Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
A lot happens in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark: Jesus is rejected in his hometown, he sends the twelve on mission, John the Baptist is beheaded, Jesus feeds the five thousand and he walks on water to comfort his companions.
These are all major events in Jesus’ earthly ministry, so much so that today’s gospel seems pale in comparison. But these less dramatic passages tell us very much indeed about the nature of God in Jesus, Son of Man.
I think that today’s reading though, serves in an important way to advance one of Mark’s central concerns; the establishment of the kingdom of God in this Jesus.
And, by extension, how it comes about in individuals and parishes.
These verses emphasize Jesus’ identity as the true, divine shepherd, who will guide his sheep into this kingdom with compassion and gentleness.
Now throughout the gospels he does this through all sorts of healings, and through his teaching. Teaching to the crowd, to the disciples, and also most explosively to the temple leaders.
In our first passage today he teaches (vv. 30-34), in the second passage Jesus heals (vv.53-56).
It is through his teaching and healing the Kingdom of God is opened wide and people can see that it is good, and real, and genuine. Some believe and some take offense – remember there have been temple leaders wanting to kill Jesus since chapter 1!
There have also been temple leaders who were not offended and sought Jesus out for private tuition, like Nicodemus.
The first words that Jesus speaks in his ministry are of the nearness of the kingdom of God and the need for people to change the way they live, called repentance (Mark 1:14-15).
The people being taught and healed see that nearness in Jesus and react dramatically. Things happen quickly in Mark’s Gospel; one event follows quickly after another, it’s exhausting.
This ‘business’ is seen in today’s gospel. After the apostles relay to Jesus in Mark 6:30 “all they had done and taught” on their mission, he recognizes their need for rest.
He calls them to “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” for “they had no leisure even to eat” (v.31).
They cross the Sea of Galilee in a boat, but they do not get the rest that Jesus had prescribed for them, because many people “saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them” (v.33).
Similarly in the second passage today when they come back and reach land the people recognized Jesus “at once.”
And they “rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was” (vv.54, 55).
The urgency of the gospel and of the people’s need for it are really stark.
Several things are happening in vv. 30-34, each of which underscores Jesus’ identity as the true shepherd, the very inauguration of the divine kingdom. Seeing the great crowd, Jesus “had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (v.34).
Now in the wilderness, Moses asks God to appoint his successor, someone “who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the Lord may not be like sheep without a shepherd” (Numbers 27:17).
Like many of the usages of shepherd language in the Old Testament, here in Mark as well, the language of Jesus as shepherd serves as a scathing critique of Israel’s false leaders – who are often referred to as false shepherds
Ezekiel, e.g., example, blasts Israel’s kings for enriching themselves while ignoring the needs of the people. He writes, “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not the shepherds 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 ... and became food for all the wild animals” [as there was no shepherd] (Ezekiel 34:2b-5).
Today’s gospel follows on from last week’s reporting of the beheading of John the Baptist and serves as an indictment of Herod. The people of God have become precisely what Moses and Ezekiel warned against, sheep without a shepherd, weakened and scattered and vulnerable.
Meanwhile their “shepherd,” Herod, throws a banquet “for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee” (verse 21), at which he kills the herald of God’s coming kingdom.
The people are longing for, even literally chasing after, the true shepherd who will bring them into that kingdom.
Jesus, moved in compassion for these lost sheep, “began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). The food for which the people hunger is the very word of God, and in so feeding them Jesus shows himself to be a shepherd “after [God’s] own heart,” feeding God’s people “with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15).
What is more, he shows himself to be the divine shepherd, the very Son of God in whom the kingdom has come.
In Ezekiel, after rebuking the false shepherds of Israel, he prophesies that God himself will reclaim his flock and be their true shepherd. God says “I rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered.
“ ... I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and strong I will feed with justice!” (Ezekiel 34:12b, 16.)
All these things Jesus does and claims for himself. He claims the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophesy and says (my paraphrase)
, “the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to comfort all who mourn and to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes.” (Luke 4:18, Isaiah 61:1-3)
He both teaches that and does that.
These are the signs that Jesus is shepherding the people into God’s kingdom, and he will gather them from the “four winds, and from the ends of the earth” (Mark 13:27).
The healings that Jesus performs after the second sea crossing in today’s text point to how the coming of the kingdom of God upends all things.
When People heard Jesus was coming, the whole region brought their sick to where that thought he would be. They laid their sick in the market place so he could just walk by and all who touched the fringe of his cloak were healed.
By healing the sick, the weakest and most vulnerable members of a community, in the market places – the most public and commercial space there was, Jesus is saying that while the market places of the world may belong to the rich and powerful.
In the Kingdom of God, the commercial space is occupied by those with the least. He shows this now by first healing them in this same marketplace, and then teaching them later in the gospel that, “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mark 10:31).
The Kingdom of God is continually breaking into this age. As we spoke about a couple of weeks ago regarding Paul’s thorn in his side, it is when we acknowledge our weakness (i.e., Lord please heal me!) the Lord’s strength will be seen.
So we are allowed, encouraged, to call out to the Lord and say, ‘Lord, all that stuff I bought in the market place doesn’t work and cost me everything I had!’
How gracious is our Lord, to return to him takes a mere moment – “I sorry I looked there first, Father, forgive me.’ Just by doing that, Jesus then occupies what we have given him, immediately. Let me pray ...