Green
Mark 6:30-44
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One year after I graduated from college, I found myself out of work. Up until then I’d been working steadily for more than a year doing one theater production after another around my hometown. Then the show I was in closed, and the next role that I thought I’d be offered didn’t materialize. So I took the first decent job that came along, which happened to be as a tour guide at the Coors Brewing Company in Golden, Colorado. The pay wasn’t bad, and there were some attractive fringe benefits. I was 24-years-old and the discounted beer for employees was hard to pass up. Tours at the brewery fall under what is known as ‘Hospitality Services,’ which was a part of the company’s marketing division. One day, before we opened for tours, all the guides were gathered for a meeting with the company’s Vice President of Marketing. He was a big wig, but he wanted to talk with us about the role that Hospitality Services played there at Coors. I remember one of my co-workers, a transplanted southerner with plenty of spunk, spoke up during that meeting and suggested that hospitality was something of an accessory to the work being done there, a fanciful decoration that was nice to look at, but not really essential to the brewery’s core business. I still remember the Vice President assuring her that while it might look that way, what we were doing was absolutely essential, that it was one of the few opportunities that the company had to directly interact with its customers. He emphasized that the experience people had of the brewery while they were on a tour had more of an impact on customer loyalty than anything else the Marketing department could do.
But I understand what my co-worker was talking about. In our non-stop, 24/7, technologically driven world, it feels like hospitality has become something of an afterthought, a luxury. A few weeks ago our family took its annual trek to Denver for African Heritage Camp where one of the recurring offerings for parents is the chance to experience the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. This was offered to us a couple of times when we were in Ethiopia, but the woman who offers it at camp is able to explain in English just what it is and how it functions in that culture. When visiting a friend’s home, it is customary for them to offer you coffee. And if it’s offered to you, you don’t say, ‘no.’ Only this isn’t Folgers run through the coffee maker on your countertop. Instead it is a social interaction that can take a couple of hours as grasses are laid out, beans are roasted and ground, and then the coffee is brewed in the traditional clay pot over an open fire. All of this takes time, and while it does, friends talk. They share. And they drink at least three cups of the potent brew (with plenty of sugar), lest they be considered rude. The hospitality that is shown and shared on a daily basis is an essential element of life in that community. But honestly, who has time for that?
Well, Jesus for one, apparently. In fact, he was so concerned about the hectic comings and going surrounding his disciples that he insisted they go on retreat, just so they could eat a meal together in peace, take their time. In other words, he recognizes that the very real workaday demands that his followers are dealing with are creating a physical crisis that also happens to be a spiritual crisis. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. They almost never are. As much as our habit is to divide things between the physical, or material realm and the spiritual real, for Jesus there is no such division. As much as we would like to sequester our spiritual lives and community from the rest of what is going on in the world, Jesus knows that in order to attend to the one, we must attend to the other. And Jesus also knows that if his disciples don’t even have the time to eat together, that’s a problem. In our own time, there is all kinds of data to back Jesus up on this. After all, we live an era where data suggests that the average American eats one out of every five meals in their car, and that we may spend as much money per week on fast food than we do on groceries. But the research has shown that regular family dinners- and their absence- can impact everything from our weight, to school performance, to drug and alcohol use, to loneliness. Eating together, it turns out, is how we connect. So Jesus takes his disciples on retreat, so that they can share a meal and reconnect.
