


“32 So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. 33 But many who saw them leaving recognised them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” (Mark 6:32-34)
Enjoying a rare Sunday off, we attended Killin Parish Church’s ‘Café Sunday.’ We were ably led through the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand while consuming coffee, croissants and home baking. The spiritual feeding at each table was stimulated by observations and discussion prompts from Morag, our worship leader.
In our group we were struck by Jesus’ compassion, seeing the crowd not as an inconvenience but as ‘sheep without a shepherd.’ We also noticed the disciples’ unwillingness to take any responsibility in the situation. They more or less push Jesus to do something (to ‘do’ perhaps the very thing that was on their minds as a solution?) – to dismiss the crowd and send them away to find their own food. Instead, Jesus challenges them to go and see how many loaves they have. Did he mean the disciples were to check their own resources? Tellingly, they calculate what a material solution would cost but none of them owns up to personally having anything. It seems they even looked in the crowd for others to take responsibility. We wondered in our discussion how many others in the crowd hid whatever they had and would not have shared it? It is left to a young boy in the crowd to offer up his packed lunch. And then we wondered if this boy willingly, generously, naively stepped up to offer his own meagre resources or if there was an underlying hint of intimidation or coercion of a vulnerable individual? Passing the responsibility for response onto someone else?
Perhaps I am being cynical, but Morag’s discussion prompts gave me some unexpected thoughts about this familiar story of disciples stubbornly reducing a problem to a financial figure and then evading any personal responsibility for resolving the issue. The Great Shepherd saw ‘sheep without a shepherd’ and the disciples effectively abdicated any responsibility for shepherding those sheep. They reduced the problem to a monetary sum and ultimately looked for someone else to resolve the issue. While Jesus miraculously multiplied the offering of loaves and small fish, it was essentially the un-named child who had become the true shepherd to the sheep.
We celebrate this well-known story as a wonderful miracle. It is one of the few that features in all four Gospels. But I wonder now if the disciples subsequently looked back on this event with some mixed emotions? Awe at the miraculous power of Jesus, mingled with shame at their own selfishness and impotence and unwillingness to step up and shepherd the sheep. Were they humbled by the outcome when one of the weakest, most insignificant, unknown members of the crowd surrendered all he had becoming the catalyst for this incredible event? Are willing to take responsibility when we see others in need and to share what we have? Then perhaps we too will see some miracles.