God leads us to green pastures. He comforts us with his grace in our darkest valleys.
Grass stains are clothing’s worst enemy and every young boy’s favorite color. Growing up, I caused our household washing machine enough unnecessary wear and tear because of them. If I wasn’t coming home dirty from my family’s fishing pond, I wore the stains of the family garden. And all of those stains had to be cleaned at home.
In every Gospel book, we hear the familiar story of Jesus’ miraculous “Feeding of the Five Thousand” (Matt. 14:13-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:1-15). We know the story like we know those old familiar grassy paths of our childhood. While all four Gospel accounts speak of the crowd sitting down, many of us can overlook a seemingly insignificant detail in Mark’s Gospel text: Jesus had the people sit on green grass.
This minor detail in such a spectacular miracle tells us it’s springtime in Israel. John wrote that this event happened when Passover was at hand (John 6:4), and Passover is always in springtime. Additionally, this explains why and how many people were in such a desolate area, including the 5,000 men mentioned. The Jewish historian, Josephus, records that upwards of two million people would come to Jerusalem during the Passover every spring. Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s gospel texts specify that it was a “desolate” place. This makes sense given that the terrain of Tabgha, the traditionally accepted location of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, lies in a valley surrounded by rocky hillsides. Yet this northwestern coastland of the Sea of Galilee has a fertile plain, big enough for a large crowd. Surrounded by barren and desolate terrain, Jesus worked and gathered people in a place full of life.
In the accounts of Jesus’ miracle in a grassy field looking down on the Sea of Galilee, we can also hear echoes of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters.” This connection is strengthened when Mark’s gospel account adds, “When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34a).
Our lives are filled with stains, stains more permanent than grass: cruel memories, bad mistakes, and awful moments. Instead of grassy green streaks on our clothes, we all carry dark spots on our hearts. Yet no matter our stains, Jesus looks upon us like a shepherd. God looks upon us as our Father with compassion.
The Greek root word translated here in Mark 6 as “compassion” is splangkna (σπλάγχνα)– the word from which the English language gets “spleen.” Ancient Greeks and Hebrews believed that emotions came from the internal organs like the spleen, liver, lungs, and heart. Even today, when we say “our heart goes out” to a person or that an experience is “gut-wrenching,” we are reminded of the kind of compassion that hits us to our inner core. That is the type of emotion Jesus is expressing during this grassy miracle. We know our sins. We know our stains. And Christ knows our efforts to turn aside from our behavior. But our efforts, no matter how good they are, leave us wanting. Christ fills that want. He fills us from the pit of our stomach. He acts as our compassionate shepherd, so that we do not want. Through and in him, we lack nothing. He leads us to green pastures. He comforts us with his grace in our darkest valleys.
Lastly, it’s not only green grass that grows at this miracle of Jesus, but also his Church. Mark 6:40 adds, “So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties.” Mark uses the Greek word for groups as prasiai (πρασιαὶ), which has Hebraic connotations of rows of leeks and onions in a garden. Jesus is not only in the business of providing for and redeeming people on an individual level; he wants people planted together, strengthening one another in the rows of pews which comprise congregations and our Christian family, Christ’s bride, his Church. Surrounded by this family Sunday after Sunday, we find our stains made clean by the proclaimed word of our Heavenly Father, our Good Shepherd, who cleans us and makes us alive and thus restores our souls..jpg?width=36&height=36&name=MRubinstein%20(1).jpg){kind=small}
