How Easily We Forget
Mark 8:1-26
You just never know how God might call you to serve him. In August of 2011 a 12-year-old boy named Gaelen from Vancouver Island, Canada, was called a hero after he helped deliver his new baby brother. It all started when his mom woke up in hard labor at 2 A.M. She had planned to deliver the baby in the hospital, but when the time came she couldn’t even get out of bed. “I was already in the process of pushing,” she said. “There was nothing I could do.”
Her cries for help woke her son who was sleeping in the next room. When got to his mom, he said he could already see his baby brother’s head.
Gaelen later said, “I grabbed [the baby] by the shoulders and his head was resting on my wrists. Then I gently pulled him out and laid him on the bed.” Gaelen then went to the kitchen to find some scissors, so he could cut and clamp the baby’s umbilical cord.
The family made it to hospital about 45 minutes after the birth. Danielle Edwards and her new baby boy, her fifth child, stayed in the hospital until Sunday morning.
When asked how he knew how to do all of this, Gaelen nonchalantly replied, “I watch a bunch of medical [TV] shows.” He also said that after this experience he is considering a career in medicine.[i]
Fortunately for Gaelen, and his mom and baby brother, Gaelen was a quick study. It’s also fortunate that the depictions of emergency baby deliveries he had watched were at least relatively true to life.
There’s a lot that goes into learning something new, and it isn’t as easy as we sometimes think it should be. And one of the keys to really learning something is repetition. Take out the piece of paper and pen you picked up on your way into the sanctuary this morning. This is an exercise I do with couples who come to me as a therapist for couples counseling. Does everyone have their paper out? Ok, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to write your name. That’s it, nothing complicated. Just write your name.
Now, below that, or on the other side of the paper, I want you to switch hands and write your name with your non-dominant hand. So if you’re left-handed, do it with your right hand. If you’re right-handed, do it with your left hand. In my experience, most people drop a few grade levels in handwriting quality when they do this. And it takes longer, and they aren’t sure how to hold the pen or position the paper. It just feels awkward, doesn’t it?
Now think about this … if you were to injure your dominant arm in an accident and had to do everything with your non-dominant arm, over the few weeks or whatever that your arm was in a cast, you’d at least get passable at writing and performing tasks – things like buttoning a shirt or eating or undoing and redoing your pants in the bathroom – you’d get passable at doing those things with your other hand, wouldn’t you. If you completely lost your dominant arm in an accident – like it was removed from your body – over time you’d get really good with your non-dominant arm, wouldn’t you? It would actually become your dominant arm.
Learning something new can be like that, especially when you’ve been doing things one way or thinking about things one way for a really long time, when the old way is deeply ingrained. I tell the couples I work with that they’re going to leave sessions feeling like they don’t know how to talk or communicate for a while, that it’s going to feel awkward learning a new way of relating to one another, and that they won’t get it right every time. But over time, they can learn a new way of being a couple that is healthier and more fulfilling. And one of the keys to learning a new way of thinking and doing things is repetition.
As we continue our journey through Mark’s gospel today, Jesus totally repeats himself. Like through the course of four incidents that happened in the region around the north end of the sea of Galilee, not really in Jewish territory, Jesus totally repeats himself. In Mark 8:1-26 we walk through four incidents, and each of the four has a parallel earlier in Mark, and those four earlier incidents occur, like these do, one right after the other and in exactly the same order. In fact, this part of Mark could be summed up in one word – “Again.” Turn with me first to Mark 8:1-10.
Jesus is, again, teaching the people out in the wilderness. The word translated as wilderness tends to designate a wild, desolate place that doesn’t have a lot a vegetation. This isn’t a lush meadow. It is a rocky, sparse, desolate mountainous area. Most cities and villages didn’t have an amphitheater large enough to handle a large crowd, and they didn’t have microphones and speakers and screens to help, so Jesus, and other teachers and performers, for that matter, tended to find natural amphitheaters where hills and large rocky outcroppings in the mountainous regions would amplify his voice.
And if you’ve been following along on our journey through Mark, you know that in Mark 6 Jesus found himself teaching a large crowd out in the wilderness, and with a few loaves of bread, he fed the huge crowd to the point that they were all satisfied and there was more left over than they started with. Mark tells us that THAT crowd was 5,000 MEN, so we can assume that the actual size of the crowd, including women and children, was well over 10,000 PEOPLE. Here, the crowd is much smaller. Mark tells us that there are 4,000 PEOPLE. Not just men, people. Total. After Jesus fed well over 10,000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish, feeding just 4,000 people with 7 loaves and a few small fish should be easy-peasy, right? Wrong!
