Disciple – The Fish and the Loaves

“The Fish and the Loaves” — sermon by Caleb Campbell, February 22, 2022
Good morning, church. My name is Caleb and I serve as one of the pastors here at Desert Springs. Today we’re going to continue in a series from the Gospel of Mark. We’re going to be in Mark Chapter 6, and I and encourage you to turn there. If you are joining us in person, I believe you guys should have received a handout with the text. If you want a print Bible and you’re in the room, there are some available for you on the table in the back. If you don’t own a Bible, grab one of those as our gift to you. For those of you joining us online, if you have a print Bible, I want to encourage you to grab that and open up to Mark Chapter 6. If you don’t have one, no problem. Just go to bible.com. We’re using the Christian Standard version of the Bible
Today before we get into our time together in the text, I want to give you a heads up on an opportunity for those of you that are married to invest in your marriage, We have a marriage workshop coming up on the 25th and 26th We’re bringing in some heavy hitters for this, like professional-level counselors, to come and give us some tools to invest in our marriages. Maybe you’ve been married for a little while now, and you notice that you keep talking about the same thing over and over. And it’s like we’re not making progress. Or maybe there’s just this general sense, like “We need to talk. We need to figure this out, but we don’t feel like we have the tools to do that.“ This marriage workshop would be an excellent opportunity to invest in your marriage.
So here’s the deal: If you think about ways that you can invest in your marriage — and there are a lot of different ways to do it — but here’s a scale just to help us understand what this would be like. If over here you’ve got reading a book together on marriage — which is great, glad for you guys to do that — and then all the way over here on the other side is consistent weekly time with a professional counselor. This workshop is kind of in the middle, leading a little bit this way. These are going to be professional counselors who are going to give us specific tools and then coach us in a safe environment. We won’t have to do group share and stuff like that. It will be a safe environment where we can get some practical tools and some guidance on navigating those issues in our marriage. I want to encourage you to take advantage of that. If you received that handout, the link should be on the back. And for those joining us online, if you go to DSBC dot church up at the top, there’s a link to events and then navigate to the marriage workshop
Now, as part of our gatherings, each week we’ve been tethering ourselves to the ancient tradition of listening to the Word spoken and then kind of digesting it together. And so I’m going to read here in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6, verse 30 and on. I’m going to ask you just for a moment if you would just allow yourself to hear the Word spoken over you. If it’s helpful to close your eyes, just allow the Word to be spoken, receive it, and then to be attentive to whatever the Spirit might be doing as you hear the Word. Maybe images are coming to your mind. Maybe a word? You’ll hang onto or a phrase and just allow your imagination to be present in that space, and let the Word come alive to you this morning.
By the way, to best of my understanding, the Scriptures were primarily artistically designed to be heard more than read. No problem reading it– I love reading the Bible. We’re going to read a bunch of it today, but we also recognize that there’s some artistry to it. So, when we hear it, sometimes things pop out more. Also, sometimes when we’re allowed to just to hear the Word, our imagination can kind of paint some of that picture for us.
Today is kind of a famous passage. It’s a famous moment in the teaching of Jesus. Some of you guys maybe have heard this story before, but I believe that it will be helpful to us today. This is the Gospel Mark, chapter 6, verse 30 and on.
“Now the apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to Him all that they had done and taught. And He said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a remote place, and rest for a while.’ For many people were coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. So they went away in the boat by themselves to a remote place. But many saw them leaving and recognized them, and they ran on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.
When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd and had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then He began to teach them many things. When it grew late, His disciples approached Him and said, ‘This place is deserted, and it is already late. Send them away so that they can go into the surrounding countryside and villages to buy themselves something to eat.’
‘You give them something to eat,’ He responded. They said to Him, ‘Should we go and buy 200 denari worth of bread and give them something to eat?’ He asked them, ‘How many loaves do you have? Go and see.’
