Feeding Thousands
Read Mark 6.30-46
anger
Sometimes the smallest thing can make someone burst out in anger
- "Please pass the salt" can produce an angry outburst "Isn't there enough on there?"
- you think: Where did that come from? What has led up to that outburst?
- perhaps they're constantly worried about your health and a little salt exacerbates it
- all that pent-up worry bursts out, not just about the salt but about everything else
- or perhaps you are always criticizing little things about their cooking
- when you add a little salt they remember all the other things you found wrong
- who knows what's behind an outburst? Usually I don't – I'm only a man!
Jesus in boat
Today we read about something which leads up to two outbursts, in Mark 7 & 8
- here in Mark 6 Jesus feeds 5000 and in Mark 8 he feeds 4000. Wonderful!
- but in Mark 7 we will see Jesus really angry about Jewish hand-washing. Why?
- and in Mark 8 we'll see the disciples get the brunt of Jesus' outburst about bread:
Mark 8:14-16 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15 "Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod." 16 They discussed this with one another and said, "It is because we have no bread."
The translation doesn't get across the urgency and imperative in the saying:
- "Be careful" is a sudden command like a shout when you approach a cliff edge
- the "Watch out" is a repeated imperative, like a follow-on when the edge crumbles
- the disciples probably ducked involuntarily till then he said: "Look out for the leaven of the Pharisees"
- then they thought they must have done something wrong, and looked around them
- they concluded the leaven referred to bread – because they hadn't brought enough
- they had come to entirely the wrong conclusion, so Jesus had to explain:
baskets of fragments
Mark 8:17-21 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?" "Twelve," they replied. 20 "And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?" They answered, "Seven." 21 He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"
We have to answer for the disciples at this point: No, we don't understand
- what's so terrible about the baskets of fragments from the miraculous bread?
- why did this make Jesus burst out: Watch out for the Leaven of the Pharisees"?
- many Pharisees were hypocrites, but what's that got to do with these fragments?
The answer isn't in Mark 8 but it is in Mark 6 where the miracle is told in more detail
- some incidental details in Mark 6 uncover the terrible truth about the Pharisees
- and, I fear, they tear right into our souls too, and uncover something ugly
- you see, in Mark 6 we find the Pharisees condemned by their table manners
OK – everything is obscure at the moment. How can good manners be offensive?
- soon, like Hercule Poirot, you will see everything clearly, and you'll see their guilt
- you'll understand why Jesus was so angry about those baskets of fragments of bread
text
When we read about feeding 5000, Mark 6 records some curious details:
Mark 6.39-44 Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. 41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. 42 They all ate and were satisfied, 43 and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. 44 The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.
Did you notice strange details? Hercule Poirot would notice them. Ask yourself:
1) why are we only told how many men were eating and not how many people?
- if Mark wanted to show how great this miracle was, he'd count everyone
- he'd say: there were 10,000 men, women and children. Why only "5000 men"?
- women may not eat as much as men, but children often eat much more than men!
2) Why did they pick up all the fragments?
- this wasn't litter – it would have soon become bird food or fertiliser
- it wasn't for eating later: just after feeding 4000 they had very little bread to eat
3) Why did the people sit down in groups of 100's and 50's?
- why not in 70's, and why in any number? Why not just large groups? Why groups?
4) Why does Mark record any of these boring details anyway?
- papyrus was expensive and every word counted. Why was this important?
- he could have given us more words of Jesus instead of listing these details
- he could have told us they had a glorious view of the lake on a nice sunny day!
Any 1st century Jew reading this story would understand these details perfectly
- they were part of normal life and automatic good manners, learned from childhood
- let me tell you, in case you travel back in time and are invited to a Jewish wedding
You need to know two things: How to say Grace and how to tithe.
grace at meal
First, you need to know about saying Grace, not only before meals but also after
- the leader says Grace before (like Jesus in v. 41) but everyone says Thanks after
- that is, the most senior man in the group starts, then everyone joins in
- the words of the Thanks is subtlety different depending on how many are there
- if there are only ten, the leader starts: "Let us bless our God" then all join in…
- if there are 100, the leader starts: "Let us bless the Lord our God" [m.Ber.7.3]
- we don't know what the blessing is for 50 but the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to it
- a few decades later, the Jews decided to say the same Thanks for any size group
The point is, you had to know how many were in your group to get the words right
- so at a wedding or public gatherings people would automatically group themselves
- that way the leader knew what prayer to use. It was just a matter of good manners
- notice Mark doesn't say that Jesus or the disciples told them to sit in 100's & 50's
- they just did it themselves, because that's what they would normally do
By the way, you only count the men. Sorry women and children, but you don't count.
