Mark 6:53-56

Compassionate Response

Mark 6:53-56 – General Healings

⁵³ When they had crossed over,

they touched land and dropped anchor at Gennesaret.

Surprisingly, without indicating the reason, the disciples and Jesus landed at Gennesaret in Jewish territory (the exact whereabouts of the site is unknown), and not at Bethsaida to where they had originally been heading. So the healings that followed happened in Galilee.

⁵⁴ When they got out of the boat,

people recognised him immediately

⁵⁵ and they ran round that whole district

and began to carry on stretchers

to wherever they heard he was

those who were not well.

⁵⁶ And wherever he entered villages and towns and farms,

they laid out in the marketplaces

those who were sick

and asked him if they could even touch the tassels of his cloak.

And all who touched him were made whole.

The widespread response of the people may have been a fruit of the recent work of the apostles on their brief mission around the towns and villages.

Jesus’ response to the sick did not proceed from a detached commitment to needy humanity but from compassion towards individual people. Jesus respected their uniqueness and reached out to real people. His action was in response to the hope expressed by the friends of the sick ones through their practical readiness to put themselves out for their friends. Jesus honoured their sense that things could be different whenever people were prepared to think not simply of themselves but of each other, particularly of those whose need is greater. The people’s caring initiative was itself a budding expression of the Kingdom.

The word translated as made whole could be translated more directly as “saved”. Jesus could restore health. The action of Jesus together with the practical compassion of other people who cared could bring about an even deeper healing of the spirit of those who had been sick. Healing of itself was hardly salvation. But hope and practical compassion opened the way to something more radical, to the practical experience of the Kingdom, which touched on the essence of salvation.

Why Mark should have connected this incident so closely to the feeding of the five thousand was not immediately obvious. It may have been that both illustrated the reality of the Kingdom.

The feeding of the five thousand illustrated how the divine action, without which there could be no Kingdom (salvation), blessed people’s readiness to share.
In the healing of the sick, God’s action built on the hope and practical compassion of the sick and their caring friends.

Like the seed scattered on the ground, the earth produced of itself first the shoot, then the ear, then the head of wheat in the ear [4:28]. Without anyone’s knowing how, the fullness came. Compassion, of itself, may have seemed insignificant, but with God’s blessing it contributed to the construction of the new Kingdom.

It would also be obvious that, by way of contrast, it led to the next encounter with some Pharisees.

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