At least, not from the disciples’ perspective. This time, Jesus has been teaching the people for THREE DAYS. Not one day like before. THREE DAYS. And these people are so in tune with what Jesus is staying that they are eating up every word. Are you hearing me? Jesus preached a THREE DAY sermon. And the people couldn’t get enough. The one thing they weren’t gobbling up was food. They were out in the wilderness. There wasn’t much sustenance out there. Even if they could hunt, there wouldn’t be many deer or other prey animals around, because there was nothing for THEM to eat. And after three days, Jesus is concerned that the people will faint on the road if he sends them away. He is concerned about them.
The word Mark uses that we translate as “compassion” here, when Jesus says “I have compassion on the crowd,” actually gets at a visceral, gut-level response to the people. They’ve hung on his every word for three days, and while they have been spiritually fed, they haven’t been physically fed, and that matters too, and Jesus has gut-wrenching compassion and concern for the people. So, again, he tells the disciples to feed them. Smaller crowd. SLIGHTLY more food to begin with. This test is easier than the first one. But AGAIN, the disciples reply with “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?”
Again, the immensity of the need facing them overwhelms them. What they haven’t yet learned is that what you have plus Jesus always equals more than enough. Yes, the needs facing us are great. And at times, beyond great. It can be downright intense. No matter how many mouths are fed, there will always be more mouths to feed. No matter how many broken lives are mended, there will always be more brokenness to mend. No matter how many hard-to-love people are loved, there will always be more hard-to-love people to love. And looking at our available resources, it looks, to us, like there isn’t enough. Not enough money. Not enough food. Not enough people. Not enough energy. Jesus, again, asks the disciples what they DO have. And whether it is 10,000+ or 4,000 people, their 7 loaves and a few small fish aren’t going to be enough. Not by a long shot. He is, again, emphasizing their lack. Before he meets the need.
They start serving, and all are filled, and can safely head home, and they gather 7 baskets of leftovers. Last time it was twelve small day-baskets left over. This time it is 7 large hampers left over. Regardless, with Jesus, there is always more than enough. No matter how great the need, you plus Jesus, WE plus Jesus, is always more than enough. God doesn’t NEED us. He is God. He is infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly loving. He doesn’t NEED us. But he INVITES us to be a part of his work so that we get to be a part of the victory, a part of the miracle. Don’t allow your fear, your anxiety, your doubt, to stop you from stepping out in faith and seeing what God will do. Don’t wait for God to say “yes.” Go until God says, “No,” and rest assured that God will show up. In fact, God is already there. Jesus uses our inadequate resources to provide abundantly.
Now, look at Vv. 11-21. Jesus and his disciples travel by boat from this wilderness area to an area somewhere near Capernaum. We don’t know exactly where Dalmanutha was. But, again, the Pharisees confront Jesus when he gets there. They ask him to give them a sign from heaven. They’re looking for a dramatic, cosmic sign that will serve as proof that Jesus really is from God. They want lightning and thunder in the sky. They want Jesus to rise up and destroy Israel’s enemies and make Israel great again. They want Jesus to fulfill THEIR agenda, and they want him to do it in a way that causes them no risk. No risk of faith. No wondering how in the world God is going to come through this time. Just absolute certainly.
And Jesus refuses to give them the sign they seek? Why? Because he’s already fed the hungry, healed the sick and lame, and delivered the oppressed. And they just say he’s doing it all with power from Satan. Look back at Luke 7. John the Baptist, Jesus’ own cousin, is in prison in Herod’s palace for speaking out against Herod. And from prison, facing death, his trust in Jesus begins to waver, and so he sends some of his own disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the long-awaited Messiah. Look at Jesus’ answer. “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up. And the poor have good news preached to them.” It was enough for John. It wasn’t enough for the Pharisees. No sign would be, and Jesus knew it. John and Jesus’ own disciples were struggling to write with their other hands, but they were trying. They couldn’t yet, but they were trying. These Pharisees refused to even try. It problem for them wasn’t that they couldn’t yet. The problem was that they wouldn’t. They refused to see. They refused to allow Jesus to challenge their assumptions, to reframe their perspective.
