Mark 6:30-44 CEB The apostles returned to Jesus and told him everything they had done and taught. Many people were coming and going, so there was no time to eat. He said to the apostles, “Come by yourselves to a secluded place and rest for a while.” They departed in a boat by themselves for a deserted place. Many people saw them leaving and recognized them, so they ran ahead from all the cities and arrived before them. When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he began to teach them many things. Late in the day, his disciples came to him and said, “This is an isolated place, and it’s already late in the day. Send them away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy something to eat for themselves.” He replied, “You give them something to eat.” But they said to him, “Should we go off and buy bread worth almost eight months’ pay and give it to them to eat?” He said to them, “How much bread do you have? Take a look.” After checking, they said, “Five loaves of bread and two fish.” He directed the disciples to seat all the people in groups as though they were having a banquet on the green grass. They sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. He took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them, broke the loaves into pieces, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. Everyone ate until they were full. They filled twelve baskets with the leftover pieces of bread and fish. About five thousand had eaten. We see Jesus feeding the five thousand as a miracle, and it is, however, it may be a miracle in more ways than one. Normally, we consider this miracle to be that Jesus blesses the five loaves of bread and the two fish before dividing them among the people. Somehow as these get divided around the elements never exhaust, and in fact, they multiply to the point that twelve baskets are left over at the end. How often do we ask why Jesus would perform a miracle like this though? To go further, why would Mark include not just one feeding of thousands but two? No miracle is ever done without a point, and no miracle is ever mentioned in the gospels without reason. In this story, Jesus proves that he is the good shepherd, the kind of shepherd that gives generously until all are filled with what they need. Jesus, in turn, invites his disciples, including us, to do the same, to avoid the greed and hoarding that scarcity inspires and instead discover the kind of miracles that occur when scarcity gives way to Christ’s example of generosity.
The feeding of the multitudes spans all four gospels with Matthew and Mark each having accounts of two different instances where Jesus feeds thousands, so this story pops up six times. Why is this story so important? We can look at all miracles on one level as proving Jesus’ credentials: if you want to claim to be the Messiah after all, you better be able to do some miracles at least. If you cannot, well then, there are plenty of other miracle workers out there, so doing something wondrous is the base price of admission for the general public's attention. However, Mark’s description of the feeding shows us another level entirely, one that sheds light on what the kingdom of God looks like and how Jesus’ disciples are to act there. At the beginning of the account, after the crowds have shown up, we are told Jesus “had compassion on them,” and his reason for this compassion? Why, it is because “they were like sheep without a shepherd.” This comparison “evokes a well-established metaphor” in scripture as a sign-post of what a Godly leader looks like– one who will care for the people.[1] Jesus then teaches them, setting himself up as their shepherd. After it gets late in the day, the crowds start to get hungry. Jesus plans on feeding them with the five loaves of bread and the two fish the disciples have found. He then commands them to sit, and sit where? They are to sit in groups on the “green grass.” This rings a bell, for “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want [as] He makes me lie down in green pastures” (Psalm 23:1-2a NRSV). What are pastures, after all, other than lots and lots of green grass? The kind that feeds the sheep, restoring their “soul” as the NRSV says, but it can also be understood as restoring life! Jesus is not just any shepherd, but the Good Shepherd, “a true shepherd with compassion” shown through these scripture references.[2] Mark takes pains to establish Jesus this way! Why do people need a Good Shepherd though? Again, on one level, we can get stuck thinking of the Good Shepherd as Jesus saving us from sin and death, saving the lost sheep. However, the Good Shepherd is not simply some Christian byword for Jesus’ role in getting us into heaven. We find this title in the Old Testament, and it shows us that salvation and the kingdom are more than simply getting us into heaven after this life is over. It also says something about our lives here and now. We can forget that in the days of Jesus having enough to eat is by no means a given. It should be understood that most “people in Galilee in Jesus’ day were one step away from hunger: one bad harvest, one season of warfare, one disaster or another.”[3] In the book of Isaiah, we are told that when God comes, “He will feed his flock like a shepherd” (Isaiah 40:11a NRSV). Again in Ezekiel, God promises to “bring [Israel] out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them into their own land, and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land” (Ezekiel 34:13). There is a repeated message that God’s shepherd will feed people, and not simply feed their souls, but fill their empty bellies. Imagine what this would have meant to the people of Galilee as Jesus promised to feed them! What a sign this would be! We are told the crowds are hungry, and that there are five thousand people or more precisely men. You see, in scripture, writers would often only note men, neglecting to count women and children. Now, whenever my family leaves the house, the three of us, I can tell you that we bring quite a bit with us. Extra diapers, a change of clothes, and last but not least, snacks. Imagine that you knew Jesus (the Jesus!) was coming, and you were going to go out into the wilderness to hear him teach and speak for the whole day. Now, imagine you brought your family with you. Would you really leave the house without any food? Probably not! However, you might have only brought enough for just you and yours, and certainly, you wouldn’t have brought enough for five thousand other families. These folks may have then “hidden their food” after seeing the crowds.