ABUNDANCE AND SCARCITY

Mark 6:30-56 Picnic by the lake alson known as the feeding of the 5,000

bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+6:30-56&vnum=yes&version=nrsv



-have you se the back of a computer in many places -maze of cables- computer/monitor/printer is a 3 in one -scanner, fax, copier and printer- video camera and microphone, additional portable hard-disk, USB expander, lamps, palm pilot cradle, voice over IP box, internet bridge, not only that I am messy but also a sign of abundance- I can buy all of those things, while most of the world will be lucky to have electricity

-speaking of electricity, no one know how important is something until you have a shortage of it, that goes for everything in life -in Spanish we have a saying - nadie sabe lo que tiene hasta que lo pierde- no one know what one has until one loss it-

How many things depend on the abundance of resources of this country

Look at our health care. I had a tooth ache in the far away island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands, when I went to Kilofi Hospital for being white I was looked after immediately and quite frankly I had such a tooth ache that I did not care. I recoiled at the look of the dental office, not your Park Avenue dentist, I forgot how medical facilities operate in the Developing World, but the pain was too strong for me to be prissy and the dentist was very efficient and provided me for free with the medications I needed and in a few days my pain was gone.

Healthcare has becoming so expensive because I suspect that pharmaceutical-industry generates and finances a constant stream of studies that justifies the increase use of resources, many of them outright useless at best and mortal at worst. Now Americans are told to get rid of the nasty regular bacteria who has lived thousands of years on kitchens. We are told that we now have to be aseptically clean, almost surgically. And I will say nothing of the chemically managed feelings that we are supposed to have a control off via zoloft and prozac and the like.

Feelings, deeper communications of the soul, heart to heart, face to face, within the reach of someone’s aroma, that come about only and more successfully when there is an abundance of wasted unstructured time, are almost impossible these days. People get home drained of energy, work not only pays better than in Melanesia but also suck up our very soul. In the area of communication we have an abundance, I will call obscene, of mediums for it, and yet increasingly we are trapped in a sort of social autism, unable to break out of ourselves and reach to others. Fear mongering in this era of terrorism and war just comes handy to solidify and reinforced the steel door behind which our souls live in terrifying solitude.

Speaking of war, the katyushkas missiles being dropped on Israel by Hezbollah, literally “The Party of God”, are wreaking death and destruction in the very same area where Jesus over 2,000 years ago asked hungry people to recline on the green grass and taking just five loaves and two fish, and acknowledging where all blessings come from, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave it to them and he divided the two fish. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of leftovers of the bread and the fish.


What an irony, the chosen people of God, Israel and the Party of God “Hezbollah”, bombing each other senseless, while the innocent caught in the crossfire are called “unfortunate casualties”. And the setting for so much destruction and death on the Israeli side is where we believe God, acting powerfully as Creator, transformed the scarcity of five loaves of bread and two fish to feed many who were hungry.

Right off the bat, I got to tell you that we are making the world more skeptical when they hear god-speak, and I say we, because specially in the US we have contributed to aggravate and additionally planning to do nothing, it seems, to prevent further deterioration of the situation in the Middle East. So sometimes, let us not be surprised that the world refuses to believe. Here do we have two conflicting views about God or we have the useful manipulation of and by the way blasphemy, of using the name of God, to further a geopolitical agenda? It is hard to separate one form the other, because I think in the historical memory of nations in the area, both politics and religion become undistinguishable.

Who does not know about Exodus? If you bring to mind the Exodus story and read the passage again you will see and find a number of considerable clues that lead me to think of a small scale re-enactment of the exodus story. Crossing of a body of water. God feeding his people -manna and quails then, bread and fish now- the scarcity of it all, the desert place setting, Moses I in the Book of Numbers 27:17 prays to G-d that the wandering people of Israel do not become “like sheep without a shepherd”, Jesus saw them with compassion, because they looked like they could use some direction, some shepherding. The were arranged in groupings like it is described in Exodus 18:25.

Jesus takes the position of a host giving a banquet for his guests.260 The gestures by which Jesus blesses the bread before giving it to the disciples to distribute (v. 41) recall the eucharistic blessing (Mark 14:22), even though the meal itself does not consist of bread and wine. The fact that there were five loaves and the two fish and they amount to seven items should not be overlooked, since the number seven in Judaic tradition stands as the time of God, the Sabbath -remember the disciples went away to rest to a deserted place- was the seventh day of the week, the Jubilee Year, seven year cycles of seven, was also known as the Sabbath of Sabbaths.

The numbers seven and twelve in the narration are not accidental, they were signs posts known by about everybody in Israel that this what was happening was no simple picnic, but it was about God and his people and their legendary journey from the Egypt, land of slavery and oppression to the Promised Land, land of abundance flowing with milk and honey. They were not allowed to keep leftovers in the Exodus story (Exodus 16:21), just what they needed for the day. Jesus on the other hand commands to collect the leftovers from them.


The primary function of the feeding miracle in this section of the Gospel is to demonstrate that the people now have a true shepherd in Jesus. The banquet in the messianic age would repeat the wilderness miracle of yonder.

Land flowing with milk and honey was God’s promise to Israel, to walk the burning sand of the desert, seeking freedom and material wealth. But Jesus audience were probably wondering what had happened with God’s promise. The Temple establishment was willing to explain it away by blaming people for their sins, interiorizing responsibility for their own misfortunes and removing any traces of it from the landowner class, enabling self-aggression through guilt, destroying in their historical memory the liberation implied in Exodus.

For twenty three years I have worked more that my fair share, and me too like the disciples, sometimes did not even have time to eat. We in clericoland have this thing called a sabbatical year every seven and if I succeed raising the funds I will be on my way to Amsterdam, to study at Vrije Universitet. This will be my first sabbatical in twenty three years of ordained ministry. Not a day goes by in which I do not have doubts about the whole idea, or where I prefer to stay home overblowing my own importance for the development of this congregation or I find reason with the kitchen project to stay put. I spend the whole of my seminary education looking after two parishes on the weekends and when I went to Canada I worked as associated priest in two parishes as well. But everyday, at the end of the day, when I feel really tired, tired from within, I realize that I have to do this. So talk to people who are tired about rest and will tell you a story.

Jesus re-enacting the Exodus myth by the Sea of Galilee, indeed a make-believe Red Sea, is reclaiming that foundational story of Israel and resetting it on a context of utopia, hope begetting new time, new Sabbath of rest for the exhausted laborers of Israel, for those whose milk and honey was stolen by the people in charge and who now collaborate with the Roman Empire forcing the poor, who eat from day to day, to pay high taxes to a foreign power that oppress and shames them. No wonder the disciples could not eat! No wondwer the multitudes followed him everywhere he went!

Jesus’s movement was in its peak of popularity. The whole story here is one of abundance and hope. However, lest we forget, when Jesus dies on a cross, he dies alone.

Seven were the years of famine with which God castigated Egypt and seven were the years of abundance