Mark 6:33-44

Sufficient Resources for All (1) – Answering Israel’s Hunger

Mark 6:33-44 – Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

³³ People saw them going, and knew where,

so they ran there on foot from all the villages

and reached there ahead of them.

³⁴ As he disembarked, [Jesus] saw a large crowd,

and was deeply moved by them

because they were like sheep that had no shepherd.

So he began teaching them lots of things.

Jesus and the disciples had got to where they were by boat, but they were still in Jewish territory. The crowd was Jewish.

Jesus’ deep emotional reaction, translated here as deeply moved, could have been compassion but could just as easily have been a kind of muted anger, not at the crowds but at those responsible for their depressed condition.

They were like sheep that had no shepherd. Mark explicitly identified them as without leadership, a leadership that cared for them; their condition was one of oppression and exploitation, referred to already in the narrative. The anger of Jesus and his depth of feeling were reactions to the inadequacy of appropriate leadership on the part of the religious, moral and political powers of the day.

Shepherd Imagery

Mark’s use of the imagery of shepherd and sheep was strongly evident in the language of the tradition and a frequent theme of the prophets.

In the light of his own approaching death, Moses had asked God to appoint a leader to succeed him “so that the congregation of the Lord may not be like sheep without a shepherd” (Numbers 27.17).

The prophet Ezekiel had God lament:

... “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!

Should not shepherds feed the sheep?

You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings;

but you do not feed the sheep.

You have not strengthened the weak,

you have not healed the sick,

you have not bound up the injured,

you have not brought back the strayed,

you have not sought the lost,

but with force and harshness you have ruled them.

So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd...”

(Ezekiel 34.2-5)

Zechariah was equally scathing:

For I am now raising up in the land

a shepherd who does not care for the perishing,

or seek the wandering, or heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy,

but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.

Oh, my worthless shepherd,

who deserts the flock!

May the sword strike his arm

his right eye utterly blinded! (Zechariah 11.16-17)

Jesus’ reaction to the situation of the leaderless crowds was consistent with his general approach. He began teaching them. As we have seen previously, Jesus would teach through what he did more than through words.

If the people’s condition was due to their own unquestioning acceptance of the established way of seeing and doing things, the evil of the system needed to be named and exposed. As well, they themselves needed to be empowered by being made aware of their own dignity and given a new image of what society could be like when all were conscious of their dignity and lived accordingly. They needed to be given hope that things could be different, that change was possible, that their God was a God who cared, a God of Jubilee. Jesus would not simply tell them these things: he would show them.

³⁵ By now it was quite late,

and his disciples came to him and said,

“This is a deserted place, and it is already late.

³⁶ Send them off,

so they might go into the farms and villages in the vicinity

to buy something for themselves to eat.”

³⁷ In reply he said to them,

“You give them something to eat yourselves.”

They said to him,

“Do you want to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of loaves

and give them to them to eat?”

The disciples had ears and eyes but they consistently struggled to hear and to see. They had been sent on mission, but their formation was far from complete. They had much still to learn.

The reaction of the disciples came from their ignorance of their responsibility for others. Send them off... to buy something for themselves. The disciples showed themselves perfectly socialised members of the prevailing culture: their solution was economic.

Jesus challenged them. It was not a question of people buying, but of the disciples giving. They promptly rejected that solution as beyond their means (or, if they had the money themselves, beyond the limits of their generosity).

³⁸ He said to them, “How many loaves do you have?

Go and check out.”

When they found out, they said,

“Five, and two pieces of dried fish.”

³⁹ He directed them to recline in dinner groups on the green turf.

⁴⁰ And they lay down in clusters of hundreds and fifties.

The mention of green turf by the banks of the lake recalled the image of the well-known psalm that imaged God as a good shepherd leading his flock by green pastures...beside still waters. God, in and through Jesus, would be the good shepherd:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures;

he leads me beside still waters;

he restores my soul... (Psalm 23:1-3)

What was to follow would be a classic illustration by Jesus of his message of the Kingdom, a graphic enactment of the foundational Kingdom parable of the seed that, once received in good soil, produced the thirty, sixty, hundredfold.

Numbering the People

Mark made specific mention of the grouping of the “men” [verse 44] into companies of thousands, hundreds and fifties, details that were insignificant to the story, but had echoes of the period in the Sinai Peninsula and of Moses’ formation of the People of God there in the desert.