[4] Even the loaves and fish the disciples did bring to Jesus may have well been the food the disciples brought to feed themselves. Bread was the staple food of the day, as common in family dining as fish, the source of protein for folks living so close to water. Jesus breaks them up into smaller groups, fifty to hundred, and blesses and breaks up the food. Jesus gives generously of their limited resources, and now, imagine the people, “after seeing Jesus provide for everyone, [how] they may have been willing to share whatever food they had.”[5] Would you just eat the bread and fish, or might you, somewhat sheepishly at the sight of Christ’s generosity, add your own fish and bread to the meal? Imagine this happening not once or twice but thousands of times. Suddenly, what seemed impossible due to scarcity becomes an overwhelming miracle of generosity! Where nobody had enough on their own, but together, they had more than enough, to the tune of twelve extra baskets. Subsistence living means a reality of scarcity, one where nobody has enough, so you better take care of those closest to you first. It means not being able to act because it would take “two hundred denarii,” two hundred days of pay for a common laborer to feed everyone. It seems so impossible, that the twelve disciples, who just go back from mission work where they “cast out many demons, and [...] anointed many sick people with olive oil and healed them,” were incredulous (Mark 6:13 CEB)! “Healings they could manage, but not this!”[6] What seemed impossible was only overcome by an act of generosity, as “when we believe that God provides, when we believe that there is enough for all, we are inclined to open our hands.”[7] The true miracle may not be found in multiplying loaves and fish but in the shifting of people’s hearts so that they gave out of what they had and found that all truly did have enough. This is not just a miracle limited to Jesus either, as we need to remember what Jesus told his disciples, saying, “‘You give them something to eat.’” Jesus invites the disciples to do what he is about to do. Jesus tells us to do the same, to shepherd people, to feed them. Again, we turn back to this image of the Good Shepherd. A true shepherd feeds the sheep, not just spiritually but physically too. This is the true sign of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom, where all people finally have enough to eat. If we are uncertain of this, well, good news! The Old Testament also made sure to describe what bad shepherds look like. Jeremiah 23:1-2 describes how bad shepherds “destroy and scatter the sheep” (CEB). Ezekiel 34:1-10 tells how bad shepherds “have been feeding [themselves]” rather than feeding the sheep (CEB). Zechariah 11:15-17 continues the trend by recounting how a bad shepherd is one who “does not care” about the perishing, wandering, maimed, or starving sheep, instead devouring them whole (CEB). Even Jesus has a moment with Peter where he insists that Peter act on his love for him by feeding the sheep. We as disciples are called to mimic the Good Shepherd, and the way we know we are is when we feed people. If we take from them or allow them to starve, we are not following God, and deny our shepherd. We can get caught up in this idea that there is not enough, and it becomes a self-fulfilling reality. When the crowds held back, the only food available was limited to five loaves and two fish, but when others decided to share what they had, the reality changed. “They were changed by faith,” and an attitude of generosity can become its own “self-fulfilling prophecy.”[8] Scarcity in all things is the reality of the world, and its logic “teaches us that there is never enough.”[9] The logic of Jesus and the logic of the kingdom of God is altogether different. It tells us that when we come together to share and give of ourselves, we will find that we do not do so at our loss but for everyone’s gain. Today, where are we being called to perform this miracle again? What folks are hungry in our midst, and what are we doing to feed them? Not only with the gospel but with the very bread that fills bellies, the very kind of good news the gospel promises. Where are we being called to respond not with the world’s logic but with God’s when the divine tells us, “You feed them.” Amen. [1] Pheme Perkins, “Mark 6:30-44, Feeding the Five Thousand” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII, Leander E. Keck, ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 599-602. Numbers, 1 Kings, and Ezekiel all echo this line from Mark. [2] David Fenton Smith, “Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand (6:30-44)” in Wesley One Volume Commentary, eds. Kenneth J. Collins and Robert W. Wall (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020), 600. [3] Cynthia M.Campell and Christine Coy Fohr, Meeting Jesus at the Table: A Lenten Study (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023), 2. [4] Lovett H. Weems and Ann A. Michel, Generosity, Stewardship, and Abudance: A Transformational Guide to Church Finance (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), 20. [5] Ibid., 21. [6] Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “First Journey (Mark 4:35-6:44)” in Women’s Bible Commentary: Twentieth-Anniversary Edition, 3rd ed., eds. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 483-484. [7] Weems and Michel 2021, 21. [8] Ibid.,126. [9] Ibid.
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