Lent 2026 Day 29: Mon 23 Mar
Mark 6:35-37
35 By now the hour was already late. So the disciples came to Jesus and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is already late. 36 Dismiss the crowd so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” 37 But Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.” They asked Him, “Should we go out and spend two hundred denarii to give all of them bread to eat?”
Whether it had been already late in the day or whether Jesus had spent hours teaching the crowd, your guess is as good as mine. Concerned disciples come to Jesus to “remind” him that there is a large crowd of people getting hungry and the nearest shops are some distance away.
We have three agents here. Firstly, Jesus, who has responded to the pastoring needs of the crowd and is compassionately teaching them.
Next, there is the crowd. They may or may not have grown hungry by now, but they were not going to walk away. We can assume that they were happy to stay and listen to Jesus. I might use a stronger term here – they were happy to stay and experience Jesus. It’s not just teaching that Jesus was giving to the crowd. He was also preaching the message and revealing new truths about Father God. I call that an experience!
Then there were the disciples. Were they engaged along with the crowd, or did they sit themselves in a separate group, not really listening to Jesus. They might have felt they knew it all by now, having been present at many similar events. And their recent experiences of going out to the towns and villages may have contributed further to their self-confidence. “Is he going to go on for much longer?”, said one disciple. “What do you mean?” said another. “Well, it’s getting late and they haven’t brought food with them. We should warn the master that he may get a bad reputation if he leaves them high, dry, and hungry.” “Good point, Thaddeus!”
So, they come, well-intentioned and concerned (very Christian!), to Jesus and tell him. His reply is the most amazing and challenging I expect they’d heard from Jesus up to now. “You give them something”. But their minds were closed. Logic took over from faith. “What, spend all our money on food?! That’s ridiculous!”
Of course it was ridiculous. They’d failed the faith test. They’d been casting out unclean spirits and seeing miracles of healing and probably other miracles too as they went out to the towns and villages under Jesus’ authority. But here, in the dusk, miles from anywhere, with a hungry multitude present, they could see no solution. They had misunderstood what Jesus had said to them. Jesus knew that buying food was not the answer. He was looking for faith for a miracle. You feed them (practise your lesson-reading skills again). You feed them. You can feed them. You can feed them. You can feed them right here and now. No need for a visit to the shops – can you just imagine the disciples trying to carry back enough food for this crowd? Imagine James the Less with four-hundred-plus lunch bags.
Jesus was looking for faith from his disciples that this pastor of the sheep without a shepherd will feed his flock, that the solution lay not in the practical but in the miraculous. If just one of those disciples had got it and had done no more than simply believe that Jesus could do it, that would have been enough to pass the test…
Has the Church in its history ever chosen to spend large sums of money rather than faithfully seek a miracle?
What would being part of a church that operates solely by faith entail for you?
Father God, you throw me challenges again and again, and I sometimes avoid taking them up and sometimes do not even realise that’s what you’ve done. Test my faith to believe not so much that I can do anything through you who give me strength but that you can use me to do anything. Amen.
This video has an interesting take on how the fish were multiplied. Jesus may look a bit too Western European, but it’s a nice song. More than enough
Paul