13 February 2024 Mark 8:14-21
How do you fit five elephants into a Volkswagen?
This sounds like a trick question, but only if you think about it as a size problem. As a number problem, it’s easy.
How do you fit five elephants into a Volkswagen? Two in the front, three in the back.
Jesus said to the disciples after the Feeding of the 4000 (Mark 8:1-9), “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, and the yeast of Herod” (8:14). The disciples were puzzled by this because they were thinking of the wrong kind of problem. They thought it was a bread problem, and so whispered to each other, “It’s because we have no bread” (8:16), though why they should have worried about that seems pretty absurd – they had just seen Jesus feed 4000 people with just seven loaves of bread. They had already seen Jesus feed 5000 people with just five loaves of bread. Nobody with Jesus had a bread problem. Why didn’t they know that?
One of the most consistent themes in all of the gospels is the slowness and dullness of the Twelve. Even Jesus got exasperated with them from time to time. Like this time. “Why are you talking about having no bread?” He asked (8:17). “We are not having a bread problem!” Then he walked them slowly through everything they had seen – five loaves feed 5000, with twelve baskets of leftovers; seven loaves feed 4000, with seven baskets of leftovers. Twelve! Seven! “Do you still not perceive or understand?” (8:17).
Twelve represented the Jews, the twelve tribes of Israel – Jesus has enough for all of them. Seven represented the Gentiles, all the nations of the Gentiles – Jesus has enough for them, too. Jesus isn’t thinking about being just King of the Jews, but King of everyone. Jesus wasn’t talking about being Lord of Jerusalem, but Lord of the World, the whole created order. The Pharisees didn’t see that. Herod and the other rulers didn’t see that.
“Why don’t you guys see that?” Jesus said (8:21)
They were thinking of the wrong kind of problem.
“I don’t need faith in God to live a good life.” Unquestionably true – it happens all the time. People who think like that, however, are thinking about the wrong kind of problem.
Here is the kind of problem they should be thinking about – why is there goodness at all? If I decide not to live a good life, what happens? If nothing happens, then why should anyone ever bother being good? Why not just live for self? Why not take from the poor if it will make me happy? You can call it wicked if you want, but if nothing happens as a result of such wickedness, so what?
That’s the kind of problem everybody should be thinking about. Don’t you get it?
And if you do think about it, you find that in the absence of God, terms like “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong”, “moral” and “immoral” have no meaning. Without an objective reference point, moral goodness and badness are utterly arbitrary. But our moral experience tells us otherwise. In the same way that our sense experience tells us that color, sound and temperature exist, so also our moral experience tells us that things like good and evil exist. And if good and evil exist, then there must be an objective reference point that tells us so. God is that objective reference point. God, the Lord of the World, is why goodness exists, why moral duties exist, why moral consequences exist.
That’s what 12 and 7 point to.
That’s what you should be thinking about.
Get it?
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