Eighth Sunday after Pentecost Year B
Sermon Preached by Reverend Michael Hillier on Sunday, 21 July 2024.
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Imagine that this afternoon, you are going to the Festival Theatre to see a play or a concert and that you are going to catch the train or bus into the city. That concert is the highlight, but you must get there and back, involving that train or bus trip.
If you like, our Gospel reading for today focuses on the train or bus trip. We get there and then get back. Jesus and His disciples cross the lake and come back. On the other side, large crowds gather to meet them. What happens next? Our Gospel reading today leaves it out. They head back. We catch the train or bus into the city and then back. Nothing is said about the play or the concert!
The part missing is the story of the Feeding of the 5,000, and next week and for the following couple of weeks, the focus will be on this—telling the story and interpreting it for the disciples and us.
So, we could see today’s Gospel as transitional: it takes us there and back, holding that story of the Feeding of the 5,000 together. As such, we might easily dismiss today’s reading as unimportant and irrelevant to the story and life.
But incidentals and details can be significant. I remember reading about a Retreat Centre being repainted by the staff. The Leader walked into the kitchen, and the one painting said, ‘I’m nearly finished; there are only a few more details.’ The Retreat Leader replied, ‘Details? But there are only ever details!’
Our sermon today is focusing on some of the details. Interesting things could happen on our train or bus trip into and out of the city. Paying attention to the details can be crucial.
First, we notice the apostles returning after being sent out by Jesus for their practical training to teach in the villages. This is the only time in this Gospel that they are called Apostles.
Jesus tells them to come apart and rest. It is another way of saying, ‘I want you alone with me to spend time teaching you’. If you are always ‘giving out’ and never ‘taking in’, in the end, you will have nothing worthwhile to say. You will just be filling up ‘air-time’; space.
On the far side, having sailed over, we see Jesus met by a large crowd. Where did they come from? Well, they had seen Jesus and His disciples get into the boat and sail and row to the other side 6 km away, and so they followed, walking around the edge of the lake the 12 or 13 km, arriving before Jesus and the disciples. And then we are told that Jesus had compassion on them because they ‘were like sheep without a shepherd, and He began to teach them many things’ (6.34).
In reading this Gospel, we will soon find out this crowd is hungry, and Jesus will respond miraculously by feeding them. But we notice before this that Jesus recognises or senses they are ‘like sheep without a shepherd’, and so His first instinct is not to feed them but to teach them.
It is easy for us to jump from that society to our own. Our society and culture closely resemble their ‘sheep without a shepherd’ society. We seem to be in a wilderness, even a wasteland, where many today lose their way.
Many seem filled with pain. It’s not because of psychological difficulties that occurred when they were children. Instead, they are hurting because they wander like sheep lost in the desert. They are confused. It is not that they are sick but relatively ignorant. They have not taken the trouble or not had the opportunity to think through any issues regarding faith.
They confront the complexity of life today with bits and pieces of insight picked up ‘here and there’ in conversations, magazines, or TV. Or they try to live in an adult world with the faith they received as a 10-year-old in Sunday School or rejected as a 14-year-old.
In this passage from Mark 6, which includes the Feeding of the 5000, there is a hunger for actual bread but also that more substantial hunger ‘for every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4.4).
In our society, powerful forces are at work to try to demonstrate in a variety of ways that the Christian Faith is nonsense, that it doesn’t make sense or ‘add up’. Some of this is almost subliminal, and we take it in, and if we’re not careful and discerning, we will find ourselves starting to believe it.
I am sure that by the end of today – whether it’s something you read or see on the TV or from the lips of a friend – you will hear something that suggests or even boldly states, that the Christian Faith is out of touch, nonsense, doesn’t make sense, or is just plain wrong.
The truth is today, to be a Christian is to be counter-cultural. It goes against the grain of the prevailing views in our society.
Christian education, that is, teaching in the name of Jesus, is one of the ways that the Church enables us to avoid being conformed to this world and, instead, as St Paul says, to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds’ (Romans 12. 1-2).
That is one reason why there can be strong negative feelings towards the Church and us as Christians. It is a struggle over the fundamental question: ‘Who gets to name the world?’ The world belongs to those who name it. No wonder some wish to drive us out of the community’s marketplace.
Because we are all victims of many competing stories and alternate means of formation—many blessed by our culture, economy, and advertising—Christian education must have a repetitive quality.
We aim to form people into a way of life they could only have known with Christian formation.
So, it must be done repeatedly and thus learned through repetition. Rather than present the Christian Faith as a course of interesting ideas to be affirmed, it is wise to present it as a set of habits to be slowly absorbed and slowly learned so that it becomes part of us.
John Wesley, writing in the 18th century, talked about ‘holy habits’. We all know about the habits we have in our daily lives—things like milk and sugar in our tea and coffee and sitting watching the TV news each night. But Wesley was suggesting ‘holy habits’: things related to our faith, things that might help us grow in that faith, things that we could consider to be good habits related to our relationship with God and our neighbour in a godly sense.
Here is something you might consider doing this afternoon or tomorrow if there is no time today.
Sit in a quiet place in a comfortable chair and think about your relationship with God: What is it you usually do? What do you say to Him? What might He say to you? How might you continue to deepen your faith? Is there something new with this that you could begin doing? Think about it, mull it over, puzzle over it. Start, or continue, to be proactive in deepening ‘holy habits’. e.g. grace before meals.
Soon, we will receive Holy Communion, and in doing so, we will hold out our empty hands.
Something is transforming in such a simple gesture of dependence. Our culture encourages us to grab, seize, and hold on to tightly. In the Church, we are taught to be open-handed, which is necessary to confess our emptiness, hunger, and need for the gift of God’s grace. That grace, God’s grace, is there to help us form our ‘holy habits’. That is something for which to give thanks!