administered in time on the sixth day?”)

So, Jesus finished the creation really, which makes Him author of the Sabbath Day, just as He said, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” What of this Sabbath Day? It’s the day He provided for 12 baskets of extra bread, so that the ones to whom each apostle was sent – you and me – might be provided for, that we might enjoy the ultimate completion of the Lord’s labors, the new creation.

Like Israel, we still await entrance into the Promised Land, but also like Israel, this bread in the wilderness is a “foretaste of the feast to come,” a foretaste of the milk and honey.

Nothing was lost. Twelve baskets full of nothing lost. Twelve apostles of whom Jesus said, “Of those whom You gave Me I have lost none.” Save Judas, but His office was filled by another, because at the end of the day, Jesus wasn’t establishing persons, but offices in the apostolic ministry. And today, inheritors of the Twelve continue to feed Israel on the new Sabbath with the bread of life, the flesh and blood of Jesus.

And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.

If this is a precursor to Holy Communion – Christ’s explanation of the sacramental gift in the context of real world events; He feeds us His miraculous meal in the wilderness of this world – there is a subtle parallel that needs to be explored. In both miraculous meals, the Lord works with existent, earthly materials. In both cases, He works with bread.

In the beginning, God created the world ex nihilo. He created “out of nothing.” By His Word everything that exists came into being. His Word is Christ. Adam’s sin plunged the world “out of existence,” back into the chaos, back into non-being. But it wasn’t really nothing, because the material of God’s creation is still in existence. Man goes back to dust, but dust is still something.

And it’s something God can work with in order to “redeem” the world. A helpful designation is the occasional description of the Holy Trinity by the functions of each Person: Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. The Father created; Christ came to redeem what the Father created; the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier, which is sometimes helpful to understand as the “separater” or “designator.” He “separates and designates something for God’s purpose, and gives it life.”

Of course, the Holy Trinity is one God, so we don’t want to push this too far. Each Person is involved in each act of God. But let’s play it out.

God’s continued creative activity operates through the seed. He created the world, and the living beings are perpetuated through the seed. The seed does exactly as He had done in the beginning. It takes of the chaotic dust and forms it into a living being. Adam’s sin, of course, causes the creation to fall into the “bondage to corruption” and “groan and labor with birth pangs until now.”

Thus, like the manna that spoiled after a day, the products of seed such as bread will also spoil. And that symbolizes the whole creation’s spoiling.

However, there is one day it doesn’t spoil, and that is the Sabbath Day. That is a prophecy of a Sabbath Day rest which will overcome the earth’s corruption. This is the day that Jesus, our Redeemer, brings. It too begins after God declares that He’s finished with the creation: “It is finished.” This was the day Jesus lay in the tomb in rest, the day on which saints rose from the graves and walked around Jerusalem, no longer spoiled. And on Jesus’ own resurrection, He established the “new first day” for all eternity.

The bread Jesus used in His feeding of the 5,000 falls right in line with these themes. He did not create “ex nihilo.”  Just as His flesh is “of this world” (of Mary), and He saves people of this world and raises flesh born of this world, so also He uses the redemptive elements of this world.  He used existing material to multiply the bread. He Himself was the expanding Seed, the Word which “pro-created” (forward created) the bread.

But as Jesus taught when the people misinterpreted His sign, this was a “food which perishes” pointing to a “food which endures to eternal life,” that being His own flesh and blood.

And that’s operative. Jesus redeems the world in Himself. He is the firstborn of those who will not experience “spoiling” or corruption. Or put in another oft-used biblical image, He (as well as we) are the “firstfruits” of the new creation.

Clearly the bread used in communion stands as a powerful reminder of this image. The fruits of the land are lifted from the fallen order, and when the Lord adds His Word, it becomes the “food which endures to eternal life.”

Now, why is this important? Gnostic “anti-theology” – the devil’s theology – deplores this creation. The idea of using the fruits of this earth as part of the redemptive work of the Gospel would be just as foolish as the idea of God taking on human flesh or God raising human flesh from the dead.

Today, many people claim they don’t need to go to church. They go to God on their own, heart to heart. They’re cutting out the creation. They’re cutting out the material elements. They’re cutting out their neighbors. They’re cutting out themselves ultimately.

