Mark 8:14-21

Mark 8:14-21 – Only One Loaf of Bread

In referring to the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, Jesus was speaking metaphorically, just as Mark’s use of the word loaf in the preceding incidents had been also consistently symbolic. The disciples, however, understood him literally. Indeed, they had failed abysmally to grasp the symbolic significance of the preceding incidents. Jesus’ message had fallen on deaf ears. The disciples were blind to the message that Jesus was labouring to convey.

When Jesus had spoken to the crowds in parables, he had lamented that people generally were blind and deaf to the truth that he had been trying to convey. He had felt powerless and disheartened. But he had unwrapped his meanings to the disciples in private, believing that they had been receptive to what he had to say. Now the truth dawned on Jesus that even the disciples had been no better than the crowds. Their hearts, too, were hardened.

Mark no doubt wanted his community of disciples to understand well what Jesus had been teaching. In speaking of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, Jesus was referring to their ethos and attitudes. Mark was not interested in Pharisees and in Herod as mere historical personages. He was concerned about their attitudes and influence at work within his Christian community.

It is possible to identify what Mark saw as the leaven of the Pharisees by a quick review of some of their encounters with Jesus. (It is well to remember that Mark did not criticise Pharisees out of concern for historical detail but because he saw their mindset reflected so easily in “conscientious” members of the Christian community.)

Starting, perhaps, from the most recent incident, the request for a sign would possibly have indicated that they saw the things of God, and themselves, as different from the ordinary things of everyday. They favoured specialness and separateness, as their expression of the sacred. They defined themselves and their behaviour by drawing clear boundaries between themselves and others. 

The response of other Pharisees to God was expressed in supplementary practices divorced from life. They focused on rituals and laws independently of their connection with and influence on people and relationships. 

They saw forgiveness operating through proper rituals rather than through the quality of love and compassion. 

Sabbath observance was an end in itself, and the original purpose of Sabbath as celebration of God’s providence towards people and as God’s undertaking to provide “enough” for everyone was forgotten. The beautiful Sabbath concept of mutual sharing as the expression of relationship with God was overlooked. 

They saw fasting as an expression of devotion, oblivious to the fact that fasting, while a free choice for the privileged, was an unavoidable fact of life for the poor; and that there was a prior duty of compassion for the hungry and the poor. 

They saw marketplaces as places of potential contagion rather than as places where the “enough” of God could be compassionately shared. 

Purity rituals overshadowed the prior need for purity of heart. 

Meals were occasions to express their elitism and meticulous observance of ritual rather than celebrations of the wonderful dignity of every human person and the opportunity to reinforce the dignity especially of the otherwise marginalised.

Mark’s sense of the leaven of Herod had been masterfully outlined in his dramatisation of the execution of John the Baptist. Herod wanted political security at any cost and could not abide moral criticism. He valued personal “honour” more than the life of another. To look good was imperative; to do good was irrelevant. He could feast and make merry while his subjects were exploited beyond endurance.

In some ways, the leaven of Herod was reflected in the saying of Jesus after he had explained God’s wonderful dream of “enough”, and even “abundance”, for everyone. To contrast Jesus’ parable of the wheat that, given the right soil, produced the hundredfold, Mark had referred to the deceitful wisdom of the age: “For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have not, even what they have will be taken away”.

In contrast, the leaven of the Kingdom was so different. It was the Jubilee promise, the dream of the enough for all, the celebration of the providential care of God, based on the call to cooperation flowing from insight into the radical dignity of every human person. In God’s Kingdom, no one was to miss out; no one was to be marginalised or exploited.

Mark’s reference to the one loaf of bread in the boat out on the water was significant. The boat was perhaps a symbol of Mark’s community on mission. Within the community of disciples there was to be only one loaf, the leaven of God. It was spectacularly more than enough for everyone, Jew and Gentile.

Later in the narrative, Jesus would take a loaf in his hands and invite his disciples to eat it, declaring it to be his body broken for all. In Jesus’ mind Eucharist would be celebration of the all-inclusive vision of God, of God’s universal offer of forgiveness and of life to the full. Eucharistic bread would allow no place for the leaven of Pharisees or of Herod.

Mark recorded Jesus’ profound sadness that even the disciples had not understood the mind of Jesus, the vision he had tried to unfold during his Galilean ministry.

Yet Jesus did not withdraw from his mission. He continued to work with his hard-hearted disciples. Whatever about their obtuseness, he loved them, he hoped in them, he would lead them further into the mystery.

Next >> Mark 8:22-26