Of Bread

An hour ago I was stretched out across my floor "prayer crying." For those who are not familiar with this term, it's the experience of equal parts sobbing and equal parts praying—prayer sobbing doesn't sound quite as good though. "Prayer crying" has only happened a couple of times in my life, probably due to lack of clean floors as well as precipitating crises calling for a good laid-out prayer cry. Yet, this is where I found myself on a Saturday evening in my 29th year of life. The essence of my "prayer cry" was this: God are you good? God are you trustworthy? Can your promises that are explicit in your Word apply to me? Mixed amongst these questions were disappointment, shame, confusion, and hurt. I have questions God, they’re not intellectual but existential in nature—Does pain tarry only for a night? Or will it be my portion forever and ever (Amen). I have brought a case against the Almighty One, like Job, the Psalmists, and the disciples I raise the question of frail children of dust: Do you care? 

In Mark 8, the gospel writer tells us that Jesus was teaching a large crowd—a common theme in Mark is that everywhere Jesus goes crowds gather to see his miracles, hear his teachings, or as is often the case both. As is common now to the reader at this point in Marks narrative, another large crowd gathers to see this wonder-worker who speaks with authority (Mk. 1:22). But amongst this idyllic backdrop there’s a problem: the people have spent three days listening to Jesus and their food supplies are not enough to get them back home from this “remote place” they have settled to listen to Jesus (Mark 8:2-3). Jesus is concerned about this situation and seems to speak his mind to the disciples about it and their response is natural—confusion and some anxiety. I love how they put it: “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?” (Mark 8:4). At points like this I think we too often make fun of the disciples. We who know the end of the story are quick to point and laugh at their lack of understanding and often clumsy statements—Mark probably does a better job than any other gospel of showing us the most embarrassing facets of the disciples (Garden streakers anyone? Mark 14:51-52). Yes, too often we make the disciples out to be simple dopes, but in this case Mark is leading us to come to that conclusion. 

Just one chapter earlier in Mark 6 we are told that Jesus had fed five thousand people with simply five loaves of bread and two fish. And to make sure that we realize that the disciples did not simply miss the miracle, Mark tells us that they were the ones who picked up the twelve full baskets of leftover bread and fish (Mark 6:43). They had seen the multiplication of bread and fish to feed five thousand and now a little while later in the narrative they are wondering where in the world they are going to find food for these people. Are they ignorant? Do they suffer from a collective amnesia? No, they are human. This is the surprising twist, Mark doesn't want us to sit back, point the finger at the stupidity of the disciples, but instead holds them up as a mirror to our own discipleship. We are to see ourselves in the disciples. 

You see, the disciples' question was about their immediate situation, and my question has been simply updated to my immediate situation. I pray cried on the floor and asked God  the same question as the disciples did: “Where in this dry and desolate land will I be able to find bread that will fill my soul?” I question the goodness of this Jesus, I wonder where there will be “food” that will nourish my soul’s hunger—Augustine’s restlessness. My questions, my tears, my cries have their root in the same foundational problem as the disciples: a hardness of heart. Jesus responds to me like he did with the disciples: “Why are you talking about having no bread?” I could replace that last word “bread” with any numbers of the wishes, hopes, and desires of my heart that God withholds—wife, career, family, healing…etc. And then Jesus speaks to me again, not with a rebuke, but with grief: “Do you still not see or understand? [Is] your heart hardened?” (Mark 8:17) And there it is, I’m undone before him. Because I don’t understand fully, but I should. Yet, I am a disciple and disciples forget.