In the feeding of the 5,000, all the elements of the Church are there. But on another level, all the elements for the reason for a Church are there. Jesus didn’t leave behind an esoteric teaching written in a book for anyone to have access to. No, He met people in the heart of the fallen beast, the wilderness, and began the redemption of all creation there. He took of the fruits of the earth. He made neighbor sit next to neighbor. He sent out ministers to deliver His gifts. And He sat at the head of it all. It’s the Church, and it’s the new creation.

The earliest example we have of a picture of Christ (the picture above) is not of Him on the cross, but Him as a shepherd. (The eariliest picture of Jesus on a cross is actually one done in mockery, depicting Jesus as an “asenos” (donkey) on the cross.)

What is the basis for this focus, this emphasis on Him as shepherd? The specific references to Him as Shepherd in the Gospels come from two sources, John 10 and Luke 15. The former is the classic “Good Shepherd” chapter, and the latter is the parable about the man who leaves the 99 sheep behind to find the one lost lamb. “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” Arguably the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats from Matthew 25 presents Jesus as the Shepherd, even if not specifically invoking the image.

Two epistle writers reference the image as well. Hebrews says, “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.” And Peter has two references in his first epistle, “For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. … and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.”

Finally, the Revelation uses the image: “The Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Of course these images evoke the beloved Psalm, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures.”

Here we see a strong indication that the apostolic church understood the Lord Jesus as truly “The LORD,” that is Jehovah. They understood Jesus as Lord God, the Son of God, of one substance with the Father.

We also see the basis for another powerful allusion to the image, in the words, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” For in the Laetare Gospel, we hear that Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” We also learn, “Now there was much grass in the place.”

Jesus literally made the people to lie down, or sit down, in green pastures. And lest we doubt the grass was green, the Gospel of Mark fills in the detail. “He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass.”

Clearly the apostolic writers recognized in the feeding of the 5,000 the revelation of Jesus as the fulfillment of Psalm 23. And if the image of Christ the Shepherd is right up there with Christ the Crucified or Christ the Resurrected Victor, it’s probably related to the fact that this miracle is one of the few events in Christ’s life (in addition to the baptism, crucifixion, and resurrection) that is featured in all four Gospels.

Again, clearly the event was pivotal in the hearts of the faithful in the early Church. Yes, it was as pivotal and central as the eucharist was pivotal and central to their worship. For clearly the feeding of the 5,000 is an image of Holy Communion. It’s Jesus’ feeding of His flock in the midst of a desert. Well, how does Jesus feed us with His miraculous meal as we sojourn in the wilderness of this world? That Jesus immediately after the feeding in John 6 goes on to teach, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” – actually explaining explicitly what His purpose is in the feeding – underscores the sacramental connection.

And then we have the sequence of verbs in the accounts. As the Matthew account has it: “And He took the five loaves…He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples.” Took, blessed (or gave thanks), broke, and gave. That’s the language of the Last Supper as well.

So Holy Communion is our wilderness feeding, where our “great Shepherd of the sheep” works among us “through the blood of the everlasting covenant,” that is, the “new testament” in His blood, the blood that speaks better things than that of Abel (not revenge, but forgiveness).

In this image of the Good Shepherd, there are no fuzzy lines where God ends and we begin, as there are in non-sacramental understandings of the Gospel. Jesus is the Good Shepherd doing all the work of grace. And us? We are made to sit in the green grasses, being fed. The sent ones (apostles) do the work of distribution, laying the foundation for all ministers thereafter.

And actually, as we find out at the end of the Gospel, things go awry when the people make their own conclusions and get involved in the action, hoping to institutionalize the moment politically. Wrong answer!

The right answer is, be the sheep. Be found. Be made to sit down in the grass, in the green pastures. Be fed.

Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?”

When Philip shows up in the Gospel, something usually profound is revealed about the Person of Christ. He’s the one who introduced Nathanael to Jesus saying, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote.” That of course is the Messiah.

He’s the one who says to Jesus, “Show us the Father,” to which Jesus gave one of His most important teachings on the Holy Trinity: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

To Philip the Greeks went when they wanted to see Jesus – “Sir, we want to see Jesus.” – a pivotal point in John’s Gospel signaling an opening of Christ’s mission beyond the Jews.

So Philip plays a role in the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who’s of one substance with the Father, who’s for (all) us men and for our salvation. That’s a bit of creedal heft!

