Mark 8:1-10
Introduction
Do you have your name tag? Have you written down your favorite picnic food? We’ll get to that in a bit.
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Our text for today is among one of the most familiar stories in the Bible—as well it should be because it is the most told story of all stories in the Gospels. It is the story of Jesus setting a picnic for a multitude of people—a story that can be found in all four Gospels and, if you can believe it, a story that can be found twice in Mark—chapter 6 as well as the passage we just read.
Now it might not make sense that Mark tells this picnic story twice, with just two chapters separating the two accounts, but it does when we understand it is not a retelling of the story, rather it is a second story of Jesus again compassionately feeing a multitude of people.
However details of the feeding of the multitudes vary from Gospel to Gospel, and even within the two Mark counts. How many loaves and fish were there?
How many baskets were filled after the meal? How many people were there? Did Jesus tell his disciples to feed the people, or did he just take this on himself? How organized was the seating? Did Jesus have everyone put on name tags with their favorite picnic food?
Now we could spend a lot of time comparing the stories, but probably best to not get bog down in scholarly inquisition (as fun as it may be for us theological nerds) because in doing so we likely miss the opportunity for this passage to speak its powerful message about the transformative journey that can teach us a faithful lesson about differentiating between human hunger and spiritual hunger, while also leading us to be able to say, “Though we hunger…And still we rise.”
Because let’s face it… the Disciples themselves—the people closest to Jesus at the time of these miracles— are getting bogged down in a skeptical inquisition and are missing what Jesus is doing because they are unable to differentiate between human and spiritual hunger. They are missing the transformative, promise filling miracle, unable to see he is doing more than throwing a picnic. He is feeding a multitude of hungry, starving spirits. The Disciples are a lot like us during the season of Lent. And consequently, we, like them, end up caught in a twisted and pointless, self-created, dystopian Hunger Games where no one is transformed or rises up.
Move 1
Suzanne Collins wrote the Hunger Games trilogy novels, concluding the series over ten years ago, which made me hesitant to use her works as an illustrating reference. But the movies always seem to be on TV and both the books and films have remained favorites of mine—so why not?
But I do think the reference fits because Collins’ work tells a story of a transformative journey rooted in a dystopian battle called the Hunger Games—games rooted in misguided beliefs and focuses that hold no hope for a positive end other than the macabre tagline, “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
Such is the case for Jesus’ Disciples. Over and over again the Disciples are beguiled with misguided beliefs and focuses, unable to break free from their narrow mindset and get to the deeper meaning of Jesus’ teachings and miracles because they keep focusing on the material human condition and not the spiritual.
Just as they did earlier in the Gospel of Mark, the Disciples question how to get done what Jesus says. “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desert?”
It’s the same question they ask in chapter six, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?”
They are asking the wrong questions. They should be asking… How can Jesus take a little and make it go so far? Will our spirits, like our bodies, become weak and collapse if we don’t nourish them? What are the real hungers of the people seeking Jesus?
But they don’t ask these questions because the Disciples were focused on what they didn’t have, and not on what God could do with what they did have. If the Disciples had trusted only their own responses to the needs, they would have sent everyone home and missed the transformative miracle of Jesus. The transformative journey, the opportunity to rise up despite the odds never being in our favor, is missed when our focus is only upon the immediate… when it is only upon what our bodies desire. And when that is our focus, there is little chance of us ever saying, “And still we rise.”
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When we look at the beguiled and misguided Disciples, we see their beliefs and focus are on the human and material condition of their circumstances, and as a result they so often miss the spiritual dimensions Jesus is speaking and teaching about.
The literal bread given to the crowds to diminish their hunger was only a symbol of Jesus meeting their deep, spiritual hunger. How hungry they must’ve been to stay three days in the desert, listening to his transformative teaching.
So as we think about the kind of transformation that will enable us to say, for both our souls and for our church, in the midst of even the most dauting of journeys: “And still we rise”, we must aim to learn from the Disciples what NOT to do, and then DO a better job to identify both the human condition and the spiritual needs of today’s Lenten Hunger Games.
Move 2
In looking at our own lives, it is easy to get caught up in the hungers of human and material matters. In our scripture, the Disciples were focused only on the need for people to eat—a need that while relevant shifted focus and attention to the less important.
Which guides us to ask ourselves, what are some of the less important human hungers we are caught up in? Maybe it’s a college education for our children; a needed vacation; higher paying job, a remodeled kitchen. No judgments for your responses. These are part of the world we live—and are not wrong to focus on. I’d like to send my kids to college.
