How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?

 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

Yesterdays we read that after a dispute with some scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, Jesus left Galilee and went 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.  We might confuse this feeding in the wilderness with the one that we read about last week, in Thursday's reading.  But the Gospels clearly set these two events as separate occasions, and there are particular differences.  First of all, Jesus has recently had an open clash with the authorities from Jerusalem (Saturday's reading), after which He went to Tyre and Sidon where a Gentile woman's daughter was healed from a demon, and then He went into the Decapolis, a mixed region of both Gentiles and Jews (see yesterday's reading, above).  So our context at this juncture in Mark's Gospel is a little different from that previous setting.  Moreover, there are other particular differences.  In the previous event, there were five loaves on hand.  This time there are seven.  The number of baskets of leftover fragments in the previous occasion were twelve; now there are seven large baskets.   Previously, Jesus fed five thousand in the wilderness; but this time, the number is four thousand.   Each of these differences is quite important, because each has symbolic meaning that linked to the evolution of Jesus' ministry, and where it is ultimately headed.   In the earlier episode, the five loaves symbolized the Law (the first five books of the Bible), but here there are seven, a number which symbolizes completeness, indicating spiritual perfection.  In the earlier incident, Jesus reveals Himself as fulfilling the Law, but here we may begin to discern that it is He who grants spiritual perfection.  The seven large baskets give us another figure of completion or fullness, the readying of the Gospel to go out to all the world.  The four thousand is also a number that symbolizes all the world who will be included in the Gospel message:  four directions, four corners of the Cross, Christ as Incarnate and also the Holy Trinity:  man and God.   Another important number here is that these crowds have specifically been with Him for three days, the number of days He will spend in the tomb, linked to the Resurrection that will "feed" all people in the world, Jew and Gentile.

It is so tempting for us to assume that somehow the Gospel writers got confused, that there must have been only one spectacular feeding miracle in Christ's ministry, and to invent all kinds of rational reasons why this could not have happened twice.  But the writers of the Gospel -- including the Holy Spirit, of course -- are far more brilliant than it seems we assume.  Moreover, Scripture is not historical writing nor is it a science textbook.  It is, in fact, something far more than that, and works on seemingly infinite levels to "feed" us what we need.  We could read these same passages every day of our lives, and they would convey to us some possible insight that we need that particular day and moment.  A science or history textbook cannot do that.  With Scripture and the work of the holy in the world, there are dimensions of meaning that we can't yet grasp, but which will always be waiting for us.  The significant details of each feeding miracle in the wilderness are marked out; each has meaning.  And this gives us something important to face in our own lives.  We are not meant to be stagnant creatures.  Our lives are marked out by time, by separate incidents, and hopefully by growth.  Christ's ministry grows and evolves.  It meets obstacles; He clashes with the leadership from Jerusalem.  But each new juncture brings a kind of growth, a new branch or offshoot, a new direction, each a new creative response through the Holy Trinity:  Father, Son, and Spirit at work in the world.  Christ's ministry is evolving and, through the apostles, will eventually go out to both Jew and Gentile, the whole world -- even though He is sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24).  Christ's evolving ministry and response to experience gives us a message about our own lives.  It would be wonderful to retain the company we've known all our lives, our friends and what is familiar.  But life does not work like that, and in particular, spiritual life does not necessarily work like that.  We are time-bound creatures and we are meant to grow.  In fact, we are always going in one direction or another -- we never stand still.  We are headed toward a deeper communion with our God, or not.  We face obstacles within ourselves we either meet with Christ, or we don't and we become more deeply enmeshed in struggles we need to face differently.  This is the struggle of the internal spiritual life, and the growth and change within Christ's ministry at every new step is a mirror of our own internal lives as a mirror of our faith.  We meet all the changes we need to make with prayer, and with faith.  It is there we find the direction that we need, the grace to accept the things we can't change and the courage to change the things we can -- to echo the words of a popular prayer widely used in a movement to help with personal struggle (The Serenity Prayer, by theologian and pastor Reinhold Niebuhr; adopted by Alchoholics Anonymous).   It really doesn't matter where we come from, faith as set out in Christ's ministry, is a journey.  It is a path, a way, as He tells us ("I am the way, the truth, and the life" - John 14:6).  That word used in the Gospel, translated as "way," means "road" in Greek.  Let us remember that we are not infinite beings outside of time, who live in an eternal fixed point.  We are created as finite beings, with a purpose for growth and evolution, experiencing time so that we may choose to meet life and experience with Christ, His way.   This path or road is not mean to be simple and effortless.  Faith is a struggle, but one which we are specifically created equipped to make, so that faith itself will test and expand who we are, take us into new foreign territory, and ask us to make hard decisions to do so.  His is the food we need, and His supply is endless.  Let us remember to turn to Him in all our choices. no matter what they are.  His is the constant bread for all of our own times in the wilderness -- no matter how frequently we may find ourselves there.