"The disciples came to him and said, 'This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away...' But he answered them, 'You give them something to eat.'" Mark 6:35-37
Jesus is a very unsettling travelling companion, isn't he?
Here he is with his friends, embarking on a mini-break after a hectic preaching tour (Mark 6:30-31). They set off by boat to "a deserted place by themselves" but – oh no – a whole load of bystanders "saw them going and recognized them, hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them". So much for the retreat, then.
Jesus doesn't send the crowd packing, but begins to teach them – apparently for some considerable time. For it is growing late (v35) when his disciples, presumably even more weary by now, come to him and ask for the crowds to be dismissed.
"Send them away," they say, "so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat."
It's not unreasonable, is it? After all, where could they have got food for several thousand people? And indeed their request could be seen as compassionate – not only for the crowds, and themselves, but also for Jesus too.
The disciples must have been open-mouthed and disbelieving when Jesus responds: "You give them something to eat." Yeah right, Lord – like that's really going to happen.
Given that Jesus must know what he is about to do – multiply some loaves and fishes to feed the mass of people – we might additionally wonder why he bothers to challenge them in the first place. Moreover, if Jesus could do that sort of thing then, why doesn't he just do the same now and eliminate world hunger? What's going on here?
1. "Without Him, we can't... Without us, He won't." That's the first principle here – as put by famous preacher CH Spurgeon in a pithy phrase many years ago. In other words, Jesus wants to do impossible things – but he wants to do them through us. We need his power, to be sure, but he much prefers to work through human agencies to accomplish his purposes.
2. That's because God's plan for us is spiritual growth, not comfort. Never mind the quiet break they had planned; Jesus wants his disciples, relying on his power, to grow in active faith, hope and love.
We often think of "God's plan for us" in terms of being whether or not he wants us, say, to go to China as a missionary (which it may be, of course) – or similar. But, more broadly, his number one purpose is for us to grow in active, thinking, holy discipleship and become like him. And if we're serious, that will most likely involve (as for the disciples here) discomfort, perplexing circumstances and Jesus frequently bringing us up short.
3. This is all about the breaking in of God's Kingdom. The feeding of the 5,000 is not some conjuring trick with bread and fish. It is about Jesus making clear that just as God provided manna in the desert (Exodus 16), so now he is acting in exactly the same way – in other words, as God himself – to provide food for the crowd. God's rule is now breaking into the world, and Jesus the king delights to use his disciples (including us) to further it.
As Bishop Tom Wright puts it, this incident "doesn't just mean 'work a bit harder for famine relief,' though that would certainly help". Rather it means acting as Jesus' people, in his power, to bring his kingdom in, while growing as disciples through the challenge and suffering this may involve.
Author Randy Kilgore sums it up so well: "When Jesus asks us to get involved, He already knows how He will accomplish His work through us. What we need is faith and vision; the ability to see that God wants us to be His instruments, and that He will supply what we need."
The Rough Guide to Discipleship is a fortnightly devotional series. David Baker is a former daily newspaper journalist now working as an Anglican minister in Sussex.
