Proper 11; Pentecost 10
Preaching
Preaching Mark's Gospel
A Narrative Approach
In her outline of Mark's Gospel, Mary Ann Tolbert presents Mark 6:35„8:21 as a unit of material. The next unit she identifies is 8:22-10:52. She suggests that both units of material can be read as the unfolding of the hardness of the hearts of the disciples. In the section of 6:35-8:21 Jesus feeds the multitudes two times (6:30-44; 8:1-9). Following each feeding story Jesus gets in the boat with his disciples (6:45-52; 8:14-21). (We have looked at these boat stories in chapter 14.) What we see in the flow of these stories is the hardening of the hearts of the disciples (Mark 6:52). The description of the disciples' hearts as being hardened fits Tolbert's assignment of the disciples as the rocky ground in Mark's version of the Parable of the Sower. (See also 8:17-21.)
Tolbert is convinced on these grounds that the hardening of the hearts of the disciples and the general blindness of the people to the true identity of Jesus begins to make it difficult for Jesus to perform miracles. Where there is no faith, Jesus cannot do the miraculous.
As the story of Jesus' rejection by his hometown and consequent inability to accomplish mighty works (6:1-6) makes clear, miracles in the Gospel are not signs to induce faith in unbelievers; they are, instead, the fruits of faith. Since faith is the prerequisite of miracle, as the disciples manifest deeper degrees of unfaith, Jesus encounters greater difficulty in performing mighty works. 1
There is some textual evidence for hardness of hearts and fewer miracles, but we would take a false theological turn if we were to accept Tolbert's thesis without reservation. Faith cannot be something that simply pre-exists as the good soil for the gospel. This seems to imply that faith is a kind of pre-existing human condition that we can produce by ourselves as we get ready to hear the gospel. It would be better to say, as has been said earlier, that faith arises at the intersection of the Sower's sown seed and the soil of human hearts. How that happens remains a mystery for us until this very day. We dwell here in the realm of the work of the Holy Spirit.
The text for this Sunday fits precisely the dictionary definition of the word pericope: "cutting all around." Today's text "cuts around" Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. The opening verses assigned for today indicate that Jesus had great compassion on the crowd. Jesus, that is, acted like a shepherd to people who were "like sheep without a shepherd." Israel had great traditions of the shepherd. In all three stories of the origin of David he is depicted as a shepherd boy: 1 Samuel 16:6-13 (v. 11); 14-23 (v. 19); 17:1-58 (v. 15). Psalm 23 and Ezekiel 34 present God as the Great Shepherd of Israel.
The assigned text then omits the story of Jesus feeding the Jewish multitude (6:35-44) and the second boat scene of Jesus with his disciples (6:45-52). The text concludes with verses 53-56, which are rather general descriptions of Jesus' ministry. What is omitted here is more important than what is retained! It is unfortunate that the lectionary omits Jesus' first feeding miracle. The lectionary also omits Jesus' second or Gentile feeding of the multitudes in 8:1-9. It is important to Mark to tell two feeding stories. It is important, therefore, for us to include them in our preaching of Mark's Gospel.
Feeding people with bread is a recurrent theme of the Bible's story of God's ways with humans. There are Old Testament stories that can be told in relation to God's feeding ways. In Exodus 16 we read the story of God feeding Israel with manna in the wilderness. There is also a story told about the prophet Elijah providing food for the widow at Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-16). Donald Juel cites the feeding done by Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42-44 as the most remarkable parallel to Mark's feeding stories. On the one hand, therefore, one can put the feeding miracles in biblical perspective by hearing them in connection with stories from the past.
On the other hand, one can put these miracles in perspective by hearing them in connection with the feeding that will follow. Hear Juel:
The string of verbs ("took bread ƒ blessed, broke, and gave") is identical to that in the account of the last meal (14:24). In the account of the feeding of the 4000 that follows in Mark 8:1-9, the sequence of verbs is the same, with the exception of the second, which is "give thanks" instead of "bless"„ the former being a term that has a special place in Christian eucharistic practice. 2
Commentators generally agree that the feeding story in Mark 6 is a feeding of Jewish people and the feeding of the multitude in Mark 8 is a feeding of Gentiles. After the first feeding miracle Jesus gets in the boat with the disciples and goes "ƒto the other side, to Bethsaida ƒ" (6:45). Mark 6:46 places Jesus in Gennesaret. In 7:24 Jesus moves to the region of Tyre and Sidon followed by a stay in the Decapolis, 7:31. Throughout this section, that is, Jesus is in the land of the Gentiles.