When they found out, they said five loaves of bread and two fish. Then He instructed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and 50s. He took the five loaves and the two fish and, looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke the loaves. He kept giving them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. Everyone ate and was satisfied. They picked up 12 baskets full of pieces of bread and fish. And now those who had eaten the loaves were 5000 men.” This is the word of the Lord.
One of the things that I want to notice here is … did you guys recognize what’s going on here? Is this famous? This is like the story we tell our kids — feeding 5000 people. If you search a list of like greatest hits, this story is on it, right? Maybe you didn’t grow up going to church. Maybe you’re still trying to figure out who Jesus. Even outside of church settings, this story is still kind of a popular.
This is a miracle of Jesus, and there’s more to it than meets the eye. I hope to dive into some of that with you today. But the first thing I want to note is that this is something a statement that we kind of started saying at Desert Springs last fall. And that is that one of the things that we’re all about as a church family is that we strive to help people be with Jesus, think like Jesus, and love like Jesus. I just want to notice when I call these out because this is core to our church family. We are striving to help people … what’s the first thing? Be with Jesus. Everybody says be with Jesus. OK, be with Jesus, think like Jesus and love like Jesus.
To be with Jesus. And the reason I want to notice that is because as a church family, we are committed to being with Jesus. That comes from, among others, a text like this — where the first thing Jesus does is to advise His disciples to be with Him. One of the key things throughout this series is that we’re talking about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Well, to be a disciple is not just to be a follower or a learner. It’s not just someone who’s going to think like Jesus or someone who’s going to put love into action like Jesus. It’s also someone who’s going to have a relationship with Jesus. This is why we don’t call ourselves students of a teacher, but rather we are disciples of Jesus. Because we believe that there’s a relationship with Jesus.
Now we are coming up on a season leading up to Easter. In many church traditions there is a season that’s practiced, called Lent. For those of you who grew up in a religious tradition that that was more liturgical, you might be familiar with Lent. Lent is generally of the 40 days leading up to Easter. It usually starts on what is commonly referred to as Ash Wednesday. It’s a season of preparation. It’s a season of lamentation. It’s a season of confession. It’s intentionally designed as a season in which we give up some things. We maybe engage in acts of generosity and service, but it’s a focused season in anticipation for the celebration of Easter, where we intentionally dive deeper into being with Jesus.
I believe Jesus calls us to be with Him all the time, but Lent is a season where we can lead up to Easter. And so I just want to encourage you. You are, maybe, wondering what’s a way to put this into practice. Our friend Ted Wisti, who’s served as a pastor here in Phoenix for many years and is the leader of the Spiritual Formation Society of Arizona, has written “Trusting God in the Wilderness, which is a daily Lenten guide. It’ll take you through Lent up to Good Friday, and we’ve got these available for you at the Info Center. If you guys want to grab some of these, here’s my encouragement. If you’ve never done anything for Lent before, don’t worry.
This guide is worth a try. It’s fresh. It’s a discipline to go through. Each day has a guided prayer, a guided thought, some guiding Scripture where you can kind of center yourself. And again, just saying I’m going to invest in my being with Jesus in this season and it kind of gets us to into what’s usually referred to as Holy Week, which is kind of the week leading up to Easter. Here at Desert Springs, we’re going to have some time on Palm Sunday, which is the Sunday before Easter. And then Good Friday, which is the Friday before Easter and then on Easter, where we’re going to call some of this material into activity corporately as a church family.
I’d encourage you again, you can grab that at the info booth on your way out. If you have another Lenten guide or another practice that you do, we’re not trying to prescribe this for you. But we did just want to make that available to you. Our friend Ted has given that guide to make available to y’all. So I’m going to highly recommend that.
OK, so this idea of being with Jesus … The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported him all that they had done … , *** TV timeout …
*** I serve as your pastor and I gotta tell you guys, I love you guys so much and I am I just I wanted to take a moment. I listened to my last couple of sermons and I recognized that I go really fast. And I get all excited, and my eyes glaze over and roll into the back of my head and I just start yelling and pointing stuff out. And that’s probably not going to change. The reason I want to pause is to say I just really appreciate you guys and your exceptional grace and long suffering in this. I hope you guys are having as much fun going through this series as I am. There’s so much cool stuff here. I get all jazzed, and you don’t want to be here for four hours. Neither do I, and so sometimes I go fast. I know I’m going to try to slow down. I’m working on it. It’s one of my besetting sins.
