The Shepherd of Scarcity ....

During Jesus' earthly ministry, a portion of Israel was governed by a cruel ruler named King Herod. Now, imagine for a moment that you are at a banquet at King Herod's palace. This palace, located in Galilee,  was a place where one could smell expensive wine and hear the heavy sound of fearful whispers. It was also a place of "self-sufficiency" where the powerful gathered to protect their status and where a king was willing to destroy an innocent life just to preserve his own pride. At Herod’s table, life was good as long as you were wealthy and had a good reputation.  In contrast , Mark 6:30-44 presents a snapshot of Jesus' Kingdom. Here, Jesus was ministering to a large crowd in a remote field where the air smelled of salt and the sound was not whispers of fear but, instead, whispers of hope.  In this setting, King Jesus did not use His power to take, but to give. He was not a King who destroyed life, but produced it as He fed five thousand men. And, the best news of all is that Jesus' kingdom is not confined to the time and place where this story occurred; rather, it extends to all born again believers who have existed in any place and at any time. 

In a city like Houston and it's surrounding area, we understand Herod’s table all too well. We live in a culture that prizes the "self-made" man or woman. We are a city of "hardworkers" who take immense pride in what we earn, what we produce, and how well we manage our own lives. We have been taught to view our time, our energy, and our resources as our own personal birthrights to be guarded at all costs.  However, this mindset only works when things are going well. So, what happens when our own capability fails us and what we have to offer is not enough? After all, every self-sustained battery eventually runs out and every bank account of self-sufficiency will, at some point, hit zero. This leads us to the ultimate two questions that we must ask ourselves: 1) When what we have to offer is not “enough,” when our resources are exhausted, and our plans are interrupted, is Jesus merely a helpful aid to get us out of our mess? Or, 2) Is He the Lord to whom we surrender our lives to so that He can change us? Today's passage presents four scenes of what happens when we let go and let God work. For the rest of this writing, we will focus on "The Basket" (the seven loaves and two fish) presented in these verses. 

In verses 30-34, we see that Jesus and His disciples had spent a long and exhausing day teaching and ministering to the crowds. At this point, the following dialog occured betweeen them: "And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, 'This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.' But he answered them, 'You give them something to eat.' And they said to him, 'Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?'  And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish” (Mark 6:35-38). Now, to fully understand the context, we must also look at the companion text to this story in John's gospel. There, we learn that two hundred demarii equaled about "half a year's wages" (John 6:7, NIV).  Notice that Jesus did not ask them to find enough food to solve the problem; He simply asked them find what they had and to trust Him to do the rest. 

Now, to fully appreciate what God is teaching us with this story, we should pause and look at these happenings from the viewpoint of the boy who originally possessed the basket and relinquished it to the disciples and Jesus. While Mark does not mention the boy in his account, the Apostle John does (John 6:9). This boy, like the rest of the crowd, was also in a remote place and (likely) just as hungry as the other 5,000 men. This small basket was his security and his "enough for the day". To hand it over to the disciples was to risk everything. Yet, that is exactly what this boy did and what God calls us to do today. Friend, it is not easy to let go of the things we think we need to survive. However, we must trust that Jesus has much better plans for our "not enough" than we can imagine. Today's culture and even our well meaning friends will tell us "You are enough". They say it to encourage the wounded spouse, the exhaused parent, the burnt out leader or the struggling student in the hopes that he or she will keep pressing on. But, the Gospel says something far more honest and much more beautiful. It says that "You are not enough and that is why Jesus died for you". Given this truth,  the ultimate question is this: Will you quit trying to live life on your own and, instead, let Christ live through you by trusting Him as Lord and Savior today?....

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