Progressive reflections on the lectionary #27

Monday 22nd July 2024

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 Messing about in boats

The lectionary gospel passage this week is basically the second half of the sixth chapter of Mark, with the exciting middle bits removed. Those exciting middle bits being, of course, the feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus walking on the water.

So what we get is two short stories about sailing on the sea of Galilee (lake Tiberias). In the first they are trying to get away for a bit of a break but the crowd gets ahead of them and Jesus has compassion because: “they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

In the second story (after the walking on the water incident) the gang land at Gennesaret and this is the cue for lots of sick people to be brought to Jesus in order to be healed.

A key tension here, I think, is between a literal and a figurative reading of these passages. A literal reading seeks to make the claim that this is some sort of historical account, the details may be in question, but this is basically where Jesus went and what happened when he went there. A figurative reading, on the other hand, makes the alternative claim that this is all intended to represent ideas about Jesus’ ministry - as such whether it bears any semblance to historical accuracy, or not, is really immaterial.

My preference here, and elsewhere in Mark, is to look on this as figurative. That’s to say that I think the question of ‘whether this happened’ or not is moot - it doesn’t matter. What matters is what this story is seeking to convey.

In the first passage, which leads up to the feeding of the five thousand, one of the many ‘signs’ in Mark, there’s a key piece of signalling. It’s the ‘sheep without a shepherd’ line - this deliberately echoes a passage which is also in the lectionary selection this week, Jeremiah 23:5 which is, of course, profoundly… messianic. One for your bingo cards there. The idea of Jesus as the (good) shepherd (the new David) is intended to indicate his status as the promised Messiah. This passage, then, is not supposed to tell us where Jesus went on that particular day, it’s supposed to tell the readers of Mark who Jesus is.

The second story, where Jesus heals all the people, comes after the walking on the water incident. It also comes after a curious line in verse 45 which says that Jesus “made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida…” the word ‘made’ here softens an otherwise strong word, translated elsewhere as ‘compelled’ or ‘forced’. The clear implication is that this was something they didn’t want to do. Also of interest is the intended destination: Bethsaida. It is believed to have been right at the northern end of the lake/sea by the Jordan river. If that is correct it would have been in Syro-Phonecia, which is, in effect, gentile territory. You will note, though, that although this was where they were supposed to go, it’s not where they ended up, which was Gennaseret a town further south and west, in Galilee: Jewish territory.

The last line of the (missing from our reading) passage about walking on water tells us that the disciples “did not understand about the loaves” - the word used for ‘loaves’ here also just means ‘bread’. The disciples did not understand about the bread. My suggestion here is that the bread the disciples didn’t understand is, not the literal loaves dished out to the 5000, but Jesus. Just as he’s the symbolic shepherd, so he’s also the symbolic bread.

In this story the disciples couldn’t understand why ‘the bread’ would be going to Gentile territory - they think he should be working in friendly Galilee because they remain stuck in the sort of messianic paradigm which stops with Israel. But Mark wants to convey that they need to learn that the Jesus mission transcends this - ‘the bread’ is for the whole world. The messianic mission is for everyone, not just the pure born.

This message keeps getting reemphasised, but here the disciples still don’t get it. They can’t make it to Bethsaida yet - because at this point in Mark’s story they don’t yet understand about the bread.

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