It’s not likely to happen anytime soon, so we make our sermons available online. You can visit those. So if I if I say something or we missed something, we make those available online at DSBC dot church. Also, we have a woman in our congregation whose ministry is to transcribe the sermons and point out to me all my grammatical mistakes and all of the way in which I could really improve on American English. But she is awesome. Those are transcribed online, so you can search the whole sermon, which is a huge gift to me, at least, and it might be to you, as well. So I just want to make sure that you guys know that’s available. We also have it on our podcast, so and on the podcast you can slow it down. You can go to 50% speed and then, and we’ll see. Maybe we’ll put in a laugh track too, so the jokes actually land. ***
Let’s go back to noticing. Notice that the apostles gather around Jesus and reported to him what they all that they had done and taught. If you remember last week last, Jesus sends out his disciples to go and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, to cast out demons and to heal people — which is living and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom.
Then there’s this really bizarre interlude. If you weren’t with us last week, go back and listen to this sermon. There’s this really bizarre interlude with King Herod beheading John the Baptist at a party. So King Herod is hosting a party, everyone is lit up — I’m not trying to say that this is good. In fact, this is really bad — but his daughter-in-law comes in and dances for everybody. I think he gets seduced. He’s so entranced by her that he promises her up to half of his kingdom. She goes back and asks her mom. And her mom says, bring John the Baptist — who is Jesus’s cousin — bring John the Baptist’s head on a platter to me. And they do it. At Herod’s dinner party — all the military commanders, the political leadership, the wealthy and affluent, they’re all there. The wine is flowing. There’s opulence and affluence, and there’s also this sensuality. And then there’s this murder at Herod’s meal. You guys remember that?
And then the apostles come back, right? So in verse 30 the apostles gathered around Jesus, reporting him all that they had done. Jesus sends them out. You get this? You get this? There’s John the Baptist’s beheading, and then the next day all we know about the apostles is that they come back and they’re reporting all that they had done. If you’re one of the disciples, are you feeling pretty good? You had a successful round of ministry. You were like Jesus. Man, it was awesome. Like “John did this and Philip did this, and I was preaching, and we cast out this demon named Jim. We had a miracle, and it was awesome Jesus, right?” So they report back to Jesus all that they had done and taught.
Jesus said to them, what? Come away by yourselves to a remote place. Notice that what kind of place — a remote place –and what? Rest for a while. Does that sound nice? Rest for a while with Jesus. Notice that Jesus says, come and be with me. That’s why, as a church family, we want to lead with being with Jesus, right? No matter who you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going, Jesus welcomes you and He wants you to be with Him.
Now many people were coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. So here are these disciples. They’ve just come back from this successful ministry trip, and all these people are crowding around Jesus. Do you see it? So much so that they can’t even what? Can’t even eat, right? Are there a lot of people crowding around Him? Yep, it’s busy, right? Notice Jesus leaves the tyranny of the urgent to spend time with His disciples, and He calls them to follow Him, as well, right? So they went away in the boat by themselves to a remote place. What kind of place is remote in the in ancient Near East area like around Galilee? Desert, wilderness, right? OK, go get a map and look for remote places.
If we were to go find a remote place, what type of a place would we be in? Kind of a wilderness, right? OK, you guys got it. So they go away to a what kind of a place? A remote place. But many saw them leaving, and recognizing Him, they ran on foot. They should have signed up for the World Vision Marathon if they got this kind of energy. Notice where they are running on foot from. All of the towns, right? These people are coming from everywhere, right? So again, if you’ve been following along with this for the last few weeks in this study of Mark, notice how big the crowd is getting. Every week the crowd goes from a little small group of people … and then it’s bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And now the crowd is coming from where? All of the towns, right?