There have also been efforts to interpret the differing numbers of leftover loaves as signs of a Jewish and a Gentile feeding. The twelve baskets of leftovers (6:43) would symbolize Israel. There are seven baskets of leftovers in the second feeding (8:8). Some believe that seven is the number that symbolizes the Gentiles. It is a number of wholeness and universality. Other interpreters, however, discount these number theories. It would seem to make ultimate sense that Mark has told these stories to demonstrate that Jesus' ministry is for all people. Given the Old Testament stories that deal with feeding, it is probably not surprising that Mark uses this kind of story to symbolize that Jesus' ministry is, indeed, the "pentecost" of all humanity. There is mission in these stories!
There is also much blindness in these stories. As we have indicated, both feeding stories are followed by boat stories. Boats mean disciples. Boats mean that the disciples don't get it! Re-read those stories! Note, too, the reaction of the Pharisees to the feeding. They watch the feeding and immediately ask for a sign! This is comical when you hear the story told aloud orally. Two great feedings and the Pharisees ask for a sign. Two great feedings and the disciples are worried that they don't have enough to eat. They only have one loaf! (8:14, 16). Jesus' exasperation with the disciples is incredible. He pounds numbers at them. "How many leftovers were there?" They answer dutifully with the numbers but they still don't get it. "Do you have eyes and cannot see?" Jesus pleads. "Do you have ears and cannot hear?" (Remember the similarity to Mark 4:11-13!!) One thing is absolutely clear. For Pharisees and disciples alike, Jesus' great signs of feeding did not lead to faith. What does this mean for us?!
Homiletical Directions
We've put a lot of material together in our comments above which creates a great variety of story possibilities for preaching. Mark has only three stories that deal with bread. Jesus feeds two multitudes with bread and he breaks bread with his disciples on the Passover (Mark 14:22-25). This text, this institution of the Lord's Supper, will be part of a long text on Passion or Palm Sunday (Mark 14:1„15:47). What this normally means is that Mark's stories of Jesus and bread never get told! The lectionary accounts for this by including four Sundays on Jesus and bread from the Gospel of John! Still, Mark's story does not get told. This is a Sunday to do so.
Mark's bread stories can be told from one of two quite different perspectives. Story One would be the feeding story in Mark 6:35-44. In the telling of this story we might pick up the theme of manna in the wilderness. The God of the Bible is a God who provides bread for people. ("Give us this day our daily bread.") Bread, of course, is a universal symbol of a deep human need. Jesus provides for that need. Jesus is a Shepherd who takes great care of his flock!
Story Two would be the feeding story in 8:1-9. Set this story in its Gentile context so that the stories told together have about them the universal shape of the church's mission of bread! It will be important in the telling of both feedings to put an accent on the numbers. Those numbers become especially important in light of Jesus' conversation with his disbelieving disciples in 8:14-21.
Story Three can be a telling of the institution of the Lord's Supper from Mark 14. An important link between these bread stories is the reality that Jesus is concerned with our whole being. The Lord's Supper stands among us as a symbol that Christ is a Shepherd who feeds us body and spirit. The physicality of the bread in the supper needs to be linked with our need for physical bread. The bread and wine of the supper are symbols of our Shepherd's care for our many hungers. This way of telling these stories puts the emphasis on the initiative of God in reaching out to feed hungry people. That is a good gospel-centered reality to fix at the center of your sermon.
Readers of these pages will represent many denominations. Having told these bread stories, you have a wonderful opportunity to say some things about your church's understanding of this sacrament.
The telling of the bread stories in Mark 6 and 8 coupled with the institution of the Lord's Supper in Mark 14 can also focus on human faith in response to God's feeding. A first possible way of telling these stories is to put the accent on God's initiative. A second way of telling the stories would put the focus on human response to God's initiative. In the boat with Jesus after the first feeding miracle we discover that the disciples' hearts are hardened. After the feeding story in Mark 8 we hear the Pharisees asking for a sign. Somehow they missed the point! We all miss the point at times! And again Jesus gets in the boat with the disciples. He grills them about the numbers. Their hearts continue to be hardened.