And in this week’s Gospel, Jesus tests Philip whether He understood the implications of the doctrine He was using Philip to reveal. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed prophet-king written about by Moses and the prophets. Yes, Jesus is the revealer of the Father, so that if you see Him you see the Father. Yes, Jesus is the universal Savior of all humanity.

But can He take care of a mass of hungry people in a wilderness? Philip fails this test even as he failed to see that to see Jesus is to see the Father. Philip seems to represent that sort of disciple who has a good confession of who Christ is, but fails to understand the implications of that confession.

At this point in the Gospel (John 6), Philip at least understood Jesus was the “one of whom Moses wrote.” Well, who was that? That was “the prophet” of Deuteronomy 18. These are the exact words of Moses, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the LORD your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die.’”

We will learn more about “the prophet” and the circumstances of God raising him up. At a minimum, note Moses’ words lay the foundation for Philip’s later catechesis from Jesus that he who has seen Jesus has seen the Father. That’s the prophet’s role, to be the face of God so we don’t have to confront God in His naked presence. But again, this is for a later day.

For now, we focus on Moses’ words “like me.” The prophet God raises up will be like Moses. What did Moses do? Of course, he did a lot of things, but one of the big things he did – so big it was one of the three items put into the Ark of the Covenant – was provide manna for Israel, their daily bread.

So, Jesus’ test of Philip was whether he believed Jesus could do something based on what Philip recognized Him to be. At a deeper level, Jesus was testing whether Philip understood the profound moment he was encountering, the fulfillment of one of Israel’s most consequential events, their wandering in the wilderness being tested and fed by manna. In a sense Philip stands for all of us in our own testing in the wilderness, will we trust God to provide us with daily bread?

Philip falls back to the realities of economics and the law of scarcity. 200 denarii wouldn’t be enough to buy bread for all those people. It would seem Philip failed the test, as we do all the time as well, as we too rely on what we think is the assurance of economic reality. Yes, we believe Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, and so on. But against the cold, hard facts of economics, do we believe He’ll have compassion on us to provide us with daily bread?

Just as Philip was failing to connect the dots between his confession and the realities of his day, Andrew comes in and tells Jesus about the five loaves and two fishes. It’s a little more than what Philip offers Jesus, but still insufficient – “What are they among so many?” says Andrew.

And then Jesus takes over. He doesn’t “live down” do their lack of faith. The little faith of a mustard seed receives the full Jesus. And that little faith of Philip was that Jesus was the one Moses talked about, the one “like me.” Jesus nudges Philip along to see that if He is the one like Moses, well, He’ll provide manna from heaven as well, a bread from heaven, indeed a greater bread from heaven.

So also with us. One of our “wilderness tests” is trusting that if we believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the face of God, the one of whom Moses wrote, will He take care of us so we need not worry? Will we “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” trusting that all those other things will be “added unto us”?

Or will we fall back to cold, hard economic realities?

Here’s the beautiful thing. Philip shows us in the end the Lord will do what the Lord will do without regard to the quality of our faith, and that is have compassion and provide our daily bread. However, what joy (Laetare means “rejoice”) to pass that test and have the confidence we could have in Christ.

If ever there was an argument for doing the historic lectionary, the Gospels in Lent build an incredible case. Let’s remember what the Church Year is all about. The Church Year wraps us up into the “year of the Lord” (AD) and binds us to Christ’s life. It’s part of the greater liturgical reality conspiring to work out the truth that we do not do the faith, but the faith does us. The Gospels of Lent brilliantly display this.

The forty days of Lent obviously call to mind Israel’s wandering in the wilderness for forty years, and more immediately, Jesus’ time in the wilderness for forty days. It invokes the truth that life in this world is a “desert drear.”

What have the three Gospels so far taught us?

Well, first there’s simply the desert motif. The desert is the place of trial, as it was for Israel. It’s the place where Jesus is driven by the Holy Spirit. The desert is where the Church exists. The desert is where we join Jesus after our own baptisms. The desert is also the “dry place,” the haunt of demons, the place where the devil awaited Jesus. Even as we begin the season confessing we are dust and ashes, we find ourselves in the dry place of dust.

The desert is the place of hunger, as Jesus shows us. But unlike Israel whose hunger got them in trouble, Jesus lifts our understanding to a truer meaning of bread.