OK, they arrived ahead of Jesus and his disciples. You’re one of the row-row-row-your-boat disciples, right? You’ve just had an exhausting season of ministry. Jesus says, let’s go away to a remote place and be together and rest and you’re like thank you Jesus, that sounds wonderful. And you’re just rowing, when out of the corners of your eyes, you see all these people. “Man, this vacation is gonna suck.”
When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd of people. What was Jesus feeling towards them? Yeah, in my studies the word is compassionate, which gets translated as compassion. It only gets used of Jesus in the New Testament, at least in the Gospels. Jesus has this … it actually kind of gets to His guts. Right, He just has this compassion for them. Why? Because they were like sheep without a shepherd. They’re lost. Where are they? Wilderness, OK. And the disciples are trying to spend some time with Jesus. They see that Jesus sees all these people. Jesus has compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Two things about that, and both of them are just fun.
First, I think I have an unhealthy hobby. Can I tell you guys my unhealthy hobby? I think it’s unhealthy, ’cause it’s probably not safe. My unhealthy hobby is to take pictures of bumper stickers or the backs of vehicles with bumper stickers that have God talk on it or Jesus talk on it, and then things that I think are contrary to Jesus. You guys with me so far? Now, some of us are like, “Oh, he’s talking about the back of my car.” I don’t know. They are anonymous. I’m not going to pull anybody’s picture up, and I’m certainly not trying to shame anybody. I’m just trying to understand.
I’ll give you an example. You see the back of the car and it’s like, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart”, and then “Expletive the president.” The reason I take pictures is that I’m trying to make sense of it. How do these two things fit together? How do how does following Jesus lead one to say, “I follow Jesus” and also “expletive the president?” And again, it doesn’t matter who the President is. I’m just trying to make sense of like how these things fit together. Or “Peace be upon thee” and then “Nuke them.”
One of the stickers that I’ve seen recently was something intimating that Christians should be lions, not sheep. I quickly got my phone out. I’m driving around in my car. Please don’t do this. Please don’t do this. I’m following this person around. Slow down please. Oh, no, it’s OK. I’m a pastor. Here’s why I wanted a picture of it. Because I don’t understand. I’m trying to understand because all throughout your Scripture, especially in the teachings of Jesus, the followers of Jesus are called, not lions, but sheep. Here you have sheep without shepherd. It’s a consistent theme in Scripture.
Here’s the other thing, too. I hear like language like, “Don’t be a sheeple.” Right, don’t be sheeple. I think I understand where that’s coming from. But I just want to say that if you think you’re not following somebody, you’re fooling yourself. We’re all following somebody. And for me and mine, I’m going to follow the dude who said He was going to die and rise from the grave and pulled it off. I think His way is better than the other way. I’m a sheep of the Good Shepherd who laid His life down, then by the power of God, rose from the grave, conquering over Satan, sin and death. I’m proud to be one of His sheep, and I’m going to follow Him wherever He leads. I’m gonna try to, at least. That’s what it means to follow Jesus, to follow the Good Shepherd.
If and when you might be listening to someone else, you’re your own shepherd. They’re your shepherd — the ones who have taken your money and your clicks, telling you that you’re not a sheeple, you’re separate. Look to the one who gave His life for you. He’s not asking for your likes, your clicks, or your money. He gave you His life for you. OK, alright. Oh, I’m preaching. Sorry. OK, here we go.
Sheep without a shepherd would have been the original translation. Here’s a highly political military phrase. We see it throughout the ancient areas, especially in Judaism. It was it was a way to talk about leaders of uprisings who would rise up against Rome. That would be the sheep. Excuse me, they would be the shepherd of the sheep who were without a shepherd. So the region of Galilee, which is where this is taking place, was a haven for zealots. These were people who wanted to use military force to kill the Romans and reestablish their country and their people. So this language would have had huge military and political overtones. “Oh, he’s getting political.” Yes, hi.