The sermon can conclude with speculation about our response to the bread stories. Today it's our turn to be fed at the Shepherd's table. How shall we leave this table? Will our hearts be good soil or rocky ground? Flesh out this challenge to the members of your congregation in a manner that is appropriate to the understanding of faith in your theological tradition.
____________
1. Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), p. 180.
2. Donald H. Juel, Mark (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990), p. 98.
Tolbert is convinced on these grounds that the hardening of the hearts of the disciples and the general blindness of the people to the true identity of Jesus begins to make it difficult for Jesus to perform miracles. Where there is no faith, Jesus cannot do the miraculous.
As the story of Jesus' rejection by his hometown and consequent inability to accomplish mighty works (6:1-6) makes clear, miracles in the Gospel are not signs to induce faith in unbelievers; they are, instead, the fruits of faith. Since faith is the prerequisite of miracle, as the disciples manifest deeper degrees of unfaith, Jesus encounters greater difficulty in performing mighty works. 1
There is some textual evidence for hardness of hearts and fewer miracles, but we would take a false theological turn if we were to accept Tolbert's thesis without reservation. Faith cannot be something that simply pre-exists as the good soil for the gospel. This seems to imply that faith is a kind of pre-existing human condition that we can produce by ourselves as we get ready to hear the gospel. It would be better to say, as has been said earlier, that faith arises at the intersection of the Sower's sown seed and the soil of human hearts. How that happens remains a mystery for us until this very day. We dwell here in the realm of the work of the Holy Spirit.
The text for this Sunday fits precisely the dictionary definition of the word pericope: "cutting all around." Today's text "cuts around" Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. The opening verses assigned for today indicate that Jesus had great compassion on the crowd. Jesus, that is, acted like a shepherd to people who were "like sheep without a shepherd." Israel had great traditions of the shepherd. In all three stories of the origin of David he is depicted as a shepherd boy: 1 Samuel 16:6-13 (v. 11); 14-23 (v. 19); 17:1-58 (v. 15). Psalm 23 and Ezekiel 34 present God as the Great Shepherd of Israel.
The assigned text then omits the story of Jesus feeding the Jewish multitude (6:35-44) and the second boat scene of Jesus with his disciples (6:45-52). The text concludes with verses 53-56, which are rather general descriptions of Jesus' ministry. What is omitted here is more important than what is retained! It is unfortunate that the lectionary omits Jesus' first feeding miracle. The lectionary also omits Jesus' second or Gentile feeding of the multitudes in 8:1-9. It is important to Mark to tell two feeding stories. It is important, therefore, for us to include them in our preaching of Mark's Gospel.
Feeding people with bread is a recurrent theme of the Bible's story of God's ways with humans. There are Old Testament stories that can be told in relation to God's feeding ways. In Exodus 16 we read the story of God feeding Israel with manna in the wilderness. There is also a story told about the prophet Elijah providing food for the widow at Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-16). Donald Juel cites the feeding done by Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42-44 as the most remarkable parallel to Mark's feeding stories. On the one hand, therefore, one can put the feeding miracles in biblical perspective by hearing them in connection with stories from the past.
On the other hand, one can put these miracles in perspective by hearing them in connection with the feeding that will follow. Hear Juel:
The string of verbs ("took bread ƒ blessed, broke, and gave") is identical to that in the account of the last meal (14:24). In the account of the feeding of the 4000 that follows in Mark 8:1-9, the sequence of verbs is the same, with the exception of the second, which is "give thanks" instead of "bless"„ the former being a term that has a special place in Christian eucharistic practice. 2
Commentators generally agree that the feeding story in Mark 6 is a feeding of Jewish people and the feeding of the multitude in Mark 8 is a feeding of Gentiles. After the first feeding miracle Jesus gets in the boat with the disciples and goes "ƒto the other side, to Bethsaida ƒ" (6:45). Mark 6:46 places Jesus in Gennesaret. In 7:24 Jesus moves to the region of Tyre and Sidon followed by a stay in the Decapolis, 7:31. Throughout this section, that is, Jesus is in the land of the Gentiles.
