Reflection -- Making Something Out of Nothing

This segment of the gospel of Mark has a lot to say about God’s love, inexhaustible compassion, and practical concern for even our most ordinary needs.  It also shows how God’s boundless grace and compassion can use even our smallest gifts to accomplish great things.

Most of us know, or should know, that God loves us.  It is the great river running under and through the New Testament.  If the story of Jesus is about anything, it is about a depth of love for us beyond our comprehension.  And yet, in spite of its mystery, God’s love is not an abstraction. 

As we might expect, God is concerned with our spiritual hunger.  Jesus’ first response to the crowds “like sheep without a shepherd” was to teach them the things of God.  But God is also concerned with practical, everyday physical things too, things like opportunities for needed food and rest.

One subtle theme here is that God’s love extends both to those who minister to others and to those to whom they minister.  Jesus was as concerned that the disciples have an opportunity to eat and rest from their labors as he was moved to compassion by the spiritually and physically hungry crowds.  God is concerned that the many of us who minister to each other, whether formally or informally, attend to our own wholeness.  No guilt need accompany self care!

This familiar story of the loaves and fishes also provides other details about the nature of God’s compassion and love for God’s people and about our response.  An extremely important one is that God almost always uses who we are and what we have right here and right now as the starting point for getting the job done.  That fact has profound implications for us.

One implication is that we have to be willing to let God use us and whatever it may be that we have.  The disciples had the choice of hanging on to their meager supper for themselves, living out of fear instead of faith, or trusting Jesus with it.  They chose faith and God did the rest.  Part of living in God’s abundance instead of in want is about a willingness to risk.

Another implication is that what God can do with what we have to give is not dependent upon its quantity or quality.  Great things often go undone when we focus on the limits of our resources or talents rather than on God’s limitless potential.  Five loaves of bread and two fish are laughably inadequate for feeding 5,000 if we "sensibly" focus on the lack.  Jesus did not belittle the disciples’ humble provisions or refuse them.  He took them and worked miracles.  He always does! 

Remember these things any time you are tempted into thinking that your gifts are not great enough for God to use effectively.  It's one of Satan's favorite tricks!  Your job is only to say "yes" and put God in control.  God will take care of the rest.

revclay

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Mark 6:30-44

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.  He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.  And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.  As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat." 

But he answered them, "You give them something to eat."

They said to him, "Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?" 

And he said to them, "How many loaves have you? Go and see."

When they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish." 

Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass.  So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 

Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.  And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken piece