The entire gospel of Mark is radically political. I just want to just want to prove it to you, just quickly. Have you guys heard of Good Friday? OK, on Good Friday, when they are mocking Jesus before they crucify Him, what do they put on His head? A crown. When they crucify Him, what do they say? “Here is the king.” It’s all throughout your Scriptures. It’s all throughout the gospel. The Gospel of Mark is radically political, but not in the way you think. It’s surprising. It’s subversive. It’s radically political, in a way that we have to kind of rethink all of our categories, which means it’s working.
OK, then He began to teach them many things. Does Mark tell us what He teaches them? Once again, Mark just says He teaches them. He teaches them many things. When it grew late, His disciples approached Him and said, “Send them away so that they can go in the surrounding countryside and villages to buy themselves something to eat.” Is that a just normal thing for these guys to say? This is super-normal. “Jesus, it’s late. We’re in the wilderness. People get hungry at dinnertime. Send them away to eat some food.”
Now notice how Jesus forces the problem. He could have legitimately said, “Quite right. Send them away. We’ll see you guys tomorrow.” He could have easily done that. Notice Jesus forces the problem. I love this. The feeding of the 5000 is an unnecessary miracle. It’s not necessary. They could have handled it another way. But Jesus didn’t want to do that. He wanted to do it a fresh way. OK, let’s take a look. I love this.
What does Jesus say to his disciples? “You give them something to eat.” Now if you’re one of His disciples, where did you just get back from? Touring around, casting out demons, healing people, and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. So Jesus may be expecting them to be in that frame of mind. But what frame of mind are they in? They said to Him, “Should we go and buy 200 denaris worth of bread and give them something to eat?” By the way, 200, denaris, that’s a lot of money, right? They’re like, “Jesus, you want us to go spend a lot of money again? There are more than 5000 people here. We gotta give them something to eat.” Is that a natural response. Their frame of mind is still in human-oriented pragmatism.
But what Jesus wants to do is something greater. Jesus wants to do something bigger. Jesus wants to show off the Kingdom in a different way than just to go and spend money to solve the problem. So sometimes in our scarcity — hold on, zoom in on me here — sometimes in our scarcity, God wants to do a work to show that He can move mountains even with meager means. Sometimes we’re worried about the money, and He is concerned about our faithfulness.
Here we go. “Do you want us to go spend a bunch of money? Give them some news?” He asked them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.“ OK, Jesus. So they go and survey thousands of people. When they found out they said five loaves of bread and two fish. There was a number. Seven 5 + 2 = 7. Yeah, and seven is a recurring theme in the Bible. It’s a number of perfection. Like how many days are there in a week — 1234567? Weird. OK, so five and two. Then he instructed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. Where are they? Oh, I love this. Oh, my goodness, the plot thickens. Where are they? They’re in the wilderness. In Phoenix, aside from spring after a heavy rain or maybe after a monsoon, when you go out in the wilderness, do you see fields of green grass that could house 15,000 people? Like this isn’t like a “Sound of Music” area, is it? That’s Austria? Fields of green grass, right? Strange.
Everyone just zoom in on this and ask how there is so much green grass for 15,000 people to sit. By the way, I’m getting 15,000 ’cause the 5000 was just the dudes. So if you count just one woman and one child, you get to 15,000. It could be upwards of 20-25 thousand people. How are you seeing that many people in a remote area on green grass? Hmm, interesting ….
So they sat down in groups of hundreds and 50s. Now why do you think we get the detail that they sat down in groups of hundreds of 50s? Have you guys ever heard of the term, a cover song or a cover band? What’s a cover song or a cover band? A cover song is when a band today does in their own way an old band song, right? So, let’s say you’re kicking around Desert Ridge on a Friday night and you’re thinking about the song “Stairway to Heaven.” You’re just walking around with that song in the back of your mind and then you walk past a band, and it’s a bluegrass band. You tell your wife, “Let’s leave, please.” But she makes you stay and then you fight about it. And now you’re signed up for the marriage workshop that’s coming up. I’m sorry, I’m projecting. OK, so you stay and there’s another band of a different genre and you hear the progression of notes. And suddenly, you’re tuned into the fact that, they’re doing a cover of “Stairway to Heaven.” It’s similar, but it’s different, right? The new artists are adding their own flair. They’re adding their own piece. They’re using what is old and they’re refreshing it and making it new for a new purpose for a new moment. Right?
