Mark 6:30-56
Dear RTB’ers,
The feeding of the five thousand is one of only two incidents outside of Holy Week that is recorded in all four gospels, the other being Jesus’ baptism. I can imagine that the Jewish people who were there and were part of this miracle would later recall their ancestors wandering in the wilderness and the provision of manna for their food. And today we can also have a recall of this miracle: And taking the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves… (v. 41a) So every time we see the priest raising the host and breaking it at our communion service, we can recall Jesus doing the same at the feeding of the five thousand. Interesting.
The end of our reading today has Jesus healing the sick at Gennesaret. In Mark’s previous chapter we had the incident of Jesus being in this same region and healing a man possessed by a number of demons (Mark 5:1-20). At the end of that healing Mark reports that the people were afraid and they …began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. (Mark 5:15b, 17b) Today we see a major turnaround in these people: And when they [Jesus and the disciples] got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized Him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard He was. (Mark 6:54-55) People change. We don’t know what time period elapsed between the previous chapter’s healing of the man with a demon and today’s reading, but apparently that man had been successful in telling his story: And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. (Mark 5:20) People change. Let’s not stop telling our own stories!
Blessings!
See also: