Understand what?
Reading for Tuesday March 28
Selected Bible portion: Gospel of Mark 8: 1-21
Jesus had taught a great crowd of people who had been with him for three days; he expressed his reluctance to dismiss them back to their homes without feeding them. The disciples responded “But where can we get enough bread to feed them?” Now isn’t that strange? By now they should have known Jesus well enough to wait for a miracle to happen. Once before he had fed five thousand people with five loaves. But no; they act as if Jesus was subject to the same limitations they were.
They remind me of the Children of Israel after their exit from Egypt. They understood that it was God who divided the water for them to walk through on dry land, but they couldn’t believe that God would provide water for them to drink Why? Why were they unable to say, “Let’s see what God will do now?”
Even if they had done that; even if the disciples had said, “Well Jesus here are seven loaves, we’ll start distributing.” that wouldn’t have entirely satisfied Jesus. His miracles had meaning. Learning to expect God’s miraculous provision is only half of learning about Jesus, the other half is learning the meaning of the miracle.
Jesus wanted them to get the meaning as well as expect the miracle, and they did neither. .
Religious lawyers came along, and demanded that he do a miracle to convince them. Jesus refused. Faith constrained by the supernatural was not the sort of faith that would learn the message of the miracles.
A short while after this the disciples get into the boat with Jesus and start to worry about the fact that they have forgotten to buy bread for the journey. Jesus seems exasperated, accusing them of not seeing, not hearing, having hard hearts. He questions them until they recall the number of the people fed on both occasions and the number of loaves. Sadly he says to them, “Don’t you understand?” No they didn’t. They continued to wonder when Jesus would re-establish the kingdom of King David and free them from the Romans.
After the crucifixion, after the resurrection, after the Holy Spirit came, the people who believe Jesus began to understand that feeding thousands of people with a few loaves was a message. It said that the kind goodness of God was inexhaustible; it said that Jesus was like bread, he would sustain us if we took him into ourselves. And his vicarious death would give life to us.
So now do we understand? Truth is we are still learning about God, we understand but not completely because no one can ever fathom out the immensity of God and his inexhaustible greatness. So life with God is still a journey of discovery.
The disciples didn’t seem very interested; when Jesus made an allegory about yeast they didn’t bother to ask for an explanation. They were making preparations to cross the lake and they concentrated on their work.
Solid wooden oars that didn’t change in their hands as the bread had done, sails that they could be in control of, the mundane tasks of daily life. They filled their minds with these things and rested from thinking about the unpredictability of Jesus and the immensity of God’s love. It was easier to work.
Exodus 16:24, Exodus 16:3.
Selected Bible portion: Gospel of Mark 8: 1-21
Jesus had taught a great crowd of people who had been with him for three days; he expressed his reluctance to dismiss them back to their homes without feeding them. The disciples responded “But where can we get enough bread to feed them?” Now isn’t that strange? By now they should have known Jesus well enough to wait for a miracle to happen. Once before he had fed five thousand people with five loaves. But no; they act as if Jesus was subject to the same limitations they were.
They remind me of the Children of Israel after their exit from Egypt. They understood that it was God who divided the water for them to walk through on dry land, but they couldn’t believe that God would provide water for them to drink Why? Why were they unable to say, “Let’s see what God will do now?”
Even if they had done that; even if the disciples had said, “Well Jesus here are seven loaves, we’ll start distributing.” that wouldn’t have entirely satisfied Jesus. His miracles had meaning. Learning to expect God’s miraculous provision is only half of learning about Jesus, the other half is learning the meaning of the miracle.
Jesus wanted them to get the meaning as well as expect the miracle, and they did neither. .
Religious lawyers came along, and demanded that he do a miracle to convince them. Jesus refused. Faith constrained by the supernatural was not the sort of faith that would learn the message of the miracles.
A short while after this the disciples get into the boat with Jesus and start to worry about the fact that they have forgotten to buy bread for the journey. Jesus seems exasperated, accusing them of not seeing, not hearing, having hard hearts. He questions them until they recall the number of the people fed on both occasions and the number of loaves. Sadly he says to them, “Don’t you understand?” No they didn’t. They continued to wonder when Jesus would re-establish the kingdom of King David and free them from the Romans.
After the crucifixion, after the resurrection, after the Holy Spirit came, the people who believe Jesus began to understand that feeding thousands of people with a few loaves was a message. It said that the kind goodness of God was inexhaustible; it said that Jesus was like bread, he would sustain us if we took him into ourselves. And his vicarious death would give life to us.
So now do we understand? Truth is we are still learning about God, we understand but not completely because no one can ever fathom out the immensity of God and his inexhaustible greatness. So life with God is still a journey of discovery.
The disciples didn’t seem very interested; when Jesus made an allegory about yeast they didn’t bother to ask for an explanation. They were making preparations to cross the lake and they concentrated on their work.
Solid wooden oars that didn’t change in their hands as the bread had done, sails that they could be in control of, the mundane tasks of daily life. They filled their minds with these things and rested from thinking about the unpredictability of Jesus and the immensity of God’s love. It was easier to work.
Exodus 16:24, Exodus 16:3.
posted by Jessie Coates at 11:31 PM
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