August 10, 2024
William G. Carter
In those days when there was
again a great crowd without anything to eat, Jesus called his disciples and
said to them, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me
now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to
their homes, they will faint on the way—and some of them have come from a great
distance.” His disciples replied, “How can one feed these people with
bread here in the desert?” He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?”
They said, “Seven.” Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground;
and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave
them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the
crowd. They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered
that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they
took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were
about four thousand people. And he sent them away. And immediately he got
into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
The Pharisees came and began to
argue with him, asking him for a sign from heaven, to test him. And he
sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign?
Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” And he left
them, and getting into the boat again, he went across to the other side.
Now the disciples had forgotten
to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And
he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and
the yeast of Herod.” They said to one another, “It is because we have no
bread.” And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking
about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts
hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to
hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five
thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to
him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full
of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” Then he
said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
Wait a second! Haven’t we heard this story before? Just two weeks ago, we were in chapter six. We heard about a large crowd that gathers around Jesus. He teaches them all afternoon, into the evening, way past supper time. They are hungry for everything he has to say. And their stomachs were growling, too.
He turns to the twelve to say, “Give them something to eat!” They look at him, kind of dumbfounded, and return with five loaves and two fish. Jesus blesses God, breaks the food, and hands it out until it’s gone. Except that there are twelve baskets of leftovers. Something happened.
Here in chapter eight, it happens again. There’s a large crowd. They have been hanging around for three days. Jesus has been teaching all that time. They don’t have any food, either. Jesus says, “I’m afraid to sent them away; they may faint from hunger.” The disciples say, “How are we going to feed all these people?” (Apparently, they don’t remember chapter six.)
Jesus says, “How much food do you have?” They found some bread and a few fish. Same routine: he takes the bread, blesses God, breaks the bread, and gives it away. There are lots of leftovers.
Didn’t we just hear this story? Sure did! When we read the story in graduate school, one of my professors smiled slyly, then said, “Isn’t it the same story? Mark could have benefited from a good editor.” That’s a fair reaction.
Years ago, the Reader’s Digest put together a Bible, kind of a “Greatest Hits” Bible. They sanded down the splinters, glued together the important parts, worked at the narrative continuity, and said, “It’s a reading Bible.” They replaced the verse numbers with page numbers, all in the hope people would read the book. I don’t have one of those Reader’s Digest Bibles, but I’m pretty sure they cut out the repetition and told the great feeding story only one time. Why tell it again? Because it's important.
The account of the loaves and fish is one of the few stories that appears in all four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell of a crucifixion and a resurrection, but they also tell about the multiplication of loaves and fish. They all say there was a crowd, they were hungry, and they were fed – with leftovers.
There’s something about this story that is central to the ministry of Jesus. It’s why his church still feeds people in fellowship meals and food pantries. Food is central to life. As Frederick Buechner once quipped, “We do not live by bread alone, but we don’t live long without it, either.”[1]
All this is true. It still doesn’t explain why Mark tells the story twice. No doubt, Mark was a preacher. My kids say, “Dad, do all preachers say the same things over and over?” I respond, “Repetition is good for you. The point might sink in.”
Except that nothing seems to be sinking in with the twelve disciples! Jesus fed a huge crowd with a few loaves and fish. Now, there’s another huge hungry crowd, and the disciples ask, “How are we going to feed a crowd like that?” And Jesus says, “Uhh, Hello!” The words “Uhh, hello!” do not appear in the text, but we can be pretty sure he said it.
For the story proceeds. The Pharisees draw near, buzz around him like hornets, and say, “Hey, give us a sign from heaven!” Jesus groans. “Why do these people want a sign?” Well, maybe because the Pharisees weren’t around either of the two mass feeding miracles. That would have been a sign. Not that it would have done any good!
And hear what happens next: the disciples get in the boat, cross the sea one more time, and Mark says, “They didn’t bring any bread, just had one small loaf.” Meanwhile, Jesus is speaking, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” One of the fishermen said, “Did somebody tell him we didn’t bring enough bread?”
With this, Jesus hollers, “Stop right here. Drop anchor!” (I know that’s not in the text, but he said it.) And he says, “We are going to have a little talk about bread. When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said, “Uhh…twelve?”
“And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets of broken pieces did you collect?” They said, “Uhh… seven?” Then he saith unto them, “Don’t you get it?” And that is the point of the story, both stories, all the stories between those two stories, and all the stories around them. They don’t get it. They never quite get it. Even when Simon Peter speaks up to say, “Oh, I get it: you’re the Christ,” he doesn’t get it. He thinks the Christ is a superhero, rather than a servant who gives life away to others.”
Now, to be fair, who really understands? If you were here last Sunday, I left you dangling after the account of Jesus walking on the water. Remember that? Jesus walked on the water and intended to pass them by, says Mark. But then he got into their boat, and they were “beside themselves.” Out of their minds. Full of the fear of the Lord. They did not understand. Mark says, “Their hearts were hardened.”
