Text: Mark 8:1-21                                                                                  12^th Sunday after Pentecost

"Do You Still Not Understand?"

            In the name of him who loved us and gave himself for the life of the world, dear friends in Christ:  Two Sundays ago, we spent some time going over the miraculous event in which Jesus fed 5000 people with only five loaves of bread and two small fish.  Even if you weren’t here, I’m sure you remember that story.  Last week, we heard about how a bunch of people who had enjoyed that meal came after Jesus seeking more food handouts.  They were quite literally hoping that Jesus would be their “meal ticket for life”.  They figured that if they stayed close to him, they’d never have to work again and they’d always have enough to eat.  They caught up with Jesus at the synagogue in Capernaum.  There, to their disappointment, Jesus began to explain to them that they shouldn’t be pursuing him looking for mere bread made of flour and water; they should be seeking the Bread of Life, which, if they ate, they would live forever.  He then told them that he himself was this Bread of Life from heaven.  He was, of course, speaking of spiritual matters.  He was calling them to faith in himself; but they weren’t getting it. They weren’t really listening to him so much as they were to their grumbling stomachs.  They were fixated on earthly matters – on gratifying their immediate desires – and on seeing miracles.  They said sure they’d believe in Jesus, but he’d have to give them a sign. Specifically, they wanted him to produce more free bread for them to eat – so you can see where their hearts really were:  on visual thrills and bread rather than the Bread of Life.

Well, it happens that the appointed Gospel reading for today printed on the back of your bulletin [John 6:41-51], the one I didn’t read, is a continuation of this same discussion between Jesus and this group of hungry Jews.  And if you read it, you’ll see that no matter how many times Jesus tries to direct their focus to spiritually higher things – to his divine mission to give himself for the life of the world – they resist him. Their hearts are hardened, and so they still do not understand what he is telling them.

But rather than continuing to focus on that discussion, this morning I chose to go to another story that is thematically closely related to it in order to help to illustrate the divine truths it presents from a different angle, so to speak – and that would be St. Mark’s account of the miraculous feeding of the 4000 that we heard a bit ago.  At first glance, it may seem to be nothing more than a simple repeat of the feeding of the 5000 with just a few of the numbers changed; but actually there are some significant differences in the two events.

The first takes place on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee near Bethsaida, within what would be considered Jewish country. The area is relatively well watered, green, and populated.  The crowd Jesus deals with there is made up almost entirely of Jews, and most of them haven’t traveled very far.  But the feeding of the 4000 takes place on the much more desert-like and sparsely populated southeastern shore in what is definitely Gentile territory:  the area called the Decapolis.  The crowd Jesus deals with there is composed largely of godless Gentiles and perhaps some of the kind of Jews who are … what shall we say?  “Less religious”?  “Less faithful”?  “Less respectable”? –The kind of Jews who don’t mind mixing freely with and marrying Gentiles – the folks whom genuine Jews think of as “cheap Jewish trash”.  To come be with Jesus, these people have traveled a farther distance – both physically on the ground, and, you might say, in spanning the wide spiritual gap.  So there’s a substantial difference in both the location of the miracles and the composition of the crowds.

            There are also differences in the character and behavior of the two crowds.  At the feeding of the 5000, the Jewish crowd is pursuing Jesus in the hope of seeing him perform more signs and wonders.  They aren’t particularly interested in hearing him teach, but they have to put up with that for nearly half a day before they get a miracle.  And when they do, that is, when Jesus multiplies the bread and fishes, they immediately decide that they should make Jesus their king. He doesn’t want any part of their plan, so overnight Jesus withdraws from them; but they pursue him still bent on seeing more signs and wonders, and making him their bread king.

The crowd of Gentiles and less honorable Jews, in contrast, seems to have been drawn to Jesus at first perhaps for healing and release from demon possession, but then stayed on for several days just to hear him preach.  During their stay, they’re almost oblivious to the fact that they’ve run out of food supplies.  To them, it would seem, hearing Jesus speak is more important than eating.  It satisfies a deeper hunger, and they forget about their earthly concerns while they are with him.  It is Jesus’ concern for their temporal needs – that they might faint from hunger on the way home – that instigates the feeding miracle.  And after it happens, Jesus sends them home – which directive they obey.  No talk of making him king; no dogged chasing of Jesus to see more miracles.  Oddly enough, though, when Jesus does arrive back on the west side of the lake, there are indeed folks there demanding more signs – but it’s not some of the folks who just ate like before, rather it’s some of the Pharisees:  the most ultra-orthodox and respectable Jews around.