- not because men ate more but only men could pray officially, so count the men
- so these were groups of 100 or 50 men. They didn't count the women + children
- that's how Mark knew how many men were present - by counting the groups
- but no-one went round counting how many women+children were there in addition
break bread
Second you need to know how to tithe. It's a lot more complex than just a tenth
- yes, a tenth was given to the Levites so they could concentrate on religious work
- also, a tenth of this tenth was given to the Priests who worked in the Temple
- also there was a 'heave offering' (so called because you 'elevated' it from your food)
- this was also given to the Priests, and it was so holy that you'd die if you ate it
(we don't know that anyone ever tried this. It was kept VERY scrupulously)
- normally the farmer took out the heave offering, so people didn't have to bother
Bread was different. A special "dough-offering" was removed when you baked bread
- a housewife would give 1/24 (or thereabouts) of bread she baked to a priest
- think of it like one slice from a modern loaf, or a corner torn from their flat bread
So, when you ate, you tore a bit off your bread and put it aside as the heave offering
- the amount didn't have to be exact, and you didn't have to give it to a priest
- if there wasn't a priest present, you could simply discard it – eg throw it on the fire
- the important thing was that you mustn't eat it. It was deadly to a non-priest
If you were a baker or produced large amounts, you should deliver it to the priests
- after all, it was their's, though they didn’t want every little bit torn off in a household
wedding
So, if you were at a wedding or public banquet, what would you do?
- before you start pulling apart your bread, think: A good host will tithe the bread
- a good host or baker will bake the bread and take the tithe to the priests
- serving up untithed bread is like making mashed potatoes without peeling them
- or like serving wine which you've stolen from the Communion Cupboard.
- no-one would do that, and no-one would insult their host by breaking off a tithe
It was different in you were eating in a disreputable boarding house or with Gentiles
- then you would tithe the food on your plate before eating any of it
- there were detailed instructions about how to do that, and it was often necessary
- even if the cook was a Jew, you might not trust them, so you tithe again, just in case
So should the people break off fragments from these loaves or not?
- this was a tricky one. It was like a public banquet, so they wouldn't normally
- even if they were at home, they wouldn't, because Mum always did it beforehand
- they only tithed when they didn't trust the person who had prepared the food
- on the other hand, this food was different. It seems to be produced on the spot
- Jesus started with 5 loaves, and yet kept handing out more.
- he wasn't putting any aside as a tithe, so perhaps they'd better tithe it themselves
feeding of 5000
I can imagine everyone looking around at each other and then at a Pharisee
- I'm sure a few Pharisees had come to listen in on what Jesus was teaching
- I imagine that a Pharisee ostentatiously tore a bit off his loaf and discarded it
- and suddenly everyone knew the right thing to do: follow his example.
What could Jesus do? The people were simply following their conscience
- they wanted to serve God, and no-one meant any harm – except those Pharisees
- they knew what they were doing: they implied that this miraculous food wasn't holy
- by tithing their food they disparaged the host as someone who was impious
- their host was like a bad Jew or a Gentile who didn't know how to serve God
- their host didn't love God enough even to give up 1/24 of their bread to him
But hold on, who was their host? Who was keeping their tithe from God?
- this bread was miraculous. Everyone could see that. It came from God himself!
- these Pharisees were disparaging God himself, and Jesus must have been seething
- that's what made him explode at the Pharisees in chap.7 and chap 8
- in chapter 7 when similar Pharisee table manners came up – ie hand-washing
- and in chapter 8 after a another feeding of thousands produced more fragments
The fragments couldn't be left on the grass. They were, strictly speaking, holy food
- I don't know if the priests would really want them, but they had to be collect up
- the baskets would have been delivered to the local Temple Treasury office
- they would have made a very public witness about the feeding of the thousands
- the officials would have asked questions about the source and passed that to Jerusalem
- so the number of baskets would have become a very public and talked-about fact
pharisees
But for Jesus, this fact highlighted the hypocrisy of the Pharisees
- it shows that they knew that the bread had been produced miraculously
- because if it had been smuggled in from a baker it would already be tithed
- and yet their polite table manners implied that it was like untithed Gentile bread
- bread from someone who didn't love God and didn't want to give anything to him
- in other words they knew it was a miracle and yet treated it as utterly normal
- less than normal: as something to be ashamed of.
I struggled for a long time to see how this speaks to us today
- what is it that Jesus would be similarly angry about in our own behaviour
- what hypocrisy is there in our own lives which is based on our good manners?
- hopefully none, but I had to examine myself, to let God speak through his Word
- I fear that I found it, though I'm not sure what to do about it.
The horrible thing the Pharisees did was treat a miracle as if it was normal
- so normal that they ended up disparaging it, as if the miraculous bread was defiled
- this miracle should have been the cause of spontaneous celebration
- this was a sure sign that God had visited humanity and was going to save us
- instead of shouting about this fantastic news, they concentrated on good manners
- they made it into a show of piety and of correctly obeying the niceties of society
- so what should have started a revival became a dispute about table manners
church
I remember reading in an atheist's blog about what put him off Christianity
- he questioned that Christians really believed they have found a rescue from Hell
- if they really believed it, he said, they'd be forever shouting about it fanatically
- they wouldn't be having polite meetings in special buildings where only they met