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“Do We Understand Yet?”
Mark 8:1-26
A Sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Here we are in another episode of the dim bulb disciples saga known as the Gospel of Mark. Here the disciples, again, don’t get it. Even though the action in these verses are largely repetitious of previous things that have happened, the disciples still don’t have a clue. How much clearer does Jesus have to spell it out?
Sometimes we’re not much better than the disciples. There are things we might not understand. Things between which we would just prefer not seeing the connections, thank you very much. We, like the disciples, would rather bury our heads in the sand sometimes.
We don’t want to know about the links between corporate evils and our retirement portfolios which are heavily invested in those very corporations. We don’t want to see that family structures can keep us from doing the work of God. We don’t want to think, as Michael Moore’s newest film, Bowling for Columbine points out, that there is a connection between the toys we let our kids play with and the shootings at Columbine, or for that matter the military industrial complex and rampant youth violence. Ironic, isn’t it that we call this “security”?
Let’s look once again at the disciple’s dimness. Mark points out the dimness of the disciples so that we the readers, the hearers, the livers of this story will see things clearly.
Today’s scripture is divided into four scenes.
Scene 1:
Again, they are faced with great crowds. Two chapters before, Jesus fed 5000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread. This time there are 4000 people and the disciples claim to only have seven loaves of bread. This feeding thing with loaves and fishes must be pretty important since it’s repeated. But the dim disciples don’t seem to get it. “How are we going to feed all of these people?” they wonder. We can see Jesus asking through gritted teeth, “How many loaves do you have?”
Next Friday, the 29th, it’s UBC’s turn to
serve the meal at the Loaves and Fishes free meal program held at St. Stephen’s
church at 22nd and Clinton in Minneapolis. Steve Lee and company go out and purchase
food just like they have every fifth Friday for the past10 years, assuming
there will be ample eats for about 250 people.
But once last Spring twice that many people showed up. People lined up down the street waiting for
food, a result of an unusually long month, a holiday weekend coming up, and an
increase in hunger and need in
Scholars are quick to point out the significance of the numbers between these two stories: In the first story there are five loaves and 12 baskets of leftovers. In the second story there are seven loaves and seven baskets of leftovers.
The first story, being held in
Jewish territory, has five loaves perhaps representing the first five books of
the bible known as the Torah. The 12
baskets of leftovers represent the 12 tribes of
What we don’t remember from history
was that Jews and Gentiles were bitter enemies.
Their relationships were as toxic as say, Israelis and
Palestinians. Or
perhaps Protestants and Catholics in
And hear this, everyone is fed, the insiders and the outsiders, the good and the not-so-good, the children and the dogs (to use the metaphor from last week’s scripture). Everyone gets fed. Ched Myers states that meal sharing is a test of social reconciliation (Myers:1997:230) and the 9000 passed the test. That’s good news and it brings us to,
Scene 2:
The Pharisees, who were not part of the 4000 fed came by to ask Jesus for a sign from heaven. I guess feeding 9000 people isn’t enough of a sign. They needed one from heaven to make sure it was legit. But they didn’t get one. Jesus had given up trying to please the Pharisees.
He gave up on the gymnastics of saying just the right thing or phrasing the Gospel message in such a way that it was palatable to the religious powers that be. Jesus said, to paraphrase another “the debate is over, the verdict is in. We do not exclude. Period. And we have better things to do with our time than this.
This week, three lifelong Catholics
were denied communion at the National Bishop’s conference on the supposition
that they were gay. The three were from Soulforce, but did not so identify themselves and yet were
denied what in catholic understanding is the body and blood of Christ. The next day, they knelt at the Hyatt Regency
in
The Pharisees loved to exclude people they deemed as impure. Jesus came to reverse this system. All are welcome at God’s table. The Pharisees ask for a sign to test Jesus. The sign must be from heaven. The only sign they get is an earthy one and in their minds it is still not good enough. The disciples don’t understand the signs right under their noses. We run the risk of being self righteous, like the Pharisees. That’s why we’ve expanded our affirmation to add other categories that are meaningless in the context of discipleship: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, rich, nor poor, educated nor uneducated, old nor young, single nor partnered, light nor dark-skinned, transgender, bi, hetero nor homosexual, left nor right for we are all one in Christ Jesus”.
