Lent 4 Meditation
Exodus 16; John 6
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
Today’s Scripture readings remind us of how our God provides for us, for our bodily needs, even in ways that we do not expect. Unexpected, uncertain circumstances can be stressful for us. They can bring out creativity and ingenuity; sometimes, though, they bring out the worst in us. The children of Israel weren’t exactly patient in dealing with their circumstances. They grumbled against Moses and even wished that they could go back to their slavery in Egypt where at least there would be some food. Even after seeing the power of the Lord in the crossing of the Red Sea just a few weeks earlier, their grumbling stomachs quickly caused them to turn their faith away from Him to the fact that their present needs weren’t being met. This is a warning for us also, especially in this current unexpected public health situation. Let us be on guard against faithlessness, against turning our trust away from the Lord to whatever else we think might be the answer to our present needs.
Grumbling is the opposite of prayer. Prayer seeks the Lord and His help. Prayer holds God to His promises. Grumbling points the finger of blame at others–politicians, leaders, perhaps family members that we’re cooped up with. But really, grumbling ultimately is directed at God. As Moses and Aaron pointed out, “You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.” So let us rather call upon the Lord’s name for help in our time of need, whether it be for food or finances or physical healing and protection. For He has promised, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me.”
We are reminded by current events, though we sometimes forget, that this world in which we now live is the wilderness. It is that place between the Red Sea of our Baptism into Christ and the promised land of our resurrection with Him on the Last Day. Right now we’re in the in-between time of testing and trials, when God calls us to trust in Him and not in ourselves. The wilderness is where faith is nurtured and shaped and strengthened.
God let His people get hungry in the wilderness, but He didn’t let them starve. They were His Israel. He promised to take care of them. He heard their cry, grumbling though it was, and He fed them. In the evening, God gave them meat, sending quail into the camp. And in the morning, a thin layer of a small round substance covered the ground, manna. God provided daily bread for His grumbling people.
That tells us something about the nature of our God. He is good even to the stubborn and rebellious, in hopes that His kindness may lead them to repentance. It is as we confess in the Catechism, “God gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people.” God provides for our bodily needs, not because of our asking or because we’ve deserved it. For even the wicked who don’t pray for daily bread still receive it. God is simply good and generous and merciful to the world through Christ. He causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall both on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Why then should we pray for daily bread? The Catechism continues, “We pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this (that He is the source of all that we have), and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving (to Him).” Hopefully, in this time when supply chains are less reliable, we will be all the more thankful to God for things we used to take for granted.
Notice once again that we are directed to pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” God only provided the Israelites with enough manna to last for that day. No one was to hoard the manna or be greedy with it. They were only to gather as much as they needed that day. They were to live trusting that just as God provided for them today, He would also provide for them tomorrow and the next day. God was teaching them to live by faith in Him.
Right now we are tempted to worry about tomorrow and next month and next year. There is much uncertainty about the future. And there’s clearly nothing wrong with planning and preparedness. It’s obviously fine for us to have more food in the house than just for today. But also don’t forget what happened to the Israelites who didn’t live by faith in God’s Word but in their own efforts and scheming and hoarding. What happened to that extra manna? It became rotten and would be full of maggots by morning.
God will provide you with daily bread. That’s His promise to you, His baptized children. It may not always be everything that you want; but it will be everything that you need. Today’s Gospel shows that our Lord can even bring something out of nothing for His people. With nothing but five loaves and two fish, He feeds more than 5000 people. And there was more left over than when He started. Learn from this that the Lord cares about your bodily needs. In fact, He cares so much that He became flesh, to suffer and die in the body, and to rise again bodily from the grave so that you, too, might rise bodily to life everlasting. That’s the ultimate answer to the prayer for daily bread, for healing and your physical welfare. Even if you must hunger or struggle in this life, you have the resurrection of your body through Christ and the riches of His glory in the life to come.
Jesus is Himself your manna for the wilderness. He is the bread sent by the Father to feed you, to nourish you, to fill you, to sustain you on your pilgrimage from Baptism through the wilderness to the promised land of the new creation. Jesus said, “I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, He will live forever. And this bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh . . . He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” Every other kind of bread is temporary. It spoils, and you get hungry again. But Jesus is the bread that does not spoil. He is the food that endures to eternal life. Eat and receive of Him and you will live forever.
One last thing: There was one day of the week that Israel was allowed to gather more than they needed for that day. It was Friday. On that day, the 6th day, they could gather enough for it and the next day, too, the Sabbath day of rest. The manna did not spoil overnight but sustained Israel through the day of rest to the beginning of a new week. So also, our Lord Jesus, the Manna from above, who died on the sixth day, Good Friday, did not decay in the tomb. Rather, He has become the Living Bread that carries us through to resurrection and new life and everlasting rest in heaven.
You eat the Bread of Life by believing in Jesus. Trusting in Christ, you are receiving and absorbing all the blessings and benefits of what He has done for you–His incarnation, His perfect life, His innocent death on the cross in your place, His victory over the grave, His ascension to the Father–all of that becomes yours through faith in Jesus.
So especially in these unusual and disorienting times, receive the bread of life day by day. As you read and meditate on the words of Scripture whether here or at home, you are given to experience the words of the Psalm, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103). And above all, here in the Lord’s Supper you get a special, literal sense of what it means that Jesus is the Living Bread come down from heaven. Under the form of ordinary bread, Jesus gives you hidden manna, His own body, once handed over to Pontius Pilate as the perfect sacrifice for sin, now handed out to you for the forgiveness of all your sin. Here God acts in a way that is wonderfully beyond our expectations, that calms our stress and our fear. That small round substance on the altar is Living Manna to sustain you here in the wilderness. Jesus is the Bread of Life, and no matter what else is going on in the world, if you have Him, then you have everything, all that you need.
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