Jesus speaks to you today, saying:
Jesus is testing Philip, His disciples, and He is testing
all of you here today. We’ve already talked about the difference between
testing and tempting concluding that God tempts no one, but that when testing
comes, it comes to draw us closer to Christ, whereas temptation tears us away
into greater shame and vice.
So what we are looking for is not just bread on our own
tables, but a deeper understanding of the grace of God AND how that grace gets
to us. Because I don’t know about you, but bread and fish are a silly way to
teach about trust. There are so many other, more efficient ways of teaching and
testing trust. Jesus could take them out on another stormy boat trip, He could
find more unclean or sick people, or He could even have found more dead to
raise.
No, Jesus chose this moment, in the midst of the most holy
Passover, in the midst of hunger to teach the faith with food. Here He preaches
against the doctrine of the devils that say it is impossible for God to become
enfleshed.
Adam and Eve were tested in the same way. The Lord gave an
entire planet full of food, but left one tree of no-eat-food. Would they trust
the Lord to provide physical as well as spiritual food?
Abraham was tested as Melchizedek, the King of Peace,
approached him with a holy meal, which Abraham received with thanksgiving and
gave a tithe of all he had as a response. Joseph tested his brothers with their
food.
And the longest, still running test that brings all of this
together is the bread that was required to always be present in the Temple
The formula for sanctification in
the true faith happened in three ways. First, God made the Altar and the Temple
Second, the Lord consecrated the
high priest and all the priests by their consumption of the most holy food as
it is written: “I have given it as their
portion of my food offerings. It is a thing most holy, like the sin offering
and the guilt offering. Every male among the children of Aaron may eat of it,
as decreed forever throughout your
generations, from the Lord's food offerings. Whatever touches them shall become
holy.” (Lev 6:17-18)
Third and last, the Lord
consecrated all the Israelites through their involvement in the divine service
and their own consumption of the holy food from their offerings saying, “You shall sanctify him, for he offers the
bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord, who sanctify you,
am holy.” (Lev. 21:8) Thus God communicated His holiness physically with
His people through the things He declared holy. By their access to the holy
things the people shared in God’s holiness.
- Kleinig.
Leviticus, pp.11
Repent. If Jesus is not holy, then He has some sort of super
powers maybe. At the least He is blazing the trail for soup kitchens to come in
the future. A great example of feeding the hungry to be sure. But, if Jesus is
holy, then the feeding of the 5000 must mean a whole lot more.
Yet, it takes a demon to throw in our faces what should be
evident from the get-go, that Jesus is holy. Not just holy, but The Holy One, “And immediately there was in their
synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, “What have you to do
with us, Jesus of Nazareth
It should shame us that we do not see the holiness of Christ
sitting on the mountainside and handing out food. It should bring us to tears
that we failed to put together that Jesus makes His people holy through His own
Blood (Heb. 13:12). That whatever He touches, becomes holy.
And so we should not be surprised to see, in this feeding of
the 5000 a copy of what was happening in the daily celebration and ceremony of Temple Temple and the Altar are holy, for The Son
of Man is the Temple
Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit. What is born of the
holy is holy. “Christ Jesus, who became
to us wisdom from God, righteousness and holiness and redemption” (1 Cor.
1:30). Jesus is the holiness of God, the Light of God, and the Lamb of God
that takes away the sin of the world. He does not spend His time in idle
munchings and crunchings. His business is the forgiveness of sins.
Thus it becomes the Church today, even at St. Luke, to
fashion an Altar and a Temple-like place for the Word of God to come true among
us also. It is meet and right to worship and bow down to the true Temple Who
comes in the Name of the Lord. It is a holy work to take what has been made
holy from the hands of the Holy and become holy ourselves.
For us today, it is a comfort that Moses and all the
Prophets were worshipping and communing the same way we worship and commune. It
brings great joy to know that the Apostles worshipped and communed the same way
we do.
For God has provided a test. A test to see whether or not we
would keep His meal at the table. The test is if there is still a meal in His
Church where heaven communes with earth, where the spiritual communes with the
physical, and where sinners commune with the most Holy and become holy
themselves, not just with showbread, but with the very Body and Blood of God
Himself, Who feeds so many more than 5000.
That is the test and yet Jesus provides all the answers. We
don’t have to figure out the right meal plan, the correct place settings, or
the magic words to get God to show up. It has all been figured out and revealed
to us so that we might be able to run without hesitation to our loving God and
find forgiveness of sins in a meal.
No comments:
Post a Comment