And this leads to the Reminiscere Gospel of the woman crying out for the bread crumb. As we were taught in the desert, man does not live by bread alone, however, but by every Word proceeding from the mouth of God. In other words, the hunger we truly have is fulfilled not by bread, but by the Word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh, the bread of life. The woman recognized this, crying out for His mercy, for Jesus to drive out the demon from her daughter. She was truly “hungering and thirsting for righteousness.” And she was filled with the bread Jesus brought, and that Jesus is.

Last week’s Gospel, Oculi, developed this theme. Jesus is the Stronger Man who drives the devil back out into the “dry places.” He enters our house as we “hear the word of God and keep it.” In the context – of the woman saying blessed are the breasts and womb that “housed” Jesus – Jesus emphasizes Mary’s true “housing” was as she heard Gabriel’s word and kept it. So also us.

So we have Jesus, the Word that proceeds from the mouth of God, the bread which truly feeds us by having mercy on us and driving away demons, for He is the Stronger Man. And then we have the desert, the place of hunger, the haunt of demons, the place of “earthly bread” temptations.

Emotionally, we’ve dealt with some heavy stuff: the forty days of hunger, the subtle temptations of the devil, the oppressing power of demons, the silence of God, the seemingly insult of God, the rebuking by the disciples (the Church), the return of the seven demons in a swept-clean house. It’s all very real stuff. It’s the stuff we face in Lent. It’s the stuff we face in life, and God help anyone who would eliminate the reality of Lent from the Christian life.

And now we get a reprieve with Laetare Sunday, the feeding of the 5,000 in the midst of the wilderness. All the cast of themes comes on stage for an encore performance, save the demonic element. We get a break from them this week.

But we have the wilderness, the hunger, the bread, and Jesus. It’s all from John 6, which if we read the whole context will put the whole theme on steroids. Jesus is the bread from heaven, literally descending from the mountain to feed the people before returning back up the mountain. For as He said, “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.” He is the Word made flesh, “ the bread of God…who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” That’s exactly what He does in this week’s Gospel.

This is the true bread we hunger for, the Word made flesh proceeding from the mouth of God, the Word we hear and keep, the life in the dry places, the rejection of that “lord of flies,” the one driving the demons away.

He feeds us until full, for the blessed who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be full. Twelve baskets are left over, each bit saved so that nothing is lost. Jesus the fulfilled manna from heaven provides enough for His renewed Sabbath, His day of rest, His day of new creation – one basket per apostle to take out into the world. (Recall that on Friday extra manna was saved to provide for the Sabbath Day.)

For the old Sabbath Rest wasn’t really a rest at all, as Jesus said, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” No real rest for God after man plunged His creation back into formlessness and void, handing it over to the devil!

No, as Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” And finish it He did when He said, “It is finished.”  Only then truly, were “the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them…finished.”

That’s Jesus’ food. And that’s the food He gives out, the bread He gives out, the extra bread saved up in the twelve baskets, ready to be distributed by the twelve apostles throughout the world, the bread of which He says, “This is my Body, given unto death for you,” the bread which when eaten “proclaims the Lord’s death until He comes.”

And that bread fills our hunger and thirst for righteousness, driving away the devils Satan and Beelzebub out of our houses, the “accusing one” and the “lord of flies,” sin and death. He who came into the world by she who “heard and kept” the Word of Gabriel, born in the House of Bread (Bethlehem), gives Himself to us, our daily bread.

For this we give thanks, as Jesus did with the bread. Giving thanks is the flip-side posture of begging for mercy. Both assume the posture of a “passive needer and receiver of gifts.”

Be sure to review the first three Gospels of Lent to properly hear tomorrow’s Gospel. They are profoundly connected.

“Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!” But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

Though a seemingly shift in gears in the narrative – from demons to Mary – there are striking parallels.

Jesus’ imagery of the house is clearly meant to signify the human person – body, soul, and spirit. Now, unlike the Greeks (and the modern Gnostics), the Hebrews didn’t have such a stark distinction between body and spirit (or in the modern understanding, between the body and Self). For the Greeks, the body was always something the spirit inhabited (in modern speak, your identity is determined by the choosing Self rather than the body). The spirit was the important thing. Plato’s entire philosophy was constructed on the premise that the body was deficient as a source of knowing, that we have to attain to higher, immaterial truths and “wake up” from the bodily illusions (see the Allegory of the Cave). In modern speak you have to be “woke” to the prison house of this world’s “constructs.”

