In the course of describing how Jesus fed the 5000 men, plus goodness knows how many women and children, Mark incorporates the following comment:
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 (Mark 6:34).
Matthew records the same language with an important addition:
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harrassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field" (Matthew 9:36-38).
Immediately after this, in Matthew’s account, Jesus called his twelve disciples together and, having invested them with supernatural authority, he sent them out to preach the gsopel of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 10:7).
In both Mark’s and Matthew’s accounts Jesus responds to the crisis he sees in a similar manner. In both instances the crisis is that of a mass of people who are without a shepherd, a God-honouring leader. In both instances the right way to shepherd the people is by teaching them or preaching to them.
The crowd Jesus sees in Mark’s account represents all the crowds Jesus sees in Matthew’s account. Indeed, in Mark’s account the very way in which Jesus, through his astounding miracle, reworks the miraculous provision of manna in the wilderness during Moses’ day (compare John 6), makes it clear that the crowd he feeds represent the entire nation of Israel.
In Matthew’s account, when Jesus, looking at the crowds, sees the immensity of the task that lies ahead, he declares, literally, "The harvest is great." His immediate concern is to get his disciples involved in ministering to these people. Though in a somewhat different manner, Jesus also does this in Mark’s account. There is an immense need to feed God’s people and shepherd them. Jesus has just been doing this through his teaching. So the very provision of food symbolises the urgency of these people’s needs for that food which will nourish them forever.
So when Jesus says to his disciples, "You give them something to eat", he is speaking with deliberately nuanced words. At one level he is challenging them to supply physical food. But Jesus has just been feeding the sheep in his own way, through his teaching, and now he is challenging his disciples to be his under-shepherds, to recognise their own calling to be Christlike shepherd-teachers of God’s people.
There is, of course, a great deal more to the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 and, indeed, John draws out yet other implications in his account. In Mark’s account the provision of food to the 5000 is primarily aimed at training Jesus’ disciples. Hence the emphasis on the interaction between Jesus and his disciples prior to the miraculous feeding (verses 35-38). The disciples are supposed to join the dots, to remember that it was Yahweh who provided food to the Israelites in Moses’ time and now it is Jesus who provides food to Israelites. History is being rewritten, but now Jesus is no new Moses but God incarnate!
Posted March 22, 2009
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