Scene 3:
Now we have the disciples on the boat again, and what are they talking about? Bread, of course. The disciples brought only one loaf. Jesus used a metaphor of yeast and warned the disciples: “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod.” The Pharisees represented organized religion and Herod represented the state.
Jesus said, “beware of them both and especially beware when they work together, for they will not likely have your best interest in mind.”
But the disciples are still on their bread thing: “It’s because we have no bread.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
That’s when Jesus loses it: He berates them by saying:
“Why are you talking about bread?
Do you still not understand?
Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes, and fail to see?
Do you have ears and fail to hear?
Do you have brains, but still you don’t remember?
Do you still not understand?”
We don’t get an answer. And it’s not because the disciples didn’t respond, but it’s so that we will respond. The question is for us, not for them. Do we understand?
I remember in a fit of unusual creative domesticity, I decided to make some bread, by scratch. No bread machine, no quick bread, no Bisquick. I’m talking making it by hand, knead it until your arms ache, let it rise and have the house smell like a slice of heaven. If I followed the recipe just right, I could do it like I’d watched my father and grandfather do. It was clearly before we had kids. I got all of the ingredients mixed up and kneaded. And I mean I kneaded a lot. I followed the recipe just so, the house smelled great. I was so proud of myself. That is until I tried to cut into those bricks disguised as bread. I might as well have used them for driving tent stakes. How was I to know that yeast has a shelf-life?
Think about what bad yeast might ruin a perfectly good loaf of bread.
Jesus said to watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees who adhered to such a strict purity code that few could be deemed worthy of holiness. Jesus welcomed everyone and invited all to his table. For Jesus, exclusion was the bad yeast.
Jesus said to watch out for the yeast of Herod, who wanted all of the people to acquiesce to Roman rule, not rocking the boat and like he did with John the Baptist, eliminating anyone who dared to call the politicians to task.
What are today’s bad yeasts?
Ched Myers argues in his commentary on Mark’s gospel that
we have been infected with bad yeast ever since Christianity became the state
religion of the
Luckily the Anabaptists came along and pushed the envelope of Biblical interpretation and rediscovered the radical Jesus of the gospels, the peace-maker, the justice-seeker, the one who said beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the Herodians. That’s our heritage. And yet, it’s still so easy to just go along.
I confess that I’m often at a loss to try to find my way through this world. All I have are a few fish and they seem so insignificant. They are squelched by the background noise of the march toward war, by the forces leaving poverty in its wake, by the religious intolerance which denies the simple bread and cup to faithful people because of their sexual orientation.
And yet, I’m reminded of the words of Dorothy Day which I read in a recent Baptist Peace Fellowship mailing: “It’s the little things that we possess—our little faith, our little deeds. These are our loaves and fishes. We can but offer them to God and pray that God will make the increase.”
We gather around one loaf on Communion Sundays. We are called to be one loaf. The disciples have one loaf in their boat. Jesus calls us to beware that we do not harm that one loaf with bad yeast.
The scripture ends with scene 4:
Jesus uses spit once again to heal a blind man, just like he used spit to heal a deaf person in the last chapter. These people hear and see, even if the disciples and we don’t get it yet. They understand, even if we don’t. But the blind man doesn’t get it at first either. The first time he looks, all he sees are things that look like trees. It takes a second healing touch for him to see, a second chance. Maybe there’s hope for us after all.
Maybe, just maybe we need to come to Jesus once again, pleading for a healing touch. Maybe, just maybe we need to learn more of God’s ways through our own study of the Bible and of the world. We do that well already here in our classes and support groups at UBC.
Maybe, just maybe we can find new ways to rid ourselves of our clinginess to that old yeast that has lost its spring.
Maybe, just maybe we can see the way of Jesus as a remedy for the doldrums and foibles of this world.
Maybe as we remember our renegade Anabaptist forebears, we might have the courage to speak truth to power and to set the captives free.
Maybe as we do this, our eyesight might clear up and we might even for the first time see with new eyes. And in that day, when God asks us, Do we understand yet?” We will know our answer.