Sermon from November 19, 2000
Have you honored anyone lately? Very likely, you have. Is there anyone in your life that you would say you cherish? Almost certainly. However, I think most of us would say those words are not equal. We are likely to honor more people than we cherish. Cherish sugests an intimacy and affection that we do not have with everyone we honor. We honor all those we cherish. We do not cherish all those we honor.

Of those we cherish would we ever say of them that they shine? Once in a while. Would we ever say they shine like the sun? That would be unusual. We sometimes call a person pure. To say the person is purer than an angel sounds like an exaggeration that we reserve for babies.

But I doubt that we have called anyone ruler of all nature lately, or Lord of the nations; except, of course, Jesus Christ. In fact, we use all this language of Jesus Christ in our worship. It is embedded in the 17th century German hymn, Fairest Lord Jesus. Not only do we talk like this about Jesus, but we also put our words to music and sing them together. You can see how Christian worship quietly raises questions for thoughtful people, not the least of which is, "Am I crazy to do this?"

Well, that all depends, doesn't it? It depends on who Jesus Christ is. The Gospel of Mark addresses that question straight up. The disciples raised the question as they cowered in their boat after Jesus had stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee. "Who is this?" they asked. "Even the wind and waves obey him."

Mark answers this question by a series of stories. What kind of man has power to stop a storm and a storm surge by speaking to the wind and waves? What kind of man can reintegrate the personality of a man so out of control that no one could control him with fetters and chains? What are we to make of it, when Jesus tells that man, "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you"?

Coming from Jesus' lips, whom do you think He meant by the Lord? He could only have meant the God of Israel, the One who delivered Israel from Egypt and from Babylon, who spoke by the prophets, and who gave the Torah. But when the former demoniac told his story in his hometown, he did not, according to Mark, talk about the God of Israel; he talked about Jesus.

He was not making a theological statement. He was just telling his story. Mark was making the theological statements, but he simply imbedded them in the story he was telling about Jesus. He does not scream; he whispers. But he whispers the unthinkable. He has allowed into his story a subtle identification between Jesus and the God of Israel.

Furthermore, who is Jesus that He should have powers to cure the woman with the twelve-year, slow hemorrhage and to wake from death the twelve-year-old daughter of the ruler of the synagogue? Someone with a bad conscience, like Herod Antipas, who had beheaded John the Baptist, might say that Jesus was John the Baptist come back to life. That is how to account for those unearthly powers.

A more responsible answer to these questions came from the lips of Jesus as well as from the chattering voices of public opinion. He was a prophet, a second Elijah even. Such a prophet had not been seen in Israel in ages. Against that background we pick up Mark's story of Jesus today in Mark 6:30ff.

The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." We almost work as hard as they did. We also try to do what they tried to do. So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place (literally, a desert place).

When you have tried to get away from it all, have you ever had happen to you what happened next to Jesus and His men? Verse 33: But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When that happens to us on our much-needed getaway, do we respond like Jesus did?

Verse 34: When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. Right here, I want to set up the first contrast between this episode and the previous episode that centered on King Herod and his wife, Herodias. One word does it: he had compassion on them. This ability to give His exhausted self to people, not out of obligation but out of compassion differs dramatically from Herod's superstitious, convenient cruelty. We will see other contrasts as we go along.

Did you notice again a characteristic of the Gospel of Mark? He says that Jesus began teaching them many things. However, Mark tells us nothing that He actually taught. Mark cares about action, and the action begins in verse 35. By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. "This is a remote place," they said, "and it's already very late. Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat." That seems reasonable. Jesus' reply did not seem so reasonable to them.

But he answered, "You give them something to eat."

They said to him rather bluntly, "That would take eight months of a man's wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?" Presumably, there were a lot of people to require eight months' wages to feed them. Mark has not yet told us how many people had gathered there.

"How many loaves do you have?" he asked. "Go and see."

When they found out, they said, "Five – and two fish." Not much. Here we have a second contrast with Herod's birthday bash, which had been a banquet. Here the compassion of Jesus addressed those who did not have enough; Herod's extravagance addressed those who needed to be impressed.

Verse 39 seems like a non sequitur. Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So, says verse 40, they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Expectations exceeded apparent resources, but apparent resources never tell the whole story when God's purposes are at stake. The simplicity of Mark's story line severely understates the significance of what happens in verse 41-44.

Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. The number of men who had eaten was five thousand.

One final contrast with Herod: Jesus' compassion gave life; Herod's banquet brought death. Perhaps Mark did not intend it, but by juxtaposing Herod's cruel banquet at the palace and Jesus' compassionate feeding of the multitude in the desert he painted a memorable picture of the eternal difference between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God. Let's never forget which kingdom our loyalty belongs to.

We will give our loyalty to the kingdom of God for the same reason we will continue to gather here and worship. We will do it because of who Jesus Christ is. But who does this miracle say He is? I cannot shake the feeling that something very important is going on here. Let me show you why I say that. First of all, this episode appears in all four Gospels. Very few of Jesus' miracles appear in all four Gospels. All four treat this miracle as having a significance greater than Jesus' other miracles.

Second, look ahead for a minute at the next episode, another sea story in which Jesus walked on water, climbed into the disciples' boat, the winds subsided, and the disciples were frightened out of their wits. The end of verse 51 and verse 52 conclude by saying, They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.

