Thursday • 3/24/2022
Thursday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 83; Genesis 46:1–7,28–34; 1 Corinthians 9:1–15; Mark 6:30–46

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

In Genesis 46, seventy souls go down to Egypt. They go with Yahweh’s blessing. 400 years later they will depart from there a mighty nation. When, in Mark 6, Jesus feeds 5,000 and recovers 12 baskets of leftovers, he signals that Yahweh’s great nation is being reconstituted around him, and around the meal where he “takes” bread, “blesses” it, “breaks” it, and “gives” it. 

Jesus is calm in the storm. All four gospel writers recount the feeding of the 5,000, but one subtle feature of Mark’s account stands out. Jesus is an island of calm and rest in a sea of frenetic activity. Mark tells us that the disciples have just returned from a mission in which they have spent themselves teaching and exercising “authority over the unclean spirits” (Mark 6:13b). When the apostles, whom he has sent out in pairs, come back together, they gather around him and start telling “him all that they had done and taught” (Mark 6:30). Imagine the buzz and excitement in that setting!

While all this energy is swirling around, Jesus says, “‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat” (Mark 6:31). Even then, notes Mark, while they are on their way to a deserted place for a retreat, “many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them” (Mark 6:33). Jesus and the disciples are sailing across Lake Gennesaret. Meanwhile a crowd is racing along the shoreline to beat them to their destination. 

Jesus desires rest for his disciples, but his compassion for “sheep without a shepherd” prompts him to teach “many things” to the crowd that has arrived ahead of them. The teaching runs so long that the day is ending. The disciples want to disacknowledge that they have any responsibility for the still-gathered multitude. “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away…” — Mark 7:35b. 

I sense such calm in Jesus’s instructions to bless and distribute the five loaves and two fishes. An island of peace in the storm, he provides the meal the people need, and more: “And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish” (Mark 7:42–43). 

In turbulent times like ours, it’s good to be reminded of the tranquility of spirit with which our Savior met, and continues to meet, every contingency. He met, and he meets, every emergency with equilibrium. He can make two loaves and five fishes feed 5,000, and he can provide exhausted souls the energy to keep giving. If all that is true, we can pray that he will make tyrants tremble, turn fools from their folly, raise up righteous people to protect the innocent, and enable fainting hearts to find courage. 

Collect for Peace: Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP, p. 258)

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

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