Mark 8:1-10: In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, “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.” His disciples replied, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?” He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground, and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute, and they distributed them to the crowd. They had also a few small fish, and after blessing them he ordered that these, too, should be distributed. They ate and were filled, and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
In the Gospel of Mark, there are two stories in which Jesus miraculously feeds a huge crowd of people with a scant amount of food. The first story is the Feeding of the Five Thousand, which is the better well-known story of the two. In appears in the other three gospels, as well as Mark—in more or less the same form each time. Jesus has retreated to the wilderness, people follow Him out there, and as the hour grows late, Jesus ensures that they get dinner before they go home. The second story is the Feeding of the Four Thousand. Besides the fact that only Mark and Matthew choose to tell it in their accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry, as well as the fact that Jesus feeds fewer people in this story, this is a story that simply carries with it less fanfare.
There are fewer details. The dialogue is kind of clunky. The way in which it has been inserted into the larger text is reminiscent of an author who either forgot to mention it earlier and who figured that chapter eight was as good a place as any for it, or who needed the context to be fresh in the readers’ minds for something else, so who randomly dropped it in. The Feeding of the Four Thousand doesn’t offer anything hugely different to the reader than the Feeding of the Five Thousand does, making it incredibly easy to skim over, or to question its importance in the first place. Why waste your time reading and studying a story that is basically a repeat of a previous one?
There is at least one meaningful difference between the stories of the Feeding of the Five Thousand and the Feeding of the Four Thousand, though, which for me, reframes the entire thing, and brings me back to the Feeding of the Four Thousand as a passage that is worth talking about. The Feeding of the Five Thousand occurs fairly early on in Jesus’s ministry. A lot of wonderful and incredible things have happened by that point for sure, but generally speaking, what Jesus is doing is all very new. The disciples are quite green, and it shows. While Jesus is healing people and doing His thing in the wilderness, the disciples are trying to take charge and to turn the tide of the situation. They are trying to get Jesus to send the people away. They are trying to get Jesus back to the original plan—which included a time of rest for the whole crew. They are trying to gain control, making it actually pretty funny that when Jesus gives them what they want, they immediately reject it. “Where are we to get that much money or bread?”, they want to know. It’s irony at it’s very best.
But by the time that the Feeding of the Four Thousand comes along, things have seemingly changed. It’s almost as if the disciples have matured in a way. Instead of pressuring Jesus to switch up what He’s doing or to move on, they are content to patiently wait. Instead of scheming and striving and finding back-handed solutions, the disciples are good to simply live in the moment and let it be. Instead of wrestling with Jesus for control and power, they are letting Jesus be in control. This is especially evident, I think, in their response to Jesus when He mentions that the crowd needs food. They don’t assume that Jesus is expecting them to come up with the food. In fact, they don’t offer any solutions at all. They only have a question: How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?
While the disciples still have a very long way to go, and they continue to grow outside of the bounds of the gospel stories—in the book of Acts and in Paul’s letters—it seems to me that somewhere between these two miracles, their understanding of what was going on and of how they were participating in it shifted. For perhaps the first time in the entire gospel of Mark, the disciples finally took what Jesus’s initial call to them had been seriously. They repented. They changed their minds. They spun on their collective heels and went in a different direction. They let go of certainty and of decisiveness and of being in charge and of having it all together and opened themselves up to Jesus and to His mystery. And somewhere in that mess of release, the disciples became people of faith. They were transformed and they grew faithful as they learned and as they practiced loosening their grip and embracing the Divine unknown.
You all have heard me say this a million times, so I’ll spare you the semantics, but the word “faith” as it is used in both the Old and the New Testament means “trust.” There are occasional contexts where the word means something a little different, but more often than not, that is what it means. Faith means trust and reliance. It means trustworthiness and assurance. It does not mean—as we so often use the word in modern society—believing in something. It does not mean having it all together, or knowing all of the things, or being 100% correct in one’s understanding of something. Faith really isn’t even about us. It’s about God. Faith is about a God who loves us completely and who can be completely and utterly trusted reaching out to us. Faith is about God’s faithfulness, which initiates a work of transformation in us that flows back out into the world—positively impacting us and others around us.
In a world where faith is defined incorrectly and where we are more apt to find faith in the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand than we are in the story of the Feeding of the Four Thousand, to reevaluate what faith is and what it means for us feels a little risky. It feels scary, even. It doesn’t feel right to exchange certainty for mystery. We might worry about what other people might think of us. Another one of the minefields of the world in which we are currently inhabiting is that so much of what we say and what we do is performative. In an attempt to correct a culture where so many people were refusing to combine faith and works, we’ve almost swung too far the other way. Everything is about doing, and nothing is about being. We have disconnected grace and faith and rest from our bodies and from our lives, and when we see others not doing as we have done, we grow resentful and suspicious. We judge them without knowing a single thing about them. It is almost a guarantee that those with whom we used to pass judgment will begin judging us if we decide to embrace God’s mystery and to let go. But what if we tried it anyway? What if we took the leap and got uncomfortable and allowed God to take the lead? What would happen to us? How would that impact others?
