Introduction
You have heard the term Christ-figure. It is a literary term for a character in a story who is like a savior or sacred figure. Those of you who have read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath might remember Jim Casey, a fallen preacher who helps migrant workers. It is no accident that his initials are J.C. Steinbeck intended for readers to make a connection with Jesus. King Arthur is a Christ-figure. He establishes a righteous kingdom and sends his knights out to battle the wicked, much as Jesus sent out his disciples. It is even said that he has not died but will come again to rescue Britain in her darkest hours. Even Tim Taylor’s neighbor, Wilson, in Home Improvement could have been regarded as a Christ-figure. Each time Tim got in trouble, he could turn to Wilson to give wise teaching that would solve his problem.
The Gospel of Mark, of course, is the story of the actual Christ. But Mark the writer also avails himself of the same literary device. In our passage we will see how Jesus figures Moses, Joshua, David, Elijah and Elisha, all the while serving a satisfying meal.
The Text
In verse 30, Mark concludes his story of the disciples’ short-term mission trip. The next verses reveal the consequence of fame that the disciples have now earned through their trip. 31 Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
32 So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. 33 But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.
Oh, the price of fame! The disciples are recognized in their own right as miracle workers now and are learning what it is like to have attention turned on themselves. We have reversed roles almost in that Jesus is now helping his disciples get away. Even so, the people are too enthusiastic, and they outwit the escape efforts of Jesus and his disciples, meeting them at their landing place.
Note now Jesus’ reaction. 34 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
He had compassion on them. I wonder what the disciples had? I would have been thinking, “Could you just give us a break for a little while?” It is the next phrase that explains Jesus’ compassion.
… because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Where did Mark come up with this simile? From Scripture. Mark, as a Jew, would have been thinking of his Scriptures. This is one:
15 Moses said to the LORD, 16 “May the LORD, the God of the spirits of all mankind, appoint a man over this community 17 to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd. 18 So the LORD said to Moses, “Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand on him” (Numbers 27:15-17).
Here is our first character Jesus figures – Joshua. Did you know that the names Joshua and Jesus are variations of the same name, just like Mary, Maria and Marian are variations of the same name? Joshua, by the way, means “salvation.” Mark knows what he is doing. He wants the readers to understand that here is the new Joshua ordained of God to shepherd his people.
He may also have wanted for those with “ears to hear” to think of Ezekiel 34 where God condemns the shepherds of Israel who have not cared for their people. His solution? To shepherd the people himself (I myself with tend my sheep, v 15.) and to provide one shepherd to replace all the others: (I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd, v 23.) Here now is David to shepherd God’s people.
What does Jesus the shepherd do? He teaches them. This is the means by which he feeds his flock. Speaking of feeding, the disciples remind Jesus that suppertime is coming on, and it would be best to bring instruction to a close and send the people out to dinner.
37 But he answered, “You give them something to eat.” Sometimes it is fun to joke around, but the end of a long day ministering among a crowd of people when actually you had wanted to be alone is not the best time for a jest. I imagine the disciples are feeling this way. They respond, “That would take eight months of a man’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?” If Jesus is trying to be funny, it isn’t going over very well. If he is serious, then he isn’t being sensible, which can be expected, seeing as he has put in more work than anyone. Whatever the case, the disciple’s reply surely would provide the corrective needed, so they thought.
38 “How many loaves do you have?” he asked. “Go and see.”
When they found out, they said, “Five—and two fish.”
39 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 set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all.
What do you suppose is going through the disciples’ minds now? When he asks about the loaves, they perhaps could be thinking that he just needs to be shown how little they really have. “Oh, we really don’t have much, do we?” he would reply. But instead, he has the disciples organize the crowd into groups and sit down. He has not, by the way, say what he is going to do. Do you think they are mumbling to each other, “Why are we doing this?” But they follow instructions and all the people are seated.
Now what? He takes the bread and the fish, says a blessing, and then proceeds to break the food probably into twelve portions. Most likely they were placed in fairly sizeable baskets, and then he gave them to the disciples to distribute among the people. I wish Mark had given us some description of the disciples at that point. They are each given enough food that at best would satisfy one adult. They look out at a crowd that contained 6…7…maybe 10,000 people and are ordered to distribute their portions to everyone.
Well, whatever they were thinking, they did what they were told and the most incredible dinner ever held resulted. 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.
The word satisfied means they ate as much as they wanted. Men were saying, “No thank you. I couldn’t eat another bite.” After picking up leftovers, the disciples returned to Jesus with the results. He had placed in their baskets meager portions; they returned with baskets full.
Interpretation
People like this story, especially those who do not believe in miracles or that Jesus is what Christians make him out to be. It is an easy miracle to explain away. Clearly what happened was that when the people saw Jesus sharing his food, those who had brought their food with them were inspired to share their food as well. The “miracle” is the love created in the people’s hearts to share, which by the way is the lesson of the story. Jesus is a man of God who came to teach us how to live in the kingdom of God and this was an object lesson.
That is a plausible explanation, and even Mark may have given a clue that this is the correct view. What does Mark normally include in his miracle stories? He refers to how the people or the disciples were amazed. He doesn’t refer to anyone being amazed here, nor does he specifically say that a miracle occurred.
On the other hand, there is no reference to the people sharing food nor that Jesus intended for them to do so. He does not ask anyone to share food at the beginning, nor does he commend anyone for sharing at the end. The leftover food collected is the same that was distributed by Jesus. Furthermore, Mark consistently has presented Jesus as doing great miracles – healing, casting out demons, controlling nature, and even raising the dead. If he intends for his readers not to take this as a miracle story, he needs to do a rewrite to make it clear that this story is different. John, by the way, does refer to the event as a miraculous sign that the people did recognize.
