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Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 2, 2026
Matthew 14:13:21
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Sometimes a meal is more than a meal. Sometimes eating food is more than just a way to get your body the calories it needs. Sometimes a meal means something. Maybe it is a recipe from a long departed loved one which makes it feel like they’re right there with you. Maybe it is an ethnic food, a tradition you carry on that connects you to your ancestors. Maybe it is something special you always eat on a holiday, without which it just wouldn’t be the same.
My wife and I were married up in Bellingham. We only had a weekend for our honeymoon because I had to come back and take my last final exams at Western Washington University that next week. So, we took a short trip to Victoria, BC. We left right from the church to catch the ferry out of Vancouver. On that ferry ride we got an order of French fries and gravy, which is how they often serve it in Canada. To this day, French fries and gravy means something to us. We sometimes have it on our anniversary. We sometimes have it when we’re up in Canada. It is a very simple dish. There’s nothing fancy about it. But whenever we have it, it is meaningful to us. It is only French fries for crying out loud, but when you put gravy on them, they become intensely romantic to us. It is a meal that points us to our honeymoon. It points us to the promises we made on our wedding day. It is a meal that points us to the covenant relationship we share.
The Bible is full of meals that mean something. Over and over again, God reveals himself in and through meals. Over and over again, God establishes relationships with his people through meals. After God made a covenant with his people, establishing a relationship with them, Moses and the elders shared a meal in God’s presence. When God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, they didn’t just witness salvation, they ate it! God gave them a meal, the Passover meal, which delivered salvation to them! As God’s people wandered in the wilderness for forty years, unable to feed themselves, God provided manna, bread from heaven, which nourished and sustained them. There were the sacrifices made at the temple, many of which concluded with the worshippers eating a portion of the sacrifice, indicating a restored and renewed relationship with God. There are meaningful meals found in the lives and writings of the prophets. Elijah and Elisha both presided over miraculous meals which revealed that the God of Israel was the true God who brings life.
And then there is our reading from Isaiah for today, one of several passages in the Old Testament where the prophets declare that when the Messiah comes, there will be a freely given feast to which all are invited! As we heard:
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant.”
Do you see that this is about more than food? This meal is about relationship. It leads to a new and everlasting covenant. It isn’t just about calories for the body, it is about food for the soul. It is a meal that means something.
All of this is vitally important background for understanding our gospel reading for today. In order to truly savor this well-known miracle of the feeding of the more than five thousand, we need to keep in mind that God has a history of revealing himself through meals!
Often this miracle story is turned into a moral lesson about sharing, about feeding people. Now of course it is important to share. Of course Christians should be concerned about feeding the hungry. We do that through our contributions to Help House, and in a number of other ways, and we should. It is part of how we live out our faith.
But this story is not about that! At least not directly! When the disciples pointed out to Jesus that it was getting late and there were more than five thousand people there, it was a valid concern. They were being practical. It was time to wrap things up so people could get home for dinner. And when Jesus told the disciples that the crowd didn’t need to go away, that they could feed them, he wasn’t scolding them for being selfish, he was setting up the scenario for his miracle. And when the disciples expressed confusion about how exactly they were supposed to feed more than five thousand people with only five loaves and two fish, they were only being realistic. How do you divide five loaves and two fish between that many people? How can you possibly cut the servings up that small? Even if you could, how would that microscopic morsel possibly be enough to fill anyone up?
What happens next is what makes this meal meaningful. Jesus took what they had, even though it wasn’t enough. Jesus told the crowd to sit down in the grass. Then Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up to heaven. He blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples. The disciples then gave them to the crowds. All ate and were filled. They didn’t get tiny scraps; they all ate their fill! There were even leftovers! Twelve baskets full – more than they had when they started!
This meal means something. Here’s what it means: It means Jesus is God’s Messiah, the savior who has come with abundant blessings for all, filling people up as a free gift. It means Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises spoken by the prophets, that God would send a savior to bring salvation to all, establishing a new covenant, a new relationship. The way Jesus prepared the meal means something. Jesus looked to heaven and blessed and broke the bread, lifting it up and saying the berakah, the prayer of thanksgiving. This means that this was not just a way to get calories for the body; it was offered as food for the soul. The twelve baskets of leftovers mean something too. They mean that the twelve tribes of Israel, God’s original chosen people, are now being expanded to include all those who gather around the bread of the New Israel, founded on these twelve apostles and their twelve baskets of bread from Jesus. Talk about rich food! This is a richly meaningful meal!
There is a church which stands today on the site of this miraculous meal. It is called, appropriately enough, the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fish, or Church of the Multiplication for short. It has been there on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee since 350AD. There is a Byzantine-era mosaic on the floor of the sanctuary with an image of loaves and fishes. Christian tourists familiar with this gospel story often point out that there are only four loaves in the mosaic. They assume that the artists messed up because the Bible says there were five loaves.
But the artists didn’t mess up. The four loaves were very much on purpose. You see that mosaic is directly under the altar. The fifth loaf is lifted up every Sunday as the priest lifts up the host of the Lord’s Supper. The artists were making a very intentional point that the miracle of the Multiplication continues in perpetuity as Jesus continues to feed his people with food for the soul, the food of the new covenant.
And so that miraculous meal of the feeding of the five thousand which happened so long ago means something to us here today too. It reveals to us who Jesus is for us. He is the savior who enacts and embodies Isaiah’s feast, given to us as a free gift. He is the savior who has invited us into the new covenant he has established, a new relationship with God, and he keeps calling us back into this relationship again and again. He is the savior who takes our “not enough” and turns it into an abundance of grace. He is the savior who fills our deepest hungers, who gives us food for our souls.
Jesus is the savior who continues to reveal himself to us through a miraculous meal. For on the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus again took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples as the food of forgiveness, the food of grace, the food of new life, the food of himself and his sacrificial love, freely given for us and for our salvation.
This meal is more than bread and wine. It means something. It means that in spite of all the things we lack, all the things we don’t have enough of, the strengthening and sustaining and life-giving grace of Jesus Christ continues to be given to us in miraculous abundance, that we would eat and be filled with his great love for us, today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church