The book of Exodus recounted:

Moses chose able men from all Israel

and appointed them as heads over the people,

as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. (Exodus 18.25)

Mark no doubt wanted to make a quiet point about the basis of the formation of the new community of disciples, as well as indicate the key role of the apostles within that community. Moses’ appointing of leaders had been to help him in his shepherding of the people: left to himself they were too numerous for him to reach. Jesus had already sent the apostles out on mission to villages that he himself was unable to visit. He would need their assistance once again.

The role of the leaders would be more significant after his death in the organising of the communities of disciples.

In the mind of Mark this story was basic to understanding the community.

⁴¹ He took the five loaves and two pieces of fish,

lifted up his eyes to the heavens, blessed God,

broke the loaves into pieces

and gave them to the disciples

to serve out to them,

The words Mark used to describe Jesus’ action were the same words that he would use in his description of the actions of Jesus during his last supper with his disciples when he would institute the Eucharist. The four verbs were evidently important in the experience of Mark’s community:

take,
bless,
break
and give.

The word translated as bless was the word used in Jewish Scriptures to describe prayers directed to God, and meant ultimately to “speak well of” or “praise”. Its object was obviously God, not the bread.

By using Eucharistic language, Mark was also making the point that Eucharist was basic to the formation and life of the Christian community.

... and to distribute the two fish among them all.

Dried fish was the staple export of the region. It was not surprising that someone should have some on hand. Yet the existence of the fish was not important to the symbolism and would not be referred to again.

⁴² They all ate and were satisfied.

⁴³ They filled twelve baskets

with the broken pieces and the left-overs of the fish

that they picked up.

Mark’s choice of detail and of language was again important.

Scriptural Abundance

The narration echoed the deeds of the prophet Elisha nine centuries previously, though contributed nothing further to the symbolism beyond providing a precedent and perhaps making the point that Jesus was at least the equal of the great prophet.

A man came from Baal-shalishah,

bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God:

twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack.

Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.”

But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?”

So he repeated, “Give it to the people and let them eat,

for thus says the Lord,

‘They shall eat and have some left.’ ”

He set it before them, they ate,

and had some left, according to the word of the Lord. (2 Kings 4:42-44)

The numbers in the two accounts were different, but the echoes were strong. In the Markan narrative, the disciples gathered up twelve baskets of scraps. This was not simply a factor of the apostles numbering twelve, each filling a basket. The number twelve to the Jewish mind spoke of completeness, of fullness, in this case of plenty. Despite the initial shortage, despite the size of the crowd, there was abundance of food. This was the nature of God’s Kingdom.

Mark continued:

⁴⁴ The number of men who ate was five thousand.

The word men is accurately translated. It did not include women or children, though Mark made no further specific reference to their not being counted, perhaps because the numbering of the tribes in the Pentateuch referred consistently to fighting men and not to women and children. Mark was dealing with foundational issues.

Interpreting the Story

Mark made no specific mention that Jesus “multiplied” the loaves and fish. Did any multiplying happen at all, or was it an experience of sharing what the disciples (or the people) already had?

What added to the uncertainty was that there was no mention of any surprise reaction on the part of anyone. After most of Jesus’ healings and exorcisms, the astonishment or questioning of the onlookers was generally noted. Given that in Mark’s mind this event was of profound symbolic significance, the silence was even more surprising.

How then did it exemplify Jesus’ teaching? Was Jesus’ message simply a functional message of the importance and possibilities of sharing?

It is obvious from the language used that either Mark himself or the tradition from which he drew had considerably sculpted the narration. This story had been told frequently and carefully; it was important.

Most likely, the story illustrated not just the possibilities of sharing but the beneficence of the God of “Sabbath enough” or “Jubilee abundance”:

The source of hope for the present and the future was God. Insight into human dignity and social interactions based on equality originated from recognition of God’s love for people.
Utilitarian sharing might be important; but without vision and hope founded in the deep sense of the creativity of God and energised by the experienced love of this God, it lacked power, and was easily distorted. Of itself sharing was not enough.
God’s beneficence worked through human cooperation, but human activity separated from the life-giving power of God was ultimately sterile.

It would seem that Mark’s intention was to convey the message that the intervention of Jesus was more than organisational: it was miraculous but, more importantly, it was symbolic.

Throughout this section of Mark’s narrative, frequent mention would be made of the essentially earthy symbol of loaves. Depending on how they were used and by whom, loaves could become symbols of sharing or of exclusion, of dignity or of exploitation, symbols of the different value systems expressed in the responses. But sharing and excluding were real experiences. Jesus was not interested in ideologies, but in concrete human relationships.

Next >> Mark 6:45-52