Mark 6:30-34
The apostles gathered together with Jesus
and reported all they had done and taught.
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.
So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.
People saw them leaving and many came to know about it.
They hastened there on foot from all the towns
and arrived at the place before them.
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.
“People were coming . . . in great numbers . . . the vast crowd”
Have you ever wondered how a “vast crowd” could hear Jesus’ words?
In Luke 9’s account of Jesus’ multiplication of a few loaves and fishes to feed the huge crowd who came to listen to Him, we are told that “the men there numbered about five thousand.” (Luke 9:14)
How did a crowd of 5,000 manage to hear Jesus without the devices of modern technology of microphone, speakers, and amplifiers?
That surely was a miracle unreported in the Gospels.
A woeful characteristic of the Gospels is how sketchy their accounts were. There is no physical description of Jesus the Christ — not His hair color, eye color, or how tall He was.
The accounts are succinct, using an economy of words.
But we are told in Mark 6 that in a non-technological age wherein news was communicated mainly via word of mouth, multitudes of people “from all the towns” got word of Jesus going to a place. So eager were they to see and hear Him, they arrived “on foot” even before Jesus and the Apostles.
Today’s so-called superstars who fill sports stadiums cannot begin to be compared to our Lord.
And may the peace and love of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you,
~E
I must admit I would like to be able to teleport back to the time when our Savior taught the people in person. It must have been marvelous to behold.
DrE . . . what a great Sabbath Day lesson, Thank you.
Me too!
Jesus spoke to every person’s heart! But as His hearers were in their earthly embodiment, it was incredibly considerate and thoughtful of Him to keep in mind that people were hungry–He did not send them away fainting for lack of food even though He had fasted for a great percentage of His earthly life (in between occasional suppers with well-to-do publicans) and certainly must have known what it was like to be hungry (his cousin John the Baptist, too–think of all the foraging it must have required to round up a modicum of locusts and wild honey). He modeled the good shepherd of the flock….
[No porta-potties in the desert, either, but, IIRC, early books of the Bible did cover such mundane matters.]
Thank you Dr.E for this wonderful post! It shows how Jesus had empathy and mercy for the vast amount of people who came to see and listen to Him. This empathy and mercy and love is the cornerstone of Jesus being the Good Shepherd who saw these people as needing a Shepherd, needing to take refuge in Him. I had the honor of being the Lector at Mass today, wherein the Responsorial Psalm depicts how the Lord is “my” Shepherd, I shall not want. . .” (I had this read at both of my parents’ funerals.) It is so genuine, loving, beautiful and considerate. It is my favorite Psalm. I can visualize Our Lord Jesus with outstretched arms for me to walk into . . . He gives each of us this opportunity, and the furnace boy can try and deflect this opportunity which is why it is so important to constantly pray and call upon Our Sweet Lord Jesus in every aspect of our lives. Jesus, I Trust In You! Thank you for being Our Good Shepherd!
First of all, they came to hear Him….so they could hear Him b/c of the Holy Spirit within. Secondly, if he could multiply loaves and fishes to feed them, making it so they could hear him was a minor miracle by comparison.
Today, our Lord speaks to us not just through the Gospels, but through our everyday one-on-one prayers/contact with Him, (think on this—you have more access to God than you do to your political Reps 🙂 . ) and b/c He and His Father have told us “I have known you …even before you were born….” A Father who knows you even before you were born will hear your thoughts and prayers throughout your lifetime, & beyond. The hardest thing for us to do is to understand and live by “God’s Time,” and not by our time when evaluating God’s response to our prayers. So, a little humor here—I’ve often told God that “wealth is wasted on the RICH” and told Him so many examples and prayed for wealth. Ha Ha….but, I already know that I am the wealthy one when I look at the lives of, for instance the Getty family, or others for whom wealth did not buy a good life or a long life, or happiness (look up the Getty family lines…it’s just awful). I am one of the wealthiest people on Earth by comparison…and it has NOTHING to do with money or what it can buy. THANK YOU GOD.