One of the great joys I had studying the Bible in seminary was having wise, experienced teachers point out things in Scripture that I had never noticed before. One example that stands out was when my New Testament professor pointed out a little detail about Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand in the Gospel of Mark that I had completely missed my entire life.
One of the things that sets Mark apart from the other gospel writers is that he loves to tell stories in great detail. A story that might take Matthew a few concise verses to tell takes Mark twice as long, and Mark likes to linger on the little details that the other gospel writers skip over.
In most accounts of the feeding of the five thousand, there is a regular repetition of the phrase “desolate place.” In Mark 6, verse 31, Jesus says, “come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” In the next verse, Mark writes, “And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.” In verse 35, after Jesus had been teaching for a long while, the disciples say to Jesus, “this is a desolate place, and the hour is now late.”
Desolate place. Desolate place. Repeated again and again. This is a desolate place. What image does your mind conjure up when you think of this desolate place? My mind automatically goes to a dry, dusty desert with large rocky hills—similar to the images that I see of the Middle East today. However, when we reach verse 39, Mark includes a vivid little detail that his fellow gospel writers omit, “Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass.”
Green grass? You probably weren’t imagining green grass in this story, were you? Neither was I—at least until I had this pointed out to me. What’s the deal with the repeated emphasis on this being a desolate place if Jesus was sitting and teaching on a grassy hillside?
The desolation Mark was referring to is clearly not of a natural or physical variety, but something rather more symbolic. He speaks of a spiritual desolation. This was a place devoid of spiritual truth and life, and it was in this desolate place that Jesus performed the only miracle recorded in all four gospel accounts. The Bread of Life himself supernaturally preserved the lives of thousands of those who followed him and sustained them in the wilderness, just as God’s people were sustained in the wilderness as manna fell down from the sky in the Old Testament, and just as he continues to do so in this broken, sinful, desolate world today. As those who follow him, as we ourselves are nourished and sustained by our great Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, may we be those who point other starving, wandering sinners to the only one who can keep them from starving as they wander through this desolate world!
All the best,
Luke