In her commentary on the Gospel of Mark, Mary Ann Tolbert says we should have seen it coming. Jesus told them, “There is a Sower throwing around Gospel seed and some of it bounces off hard soil.” He throws it and it never takes root. And Jesus has been dealing with this from the beginning. They asked him, “Why do you teach everything in parables?” His response was to quote the prophet Isaiah, “I teach in parables so that people won’t understand.”[2]
Is that harsh? Maybe. Or perhaps it is realistic. Why aren’t our churches full? Maybe this God Stuff is too much for folks to take in. I don’t know; we might have to talk about that at coffee hour and do so with some honest sympathy.
What I do know is what John Calvin wrote, that one of the signs of our all-too-human condition is a quality of dullness.[3] There is something in us that simply cannot process the glory of God. It’s too big, too marvelous, too wonderful, too exhausting, too bright, too overwhelming, too frightening. And so, we back off, or look somewhere else, or just stop looking at all. The heart calcifies. The eyes shut. Dullness seeps in.
I have reflected on a trip years ago to the Canadian Rockies. I’ve been there twice, I love it. I would go back in a minute. The mountains are majestic. The beauty is bracing. Thanks to the granite dust from glaciers, the lakes are an unreal color, somewhere between azure and cerulean blue. It’s a stunning place. If you ever want to get rid of me sometime, send me to the Canadian Rockies.
At least, that’s what I say. The reality is that halfway through a twelve-day trip, about six hundred miles into our big loop, I started to grow tired. Those great mountains, eleven thousand feet high, capped with snow fields, it takes about an hour to drive around one of them. And you can’t do it quickly. It’s slow going. We came around the bend, and I’d say, “Oh, right, another mountain.” Another hundred miles, it was, “Ho hum, another mountain.” I love those mountains. I stopped looking at the mountains because there were so many of them.
That’s “dullness,” as John Calvin would call it. An overdose of glory and you stop looking at it.
You know, over the years some of us have fantasized, “What would it be like if we could have seen Jesus?” Listened to his voice? Walked with him? Watched what he did, heard what he said, went where he went? Well, the Gospel of Mark doesn’t glamorize it very much. If anything, Mark says we would miss a lot, because the disciples missed a lot – and they were with him every day. That should keep us humble.
Humility is certainly one of the discipleship lessons that emerges from so many of these accounts. We get the sense there’s more to Jesus than we can take in. He loves more people than we do. He goes where we are afraid to go. He takes risks when we’d rather play it safe. According to Mark, he never stops. Even when somebody nails him down on wood, he breaks free. It’s a bigger story than we can comprehend and that’s OK. Stay humble.
But there’s something else about Mark. He doesn’t need an editor, as my professor once said. Rather Mark has been most careful in how he positions his stories. On day one, Jesus steps in the synagogue to teach and casts out an evil spirit. He mends a man, and the people say, “Never had a lesson like that!” Then he steps over the book of Leviticus and touches a person with leprosy. While the healed person dances away, some scratch their heads to say, “Was that legal for him to do that?”
Then he gets in the boat, goes back and forth across the sea, over to the Jews, over to the Gentiles, back to the Jews, back to the Gentiles, back and forth between them, announcing God has a dominion where everybody can flourish together. Nobody understands that kind of boundary crossing.
And then, all those disciple stories. As someone calls them, “duh-ciples.” Dull-ciples. He feeds a multitude, not once but twice, and for all we know, maybe more times than that. They get in the boat one more time, and the disciples say, “Oh yeah, we forgot to bring any bread.” It’s enough to make you want to holler, “Don’t you knuckleheads get it? Don’t you see who this is?” When that exclamation rises in our souls, Mark has done his work.
The Gospel of Mark will do anything to invite us – or provoke us – to see that Jesus is the Christ. He wants us to trust that Jesus is the Suffering Servant who lives abundantly. He wants us to know Jesus steps over any artificial division that punishes or excludes. He wants us to see Jesus is the Son of the Most High God that no religion can capture or codify. And he is invites us to trust Jesus is the One who will love us to the end, and the One who will lift us up after the world lets us down.
Admittedly, this is a lot to take
in. It’s greater than our natural understanding. It’s deeper than we realized. It’s
clearer than the spiritual cataracts that form on eyes of our hearts. Yet once
in a while, the glory breaks like the dawn. The shadows are punctured by light.
The fog evaporates. We see what has been before us the whole time, that the dominion
of God is right here. Right here.
[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful
Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: HarperCollins, 1973).
[2] Mark 4:11-12, on Isaiah 6:9-10.
[3] John Calvin, The Institutes of
the Christian Religion, 2.2.12 – “Indeed,
man’s mind, because of its dullness, cannot hold to the right path, but
wanders through various errors and stumbles repeatedly, as if it were groping
in darkness, until it strays away and finally disappears. Thus, it betrays how
incapable it is of seeking and finding truth.”
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