¬¬Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
August 9, 2026
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Pentecost 11
Jesus Paid
And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. Immediately he urged the disciples to get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side while he dismissed the crowd. Once he dismissed the crowds he went up the mountain by himself to pray, and when it was evening he was there alone (Matthew 14:20-23)
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The one thing we never think about when we hear the feeding miracles of our Lord is: who paid for all that food? Our first answer is that our Lord Jesus Christ who is as fully divine as he is human, miraculously multiplied it, and by his great power and love he fed not only 5,000 people but, including women and children, more like ten or twenty or thirty thousand people or more!
That’s a lot of people and a lot of food because they all ate until they were satiated. But who paid?
Not to go down a rabbit hole at this time, but let us at least mention that this miracle is a prophecy or the miracle we partake of every Sunday in the church when we bring bread and wine to Jesus and he multiplies it before our very eyes. Not in quantity, but in quality par excellence.
We bring him bread and wine and now, as then, he consecrates it and returns to us – not bread and wine – but his own glorified flesh and blood by which we gain remission of our crimes against heaven and life in and with God himself. Eucharist is rightfully called “the medicine of immortality,” because by it we live in Christ, and he in us, and as death no longer has dominion of him, nor does it over us.
But back to our question: who paid?
But why do we ask it? Why would we even thing along those lines? We ask because of the curse given to Adam after his sin, which is still if effect today. Namely Genesis 3:17-19 “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
If we want to comprehend the nature of this curse we only need remember that before sin entered the world (and death by sin) Adam and Woman lived in Paradise. They were partners with the God of Creation in caring for the garden and indeed all the earth. God gave them dominion over it and over all that is in it and upon it. And their gifts were extraordinary. We might say that if people only use 10% of their brain power, Adam and Woman had full use of it – and what powers must dwell there?
So yes, they did work! But it was joyful work of which they never tired, nor did they ever complain about the alarm clock going off in the morning.
But under the heading: “You never know what you have until it is gone,” the most cataclysmic possible change took place when they “committed adultery” with the Serpent.
They were like Job who one day had it all, and the next day lost everything except his nagging wife. He lost is Elon Musk type wealth, all of his land and animals which provided him with abiding gladness and above all his ten beloved children. Here one day, gone the next! At which point Job did something that Adam did not. He fell down on his face and worshiped God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
Yes Adam’s world was turned upside down. They lost their righteousness. They lost their innocence. And now the joi de vive disappeared. Their satisfaction was gone. Their feelings of well-being went missing.
But now Enter Jesus! The New Adam. The Second Adam who was and who is true, full and complete. He was and is what Adam was meant to be but was not. He is God come down from heaven, lowered himself and took on human nature in its entirety; who became like us in every way, except that he was without sin! And that makes all the difference!
In 1 Timothy 2:5 Saint Paul calls our “Only Mediator between God and Man,” “The Man Christ Jesus.” Or possibly more poignantly “Christ Jesus The Man.” Two separate natures one fully Divine, one fully Human joined together into the Person Union when the Blessed Virgin Mary said, “be it done unto me according to thy Word,” and the: Holy Spirit “came upon her and the power of the most High overshadowed her” so that the Holy Offspring within her Virgin Womb is called, and in fact is, the Son of God.
Who paid?
The Son of God paid. You see, even in the case of our Lord food was not free. Bread and fish, just like Bread and Wine today, could not be had except by the sweat of One’s Brow, in this case our Lord’s brow crowned with Adam’s thorns.
His “sacred head now wounded with grief and shame weighed down.”
And so it is no simple sentence when today’s gospel says at the end of this Holy Meal that Jesus: IMMEDIATELY URGED the disciples to get into the boat and precede him to the other side of the Lake. Why did he do that, and what happened next?
Jesus urged them, in very strong language, because he “felt the virtue leave him” as it were. They crowds were filled to the full but “The Man. Christ Jesus.” was on empty. He had to repair to the mountain tops, by himself, for crucial Communion with his heavenly Father in prayer, so that he might be renewed and lifted up as on the wings of an eagle.
But even before that he “dismissed” the crowds with a Blessing. He sent them back into the world to be his Light to the world, and his Salt of the earth. To let their light so shine before men that men might see their Good Works, and come thereby to glorify His Heavenly Father. This is what happens still today when the priest gives the communicants the dismissal: May this true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen and preserve you in the one true faith, unto life everlasting!
Receive it and believe it O Holy Communicant!
Then he went to pray.
There is a great deal we can say here but feeble lips, combined with short attention spans do not permit. But let us say this much. Jesus sought out the power of God in his life through prayer! But this prayer wasn’t for us, at least not directly. But for himself, as every man MUST pray to commune with the Almighty.
He prayed that the energy HE expended in feeding so many people might be restored to him so that he could make the FINAL PAYMENT for the curse of Adam – His wondrous death on the cross! That is where he finally paid for the Bread and Fish, for his Incarnation and for all his miracles of curing disease, raising the dead, and for all the dreary labors of men!
And we know his power was restored because immediately thereafter, recharged by God, he walked on the stormy sea as if it were nothing, entered the Church with Peter and the disciples, and put the storms to rest. For which he also paid the price.
Who paid? Jesus paid. Amen and Amen!