Mark 8:1-10

"Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away." (Mark 8:9)

            Often times the significance of Christ's ministry is in the details. Today's gospel reading from Mark tells of the feeding of the four thousand. It would seem that the great significance would be in this miraculous feeding. Yet in the highlighted verse above, I think we find the real heart of the passage. "And he sent them away." Now, to be sure, Jesus is not casting these once-hungry, now-fed people out. Far from it. They had received their nourishment from Him, but their work was not done. Indeed, it was just beginning.

            It is tempting to view the church and her ministry through the lens of effective ministering to. We think that good worship is that worship which "feeds us." We think of good Bible studies and Sunday school programs as those that "nourish our souls." Mission projects are good when folks feel their hearts strangely warmed in the process of serving. Yet this one verse - "And he sent them away" - tells us more about the nature of our faith than the actual feeding. In this passage we learn that the feeding is only so good as the sending. Energy (from food) is only so good as its outlet (in being sent).

            I'm quite confident that there was some resistance from some of those four thousand. They had seen a few loaves become a feast. Those who spent a lot of their time fluctuating between hunger and looking for food probably thought they had stumbled across the Kingdom come in Jesus. And as compassionate as Jesus is to their hunger, He knows that real feeding comes from being sent out. I'm sure there is a real temptation amongst some to just keep near to Christ so they could keep eating. But Jesus has another plan; He wants to see them go. The point, though, is that they go changed by their experience. They go as different people - holy people - set apart in order to witness to a hungry world. And as true as this was for those four thousand it is still true for us today.

            To be clear, Jesus Christ desires to nourish you - body and soul - but that is not His end goal for your life. We have not come into our full faith only when we are nourished by Christ. No, that can only come when we are sent away with the call to nourish others. For this reason, the call to missions and service is not an addendum to the spiritual life, but the centerpiece of it. It is not the post-graduate studies of the spiritual life, but the core course requirements. There is no true feeding where there is not also a sending. Amen.