We Have No Bread

1st Sunday of Lent                 February 18, 2024

5th in the Gospel of Mark 6:7 - Mark 8:26

In the portion of Mark we addressed on February 4, we considered the two types of groups Jesus encountered in his ministry: strangers who eagerly sought him and appealed to him for help and those who were skeptical of him for having known him from his childhood, responding to him with disbelief.

Chapters six, seven and eight continue to record dramatic events and encounters, but in these chapters, we see Jesus attempting to lead his disciples and others into a deeper understanding of him and what ‘the Kingdom of God is come near’ means.
Jesus begins by empowering his disciples to cast out demons and heal the sick, thus
enlisting them as active participants in his ministry to undermine evil, announce the good news of the Kingdom of God and call the people to repent. They are to go out in pairs with minimal provisions, trusting in God’s provision. 

If a town did not accept their message and respond with repentance, they were to leave, shaking the dust from their feet. In other words, they were not to waste time thinking they should work harder for a positive response. They were to release that population to the judgment of God and move on. 

But what kind of repentance were they calling the people to make? They were calling them to change their minds: change. Change the orientation of their thinking, their ideas, their behavior, allegiances; to turn and realign their orientation toward God and God’s revelation through Jesus. 

So, the disciples have dispersed to carry out their mission. In the meantime, Herod kills John the Baptist. We’re not going to go into this account today, but it is important to
note it and its placement in Mark’s Gospel. John preceded Jesus with announcing the Kingdom of God and the call to repent. He baptizes Jesus. It’s John and Jesus, but then John is arrested and Jesus takes over. Now Jesus has sent his disciples out on his behalf. 
There’s an image here of the multiplication of God’s agents ministering in God’s name.

The disciples return to Jesus to report all they’d done and taught. And Jesus invites them to take a bit of R&R. “Come away and rest,” he says. But it is not to be. People see and recognize them and anticipate where they’re headed so when Jesus and his disciples arrive to the place of rest, they’re greeted by a large and eager crowd. Jesus spends the day teaching them and when evening approaches, his disciples tell him to release the people to go find food before the markets close. He tells them, no, you feed them. What!? we feed them? how are we going to feed them? We don’t have money to buy enough to feed this crowd.

I imagine Jesus looking at them, recalling the stories they’d told him of the success they’d had in their mission trip, and perhaps wondering why they didn’t think they could feed this crowd--didn’t think that God would provide. He asks what food do you have?Five loaves and two fish, they say. Tell the people to sit down in groups. Jesus takes the loaves and fish, looks to heaven, blesses and breaks the loaves and gives them to the disciples to take to the people. And when all were satisfied, the disciples collected twelve baskets of broken pieces of bread and fish. Ten thousand hungry people were fed and each disciple had a basket full of food. 

Note here that Jesus both teaches and feeds. He provides food for both their soul and their body. That’s what he wanted his disciples to learn--and claim because of the empowerment he’d given them.

Jesus instructs his disciples to boat to the other side of the Sea while he stays and dismisses the crowd. He then goes away to pray. A strong wind blows up on the Sea. Jesus sees them straining with the oars and sets out to walk toward them--walking on the surface of the water. When they see him they are terrified, thinking they’re being visited by a ghost. “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid,” he says and when he gets into the boat, the wind stops. The disciples are astounded and confounded. They didn’t understand about the loaves. 

They couldn’t appropriate or accept what they’d witnessed of the bread and fish, Jesus’ walk on water, the change in the wind. The text says their “hearts were hardened."
There’s a subtext here that Mark’s readers would have captured. “It is I,’ would have brought to mind God introducing himself to Moses as “I AM” and Jesus’ walking on water would have brought to mind the Book of Job describing God as “one who appears on the waters” (Job 9:8, 38:16).  And in reading that the disciples’ hearts were hardened, they would have understood that even though Jesus had given them deeper teaching than the crowds and had calmed the sea and evicted a legion of demons, the disciples were no closer to understanding and believing than the Pharisees and Herodians mentioned in Chapter 3 when Jesus healed on the Sabbath.  Yes, they were ready to follow but they were not ready to take in and accept what they’d been hearing and witnessing.

In contrast to these disciples, the people of Gennesaret have so much faith they rush to Jesus from the entire region and believe that just touching his cloak would heal them.

