A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between
The text: Mark 8:1-26
After two weeks of talking about tradition, we are into a transition phase of the gospel—the hinge point at the center of the text. We also get a good chunk of text to work with this week.
The Second Feeding
A second time the people are following Jesus, unfed, and Jesus is sympathetic towards their plight. This redux of the feeding of multitudes (this time four thousand rather than five) might seem extraneous or reinforcing a point about Jesus. And I think it does, just not the one we usually focus on.
Jesus offers a short preamble to the moment:
“I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way—and some of them have come from a great distance.” -Mark 8:2-13
My first reaction is that Jesus cares about their blood sugar! As someone who was diagnosed with hypoglycemia in childhood, I have fainted when I don’t eat. This isn’t a figure of speech.
And if we think about this more, they’ve walked for three days with little nutrients. These people are literally starving. And the conclusion that, if sent to fend for themselves (and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, perhaps) people might actually die.
There is a way that we often speak about food like it is a privilege rather than a necessity and a right. Or that we aren’t called to worry about each other—while also lionizing the covered dish and bringing food to people when they are sick. A deemphasis of the life-giving character of food and making the act of taking care of ourselves the primary offering of neighborliness—such as “teaching a man to fish” is more virtuous than feeding him.
The life/death character of this story reminds us that this is a privilege of modern Christians to think it is one or the other—teaching fishing as virtuous or feeding directly—rather than parts of the same goal of responding to a life/death moment and cultivating a more just and loving world.
The Sigh
From there, Jesus sent the people away and they got in a boat and headed to the district of Dalmanutha. And it is there that some Pharisees come up and try to start something with Jesus. They demand a sign from heaven.
This elicits my favorite reaction from Jesus:
“And he sighed deeply in his spirit
Isn’t that amazing? Jesus can’t even with these people.
The point here, I suspect, is that this is only the second place Jesus doesn’t express his power (the first being back home in Nazareth). This gives us two examples of times when Jesus isn’t really welcome to proclaim the Good News: when people think they know him and don’t believe him and when people act like he needs to prove himself on command as a condition of belief.
That Jesus doesn’t give either of these the time of day is truly significant—and instructional for anyone who thinks their job is to prove to skeptics how awesome Jesus really is.
Yeast and Bread
Leaving by boat, the disciples realize they forgot to bring bread with them—which is a notable thing since they just collected seven baskets of bread from the feeding of four thousand people a few verses earlier.
It is significant since this bread is for them and for distribution. That they “forgot” it is a lot like the dog eating homework—in college. This isn’t something you just “forget.” This bread is part of the deal. Now they’re showing up to class without paper and a pencil.
Of course, the fact that the bread is missing is on their minds when Jesus tries to teach them about the skeptics of Jesus’s ministry. He says
“Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.”
Which, is pretty clearly a metaphor. That they can make the dough of discord grow. So how do the disciples get this so confused?
I think the point is that they are that distracted. And here, there are two tracks for what is really distracting them—and neither is particularly good. But they are totally relatable.
The first is that they are distracted by not having enough. That they forgot to bring bread with them and are worried about running out. Which is weird given that Jesus just made a scrap of food into a feast for four thousand. This fear is irrational. It also represents a pretty normal response we have to our own scarcity. And shows us why Jesus thinks this response is pretty dumb on our part.
The second is that they are distracted by forgetting the thing Jesus wanted them to bring along. In this, they are distracted by their seeming failure, forgetfulness, weakness, and are worried, ultimately, of being punished for it. In some ways, this is the more insidious and faith-breaking response of the two.
Jesus is not a tyrannical coach obsessed with winning. He isn’t demanding the disciples never make mistakes. And this approach to challenges is extraordinarily limiting because we play not to lose rather than to win—our need for safety, avoiding punishment, means we don’t stretch ourselves, push ourselves, or build up to anything difficult. In short, we don’t try to learn—because we’re afraid to go beyond our own limitations.
The idea that the disciples would be obsessed with their forgetting bread—whether it be concern for their own physical safety in getting to eat a snack later or in not wanting to screw up and look bad in front of Jesus—is a striking lack of faith in Jesus. In the one who is leading them into repentance. Into changing, turning, and becoming new. the one who has sent them out to do this same work. And the one who has come to reconcile the world to God.
So, yeah, obsessing about the bread isn’t a good look. And Jesus reminds them of what that bread they’re obsessing about is supposed to be about. That mission. And has God provided for that mission? Twice now—with abundance.
The Man No Longer Blind
The last part of this section is an interesting healing bridge between the disciples confusion and the Messianic confusion we will have in this week’s gospel.
Jesus and followers enter Bethsaida, where they meet a man who is blind. Jesus brings the man out of the city to heal him. There is a natural connection, I suspect, with the man healed at the end of chapter seven who was deaf and mute. The one Jesus healed and said Don’t tell anybody about this and people told everybody about it.
With this in mind, it is a lot easier to recognize the caution Jesus displays in healing the man away from the crowds, even away from his followers. And then, when it is finished, to tell the man not to go back into town—his life will be too much a witness to the power of Jesus.
There is also the delightful peculiarity of the nature of this healing—the labored approach, in stages, that Jesus seems to be testing something—that is curious. This doesn’t seem to be essential to the theme, but it does offer some interesting color commentary.
And what might we take from it? I’m toying with the idea of Jesus being careful/cautious. Rather than heal the man with a word or a touch, he is using a method that is slower—perhaps because the man needs this approach. Maybe it tells us something about the man more than Jesus.
it also seems an antidote to the overpowered Jesus that the disciples keeping wrestling with. And the demand for a sign from the critics—that Jesus is just a magic-trick-making guru and not a source of abundant life and change. This slow, measured approach seems, in a way, more generous and communicative of Jesus’s mission.
And let’s be clear, doesn’t this seem like its own antidote to our own disfunction? Our obsession with productivity gains, enormity, of world-changing scale and total transformation of bodies, cities, and commerce? We’re on a breakneck pace (think about that image for a second before we move on) and our demands for power, growth, size… take all of that and consider how lost and confused and powerless we all feel.
There is something about a slow antidote, of a right-sized dosage of generous healing, measured to the person, that seems far more extravagant and generous than the mass-healing of thousands who keep pushing for more and more and more.
I’m reminded of an interview with a writer who explored health systems all over the world. And he described his experience of the British healthcare system in a fascinating way. His endeavor is to see if he could get experimental treatment, and if so, how would it go. And in England, he got the fastest no. But what he got from them was the most useful pain management care.
The author shares that sense of disappointment—what happens inside his head when he heard no—and how distracting that response can be. It clouded his judgement for what he would actually get from them: guidance geared toward his particular needs and how to live with it better.
Perhaps the challenge for us, as people with misplaced expectations and a constant drive to consume, is in recognizing the intrinsic value of the individual experience, slowly made, and offered in a way that gives us new sight of the world around us.