Proper 11 Year B 2024: Mark 6:30-34,53-56

One Sunday during my seminary field education at St. Mary’s in Arlington, VA, I was “helping”, code for being another adult in the room in case of a riot, with Children's Chapel. I don’t remember what the Gospel lesson was that week, but there was one boy who took issue with the fact that he’d heard that one before. Let’s be real, that wasn’t his actual problem. I think he was just annoyed to be in Children’s Chapel and decided he’d take it out on the Gospel lesson. Because we love stories we’ve heard before. Not just children, who are notorious for wanting to watch the same exact thing over and over and over again - I bet if I’d told that kid from Children’s Chapel’s parents that he’d complained he’d heard that story before, they would instantly say something like, “that’s interesting, because he’s watched this one movie every day this week.” But adults have favorite movies we could almost single handedly recreate, dialogue and all. We go to concerts to hear the same songs. While it’s nice to get some deep cuts, you want to hear the hits. Imagine the confusion if the lights came up at a Billy Joel concert and he hasn’t played Piano Man, or at a Taylor Swift show and she hasn’t played Shake it Off.

Today’s Gospel lesson seems like a deep cut. It’s surrounded by hits - the death of John the Baptist, feeding the 5000, walking on water - but it feels like the part of the concert where you go to the bathroom. But in reality, it’s more like a deep cut where if you listen a little more closely, you can hear its genius.

Mark oftentimes doesn’t get a lot of credit for cleverness. Most of the time it’s Luke’s elegant storytelling and style that gets all the recognition. Usually, what is pointed out as being characteristically Marcan is the frantic pace and clipped style. But here, it’s so cool the way in which Mark lays out his argument without arguing anything. He begins with sheep without a shepherd. It’s Mark’s clever answer to the people musing about who this Jesus was in last week’s reading, which ended right where this week’s text picks up. Some people were saying Jesus was John the Baptist, some were saying he was Elijah - Elijah, who was considered a harbinger of the “day of the Lord” because in 1 Kings Elijah never really dies, he’s taken away in a chariot of fire.

But then today’s Gospel lesson skips a couple of important stories that would have dramatically made Mark’s point for him. In today's reading Mark doesn’t explicitly say anything about Jesus’ divinity. He shows it. Jesus does not identify himself as the shepherd of the sheep, as he does in John. In Mark, all it says is “he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” And Jesus doesn’t say any of it, it’s all narration.

Our other lessons today make it clear that Mark’s point was heard. In today’s Old Testament reading,  Jeremiah promises a shepherd for God’s people while at the same time acknowledging the greatness of King David - a shepherd. Then Psalm 23 declares: who is my shepherd? The Lord. Then we hear from Mark’s Gospel where the people were like sheep without a shepherd, and Jesus responds to that by teaching them. Now, about the deep cut,  those two very telling hits that take place between “he began to teach them many things” and “when they had crossed over”? The first is that feeding of the 5000 where, while Jesus is teaching the people, it becomes late and instead of sending them away to buy food, he feeds the people with five loaves and two fish. The feeding of the 5000 recalls Israel’s miraculous sustenance by God during the Exodus from Egypt as well as Jewish expectations of an end-time feast for God’s elect. Immediately after the people have eaten - and the disciples cleaned up twelve baskets of leftovers - the disciples got in a boat to cross over to Bethsaida without Jesus, so he could go up on the mountain to pray. And then he catches up with them by walking on the water. Jesus gets in the boat and says, “have courage, I am (not I am he, just I am), do not be afraid”, the identification of himself as “I am” being particularly noteworthy, as it is the same way as God identifies Godself throughout the Hebrew scriptures. And it is after all of this that they get out of the boat at Gennesaret. And while Jesus has healed the sick earlier in the Gospel of Mark, now, with the new information of the feeding of the 5000, walking on water, and saying things like “I AM”, we see text as non-specific as “they get off the boat and Jesus heals more people” in a new light. Maybe this is more than Elijah.

When I started looking at the scriptures for this week, I was a little bit like that boy in Children’s Chapel. The text didn’t look all that interesting. I’ve heard lots of takes on sheep and really didn’t feel the need to remind everyone how sheep without a shepherd are a mess, blah blah blah. But Mark is telling us so much more than “we are sheep, Jesus guides us.” Even with the missing stories out of the middle of today’s lesson, Mark is giving us information about this shepherd. If we are sheep, then we’ll follow something. So let’s make sure what we’re following is this shepherd who feeds the multitudes so well that there is always more than enough. This shepherd who walks over the chaos of stormy waters like it’s no problem and identifies himself as the Lord. This shepherd who, wherever he goes, is constantly healing people, even by them merely touching the edge of his cloak. This text isn’t really about us. It’s about Jesus.

If this concept of Jesus guiding us like a shepherd is so overdone, so boring, then why are we so bad at being led? If we see this text and think, “I know, I know”, do we really know? Are we paying attention to what Mark is saying? After 2000 years, does the earth shattering, reality changing nature of who Jesus is not hit quite as hard as it would have to Mark’s audience in first century Palestine?

Are we too comfortable to let Jesus change our reality? Too safe in our state of relative privilege, when compared with the rest of the world? Too satisfied with the things in the world we think we understand that we feel like we have enough control that we don’t really want things shaken up too much? If that’s the case, then what shepherd are we following? We have an opportunity to make things about Jesus. About who Jesus is, about what Jesus wants for us. As scary as it can be to surrender our delusional role of self-as-shepherd to let go and trust, what Jesus has in store for us is better than what we can ask or imagine. So we can loosen our grip - we’re not in control anyway. And we can look closer at what we think we know to find new ways in which Jesus is calling us to follow him. Amen.