Some Jerusalem Pharisees and scribes have come out to where Jesus is and they see his disciples eating with unwashed hands. The Pharisees and scribes see this as a breach of “the tradition of the elders” which called for the washing of hands and food before eating.

“Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders?” Jesus shoots back by quoting Isaiah’s judgment on the people of his day calling them hypocrites for giving lip-service to God without sincere worship; favoring human tradition over God’s law. 

Jesus then calls the crowd and tells them that what’s at issue is the true nature of one’s heart. Defilement does not originate from the outside but from what’s inside the person. 
His disciples don’t understand this teaching but Jesus takes mercy on them and explains 
that if their heart isn’t in keeping with God’s will, they are defiled no matter how much they wash their hands in honor of tradition. It’s the intention of their heart that can defile them: things like adultery, deceit, envy, not things they ingest.

Jesus goes to Tyre---a Gentile area, and is seeks a quiet time in a house there. A gentile woman comes to plead with Jesus to release her daughter of a demon. Jesus seems to rebuke her by saying “First, let the children eat all they want for it isn’t right to take from the children and give to the dogs.” Yes, she says, but even the dogs are permitted to eat the crumbs. Jesus commends her response and heals her daughter.

By connecting the defilement lesson of outside and inside, with this story of Gentile outsider with Jewish insider, Jesus offers yet another lesson about the dangers of elevating tradition and preconceptions over seeking first and foremost God’s will---living in the spirit of God’s will.  You will find commentators who interpret this encounter as Jesus losing an argument with this woman then yielding to her “win” if you will. I don’t agree. I believe Jesus is constructing this encounter to offer the deeper lesson that no one is excluded from God’s grace and mercy. 

Jesus moves south to Sidon still within Gentile territory where he heals a man deaf with a speech impediment. The people are overwhelmed that he can even heal the deaf and mute.

While there another large crowd gathers and another season of teaching ends without sufficient food for the people. They’ve been with Jesus for three days. He tells his disciples he’s going to feed them but they ask, where can you find food here in this deserted place? He repeats the question he asked them before: How many loaves do you have. They have seven and some fish as well. This crowd of 8,000 sits down and after giving thanks for the bread and fish, Jesus has his disciples distribute them to the crowd. The disciples collect seven baskets of leftovers. 

Jesus moves on to another area where Pharisees and scribes question him and they ask for a sign---a sign that will affirm to them he is who he says he is. He refuses and he and his disciples return to the boat and leave.  

While traveling across the sea the disciples realize they’d forgotten to get bread though they do have one loaf. Jesus tells them to “beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.” The disciples think he’s criticizing the fact that they don’t have bread. Can you see Jesus’ puckering his face a bit when he asks them “Why are you talking about bread?” Do you not yet understand? Are your hearts so closed? Do you not see? do you not hear? do you not remember my feeding 10,000 and then 8,000? and what you gathered after they ate? Do you not understand?

Are you feeling for Jesus here?  And are we seeing any kinship in ourselves with the disciples? It’s a worthy question for all of us.

And as a demonstration of this denseness or disconnect we are given the story of Jesus healing a man born blind, but this healing differs from the others. Jesus takes the man by the hand, leads him away from the village, puts his saliva on the man’s eyes and asks him “Can you see anything?’ Yes but people seem like trees walking. So Jesus lays his hands on his eyes again whereupon the man “looked intently and his sight was restored, he saw everything clearly.”

Can we put ourselves into these stories? Can we see ourselves following and seeking but not “looking intently,” getting sidetracked with misguided ideas and alignments? Can we see to what degree our own spiritual journey follows a trajectory akin to that of the disciples? So much evidence of God’s graciousness and mercy and love; so much evidence of God’s desire and power to heal and set right yet all our faith can muster is 
“we have no bread.” Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees he warns them; beware of being, thinking like them, being hard-hearted like them.

If in your heart-of-heart honesty you see yourself having no bread -- having no deep experience of or belief in Jesus’ ability and compassion to make something out of nothing-- Repent.  Repentance is not a one and done act, it is an ever-needed life-line that tethers us to God; an ever-active turning toward God. It’s an acknowledgement that we do loose our orientation, we do waver, we do get lax, we do get sidetracked. It’s an appeal for forgiveness and a commitment to stay true and honest before God. 

L Quanstrom