What had they missed about the feeding of the 5,000 that should have helped them in a storm at sea? Clearly, Mark, looking back on the event, saw something the miraculous feeding revealed about Jesus that the disciples at the time had missed. That brings me to my second observation.

Why didn't Mark say in verse 52, "They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about Jesus' power to raise the little girl in chapter five from death"? The Gospels never make Jesus' power to raise people from death as central to their understanding of Him as they do with His feeding of the 5,000. Why?

There are similarities between this story and the story of Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42-44. There a man brought Elisha 20 loaves of barley bread. Elisha told him to serve it to an assembly of people. The man objected. "How can I set this before a hundred men?" (2 Ki. 4:43). Elisha insists, and the hundred men ate and had some left over. But if 20 loaves did not ordinarily suffice for 100, how much less could five loaves suffice for 5,000? Maybe Mark intended us to see Jesus as greater than Elisha – very much in keeping with the idea that Jesus was a prophet.

It is possible that Mark intended this story to serve as a parallel to the Old Testament story of manna feeding the children of Israel in the desert. Remember, the solitary place of verse 32 was, literally, a desert place. Maybe Mark wanted us to see Jesus as another Moses, forming a new people for God, a new Israel, and providing for them in the desert. If so, there is one huge difference. Moses himself did not provide, much less make, the manna the way Jesus multiplied the loaves. We have to go a step further to appreciate what Mark is saying about Jesus. Take a look with me at eleven observations about this miracle.

1. This miracle differs from most of Jesus' miracles in that it does not do anything to a person. There are only two or three other miracles like it.

2. This miracle was not strictly necessary. According to verses 36, the disciples said to Jesus, "Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat." People could have gotten food on their own. They may have been hungry, but they were neither desperate nor destitute. Something besides human need justified this miracle in Jesus' mind.

3. Jesus' command, "You give them something to eat" asked something of the disciples they could not do. They did not have the food, and they did not have the eight months' wages to buy it. Rremember also, they had just returned from a mission trip on which Jesus had told them to take no money.

4. What they came up with (at Jesus' request) was laughable – five loaves of bread and two fish for 5,000 people.

5. Seating that many people in such orderly fashion awakened expectations that far exceeded resources. By the way, the poverty of the disciples, the paucity of resources, and the unrealistic expectations highlight a reality that all spiritual leaders feel: We are not adequate to the human needs that come before us. Any spiritual leader that does not experiene that has not learned the most fundamental lesson of ministry. We bring our five loaves and two fish and trust God to multiply them, or else we fail.

6. Jesus blessed the loaves before He broke and distributed them.

7. Mark ephasizes the unexpected bounty. A) They all ate. B) They were all satisfied. C) The disciples took up twelve basketfuls of broken bread and fish. D) Verse 44 comes like an exclamation point at the end of the story, telling us for the first time the size of the crowd that had eaten, been satisfied and had all those leftovers: 5,000 men.

8. Mark records no human response to this miracle. He cares little or nothing about what the disciples said or thought. He places a magnifying glass on the miracle and says in effect, "Look at what happened here. Ask yourself, 'What does it mean?'"

9. We know that miracles in the Bible are never an end in themselves. They always point beyond themselves to tell us something about Jesus' authority or His identity. The model is in chapter two, where Jesus heals the paralytic whose sins He had forgiven with these words: "But that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins," – he said to the paralytic, "I say to you, 'Rise, take up your mat and go home!'" and he did it. The miracle offered powerful material evidence of Jesus authority to forgive sins. So, what does this miracle tell us about Him?

10. If this miracle is one that Jesus can do at will, then He can feed the world. Now, it is a fact that everywhere Christianity has gone, hunger has been alleviated. God has abundantly answered the prayer of the Church, "Give us this day our daily bread." But everything we know about Jesus Christ points beyond this. He Himself said, "Man does not live on bread alone."

11. Could it be a responsible way to interpret this text to say that this miracle of satisfying hunger means that Jesus satisifies other hungers as well? We do have other hungers, none deeper than our hunger for God and meaning and a hope that does not disappoint us as so many hopes do. Is Jesus Christ the inexhaustible Source that satisfies such hunger? Our meager resources cannot, and life experiences teach us over and over that they cannot.

If I am right, if the feeding of the 5,000 points to Jesus as the inexhaustible source of satisfaction for humanity's seemingly insatiable hunger for purpose and wholeness, then we have the deepest answer yet to the question, Who is Jesus? He is more than a carpenter, more than a native son of Nazareth. He is more than John the Baptist come back to life. He is certainly a prophet. He thinks of Himself as a prophet (Mark 6:4), and others call Him a prophet. But if He is the inexhaustible source of satisfaction for humanity's seemingly insatiable appetite for purpose and wholeness, then He is more than any other prophet ever claimed to be.

Except for the demon-possessed, no one in Mark's story has as yet fallen down at Jesus' feet to worship Him. The disciples have come close. In Mark 4:41 they were terrified of Him. In Mark 6:51 they were completely amazed at Him. We who live on this side of the resurrection have gone the next step and knelt in homage to Jesus Christ. Three hundred years before the Church's theology expressed somewhat adequately the nature of Jesus Christ, the Church's worship had got it right. Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang:

     "Worthy is the Lam, who was slain,
     to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
     and honor and glory and praise!" (Revelation 5:11-12)

It brings us back to the priority of worship. Our scriptural interpretation will often be questionable and our intellectual understanding will be cumbersome. We always find firmness and clarity when we adore the Bread of Life.