It kind of goes without saying that these are personal questions. Rather than answering them for you or offering up my very narrow interpretation of what God might be trying to say to you through these questions, I am simply asking you to consider them. I’m asking you to draw near to God and to maybe draw near to some others who are willing to listen, to discern, and to explore with you. I am asking you to pray, to feel, to think, and to try things out. You all know that preaching sermons where I tell people what I think they ought to be doing is not my style. Actually, based on the definition of faith that I just harped on about, for me to do so would be unfaithful. But I do like to imagine and to allow myself to get caught up in the wonder and in the awe of the possibilities. I like to bask in the glow of the gifts that God has to give to us, so I have some ideas. Take them or leave them—whatever is fine—but I’d like to at least offer them up so that they can be companions for the journey.
So, maybe uncurling our fists and letting go of some of our certainty and righteousness would make us easier to be around. And lest anyone thinks that being easy to be around isn’t important, or that it’s just giving into culture or whatever else Christians like to tell ourselves, I can tell you—because of experience—that it is important, and that it is not a cop-out. We can’t love people when we are constantly trying to bend their will or trying to save them or trying to be their bosses. We can’t experience meaningful relationships with others when we behave like this, because people don’t offer up their whole selves to people who belittle them. We can’t help to build the Kingdom of God. We can’t make peace or fight for justice or do whatever else it is that we are called or compelled to do. Holistic well-being and even survival itself directly correlates with our own willingness to love and to be loved. We can’t be jerks if we want to be the people who we were created to be. Brokenness doesn’t make for whole people.
Perhaps changing how we “do” faith could be permission to rest. Again, I can tell you because of experience that thinking that we are the only possible people who can be right or who know what’s going on or who can solve a problem is a death sentence. It burns us out. It strips away the dignity of others because we are not allowing them to be the people who they were created to be. Nobody can do it all. Nobody should do it all. Sometimes, random people in the crowd are supposed to be the ones who provide a little bit of food, and Jesus is supposed to bless it and multiply it. If we stop wrestling with God and with everyone else for control, we will find the rest and the peace that we all need.
Maybe allowing God to be God and learning to rely on God could open our eyes up to beauty. Over the past few years, finding joy and beauty has become extremely important to me. I know what it is like to live without joy, and if you want to take me back, you’ll have to take me back kicking and screaming. But what I’ve discovered is that when we are walking around thinking that we’ve got it all figured out and that we know exactly what’s going to happen next, that’s when we miss the grace that exists all around us. We don’t see the dandelion growing up through the crack in the sidewalk. We don’t see the breathtaking sunset. We don’t notice that weird, hilarious thing that the dog did. We don’t hear laughter or simply remember to be grateful in the present moment. We don’t realize that getting to be alive and getting to live here is a miracle beyond miracles and an incredible gift. We get lost in trying to solve life instead of living it. Trusting God could enable us to actually live. It could steer us into wholeness.
Perhaps the release would make way for the things that we thought were just pipe dreams to actually happen. It could make the type of community renewal that is born of cooperation possible. It could result in new, beautiful relationships. It could create incredible opportunities. It could set Jesus up to miraculously feed thousands of people!! Maybe that sounds cheesy, but you understand what I mean. Taking our will out of the equation can be a beautiful, beautiful thing. It can make the world a better place.
And maybe—last, but not least—changing our approach to faith could take the pressure off for everyone. Maybe it could teach us how to be human again. It could teach us how to trust each other. It could enable us to give one another the benefit of the doubt. It could take judgment and criticism off the table. I am not naïve enough to think that we would all suddenly just get over our issues and hold hands and sing “Kumbaya” but taking the pressure off would go such a long way. It would bind us together in love—bringing us closer to the world that God is actively creating, with our help.
I ask you again, Friends—what if we embraced God’s mystery? What if we sidled up the Divine unknown? What if we all sighed a big sigh of surrender and opened up our hands? What if we took a step without knowing what was out in front of us? What if we allowed God to be God and permitted God to teach us and to show us who He is and what He’s up to? What if we truly became people of faith?
May God guide us and transform us. May God break through our pride and our fear. May God unknot our ropes and loosen our grip for us when we cannot bear to let go. We God turn us into people who respond with questions rather than with answers. May God open up our locked-up, captive hearts, and attune them to His love and grace.
Amen.
Ada Chapel Friends Meeting 