The point is though, it is easy to overlook our spiritual hungers because our human hunger always has the odds in their favor—but if our spirits are hungry, it’s hard to faithful tend to human needs. But the people in today’s scripture… they got it. They hungered for Jesus’ teachings about hope, about how to live together, and about the kingdom of God. They had some serious spiritual hunger in the midst of their daily lives of herding sheep, or taking care of a household, or collecting taxes—which is what brought them to the desert place to be with Jesus.
So it would be wise of us to ask ourselves, what are our spiritual hungers? Do we need more prayer time to listen to God; to study scripture more deeply; do we need to take shift the odds in favor of busyness to being in favor of time with loved ones.
Important considerations, but let’s take another step and look at what we feel our church is hungering for. Examples might be: attract more young families; overcome our budget leap of faith; become big like the church down the road; take even just a baby step above midcore preaching.
Again, no judgement for your responses. But will meeting these human hungers feed our spiritual hungers? When looking at our lives it’s easy to overlook our spiritual hungers. Which is why it becomes important within a transformative journey— if we are going to say, “And still we rise”—to ask ourselves, “When it comes to my spiritual hunger games, how can the odds be ever in mine and God’s favor?”
Move 3
Each Lent many of us are more than willing to say, in Hunger Games fashion, “I volunteer as Tribute… to give up potato chips so I can be transformed by Jesus.” But rarely, if ever, are the odds in our favor for such to happen because there is a disconnect between our earthly hungers and our spiritual hungers. This is the Lenten Hunger Games we play, but does anybody really rise up in the end?
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A friend in seminary once gave up red meat for Lent. On Easter morning, in the small, rural, Kentucky town he served, he went early to a local diner and asked the cook (who he knew) to make him a big fat juicy cheeseburger to eat before he went to church—because hey, it was Easter morning, and Lent was technically over. Make no never-mind that he and his church hadn’t even yet said, “Hallelujah! He is risen! Risen indeed” cheeseburgers were once again a permissible indulgence.
I am glad to say my clergy colleague did figure out his body might have been fed, but his spirit wasn’t.
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So how can we make sure we feed our spirit? How can we feed others, as Jesus says to? Well, there are several practices I can suggest. First, trust God will. The multitude of people in our text did, and they were not disappointed. Second, like the Disciples (who eventually figured it out too), faithfully share what you have, no matter how little it might seem. Begin with these practices and we faithfully live out our Lenten Hunger Games and are able to say, “Many are hungry… And still we rise.”
Conclusion
There is still one more practice we can implement…What is your favorite picnic food? (Did you think I forgot about this little exercise?) Whatever your favorite picnic food…it’s great. No wrong answers. But I want to encourage you to change from whatever you wrote to…“Compassion.”
Jesus served compassion at his picnic with the multitudes. It came in the form of bread and fish, but he always served compassion, because compassion always feeds—in every way a person need. So consider changing your favorite picnic food to compassion.
And then consider sharing your picnic compassion with someone—maybe someone you haven’t seen in a while; or someone who needs special prayers; or someone who needs a little extra love and care.
You’ll notice for this week’s “Think-Pray-Connect” there are no names or addresses. That was done intentionally because this week I want you to think of someone who might be battling a spiritual hunger games. Think of who that may be, and then aim to help them rise up by offering compassion. Maybe not through bread and fish, but maybe through a phone call, a text message, a card in the mail, or a visit to their home with a plate of cookies. Aim to feed them, like Jesus does, so they know their needs are known, so they know they are known, so they know they don’t have to battle this spiritual hunger games alone. Do that… feed another’s spirit with compassion… and our Lenten Hunger Games will have all of us rising up. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, March 5, 2023, Lent 2
Holy God, today you have taught us about spiritual sustenance as a necessary part of our journey through transformation. We’ve asked what our spiritual needs are as individuals, and as a community, and we began to think about how to make spiritual nourishment part of our work.
So help us in this work. Confront us. Challenge us. Compassionately, as you do. But don’t let us lose focus on the spiritual hungers we have but letting the human hungers pull us away from what matters most. Encourage us to ask ourselves each day in this Lenten journey of transformation: What is my spiritual hunger today? Help us to be honest about them, and lift those needs to you, while putting our faith and trust in you to tend to those needs in the ways we needed them tended.
But don’t want to stop there. Help us include others in this journey of transformation, and these efforts to rise up, despite the forces that work to keep us down. Jesus showed us that responding to the needs of others is just us critically important in this journey through the wilderness, reminding us time and again there are people just like us trying to rise up anew.
So remind us again, help us trust again the truth, that you have equipped us and made us ready and able to offer compassion and to share whatever we have. For this is the faithful way through any wilderness wandering and it will undoubtedly lead us, and others, to find the spiritual sustenance that will enable all to say, “And still we rise.”
Hear now the prayers we have on our hearts, as we share them in this time of Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the compassionate name of Jesus the Christ, who taught us to pray saying, “Our…”