And there are other differences in the two miraculous feeding events, the most obvious being the numbers involved.  First it’s five loaves and two fishes to feed 5000, with twelve baskets of leftover fragments gathered up, and then it’s seven loaves and a small but unspecified number of fish to feed 4000, with seven baskets of collected excess.  And what you don’t catch in the English translations is that two different words for “basket” are being used.  In the first miracle, what’s described is a kind of hand basket, like you might take on a picnic.  It’s fairly small.  In the second case, the basket that’s described is much larger – more like a bushel basket.  So, while a smaller number of baskets is collected the second time, the total volume of the leftover fragments is far and away greater.

And all of this, it would seem, is important to understanding the whole story. Later, when then disciples are in the boat with Jesus, he warns them to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod”.  The disciples, failing to grasp the spiritual meaning of what Jesus said, think he’s talking about regular bread.  All they’ve got is one loaf of bread in the boat because they’ve forgotten to bring any more along, and they start arguing about it.  Jesus, marveling at their lack of comprehension, stops them and has them run through the exact numbers in the miracles again.  Now, a lot a people think that all he’s saying is to them at this point is, “I’ve fed a lot of people with a little before.  Why can’t you trust me to do it again?”  But if that’s true, why go over the precise numbers?  If they’re not important, why does he bring them up – and then ask, “Don’t you guys get it? Do you not see and hear what’s been going on?  Are your hearts so hard?  Do you still not understand?”

And maybe, if you’re like me, if you had been sitting there in the boat with the disciples, you’d be thinking, “Uh … no, Lord.  I hear what you’re saying, but I do not understand.  Clue me in.  What do you mean?  What should I be getting from all this?  What is it I don’t see?”

It’s interesting to me that in the very next passage of Marks’ Gospel, after he asks the question, “Do you still not understand?” Jesus gives sight to a blind man – and then, not all at once, but in steps:  first the man can see a little, but everything’s blurry; then, after Jesus touches him again, things come into clear focus.  May the Lord do the same for us over the next several moments, that we might see and understand what he’s saying to us.

First, two weeks ago when we looked at the feeding of the 5000, I indicated that the numbers were indeed significant – that they had a certain symbolic meaning to them as numbers often do in the Bible.  And let me say that I’m not suggesting that we should embark on wild frenzy of speculation trying to find the “hidden meaning” of every number that appears in a text; yet sometimes, especially when Christ’s words indicate that they are significant, we ought to sit up and take notice. Well, anyway, five, it turns out, is the number of God’s Word, standing for the five books of Moses.  A thousand, in the Bible, tends to be a number that consistently represents “fullness” or “totality”.  So, the picture in the first miracle is that Jesus places the Word of God in the hands of his disciples to feed 5000 people – which might be thought of as standing for “the total number of the people of the Book of God’s Word” – the Jews, in other words – which just happens to be who’s in that crowd.  It goes forth and feeds them all to satisfaction, and then what returns to Jesus are twelve baskets of remnants – twelve consistently standing in Scripture for the number of God’s people:  those who hear and believe and are saved.

In the second miracle, we start with seven loaves.  And seven is really a loaded number in the Bible; it means a lot of things.  For example, it denotes the completion of God’s work and rest like at the time of creation.  It also speaks of God’s gracious dealings with his creation.  You see, three is the number of God (the Trinity), and four the number of Creation (the four corners of earth, four winds, four rivers of Eden, and so on).  Their sum is seven – and so overall, seven has kind of a Gospel connotation:  God and Creation together.  Interestingly enough, seven is also the number associated with the Holy Spirit. So, let me suggest that now we have the Gospel and the Holy Spirit going forth to the four thousand, to all nations of the world – including the Gentiles and all those who are far off. And here the Word has even greater effect, so that everyone eats their fill and seven large baskets are brought back – seven just also happening to be a number that the Bible uses to represent the Christian Church.