Is it a cover band? Most of your New Testament is just cover songs of your Old Testament. Most of the material in the New Testament is just New Testament authors riffing on what you find in your Old Testament, and I’d like to just prove you one in just one little example, one little moment.
Has there ever been a time where a massive people have been out in the wilderness, hungry, not knowing where they’re going to get their food? And then they get separated into groups of like thousands, five-hundreds, hundreds, and 50s? Does that ever happen in your Bible? Yes, it does. In the Book of Exodus, when Moses, who was one of the great leaders of Israel, when he leads God’s people out of captivity in Egypt and leads them to the promised land, they spent about 40 years wandering in the wilderness. They don’t have food to eat. Moses even asked, “How am I going to feed all these people?”
And God says that He’s going to send manna every day. So they would go out every morning and they would pick up a bread-like substance — you know, kind of like “give us this day our daily bread” — and so God provided day by day the needs of the people. But there’s this other scene where Moses was trying to lead all the people by himself. And his father-in-law, Jethro, comes to him and says, “You’re dumb. Stop trying to do that. You’re a limited person. You need to lead through other people. And so he divides the people into groups very similar to this. Notice what Jesus is doing to his disciples. Separate the people into these manageable groups and then you go lead them. Did you notice that Jesus is not directly feeding all of these groups of people, but He’s doing it through His disciples. He is mirroring Moses. Do you see? This is a cover song.
Something else is going on here, too. Oh, my goodness, I love this. OK, here we go. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and 50s. He took the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke the loaves. Who did he give the loaves to? He gave the food to His disciples to set before the people. Notice it goes from Jesus to disciples to the people. Do you see it right? Similar to Moses, OK?
Communion is something that we do frequently here at Desert Springs. It’s a moment to remember. Sometimes we call it Eucharist, which just means Thanksgiving or Lord’s table, the Lord’s supper, communion. We take of bread and the fruit of the vine, and we remember the broken body, the shed blood of Jesus. We take that from a few texts in Scripture, but one of them is Mark Chapter 14, where Jesus initiates this at the Passover for his disciples. He gives them the bread. He gives them the wine, and I just want to notice something here that he blessed broke and gave, which are the same words that are going to be used in Mark Chapter 14. When he blesses, breaks, and gives of the bread to his disciples at Communion — OK, this is my conjecture, but I’m right. This is just my opinion, but if you disagree with me, you’re wrong. All right, it is really just my opinion. I think what Mark is doing is he’s tethering the provision of God as on full display with the manna to the chosen people through Moses. He’s tethering that to this scene, and he’s tethering it to what’s going to come in Mark Chapter 14, which is the Lord’s table. Here’s why I think he’s doing that.
How much life does Jesus have to give? How much life does Jesus have to give? Is it limited or abundant? Is it finite or infinite? How about right? So just notice that at communion, we take of and we remember the bread of life broken for us. I think I’m actually going to start crying here in a minute. I think this is such a beautiful image of what Jesus is up to. Did Jesus have to do this to feed the people? He’s trying to do something bigger. Oh, my goodness. OK, watch this. He kept giving food to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided two fish among them. Everyone ate and was what? Satisfied. Was anyone hungry at Jesus’s table? In the Kingdom of God, is anyone hungry?
OK, let’s remember that, especially next week. By the way, y’all gotta come back. Next week, next week, you gotta be here. That’s all I’m going to say. You gotta be here next week. Just remember that for next week. Do people go hungry in the Kingdom of God? No. Everyone ate, and they picked up 12 baskets full of pieces of bread and fish. How much does Jesus have to give? Just enough or abundance? Just an abundance or a super-abundance. Does he not give enough to where these people can actually take what is leftover or what didn’t get eaten and take it and distribute it in their towns? How much life does Jesus have to give? Now hang with me here. They picked up 12 baskets full of pieces of bread and fish. Now those who had eaten the loaves were 5000 men. Again, that’s where we got the number where I’m getting 15,000 or 20,000. Everyone ate and was satisfied.
