Thanksgiving for the bread

[AI translation] Two weeks ago today I announced that I would like to start a sermon series and talk about what kind of God we have! I would like to present one feature of the infinitely rich God in one sermon. I also said the other day that we have a God like the one we see in Jesus. Because Jesus is the reflection of the invisible God. In Him, in His actions and teachings, God revealed Himself, made known His will, His emotions, His intentions - in Jesus He revealed His heart to us. Jesus is the window through which we can see into the heart of God! Then we were talking about having a God who even provides for our rest, and now I want to talk about having a God who also provides for our bread.The Jesus in whose hands, there on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, five small loaves of bread and two fish are multiplied with such majestic power that there is enough for everyone, so that no one goes hungry: the image of the God who has the problem of bread on earth at heart. God not only wants "all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4), but He also wants all men to have their daily bread! In this way, Jesus' sharing of the bread reflects the fatherly love of God who provides the bread.
It is especially good to talk about this now, when the grain is ripe in the fields, the harvest is in full swing, the machines are humming, thousands upon thousands of people are sweating and sweating to harvest God's blessing. Yes: let there be a certain harvest thanksgiving in our church this Sunday. Although there are not many farmers here in our congregation, it is good, even necessary, that at least once a year we city people should also take care, in prayer and in thought, of the greatest concern of the country people: the harvest! After all, we all live from what they harvest now!
I do not want to say anything else with this sermon today, only that when we think about the harvest of the earth, which is our daily bread, which is our physical life: we see behind it the love of God as a father caring for people. This is what is expressed in this devotional testimony, which we read in our basic prayer: It is true that King David said this about something else, but the content is also valid for the harvest, for bread. Everything is from your hand! Yes, the multitudes there on the shores of the Sea of Galilee understood then, better than we do today, that the food they ate was from the hand of Jesus. Not directly, for the five loaves and two fish originally belonged to one child, and the broken pieces were scattered by the disciples among the multitudes, but in Jesus' hand the little was multiplied so that there was enough for everyone.
So those people there experienced the bread, the food that fed them, as a divine miracle. It would not have occurred to anyone to thank the child for sharing his food with them, or to thank the disciples for the bread they had been given - it would have been foolish not to look beyond them to Jesus and acknowledge that it was to Him, to Him alone, that they did not starve! Okay, there were other factors in this satisfaction, the willingness of the child, the zeal of the disciples, but what would it all have meant without Jesus? It could only be a blessing to them through Jesus. When they held that bread in their hands, they could truly experience what our Word says: "All things are from you, what we have received from your hand we have given. For this is why they wanted to proclaim Jesus King. I don't think that anyone: any of the disciples or that little boy, would have hidden from them the majestic figure of Jesus who gave them bread!
Well, this story was also written so that we people today might see behind our daily bread the caring, loving hand that gives it to us! It is not so obvious that bread can be on our table! Don't let the many, many intermediaries - the grocery store where you buy it, the paycheck you use to buy it, the habit of breaking it every day - obscure the divine hand that gives it! The bread you ate this morning, or ate for lunch, is as much a miracle today as the bread those people ate there by the lake! It's good to think sometimes how many people's sweat and toil preceded that piece of bread on your table! There were those who ploughed up the ground somewhere last autumn to sow the seed that became the bread. Some of them had brought manure from distant barns to make the crop grow better. There were those who harvested the crops in the hot sun, suffering the heat of the day on rattling combines. Some carried it on trucks, others sucked in the flour-dusted air between the humming machines of mills. Some had their alarm clocks going off at three in the morning, so that by the time you woke up, the bread would be baked and ready to be bought and taken home fresh, ready to be eaten.
But as important as they are - the little boy and the disciples are still just intermediaries - there is Someone else behind them! That dear, loving, powerful Somebody, Who, well, this year, too, has seen to it that this great machine of social cohesion works well, that it is not disrupted by a world conflagration or carpet bombing - for we have seen that before, and then it was a bigger prize for a piece of bread than it is now! And even today, there are areas of the earth where it is not so obvious that there will be a sowing and a harvest, or that there will be bread on the table - and sometimes there is no bread on the table for weeks. Where what they wouldn't give for a loaf of bread that you don't want because it's no longer fresh enough! It's a bit dry!
