Coming for the Blessings
Sermon preached on Matthew 14:13-21 at First Lutheran Church in DeKalb, IL Grace, peace, and mercy be to you from God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, amen. Often I have found that the texts that are most familiar, the texts that are found in all four gospels, the texts that are the nuggets we heard growing up in Sunday School, the ones that are in the media, are the hardest texts to preach on. I think that they are the hardest ones because they are so widely known which means that people have opinions on them, they are the ones that have been taught over and over, and it is almost as if we can’t see any deeper than what it is right in front of you. Take today’s gospel for example, we have probably all heard the feeding of the 5000 a dozen or more times. It is found in each of our four gospels, each providing slightly different information, and different details but at its core, the story stays the same. Jesus has the masses on a hillside, it is getting near dinner time and