The question for us, then, is What does Mark want us to get out of this story? What did he think his readers would have picked up on? Many of them were Gentiles; that is obvious. But many were also Jews as he was. He wants them, while they are reading, to say, “That reminds me of…” We’ve already talked about this regarding verse 34. Some would have said, “That’s what Moses said about Joshua. That’s what Ezekiel said about David.”
What would they have been thinking after this story? Let’s put some of them in a book club. They are having their monthly meeting discussing “Stories from the Gospels,” like Bill Moyers had people do for Genesis readings. A discussion might go like this.
“I got from this story a nice idea about how we ought to share what we have.”
“Well, I think it is a good lesson on how not to waste food. See how the disciples collected what was left over?”
“Did anyone note the references to being in a desert place? I read the King James Bible, so I know that three times Mark refers to Jesus, the disciples and the crowd going into the desert (31-35). You NIV readers wouldn’t have noticed that. It makes me think about Moses leading the Israelites into the wilderness. Didn’t he also feed the people?”
“Why, you’re right. There is the manna; in John’s Gospel the people even refer to it (26ff). And there was the time when quail came and the people were stuffed with food.”
“So, what you are saying is that Jesus is like Moses. He delivered his people from another kind of slavery and provided for them in their wilderness experience.”
“That’s right. Here is another Moses come to deliver his people.”
“But the men I was reminded of were the prophets Elijah and Elisha. There was that time when there was a famine and Elijah was sent by God to live a widow and her son. She had just enough oil and flour to make one last meal. But Elijah told her she would not run out of either until the famine was over. Every time she poured oil out of the bottle and reached for flour in the pot she had enough. Elisha one time told a woman who had run out of money to collect all the jars she could from her neighbors and then start pouring from the one small jar she had. She poured until every jar was full. Those were the same kind of miracles that Jesus did with the bread and fish.”
“So, Jesus is like another Elijah and Elisha.”
“Some people thought he was Elijah.”
“So, Mark’s message is not about how we should share our food or conserve it, but that here is another great Servant of God sent to deliver his people.”
You and I can smile. We’ve understood all along as we’ve gone through Mark’s Gospel that he is raising the question, “Who is this Jesus?” That’s what he is asking now. “Have you got it yet? Have you figured out that he is more than a man of God with a message about getting along with one another or with God?”
I’ve approached our passage using the concept of the literary device of figure. Jesus is a figure of Joshua, of David, of Moses and the prophets Elijah and Elisha. The real truth, though, is that those men were figures of Jesus. They, through their callings, pre-figured (pointed to) the Messiah Jesus. Moses and his manna from heaven symbolized the Bread of Heaven who was to come and feed his people with his own body and blood. King David symbolized the Righteous King who was to come and sit on the throne of God’s heavenly kingdom. As Joshua was anointed to lead the people into the promise land, here comes the Anointed One to lead his people into the real promise land of God’s kingdom. And as Elijah and Elisha were God’s prophets to proclaim his Word, here is the Great Prophet who is the Word of God.
To Jesus, to Jesus everyone and everything in the Bible points. Through Jesus we understand the histories and prophecies and everything else in Scripture. We need to grasp this principle. Jesus’ coming is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. If Mark were in our Book Club discussion group, he would have said that the reason for Moses leading the exodus in the OT was to prepare the way for Jesus to come as the Messiah and to help us understand Jesus’ redemption.
The Bible is about redemption. That is the theme of the Bible. The story of creation reveals to us what we were supposed to have been like. The story of the Fall reveals what went wrong. Way back then, God promised that an offspring would come who would crush Satan, thus bringing redemption. The rest of the Bible moves us to that time and gradually reveals how it will play out. God makes covenants with Noah then Abraham then Moses. Through them he teaches us about the covenant that will be made through his Redeemer. God establishes a people – a nation for himself. He teaches us then about his kingdom that his Redeemer will establish. God raises David on the throne and establishes his family as a dynasty. Through that he teaches about the Redeemer who will come from that dynasty and establish an everlasting throne. The history of rebellion, punishment and redemption played over and over again through the OT is a lesson to us of our rebellion, impending punishment, and redemption by the Redeemer.
So when Mark records a story like this one, he is saying, “Look how it is all coming together. The Redeemer is here, and he is re-enacting the history of the Bible. He is fulfilling the history of the Bible. He is bringing redemption.
Get that point. We tend to read the stories of the Bible, whether Old or New Testament stories as though they were written to be moral stories like Aesop’s fables. The Bible was written by the Holy Spirit to show us our predicament of being lost and our hope in Jesus’ redemption.
Having said this, let me close with a secondary, but useful, moral application that we can pick up from the disciples. For all their faults – their lack of understanding and faith – they nevertheless were obedient disciples. I speculated about what is going on in their minds to what seems to be an unreasonable demand by Jesus, but that is all it is. What we know for sure is that they obeyed whatever Jesus directed them to do. That’s a good trait to possess for a disciple.
They may have questioned Jesus at times, but they never balked at an order. They didn’t do what we often do – refuse to obey until we have been satisfied with an explanation. They had their times of getting frustrated with Jesus, but they did not leave him, nor did they disobey. And as a result, they, more than anyone else, got to observe and experience the greatness of their Master.
We would do well to do the same. Following Jesus is not easy. Sometimes what he expects of us seems too difficult; sometimes it just doesn’t seem to make sense. “Go,” he says to his disciples and to us, “Carry out this work I give you which seems foolish and impossible.” But then, what else can you expect from one who left glory to be a servant and march to his death in order to save his enemies? What else can you expect from God the Son, whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8,9)?
But, again, we would do well to do as the disciples. For in obedience we will find true blessing; in obedience we will grow in understanding of our God; in obedience the kingdom of God will become clearer and more glorious.
