First reading: Ezekiel 34:11-12,15-17
Psalm: Ps 23:1-3,5,6
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:20-26,28
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46

For I was hungry and you gave me food

I have a question. Where does bread come from?

Our answers are certainly correct. Bread comes from Freihoffers, another bakery, Mr. Meyers around the corner, from mom or dad, from the gifts of the earth, from farmers who plant, grow, and harvest the wheat, and rye, and oats, and flax. Perhaps we should consider the miller, the store clerks, the delivery people, an entire litany of people and places that have a hand in the making of bread —“ from seed to our tables.

It is a natural instinct to see things as they are, to digest the evidence that’s in front of us and report on it.

Today we are confronted with truth —“ a truth we discern through the eyes of faith. Our bread comes from God. Our bread comes from the King.

Let’s consider that. We get our bread from the King. More than bread we receive all we need from God. This is best summed up in the words of Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

The King provides bread for us.

God is different than human government, and more so, He is a King that loves, cares for, and looks after His flock. God provides for us, giving us bread beyond the bread that feeds our mortal bodies. Ezekiel saw that in telling us that God will look after and tend us, He will feed us, He will give us rest, He will bring back the lost and the strayed, He will bind up the injured and heal the sick.

What an amazing concept. What an awesome King is our Lord, caring for us, looking after all that we need.

Brothers and sisters,

When we say that God gives us bread that goes beyond our bodily needs we understand that His food is more than what we put on our plates each day, more than the stuff needed for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He gives us three essential things: His Kingship, His Word, and our daily bread.

Of course God is responsible for our daily bread. We pray that every time we say the Our Father. His gifts, the skills we have been endowed with, the balance and perfection in nature, all come from the hand of God. He sees to our needs. Jesus showed this in the way He cared for the everyday needs of those around Him. This was exemplified when He fed the multitudes, when He showed compassion for the sorrowful and the sick. Jesus also spoke of the Father’s watchful eye, comparing the creatures and fields under God’s care to the greater love He shows toward us:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin;
yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you?

God gives us more than the bread we need for daily life, He gives us the Word – which is necessary for eternal life. By endowing us with His Gospel God provides us with the measuring stick by which we are judge the rightness of our relationship with Him and our neighbor. By giving us His word He gives us the very thing we need to carry out His mandate. We take up that word as bread for our daily lives and as food for our relationships.

In the end God gives us His kingship, but in a most remarkable way. He comes to us as the servant King, the King who is Priest and Sacrifice. God gives us His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We can have our daily bread – the basics we need to live. We can have God’s word, and live by it, yet even with all that our King had to crush our bondage to sin, to eternal death.

God’s overwhelming love moved Him to intervention in the history of man. He wanted us to know that life was more than the evidence that is in front of us. He wanted us to see and know the eternal, to know Him, so He chose to break down the enmity we create through sin. He sent His Son to show the Father’s love, to overcome sin and to destroy death. In the end we gained a new beginning – Jesus opened the doors to the heavenly kingdom. St. Paul reminds us of this when he says:

Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since death came through man,
the resurrection of the dead came also through man.
For just as in Adam all die,
so too in Christ shall all be brought to life

Our King provides for all that we need, and best of all He gives us His very presence, His life, and the gift of eternal glory. In turn we honor and praise Him with due worship and adoration.

My friends,

Worship and adoration for the King translates into action. It is key that we see to the needs of our brothers and sisters, who, along with us, are provided for by God. God provides for them through us, and He makes no separation between their dignity and value and our dignity and value. In the simplest terms we are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the ill, and visit those in prison. When we do that we recognize the King who gives bread to each of us, who gives His word to all mankind, and Who saves us.

Jesus tells us :

‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

The King is with us and in us. He is the giver and the recipient. May we give Him praise and thanksgiving, may we serve Him in serving the least among us. Amen.