And even further: there is Someone, a dear, great Someone, Who created the wheat kernel so that it could become bread for us. Who made nature so that the grain of wheat that was sown could become thirty, sixty, a hundred: multiplied like those five little loaves of bread and those two little fish in the hands of Jesus - that's just as much a miracle! And He who so doth proportion the hot day and the cool night, the sun and the rain, that the corn may be ripe. For no blade of grass could be made to live and grow by our own efforts, no matter how much technical and chemical effort we put into it. Yes: there is a planter, there is a waterer, - but there is also a God who makes things grow! A life-giving God! Without His blessing, all human efforts would be in vain! Yes: the bread you take in your hand every day is a miracle, just as miraculous as the one in this story! A miracle of the caring love of our God the Father! It is not as self-evident and natural to have it on our table as it seems! Even if it has come to us through many, many intermediaries: in the end, we can only say, like David, "From You is everything", we too, have received everything from Your hand!
Truly: we have a God who, like Jesus on the lake, has a heart for what people will eat! A God who cares not only for our souls, but also for our stomachs! For man is body and soul. He is both a spiritual reality and a material reality. Not just one! And God is Lord and Savior of both! Not just one. But of the whole man. Man, in his physical-spiritual reality, with his material-spiritual needs! So let this worldly side of life, the material side, the problem of bread, be always under the omnipotent rule of God! In a way, as Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, "He who did not please his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how can he not give us all things with him?" Even the bread! Here the apostle Paul puts "everything" - let's say, including the bread - directly under the cross on which Jesus died. Or in other words: he places the cross above the wheat fields, above the farmers sweating in the sun, above the combine harvesters, the mills, the grocers, the dining table! And he says, "Behold, all things from that mercy are put as food on your table, as clothes on your body, as money in your pocket, as gifts to meet your daily needs! Everything from the grace that Jesus proclaimed (revealed) in His sacrifice on earth! See the cross not only through your salvation, but also through your daily bread! Yes: not only is forgiveness of sins and eternal life by free grace, but the bread you earn is by the same grace!
Grace! What an inexhaustible richness of concept, of reality this is! Even deeper than love! For love, if it is one-sided, without reciprocal love, is powerless. It cannot flourish. It cannot give itself. But grace is always one-sided! That is its essence! It asks for nothing! It gives everything! It lives only for itself and only for the other! There is nothing greater than to live in grace! In the grace of God! And we can live in it! On earth and then in heaven. With all our spiritual and physical needs. For "He who did not please his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also give us all things?"
Do you already feel how much the bread that is now ripening in the fields is a miracle of God's grace? For the great thing is that we who believe in God, who can believe in God, know that beyond human work, beyond economic measures, beyond machines, beyond natural laws, beyond laws: there is One who cares for all, who cares for us with great Fatherly love! Someone to Whom we can say, "You," and before Whom we can now confess, "From You is all!" From Thy hand we have received all things! And to Whom we can finally say one more thing, what David said in our basic prayer, "the things which we have taken from Thy hand, we have now given to Thee."
This sounds a little strange, for what can we give to God when we ourselves have received everything from Him? To the God who wants for nothing, because everything is His? Well, it's a bit like a little child who has no income of his own, and who costs his father money, who once in a while buys his father a little present for his birthday, or his mother a flower, with the pocket money he has received from his parents. And then his parents tell him: This is the best present I could have received! And believe me, our heavenly Father feels the same way: that the most beautiful, the kindest gift is to receive from His children something beautiful, something good - to receive something back in gratitude for the many things He has given them.
The kindest thing he can receive is a word of thanks, of gratitude. And yet how seldom he gets that too! God receives the praise, the exaltation in heaven, He is praised on earth by the whole created universe. But most of all, He would like to hear this praise from the lips of His human children, who know that they live by His hand and can therefore say with all their hearts: thank you, Father! May we henceforth be able to say with more soul and with a more grateful heart the blessing of the table, "He who has given us food and drink, blessed be His name."
If you can accept the bread from His hand, believe me, it will be better nourished, it will taste better, because in every gift there is something of His heart: in every loaf, in every piece of bread, He gives a little of His heart. A birthday gift, for example, is different from other things you buy in a shop in that it contains the heart of the giver, his love! So, what can we give back from what we have received from His hand? And not just now, when we have a special harvest thanksgiving celebration, but always!
A thankful life is a truly happy life! A grateful heart can use all that he has received from the hand of God: for His glory, that is, for the benefit of his fellow man! The grateful man knows that he owes because he has received everything! The grateful man can give: love, kindness, help, bread to others, because he has received it! And that is why he received it! So in fact, it is not the least, but the most we can give to God: gratitude! So let us say, "From you are all things, and the things which we have received from your hand we have given to you."
Amen
Date: 30 July 1967.