Every Wednesday after the 12:15 pm Eucharist we take a few minutes for Bible Study. When I first came to Christ & Saint Stephen’s, those two words: “Bible Study” struck fear in my heart. In the part of the world where I come from Bible Study is often a euphemism for Bibliodolatry, that 
strange practice wherein the written Word of God is worshiped, extolled, and altogether glorified to the exclusion of all else -- that is, Scripture über alles; you can forget about catholic tradition and certainly forget about Enlightenment reason. And Bible Study Southern-style is most often led by one of those people with an exhaustive knowledge of the Christian scripture with a special mental index that includes a cross reference of all those parts of the Bible that most of us have never heard of indexed with those parts that most of us aren’t living up to.
So I was a little trepidatious about what I might have to do to lead Wednesday Bible Study. As it turns out, our Bible Study is a quite reasonable, rational encounter with the scripture. We read over the collect and the lections for the next Sunday, and talk about what we have read. I’m proud to report that not once has anyone branded anyone else a sinner nor has anyone been banished to hell.
We usually start by reading and reflecting on the collect. And this week, upon reading the collect appointed for today, one of our Bible scholars posed an important question. Our collect has a lot to say about God’s understanding of our needs, and about asking God to fulfill those needs, regardless of whether we’re asking for the right things, or are worthy to receive them. The question was asked: “Why, if God knows our needs, do we have to ask him to fulfill them? Why doesn’t God give us what we need without our having to ask?”
It’s a good question, and it has larger implications. Why is there need in the first place? Why are there such horrible natural disasters, famines and droughts? If God is good, why does God let bad things happen? Why do people go hungry? Why do people get sick and suffer? Why does God allow us to be lonely?
There’s an answer to this very compelling question in today’s Gospel. This rather famous story of the feeding of the five thousand from Mark. This is a central story in our tradition. It is repeated in all four gospels.
Bread for the people of God is a motif that runs throughout salvation history. God fed the Israelites with manna from heaven during the Exodus. A fleeing David ate the bread of the presence at Nob. As we read in today’s gospel, Jesus fed the thousands with but a few loaves of bread and some fish. And, of course, Jesus offered his disciples bread that was his body, and wine that was his blood in their last meal together. We will commemorate that meal in a few moments when we draw near this altar to recount that familiar story.
As we said last week, Mark is about discipleship. In this section of Mark, Jesus is teaching the disciples to be disciples. Not an easy task, because there had not heretofore been any disciples of Jesus. It was a new position. If you were Peter or James or John, you might be forgiven for being a bit confused about just what the job of disciple entailed. Jesus uses himself as the model and he uses a construct that would have been familiar to every first century Palestinian. You heard it referred to in our sequence hymn. Jesus is, and we are to be also, a good shepherd.
In our gospel reading today, Mark deliberately echoes one of the most famous discourses on shepherds and shepherding in all of literature. Jesus recognizes the vulnerability of the crowd that has followed him along the shore of the
This passage from Mark is the 23rd Psalm come to life. The crowd gathered shall not want, for they will be fed. They will lie down in the green grass, beside the water, and a table will be spread for them.
That is what Jesus does for the five thousand, and by extension, it is what the disciples are to do in imitation of him and it is what we, who pledge to follow the Apostle’s teaching, are to do as well. A good shepherd makes sure the sheep are fed and watered. A good shepherd fights against the wolf that would threaten their lives. A good shepherd looses not one of those entrusted to his care, venturing far and near to rescue even one lost sheep.
But there is something else worth noting in this gospel passage. Something that often gets overlooked. As the crowd following Jesus in the wilderness grows, the disciples are afraid of an ugly scene developing: thousands of hungry people in the middle of no where with no food and no where to get it. Their solution is to ask Jesus to make the people and the problem go away. But Jesus gives the disciples – and us – a very specific instruction. Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”
It’s not God’s job to feed the hungry, it’s ours. It’s not God’s job to equitably distribute whatever bounty may be to hand, it’s ours.
+++++++++++++
The reason God doesn’t answer our prayers without us praying them, or give us what we need without our asking, is that our God wants to be in relationship with us. Our God wants to know us, to hear from us, to know the troubles of our lives and the desires of our hearts. And I believe that as much as our God wants to know us, God wants us to know ourselves as well. We have to plumb the depths of our own hearts to know what is our heart’s desire. We have to be honest with ourselves about our defects of character if we are to ask God to remove them. We have to acknowledge just how empty our cup is, if we want God to make it run
over.
That is, after all, what relationships do. It is in relationship that we come to know our true selves. Any one here who has been married or partnered for a few years will tell you that. The truest image of ourselves we can see, and often the most humbling, is the image of ourselves we find reflected in the eyes of another.
Our God, who is after all most fully expressed as a relationship, a trinity of persons in inextricable linked, wants to be in relationship to us.
And just as we are called into loving relationship with the Almighty, we are likewise called to be in loving relationship with the whole world. Everyone everywhere is our brother and our sister, and everyone everywhere is a part of the mystical body of Christ. If we are to follow Jesus, and to be his disciples, to be good shepherds in imitation of him, then everyone everywhere is part of the flock that has been entrusted to our care. Our job as Christians is to spread the good word, to help the suffering, to feed the hungry. The crowd is gathered all around us, hungry for justice, thirsty for the good word of Jesus Christ. They are starving for food, pining for shelter, crying out for peace.
How can a just God allow such a world to exist? That’s the wrong question. The question is not how can God allow such a world to exist, the question is how can we?
How can we allow the hungry to starve, how can we allow the sick to die, how can we allow the victims of injustice to continue unheeded, unsatisfied? How is it that the genocide in
How do we, as Christians, allow it?
You know, Jesus is one of the most oft quoted people in history, famous for many, many really memorable one liners. “I am the way and the truth and the life.” “Come to me all who labor and I will give you rest.” “I am the Good Shepherd.” “My father’s house has many mansions.” “Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.” Well, I want to add another one liner to the pantheon. It’s a saying of Jesus’ that I think we would do well to remember and to help popularize. And it’s smack in the middle of today’s gospel and it is at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s a bit less poetic, and it carries some somewhat less comforting connotations. But it is, I think, one of the most important:
“But he answered them,
‘You give them something to eat.’"
(Mark 6:37)
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
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