Loaves, fishes, and little garden plots: Mark 6: 30-44

The sixth chapter of Mark’s gospel is full of events, one of which is the feeding of the five thousand. This morning, a word in the narrative caught my attention, and the whole passage gave forth a new smell (as G.F might say).  I am going to try to articulate some of the echoes and resonances that I hear.

It’s been another crowd scene. As soon as Jesus & the Twelve moor their boat, people gather around, and the demand for healing and for teaching is so great that there’s no time even to eat. It’s getting late, and the apostles urge Jesus to send the people away, so that they can find food nearby.
Jesus sees that they have a point, but he is moved with compassion for all these folks, because they seem to him like sheep without a shepherd. Now a one part of a shepherd’s job is to find good pasturage for the flock under his (her) care; hence the apostles’ suggestion would be common. sense, and also in line with the shepherd’s duty.
But Jesus recognizes that the people, being unshepherded, untended, and needy, have come to him for spiritual nourishment as well as relief from bodily suffering (“Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven…). To send them away now would mean they have to forage for themselves, each according to their means. There is yet more that Jesus can do to convey the sense of God’s care and abundance, and it’s not just.a matter of catering, of largesse such as a rich man might provide out of compassion.
1. First, he suggests to the apostles that they feed the people themselves. Naturally the apostles, practical people, point out that they couldn’t afford to buy sufficient provisions. Jesus, though, has them consider what resources they have on hand (to those that have, more will be given). They have five loaves (I always imagine flat-bread) and two fish.
2. Jesus’ next action is to have the people sit down for a meal. Now, there are several words in the Greek text that are not well captured by translations. I am going to try to convey something of the flavor of the words.
3. He and the apostles had the people recline. Most translations that I’ve seen say “sit down” or something like that but this passage uses the word that you’d use about people eating at home, en famille or with guests: people reclined on dinner couches (some of which might hold two people). So Jesus has them make themselves at home.
4. They are arranged in groups, but the word for groups is symposia — they are not just organized, but asked to sit in dinner-fellowship together. “Friendly eights” if you will, though the groups are larger; but there are groups within groups.
5. He has them recline at their ease on the green grass. Does this bring to mind some other image of a shepherd, sheep,and green pastures? It can’t be a coincidence, especially given how alive the Psalms were to Jesus and his people. The words in Psalm 23 (it’s #22 in the Septuagint) are not identical — there the Greek says (roughly) “places of fresh growth,” but the image is the same.  Moreover, in the Septuagint Psalm has the Shepherd pitching a tent there;  so Mark’s different wording emphasizes the images of table fellowship, even though it’s a picnic sur l’herbe.
6. The people plop down as invited. The word used means to take your place up on the dining couch, but the root of it is “to fall.”
7. They are arranged in groups — but this time the word for “groups” is different. It is prasia. Now, the phrase used here, prasia prasia, can mean any orderly arrangement in groups (for example, it can be used of soldiers grouped in companies), but the word means “garden plot, a vegetable bed.” They were a crowd who have assembled following their individual needs (for healing, for teaching, or out of curiosity), but the Shepherd has organized them, and gathered them into fellowship:  “He setteth the lonely in families” (as the Psalms have it) and gathers people, in all their diversity, into one body.  The Seed has been sowing the seed, and they are prepared ground.
8. Jesus looks up to heaven, and gives thanks. In Mark, Jesus does not speak of himself as the “Bread from heaven,” but this passage certainly echoes that image (as commentators have noticed before).  But the other thing that’s going on here is that Jesus is giving thanks in effect to the Creator, the source of the food, the fields, and indeed the people.  In this exchange, there is the root of communion, whose keynote is thanksgiving.

9. The people are satisfied — indeed, they ate their fill, and the word is used of animals gorging themselves;  the word is related to the word for the field upon which the people were dining.

10. Moreover, there were bountiful left-overs.  Indeed, abundance is an important theme of the story — abundance discovered right on the spot. “Seek first the Kingdom of heaven, and its righteousness, and all these things will be added.”

11. The apostles are amazed, along with the crowd, but (as the writer comments after the next story), they still don’t understand, haven’t yet learned to see and hear as Jesus has invited them — and us — to do.

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Mark’s gospel is often thought of as the straightforward, unadorned one.  No wise men or singing angels,  no mystical hymns about the Logos, no long genealogies — but in a passage like this story, one can feel the intensity, the awe, and the mystery that lie beneath the plain words, which turn out to be less plain than first appears.