*** OK, time out. Do you remember last week we had a meal. It was not Jesus’s meal. Whose meal was it? It was Herod’s meal. Who got invited? The military powers, right? The affluent. Only those who were important according to this world’s standards got invited to Herod’s meal. And at Herod’s meal there was lots of bread and meat, and certainly the wine was flowing. But there is also this, this deceitful, essentially deceitfulness, that was at work. Even Herod was drunk and brimming with sensuality. He promised half of his Kingdom and what ended up being demanded him was the life of John the Baptist. And so, how did Herod’s meal end? In life or death? I think Mark is intentionally juxtaposing these two feasts.
In Herod, we see how in the kingdoms of this world people treat one another, how they treat their resources, how they expect God to behave — which in Herod’s mind is not at all. And yet in Jesus’s Kingdom and the Kingdom of God, everyone ate and was satisfied. By the way, who got invited to Jesus’s feast? It was just the disciples at first, but then thousands upon thousands of people came running towards Jesus. And you know who Jesus said no to. Nobody who wanted to follow him. Herod’s gates were locked. Jesus doesn’t even have a palace. So when we take of communion — hang with me here — we’re tethering it to that ancient understanding of God’s providing His daily bread for the people in Egypt. We’re seeing on full display that Jesus has plenty to give.
And He uses His disciples to hand it out, do you notice it? So we’re going to take communion. Would please take your communion elements from the back of the seat in front of you, if you’d like to take communion with this today. I might ask my man Javier to join me up here. He’s one of our pastors in residence, or pastoral residents, who’s doing a great job.
And for those of you that are joining us online, if you would please grab some elements that would represent the body and blood of Jesus. And if you’d please open the elements so we can dispense with this cellophane symphony. I just want to draw our attention here. We’re going to put ourselves in that space of the disciples, recognizing that every time Jesus hands us the bread, there’s more than enough to go around. Every time Jesus gives life, there’s plenty of life to go around.
I’m going to read in English. Javier is going to read in Spanish. We’re going to read the text in Mark Chapter 14. We’re going to tether this text that we were just reading. Notice what Jesus does with the bread, and then we’re going to pause. And I’m going to ask you to consider this question: What does it mean for you to be with Jesus, knowing that He loves you more than you could ever imagine. He knows you inside and out. And He calls you to Himself. What does it mean for you to be with Jesus even in this moment?
And then I’ll come back and I’ll lead us in the taking of communion together. So let’s read. “As they were eating, He took bread, blessed and broke it gave it to them and said, “Take it, this is my body.”
And He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.”
Just take a moment to reflect on that night Jesus was betrayed. He took bread and He broke it. Giving it to His disciples, He said, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Would you take and eat?
And in the same way He took of the cup saying, “This is my blood, poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Will you take and drink?
Before I pray and conclude, I want to ask you to pause for a moment and to consider this: When Jesus gives the bread, there’s always more to give. And He uses his followers like you and me to be the distributors of that bread.
And so would you just take a moment and ask the Lord what it would look like for you to be a distributor of the bread to those in your life? Maybe even if there’s someone that He’s bringing to mind right now who needs to hear this truth. Would you take a moment?
May we be a people who recognize that there is always more to give. Do you remember the green grass? Isn’t it strange that there’s so much green grass available? It seems quite rare. In fact, most of the commentators note that it is really out of place for there to be that amount of green grass available for that size of a group in that region. And yet Mark notes it. It’s almost like the goodness of the Kingdom of God was just sprouting up out of the ground for that moment.
It could also be that Mark had this in mind when he recorded it for us. Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need. He lets me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the quiet waters. He renews my life. He leads me along the right path for His namesake. Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me, in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life. I will dwell in the House of the Lord.”
Let this be our prayer and live in light of this truth. We’ll see you guys next week. ###