Click here for the complete sermon ->SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. SECOND SERMON: MARK 8:1-9.
13. Thus will Christ warn us first of all here through his own example that everyone is required to help the kingdom of God and his Word with temporal provisions for the body; in case he himself cannot or will not become a minister of the Gospel.
14. Following this he also comforts those who are in the ministerial office, that they become not distressed or alarmed through their present want or poverty; but that they may know that Christ cares for them and will nourish them even in their poverty and will never permit them to suffer need and want, but will finally provide the richer bounty for them; yea, he has already thought of all things before and provided for them before they thought from what source they should obtain what they need.
15. For he shows indeed forcibly in this example that he is a rich and powerful lord and provider; yea, he is a rich miller and baker, better than any other upon the earth that has learned his trade perfectly. Yes, he does indeed very much work instantly and aside from and without any human help. He plows, harvests, threshes, grinds and bakes in a twinkling of the eye. For it is indeed a miracle and beyond the comprehension of reason that so many thousand men, not counting the women and children, were fed with seven loaves, that they all were satisfied, and yet some were left over; but he did it so quickly by one word, when he only touched the bread and gave to his disciples to distribute; there is at once ground to flour, baked and everything prepared for so many thousand persons and even more. He must be a fine king (as the five thousand said whom he also fed in a like manner, John 6:14), him we would also wish to have as our king, who should lead a multitude of people to the field and care for them, so that one could at all times reach into the basket or into the pocket, and richly feed and pay a whole multitude.
16. Now he can do that and in him we have such a king. Where he reaches there all is full, and where he gives there all must be sufficient and overflowing. Thus in Matthew 17:27 he told Peter to go and take a shekel out of the mouth of a fish. Who prepared or minted the silver there or who would seek there in the water and even in the mouth of the fish for money? But he can create it and take it when and where and as he wishes; yea, can also bring bread and water out of the rock with which to feed the whole world; for we see everywhere he does so daily and everything that the world has comes about only by such miracles which are not less miraculous, as St. Augustine says, than this miracle.
17. We are, to be sure, thus familiar with the fact that corn grows yearly out of the earth, and through this familiarity we are so blinded that we do not esteem such work. For what we see daily and hear, that we do not regard as miraculous; and yet it is even as great; yea, if one should speak correctly, it is a greater miracle that God should give us corn out of the sand and the stone, than that he should here feed a multitude with seven loaves. For what is the dry sand but crushed stones, or a stone other than sand and earth welded together; but how can bread which we eat come out of stones, and yet it grows only out of the sand of the earth? In like manner everything that grows, and all the animals give to us, each according to his own nature; whence does it come but out of the earth and dust?
18. These are even the miracles which have been established from the beginning of the world and daily continue, so that we are entirely overwhelmed by them, without our eyes and senses feeling them, since they are so common that God must at times, as he does here, perform not a greater, but a special miracle, which is extraordinary by which he awakens us and through such an individual and special miracle he shows us and leads us into the daily miracles of the whole world.
