This coming Sunday is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. As ever Pheme Perkins [601-2] offers food for thought.

This passage begins with Jesus expressing compassion for the crowd. Teaching and feeding show that Jesus is the shepherd. The combination represents a variant of the teaching and healing that have been characteristic of all of Jesus’ ministry. People today find it difficult to balance those two aspects of Christian responsibility. Some think that the social ministries of the church are all that is necessary to make Christ present in the world. Others think that the church should have nothing to do with feeding and healing except when it is necessary to help someone in the local community. The church’s ministry, so the argument goes, is to preach the gospel and provide for public worship.

Both sides are wrong. There is no Christianity without proclaiming the gospel. Teaching and learning the Word of God are as essential to faith as are prayer and belonging to a Christian community. A community that has the same compassion for the suffering that Jesus exhibited cannot be content with only preaching the gospel to the already converted. Christians must also attempt to meet the pressing social and material needs of others, even if few of those who receive such services ever become members of the church.

Christ preaching to the Apostles, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1381| Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena | Public Domain US

This coming Sunday is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. It is easy to imagine the groan of despair that must have gone up from the exhausted disciples, when they saw, long before they had reached the other shore, that the inevitable curious crowd had followed and the possibility of rest was fading.

34 When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

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This coming Sunday is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. It seems as though Jesus and the apostles have attracted a large crowd of people. The short lake voyage, back to the old familiar surroundings of the sea, after tramping the dusty roads, must in itself have been a rest and relaxation for the Galilean fishermen. But the small size of the Sea of Galilee made it quite possible for the crowds, traveling along the shore, to outdistance the little ship, which probably did not have favorable wind. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. Jesus invited them to a deserted/wilderness place to anapausasthe (rest, remain quiet, cease). It is noteworthy that Mark twice notes that the place of rest is in the wilderness, apart from the crowds of people. The word eremos most literally refers to an uninhabited place in contrast to polis = “a populated place,” “city,” “town.” While sparseness of people and vegetation often go together in the Middle East, e.g., a desert region; this word centers more on the lack of population than the lack of vegetation. Note that in v.39 the crowd sits down on the green grass. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. At the conclusion of their mission to the Galilean villages the disciples returned to Jesus. He had commissioned them to be his emissaries (Ch. 6:7–13), and it is appropriate to this circumstance that they should report to him how they had fulfilled their commission.

30 The apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught. 31 He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat. 32 So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.

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This coming Sunday is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time in Lectionary Cycle B. The sequence of Gospel texts in this part of Ordinary Time serves as a reminder we are not simply moving from chapter to chapter, story to story in the Gospel according to Mark. Consider the sequence of passages assigned to these summer Sundays (in juxtaposition with all the verses of Mark): Continue reading →