How Jesus Centers Himself
Yesterday we looked at how Jesus as a teacher centered certain themes from the Hebrew Scriptures, namely things like loving God and loving our neighbors. Jesus also chose a place in the story that shows how he centered his identity in those same scriptures.
When we read about Jesus feeding 5,000 people, one of the most interesting things about this story is how Jesus uses it to lay claim to a central theme in the Bible. At the bottom is the whole passage, which you’ll get to read with a few thoughts in mind.
First off, Jesus thinks of the crowd as needing a shepherd. And he thinks of them as sheep.
So he guides them to sit down, near the sea, in green grass. (Note: colors like green, blue, orange, yellow, etc. come up exactly once in the gospels: right here!).
All the while he’s teaching them things so that they can walk in good ways.
And he feeds them so that they want no more.
Can you see it? Jesus is laying claim to being The Good Shepherd of Psalm 23! Of course that image of God as good shepherd comes up countless other times in the Hebrew scriptures. Here’s how it starts:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me besides still waters.
He restores my soul and leads me in straight paths.
Jesus is making a play here to be known and loved as the God who is the Shepherd. There are plenty of other images of God he could have chosen to center, but this one is perhaps the most significant. What does that say about how Jesus thought of himself? About what he thought God was like? And what about you - what images for Jesus are most central and why?
Now read the passage and get a feel for who Jesus is…
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”
But he answered, “You give them something to eat.”
They said to him, “That would take more than half a year’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”
“How many loaves do you have?” he asked. “Go and see.”
When they found out, they said, “Five—and two fish.”
Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves.Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand. - Mark 6