NOTES for Mar 6:14-30

The preaching of Jesus Himself and His apostles led to His name becoming known throughout Galilee, eventually reaching even its ruler, Herod (v. 14). Herod was not, of course, an independent ruler—he was a vassal of the Roman emperor, for in Gospel times Galilee, like all Palestine, was part of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, all kinds of rumors about Jesus circulated among the people. Some regarded Him as a prophet like one of the ancient prophets whose preaching became part of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, which were well known to all believing Jews and regularly read in synagogues during worship. To others He was Elijah returned from heaven (v. 15); the Old Testament says that Elijah did not die but was taken alive into heaven (2 Kings 2:11–12). This book was well known, as were the other three Books of Kings, the Book of Joshua, and the Book of Judges: in Judaism they are counted among the prophetic books and are called the “Former Prophets.” Believing Jews of that age held that shortly before the coming of the Messiah-Christ, Elijah would return from heaven to earth to remind people of His imminent appearance.

Herod, however, took Jesus for John the Baptist risen from the dead, whom he had had executed not long before (v. 14). The execution had been preceded by John's arrest after he denounced Herod for marrying his own brother's wife in defiance of the Law (vv. 17–18). It should be noted that the king generally paid little attention to religious and moral norms and was also marked by immoderate sensuality. Yet he did not dare execute the prophet at once: despite his moral corruption, Herod still respected him (v. 20). It is not surprising that Herodias, formerly the wife of Herod's brother Philip, hated John more than Herod himself did (v. 19).

At last a suitable moment for the reprisal came: during a ceremonial banquet, Herodias's daughter performed an inflaming Eastern dance before Herod and his guests, perhaps something like the belly dance still well known in the East today (vv. 21–22). Inflamed by wine and lust, he solemnly swore to grant the girl any wish. At her mother's prompting, she seized the opportunity to be rid of John (vv. 22–25). Herod evidently did not want John to die at all, but driven by vanity and unwilling to lose face before those around him or break his own solemn oath, he nevertheless ordered the execution, which naturally became known at once to many people, including the apostles (vv. 26–29).

Into his account of Christ's deeds, Mark inserts the story of the murder of John the Baptist by King Herod. It might seem no more than a historical note were it not so instructive. This story of Herod is a good example of how much harm can be caused by a person's stubborn desire to live in his own way rather than in accordance with God's ordinances. Breaking God's law, Herod takes his brother's wife, Herodias, as his own. We should not think that this happened through carelessness: Herod knew he was acting unlawfully, yet he committed the offense all the same.

Through His prophet, God rebukes the king. The response to the rebuke is hatred from Herodias, the obvious accomplice in the sin, and an embarrassed attempt by the vexed Herod to silence the prophet's voice by imprisoning him. As though apologizing for what he had done, while having no wish at all to abandon the corrupt relationship, Herod gladly listens to John and even follows his advice in certain matters. It might seem that “the wolves are fed and the sheep remain safe,” but how precarious such a state is! The king's foolish promise gave Herodias's anger a free hand, and the last chance to correct the mistake was shattered by Herod's desire to preserve his authority in the eyes of the people's leaders. The result was another grave sin: the murder of God's prophet.

What will we do when someone points out our sin? If we are attached to it, then when rebuked we will fight not against the sin but against the one who rebukes us. Sooner or later we will have to choose whether to follow John's path or Herod's. If rebukes trouble us more than sin, we are in danger.

When King Herod heard about Jesus, he immediately remembered John the Baptist. It seems to him that the great prophet has "risen from the dead" and is again walking through Judea, preaching repentance. What Herod learned about Jesus' identity somehow touched his hardened heart. Evidently there was something in the Lord's words that was addressed personally to him, something that forced him to look again at the crime he had once committed.

The evangelist Mark notes especially that while John the Baptist was alive, Herod "did many things, listening to him, and heard him gladly." Therefore the execution of John became for the king a departure from the ideals he had formerly held; it was a kind of apostasy.

When we open the Gospel, we often encounter words of the Lord that are addressed precisely to us. Behind two lines an entire life situation rises before us, sometimes a very painful one for us. And just as Herod did, we have a choice between correcting it, rethinking our life in God, or going farther down the path of apostasy.