Now, I know that’s a lot to digest, and you may be wondering where I’m coming up with these strange ideas; but historically we see how this works out. The Word of God went first to the Jews. They lived on it for centuries, and some few of them believed it.  But for the most part, they were unfaithful.  Very few of them believed in Jesus in the end, and the Apostle Paul would later say of them, “Jews demand signs and wonders.”  This is exactly what we see in the miracle and its aftermath. Then, later, after God had completed all his work of salvation in Jesus Christ – after his death for sin, his rest in the tomb, and his resurrection – the Gospel went out to the Gentiles in all the world:  to sinners, to those who were both physically and spiritually far away; to those who lived in spiritual desert wastelands.  The Holy Spirit came to empower the disciples to take it to them – to work through their preaching to convey Christ to the nations.  The result was tremendous: The Church of Christ sprang up in all corners of the world.  People everywhere were satisfied by the Bread of Life from heaven, and they found eternal life in him.  And so we see that these two miraculous feedings have a certain prophetic message attached to them:  a message in part about the relative receptiveness of the Jews and the Gentiles to Jesus and his Gospel, and how the disciples would soon be tasked to take the Gospel to the four corners of the earth.

And with the prophetic message is a prophetic warning:  “Beware the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.”  And in good Lutheran fashion we should ask, “O.K., what does this mean?”  Turns out that yeast is used in the Bible to represent sin, or falsehood, or false teaching.  That’s because yeast is a contaminating agent:  it gets in and spreads – a little infects the whole lump of dough; and once it’s in, you can’t get it out.  So, what, we might ask, is the sin or false teaching of the Pharisees?  In the context that Jesus gives the warning, we’ve just heard the Pharisees demand a sign from heaven.  That’s the same thing the Jews at Capernaum wanted.  Jesus also mentions the “yeast of Herod”, and if you recall that at the time of Jesus’ arrest and trial, Pontius Pilate, who hopes to rid himself of the sticky problem of trying Jesus, at one point sends him to Herod.  The Scriptures tell us that Herod was happy about it.  He had been hearing about Jesus for a long time and was hoping to see him perform a miracle.  So again, it seems that in this case, the yeast Jesus speaks of is the demand or desire to see signs and wonders.

So what’s wrong with wanting to see signs and wonders?  I suppose the best answer to that question is seeing is not believing.   This is made explicitly clear in the two feeding miracles.  One group comes seeking signs and wonders.  They see one, and it only creates the appetite to see another.  They don’t believe in Jesus; they just want to see more miracles.  The other group comes to Jesus seeking rescue from demons and healing, gets it, but afterward finds something that fills and satisfies them even more:  the words and teachings of Jesus.  Then they get the miraculous feeding, but it’s basically an anticlimax.  They’ve been fed with the Word.  They’ve come to firm and solid faith in Jesus.  And for them the miracle is put into perspective:  they’ve sought first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then, according to the promise of the Lord, all their earthly needs have been taken care of. They go home truly satisfied because they’ve filled their spirits first with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And it’s important that we see this.  It’s possible to spend time with Jesus, and listen to Jesus, and even call yourself a Christian, and still not have faith in him.  That’s what the first crowd proves.  And we see the same thing going on today with those associated with the Christian signs and wonders movement.  People flock to so-called faith healers, and tongue speakers, and preachers who make folks in their audience fall down, laugh or cry uncontrollably, whoop and run, carry on, and bark like dogs.  They come to see a show, not to hear about salvation and the forgiveness of sins that Christ has earned for the world.  And they get what they came for – but does it give them faith? No.  It merely creates the desire to see more of the same.  You and I fall into the same trap when we think to ourselves that seeing a miracle, or having a loved one miraculously healed, or having a certain prayer answered in a supernatural way would somehow confirm our faith in the Lord.  And I know it’s a temptation we all indulge from time to time.  Jesus says, “Beware of that yeast.”

That’s because signs and wonders belong to the physical and earthly side of things.  They gratify the flesh, not the spirit – just like regular bread made of flour and water does.  True spiritual nourishment and faith come from listening to the Words of Jesus, and in that way, feeding on him, the Bread of Life.  He and he alone is our one source of sustenance and life.  He is all we need for this life, and the next.

And we see this too in the text.  In the final scene we’ve got the disciples in the boat with Jesus – and just one loaf of bread for all of them.  They think this is a problem – but that’s because they too are fixated on the earthly and physical, and missing the big picture.  What they’re missing is that they are in the boat alone with Jesus who is the one true Loaf, the one true Bread of Life.  He is the Word made flesh.  It’s on him they must feed and have eternal life.  That’s why Jesus takes them task:  “After all the lessons I’ve taught you, after the lessons of all these miracles, do you still not understand?”  Praise God that learning from their mistakes, we do see and understand. We are here in the boat with Jesus – and that’s all we ever need.  In his holy name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!