Day 15: Mark 6:30-44

This is the only miracle of Jesus that is recorded in all four of the Gospel accounts (Matthew 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6). That seems like it’s a pretty significant fact. What makes this miracle so important?

First off, Jesus had left Capernaum with his disciples to be alone. His cousin John had just been put to death by Herod and the disciples had just come back from their first ministry tour without Jesus and were wanting to tell him all about it. But there were so many people trying to get to Jesus that they couldn’t even find a time and place to share a meal together. So Jesus tells his disciples, “Let’s get away somewhere we can rest.”

Except that when they get to where they’re going, there’s an even bigger crowd waiting for them. Notice how Jesus responds. He doesn’t get angry with the crowds and try to get rid of them. He doesn’t get frustrated with his disciples and try to figure out which one of them let it slip where they were going. It says that he had compassion on them and began to teach them. Then, as it is getting late, he tells his disciples that they should feed the crowd. Now, the Gospels say that there were 5,000 men, not including women and children, present. So most scholars believe the actual number of the crowd could have been anywhere from 15,000-20,000 people. That’s roughly the same amount of people that fit into most NBA arenas, just to put it into perspective. The disciples weren’t going to have enough money or enough food to feed all of these people.

But Jesus wanted to feed them. Why? Simply because they were hungry, and he had compassion on them. He wasn’t trying to build a church or an army. He wasn’t going to take up an offering afterwards to fund the rest of his ministry. In fact, most of these people probably left that day and went back to living their lives the same way they had before Jesus showed up. Jesus fed them because he loved them. 

Why do we as a church do outreach programs in our city? Is it to try to get people to come to our services on the weekend? Is it to establish a good name and reputation in our community? What if we put time and effort into an event, such as Night to Shine, and we don’t see even one person from that event ever step foot in our church building again? Does that mean that it was all a waste of time? We need to be motivated by the same thing that motivated Jesus: love. We do these things to show people that we love them and that God loves them. No other reason. And if we are able to show that love to someone who otherwise would not experience it, that means we had success.