[CatherineTorpey]

The Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft is preaching this Sunday. Her title is “We’ve Got to Make a Mindset Shift” and her text is Mark 6:30-44.

The scripture is the account of “The Feeding of the 5,000.” This is a very familiar story, and it has the rare status of being told by all four gospel writers (Matthew 14:13-21; Luke 9:10-17; and John 6:1-15). Both Mark and Matthew in addition tell a story of Jesus feeding 4,000 (Mark 8:1-9 and Matthew 15:32-39). The two incidents (feeding the 5,000 and then feeding the 4,000) are so similar that there has been much speculation over the centuries about whether Mark and Matthew mistakenly believed these to be two different incidents, but in fact perhaps it was one incident which had been told by various people over the years so that the accounts differed (like a game of telephone). Be that as it may, it’s interesting to see how the two accounts differ in Mark. In our account this week about the 5,000, the disciples are worried about how they would find the money to get food for so many people. When the second incident happens two chapters later, they are wondering where they could find so many provisions. So it’s as though they’d evolved a tad. Now they are willing to spend the money, but just can’t figure out the logistics. Curious that it didn’t occur to them to say to Jesus, “Hey, could you do that cool trick again?” But, then again, in the gospel according to Mark, the disciples are as dense as dense can be.

This account of the 5,000 in Mark comes immediately after King Herod had John beheaded. Herod ruled Galilee (the northern part of Israel), and was himself a Jew, but the Herodian dynasty was a “client state” of the Romans. (A modern example would be the Polish government under the Soviet Union or Vichy France under the Nazis.) Herod, who should have been feeding and caring for the masses had instead just given “a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.” The result of this luxurious festivity is that John is beheaded for no greater reason than that a pretty girl with good dance moves had requested it. Jesus, in stark contrast, is out with the people. He gazes upon thousands of bedraggled people – very definitely not “the leading men of Galilee,” who were coming to him out of their need for leadership. Mark tells us, “He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

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