Only it doesn’t quite work out the way that the disciples, and maybe even Jesus, intended. Because no sooner do they arrive at their intended destination, no sooner does their boat come ashore at that supposedly deserted place than they encounter another crowd. Turns out this crowd saw where Jesus and his disciples were headed when they left and decided to go ahead on foot to meet them there. So much for their retreat. That is how it goes sometimes. Best laid plans, and all that. Now if it were me (and I suspect that disciples who were looking forward to a little hard-earned R & R might have been with me on this), I’d tell them all to go away. “Can’t you see it’s my day off,” I might snap, a little too testily. When our expectations get thwarted by the unexpected, it’s easy to get angry. This isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t what I was hoping for. Now, since Jesus was the one to suggest this little getaway, I seriously doubt that he was super-thrilled to see all those people either. But then Jesus does what I think he would call us all to do when we are confronted by a crowd of people who have come to find us; a crowd of people who recognize that what we have, what we are doing is not only valuable and inspiring, but that it just might save them, from God knows what. Jesus sees those crowds and we are told that he has compassion for them. Maybe the modern use of the word compassion sounds a little soft to you, a little too weak. The Greek word is a little more visceral than that. It’s most literal rendering would be something along the lines of being moved in one’s bowels. Which is to say that he had a very deep, gut reaction to what he was seeing. Perhaps the same kind of gut reaction many of us have been having these past few weeks at the limited photos and audio released from the humanitarian crisis being created by our own government at the southern border. Some folks call them ‘illegals,’ as if the seeking a better life for their families has stripped them of their humanity. Others blame those fleeing violence and poverty for putting their children at risk, without fully comprehending the very real and significant dangers they are trying to protect those children from. But I imagine that Jesus looks upon them in the same way he looked upon that crowd that crashed his dinner party with his disciples. He sees them and has compassion for them, because just like us they are like sheep without a shepherd. He does not fear their need. He does not rage against their intrusion. He sees them. And his gut reaction is to have compassion on them as he begins to teach them many things. He takes the time. Because that is what compassion does. That is what hospitality does. It takes the time. It takes the time to see more than its own inconvenience. It takes the time to look beyond the fear of what else might not get done. It takes the time to meet people where they are- particularly when they’ve come to meet you where you are.
But then, as it often is now, Jesus’ own disciples grow restless. They. Had. Plans. Can’t he see that it’s getting late? Remember, Jesus, this is the deserted place you wanted to take us to get away from all this craziness. Time to send these people off to get something to eat, leave us alone to eat our private dinner together in peace. You know what they say, Jesus, God helps those who help themselves. And do you know what Jesus’ answer is to that? Do you know what Jesus’ answer is to the people who follow him and believe in him who want to send people in need away so that they can fend for themselves? Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.” As it turns out, Jesus appears to be of the opinion that God helps precisely those whom we help. Because as the Reverend Samuel Wells has put it, “we aren’t part of God’s plan. We ARE the plan.”
But, but, but… are we supposed to go BUY food for all these people? That isn’t in the budget. We can’t feed all these people. Do you how much that would cost? There isn’t room. There isn’t money. There isn’t time. It’s at about this moment in the story that I imagine Jesus channeling Master Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back. “Always with you it cannot be done.” But instead of engaging them in an argument about what they don’t think they have, he asks them instead what they do have. Because in the end the list of reasons we use for not doing something is always going to be long enough to justify our inaction. God has never been much interested in those. Moses tried to pull the same stunt all the way back at the burning bush, but God didn’t go for it then and God certainly isn’t having any of that now.
Five loaves and two fish doesn’t sound like nearly enough to feed a crowd of more than twelve people, let alone five thousand. But then Mark, the gospel writer who is in such a rush to tell us the good news about Jesus that he doesn’t use any extraneous detail in the telling us the story includes something curious in Jesus’ instructions. In that deserted place, in an arid climate not unlike our own, Jesus has the crowd sit in groups on the green grass. Really, Mark? Green grass? Yes. Of course. Because they are like sheep without a shepherd, but the Lord who is my shepherd, who leads me beside still waters, also makes me lie down in green pastures. And because the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. With this shepherd excuses about scarcity are no match for the abundant generosity, the abundant hospitality of God. And when this shepherd takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to his disciples there is no limit to how many can be fed. With Jesus, there is always more to give than we think we have. With Jesus, there is always room for those who have nowhere else to go. With Jesus, there is always time to sit down on the green grass and share a meal and a cup that overflows with a neighbor in need, and connect.