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In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar." Then His disciples answered Him, "How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?" He asked them, "How many loaves do you have?" And they said, "Seven." So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude. They also had a few small fish; and having blessed them, He said to set them also before them. So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And He sent them away, immediately got into the boat with His disciples, and came to the region of Dalmanutha.
- Mark 8:1-10
Yesterday, we read that Jesus traveled north from Galilee to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden. For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. But Jesus said to her, "Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs." And she answered and said to Him, "Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs." Then He said to her, "For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter." And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed. Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him. And He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched His tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly. Then He commanded them that they should tell no one; but the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, "He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar." Then His disciples answered Him, "How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?" He asked them, "How many loaves do you have?" And they said, "Seven." So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude. They also had a few small fish; and having blessed them, He said to set them also before them. So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And He sent them away, immediately got into the boat with His disciples, and came to the region of Dalmanutha. Here we have another "feeding" miracle; this time there are four thousand (see You give them something to eat for the feeding of the five thousand). The first thing to notice in today's reading is Mark's repeated emphasis on the great crowds that now follow Jesus. That plays into traditional interpretations of this distinctly separate feeding miracle from the first, and its meanings. In the first feeding there were five loaves, and here we read about seven. My study bible says that the earlier five loaves symbolizes the Law, while seven here symbolizes completeness, and indicates spiritual perfection. Therefore, in the first feeding in the wilderness Christ reveals Himself as fulfilling the Law, and here He shows that it is He who grants spiritual perfection. There's also symbolism in the number of days we're told these crowds have been with Him: three is the number of days He would remain in the tomb. My study bible says, "Participation in His perfection can only come through being united to Christ's death."
We've just read (in yesterday's reading) about the Syro-Phoenician woman who received the "crumbs" from the food given to the children -- that is the miraculous healing of her daughter via her faith in Christ, at a time when He was in Gentile territory ostensibly for a rest from the crowds, and wanted to remain hidden. Today's feeding in the wilderness reflects a growing understanding of the faith that will be taken into the whole world, even as it is first taken in ministry to the Jews. This has a different sort of "flavor" than the ministry in which Jesus fulfills the Law; it is a reflection of the power of the Spirit, of holiness that will work via grace. In and of itself, it's a teaching about transformation: that power that works within us as we persist in discipleship to Christ. It's really important to note that in every case Jesus isn't only working here to feed people as His entire mission in life. We're not talking about a kind of generous donation as His sole ministry in which He simply seeks to give people food to eat. As we said in the commentary of the previous feeding miracle, we have to be able to consider what kind of food is really at work here, and what His true basic offering to the world is. We really must accept that what comes first is that these people have been with Him for three days. They have sacrificed their own comforts and physical needs for the spiritual food that He offers, for the ministry of His word, His teaching. That's the first place we have to go in order to understand what is happening here and what Jesus is about. These crowds have first expressed a spiritual hunger and thirst so great that they've continued with Him for three days, ignoring their own physical needs. In other words, this hunger and thirst is a faith, a deep desire for relationship, and overall an expression of trust that they have expressed for Him. We really have to start there to understand what's happening. The message here is about discipleship, about sticking with one's faith, no matter where it leads. This feeding in the wilderness comes in the sense that Christ helps us with the necessities, even when we don't know where they are coming from -- but faith comes first. It's a kind of statement about a spiritual journey of faith, a long road of trust in Christ, in which what is at hand may surprisingly suffice for our needs, with His help. And the importance of transformation mustn't be forgotten here: this comes through relationship, time put into the journey with Him. That is what discipleship is all about. One after another, we read in Mark's Gospel about the places Jesus leads His disciples: they repeatedly go across the sea in storms that terrify them (here and here), they come to frightful sights in strange places (as in meeting the man who called himself Legion), and here yet again even whole multitudes find themselves in the wilderness without resources for food. But it's always faith that leads the way, it's the seeking of the stuff He's truly offering: Himself, His word. Let's remember that's how the journey starts. This isn't just about a charitable work (elsewhere He evades the crowd that seeks to make Him king and chastizes them that they just followed Him for the loaves He gave them). Jesus' mission is all about something we put our faith into, something much grander than whatever we might consider our lives to be about in a worldly sense, and it's into that mystical reality we're invited. It's a widening of the picture, a much greater concept of life into which all our own understanding of life may fit and is included: a kind of broadening out of what we think our lives and our concerns are all about. We put faith first because everything else that concerns us is contained within that discipline to learn what life is about, how we go about putting our lives together, what kind of choices we want to make as we put our own futures into real perspective and planning. So much depends on what we put our faith into, what we trust, and how we go about building our futures. Faith encircles everything we may think to build and to become, the whole portrait of life we want to live, the world we choose to build, what kind of people we are and how we make whatever impact we do upon the world. This is the whole picture, not a piece of it. It's His whole mission, for the "whole" of our lives.