For the Hebrews, God created the body and infused the spirit into it. The human person is not an incarnate soul – a soul using a body – but an animated body – a body brought to life by the spirit. And in the Hebrew understanding, the spirit was not necessarily a self-subsisting entity, like a ghost, that once freed from the body still had conscious existence, floating around in trans-dimensional regions. The one mention of a ghost, Samuel, informs us he was disturbed from his rest. He was sleeping, hardly conscious.

What this is all to say is that Jesus’ house metaphor must refer to the whole person, not just the body. And He makes this clear by His little encounter following the bulk of the Gospel, with the woman who cried out to Him that Mary’s breasts and womb are blessed (as opposed to her as a whole person, body and soul).

Now, there is something tantalizing about the body in particular, as far as demons are concerned. Why are they restless until they possess a body? Are they jealous of bodies? Do bodies give them individual existence, freedom, and a fullness of existence they don’t have as networked spirits with identity confusion? (“We are legion, for we are many.”) What exactly is “dry” about being separate from human bodies?

All interesting questions, but lets remember the bigger point of the Gospel. There’s a new sheriff in town, Jesus. He’s a body, an incarnate one. He’s not Adam, bound in the basement while Satan rests upstairs watching TV. He’s the stronger man who kicks Satan out. His “house” (the Temple; His body) is freed from the devil. The point is, He did it! Jesus ousted the devil.

OK, so here’s a question. What aspect of Jesus ousted the devil? To put it crudely, was it His flesh part or His God part? Jesus answered this when He said in another meditation on this subject, “The Spirit gives life. The flesh profits nothing.”

Jesus’ Person is one, though His natures (divine and human) are two. But when we speak of His actions, we always speak of Him as the one Person. We wouldn’t, for example, separate Jesus into two persons (as the Nestorians did) and say, “Well, when Jesus walked on water He was doing it as God; but when He suffered on the cross He did it as man.” No, the whole Person was involved in every act: Man walked on water and God died, God walked on water and Man died, all this because Jesus walked on water and Jesus died, since Jesus is one Person!

Yet, when you do get technical, as Jesus needed to after teaching His disciples about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, Jesus doesn’t save us merely because of the flesh – the flesh profits nothing – but because that flesh is enlivened eternally by the Holy Spirit. And that’s why distinctions are indeed made, because people (like the woman in the Gospel) will so easily miss the point. Jesus walked on water by His divine nature not because there’s some magical potential about human bodies; Jesus suffered on the cross by His human nature, not because God in His essence is subject to human suffering.

Well, I believe this episode with the woman at the end of this Gospel is similar.

The woman seems to “get it” as far as Jesus is concerned. She recognized that He’s the “stronger man.” And who but the mother of the stronger man would be the first “house” the stronger man would inhabit.

So she decides to pontificate about the proper way to receive that stronger man: How blessed must that woman have been who gave birth to the stronger man and nursed him! Surely she had done something special with her womanly body parts, in order to bring this other body into the world and nurse him!

Jesus says, “no.” In a sense He says exactly what He did in the other context, “The flesh profits nothing.” It’s not the one who does stuff with my body that causes the strong man to gain victory – that puts the onus on that person! Rather, it’s done in God’s way.

And what’s God’s way? To hear the Word of God and keep it. That hearing brings about the “Word made flesh,” and that’s truly how the full person of Jesus – body and soul – is brought into the full house, body and soul. Bodies profit nothing; and your body receiving Jesus’ body profits nothing – that turns your salvation into a religion of works. But the Word of God animating Jesus’ Body certainly profits everything, even as that Word brings His Body into your house and gives you victory over Satan.

In the same way, when you receive communion, you always receive His Body – just as Mary truly nursed God always – but the blessing comes not from the mere eating of bread which is Christ’s body, or from nursing Jesus. The blessing comes from hearing the Word, receiving the Body, and keeping it in one’s house.

Mary provides a great example. She heard the Word of God and kept it, and through her the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, becoming a tabernacle, a temple, a house. And blessed are all those who receive Jesus as He comes in His Word, in His full Person, body and soul. As they keep Him in their house, the demon and his seven buddies move on to someone else.