There have also been efforts to interpret the differing numbers of leftover loaves as signs of a Jewish and a Gentile feeding. The twelve baskets of leftovers (6:43) would symbolize Israel. There are seven baskets of leftovers in the second feeding (8:8). Some believe that seven is the number that symbolizes the Gentiles. It is a number of wholeness and universality. Other interpreters, however, discount these number theories. It would seem to make ultimate sense that Mark has told these stories to demonstrate that Jesus' ministry is for all people. Given the Old Testament stories that deal with feeding, it is probably not surprising that Mark uses this kind of story to symbolize that Jesus' ministry is, indeed, the "pentecost" of all humanity. There is mission in these stories!
There is also much blindness in these stories. As we have indicated, both feeding stories are followed by boat stories. Boats mean disciples. Boats mean that the disciples don't get it! Re-read those stories! Note, too, the reaction of the Pharisees to the feeding. They watch the feeding and immediately ask for a sign! This is comical when you hear the story told aloud orally. Two great feedings and the Pharisees ask for a sign. Two great feedings and the disciples are worried that they don't have enough to eat. They only have one loaf! (8:14, 16). Jesus' exasperation with the disciples is incredible. He pounds numbers at them. "How many leftovers were there?" They answer dutifully with the numbers but they still don't get it. "Do you have eyes and cannot see?" Jesus pleads. "Do you have ears and cannot hear?" (Remember the similarity to Mark 4:11-13!!) One thing is absolutely clear. For Pharisees and disciples alike, Jesus' great signs of feeding did not lead to faith. What does this mean for us?!
Homiletical Directions
We've put a lot of material together in our comments above which creates a great variety of story possibilities for preaching. Mark has only three stories that deal with bread. Jesus feeds two multitudes with bread and he breaks bread with his disciples on the Passover (Mark 14:22-25). This text, this institution of the Lord's Supper, will be part of a long text on Passion or Palm Sunday (Mark 14:1„15:47). What this normally means is that Mark's stories of Jesus and bread never get told! The lectionary accounts for this by including four Sundays on Jesus and bread from the Gospel of John! Still, Mark's story does not get told. This is a Sunday to do so.
Mark's bread stories can be told from one of two quite different perspectives. Story One would be the feeding story in Mark 6:35-44. In the telling of this story we might pick up the theme of manna in the wilderness. The God of the Bible is a God who provides bread for people. ("Give us this day our daily bread.") Bread, of course, is a universal symbol of a deep human need. Jesus provides for that need. Jesus is a Shepherd who takes great care of his flock!
Story Two would be the feeding story in 8:1-9. Set this story in its Gentile context so that the stories told together have about them the universal shape of the church's mission of bread! It will be important in the telling of both feedings to put an accent on the numbers. Those numbers become especially important in light of Jesus' conversation with his disbelieving disciples in 8:14-21.
Story Three can be a telling of the institution of the Lord's Supper from Mark 14. An important link between these bread stories is the reality that Jesus is concerned with our whole being. The Lord's Supper stands among us as a symbol that Christ is a Shepherd who feeds us body and spirit. The physicality of the bread in the supper needs to be linked with our need for physical bread. The bread and wine of the supper are symbols of our Shepherd's care for our many hungers. This way of telling these stories puts the emphasis on the initiative of God in reaching out to feed hungry people. That is a good gospel-centered reality to fix at the center of your sermon.
Readers of these pages will represent many denominations. Having told these bread stories, you have a wonderful opportunity to say some things about your church's understanding of this sacrament.
The telling of the bread stories in Mark 6 and 8 coupled with the institution of the Lord's Supper in Mark 14 can also focus on human faith in response to God's feeding. A first possible way of telling these stories is to put the accent on God's initiative. A second way of telling the stories would put the focus on human response to God's initiative. In the boat with Jesus after the first feeding miracle we discover that the disciples' hearts are hardened. After the feeding story in Mark 8 we hear the Pharisees asking for a sign. Somehow they missed the point! We all miss the point at times! And again Jesus gets in the boat with the disciples. He grills them about the numbers. Their hearts continue to be hardened.
The sermon can conclude with speculation about our response to the bread stories. Today it's our turn to be fed at the Shepherd's table. How shall we leave this table? Will our hearts be good soil or rocky ground? Flesh out this challenge to the members of your congregation in a manner that is appropriate to the understanding of faith in your theological tradition.
____________
1. Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), p. 180.
2. Donald H. Juel, Mark (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990), p. 98.