And then they get back in the boat and head over to Bethsaida. And on the way, Jesus talks to his disciples, again, about bread. “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” Leaven, or yeast, is what makes bread rise, right? The problem is, when the leaven is bad, the whole loaf comes out bad. And we don’t put a lot of leaven into an unbaked loaf to get it to rise. It doesn’t take much. The leaven of the Pharisees that could ruin the loaf was their legalism and rule-making and the assumption that the Messiah would be a great military ruler who would throw off the chains of Rome. The leaven of Herod was the pursuit of wealth and power and pleasure above all else, regardless of the consequences.
But the disciples think he’s chastising them. Why? BECAUSE THEY FORGOT TO BRING BREAD ON THE TRIP. They STILL don’t understand. The one who makes bread out of nothing is with them. And Mark teases his readers. He tells us right off the bat that “they had forgotten to bring bread, AND they had only one loaf with them in the boat.” If they forgot to bring bread, how did they have even one loaf in the boat? Was it leftover from the previous users, soggy and trampled on? That’s gross. No! They have THE loaf of the Bread of Life with them in the boat, and they still don’t understand.
They don’t understand on … so many levels. They miss what Jesus is trying to teach them about the Pharisees and Herod and his followers. AND in the process they miss what having Jesus with them means. He’s just fed 10,000+ with five loaves and two fish, and they didn’t understand. So he fed 4,000 with seven loaves and a few fish, and they still don’t understand. Now he can’t feed even the 13 of them? He keeps lowering the stakes, from 10,000 to 4,000 to 13, and still they don’t trust him. Not the way he wants them to trust him. They don’t see. Not yet anyway. They “have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not hear.” He asks them why they still do not perceive or understand. To perceive is to really see. To really get it. To observe what is happening around them with reflection and comprehension. To understand is to assemble all the data and arrive at a reasonable conclusion. To connect the dots. They still aren’t doing either. Oh, they’re trying. But they still don’t get it. Have you ever read a page or two in a book with your mind on something else? And you get to the bottom of the page and realize that you have no idea what you’ve just read. That’s kind of where they are right now.
But they have another object lesson coming in the form of a blind man. Again. Look at Mark 8:22-26. Again, he takes the man by the hand and leads him out of the village so he isn’t a spectacle, and he creates a salve with dirt and saliva and puts it on his eyes. Again, he is communicating what he is going to do for the man very clearly, so that he understands. But this man can hear. And at one point in his life, he could see. We know this because when Jesus asks him what he sees, he says he sees people, but they’re blurry, like trees walking around. He has the mental concept of trees and can picture them in his mind, something a man born blind wouldn’t be able to do.
Wait a minute. Jesus ASKS the man what he can see? This is the only time in any of the gospels where Jesus asks the person if they have been healed. Not only that, but the man is only partially healed. THAT hasn’t happened before either. And so Jesus laid his hands on the man’s eyes again, and he could see clearly. It was in the repetition that he could, finally see clearly. He went from blind, to sort of able to see, to being able to see clearly, both up close and at a distance.
Do you see the object lesson? Jesus wasn’t suddenly limited in power or authority. He was holding up a mirror and letting the disciples see themselves in this man. When they first met Jesus, they couldn’t see at all. They didn’t get anything. Now, after some time, they were starting to see, but their vision still wasn’t clear. But they would see clearly … eventually. Jesus gets exasperated with the Pharisees, but not his disciples. He is patient, and here he embodies the promise St. Paul gives us in Philippians 1:6. “And I am SURE OF THIS, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” God always finishes what he starts.
When you look around you, what do you see? Do you see problems that our limited, finite resources can’t meet? There aren’t enough of us. We’re too old. Too poor. Our building isn’t fancy. Our pastor has a shiny head and our worship leader is older than our building’s boiler. Or do you see Jesus, meeting those needs in unexpected ways, because he wants those needs met? He is always enough.
We all struggle to see that, and so he keeps teaching us. Over and over again, with patience and in love. But we must beware not to harden our hearts like the Pharisees, thinking that we already know what God is going to do, that we already see everything so clearly.
There’s a huge difference between can’t see yet, and won’t see ever. But before you get down on yourself for not getting it fully yet, not seeing fully yet, remember, that the one who is clearing your vision will finish what he has started. Are you writing with your off hand yet, spiritually speaking, seeing things through HIS lens? No? Fear not, you will. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Let’s pray.
[i] CBC News, “Boy, 12, helps deliver baby brother” (8-22-11)