The figure of Herod the Tetrarch, mentioned in the Gospel, would not have appeared sympathetic either to historians or to his contemporaries. He was a petty, cruel, and suspicious tyrant with fairly pronounced sadistic tendencies, a typical representative of a degenerating dynasty. In spite of all this, he retained the formal status of a Roman ally, which he had inherited from his father. For this reason Rome, despite numerous complaints from local residents and reports from the procurators of Judea, could not fully deprive him of power, leaving him Galilee, for which the Roman authorities apparently felt less concern than for Judea.

All this did not prevent Herod from having his own peculiar notions of what he considered and called honor. He was boastful, but once he had sworn an oath in the presence of witnesses, he considered it humiliating not to keep it. Herodias took advantage of this. Judging by the Gospel account, she hated John far more than Herod himself did. Herod was content for John to be silent, or at least for his accusations not to be voiced publicly. Herodias wanted nothing less than to get rid of the prophet, to have him executed. She knew her husband well: the trick with her daughter's dance worked exactly as intended. Lust and boasting can be an utterly deadly combination, and Herod reluctantly does what he had not intended to do.

He was, however, if not religious, then at least superstitious. When he heard about Jesus, he decided that Heaven was punishing him for the murder of a man of God. Herod lived in constant fear and among many fears, so it is no wonder that he became superstitious to the point of absurdity. When a personality falls apart, even the most absurd and impossible things can appear completely real. So it was with Herod: he hated and feared John while John was alive, while at the same time involuntarily respecting him; and after executing the prophet, he began to fear his shadow.

In every age and among every people, an oath bound the person who had to fulfill it, otherwise consequences would fall on his head that he would have cause to regret. It is no accident that the ancients, including adherents of Yahwism, swore by the names of their gods. In Yahwism too it was customary to swear by the name of God, the name of Yahweh. In this way a person called as witnesses and guarantors of what had been promised those whom it was either simply impossible, or at least mortally dangerous, to deceive.

At the same time, however, a natural question arose: did every promise please those who, according to the intention of the one swearing, were supposed to guarantee its fulfillment? Take Herod's oath, for example. Most likely, he too swore by the name of Yahweh, in whom perhaps he did not truly believe. But does this mean that Yahweh really became the guarantor of Herod's oath? The question is rhetorical: an oath by the name of any god, not to mention the One God, presupposed involvement in deep relations with the one by whose name you swear. This cannot be said of Herod and Yahweh: their relations were the most superficial kind, if they existed at all.

But there was something else: false pride, which at times makes a person, out of a desire to appear "tough," do something he will most likely regret deeply afterward. That is what happened with Herod. He hated and feared John, and at the same time involuntarily respected him, so much that, while holding him in prison for especially dangerous criminals, Herod nevertheless came more than once to speak with him. He hardly wanted John's death. He only wanted John to be silent, so that his denunciations of Herod's sins and crimes would not sound publicly.

Things happened differently, however: a rash oath and the unwillingness to "lose face" in the eyes of those around him made Herod a murderer. Of course, this murder was not the first in his life and not the last, but here it was the murder of a prophet, a man of God, whom Herod moreover had not wanted to kill. So pride and false ideas of honor take a person captive, forcing him to do what otherwise he would never have done. It is a terrible case, but for the fallen world, alas, entirely characteristic.

In this passage we see the remarkable humanity of Jesus. Being fully human, He understood well how much people need rest. In the Gospel one can find places where Christ withdraws into the mountains to pray and be alone with the Father. Therefore He sends the disciples to a deserted place where they could rest from the crowd, which was so large that they did not even have time to eat. The disciples go away, but the number of people needing help does not become smaller. Seeing these "sheep without a shepherd," the Lord had compassion and Himself remained beside them.

When our strength leaves us and we understand that we urgently need rest and solitude, it can be so frightening to leave those who need us and be alone with the Father. But if we nevertheless decide to do this, the Lord stands in our place and solves the problems for which our own strength is no longer enough.

After a whole day spent in ministry, Jesus sends the weary disciples to a deserted place so that they may rest for a while. The Lord understands the importance of rest and renewed strength: without them, a person can burn out even while doing God's work.

Verse 33 shows the result of the apostolic ministry: a vast crowd gathers around Jesus. Perhaps the best measure of preaching is that people are drawn to the Lord rather than to the person who preaches about Him.

Mark gives a wonderful description of Jesus meeting the multitude. In Jesus' eyes, these people were "like sheep without a shepherd." Who would care for them and have compassion on them? "And He began to teach them many things": the Lord gives them what their souls need most.

Evening came, and the apostles pointed out another urgent need: the people had to be fed. Jesus invited the apostles to solve the problem themselves. Yet the disciples' solutions had one weakness: they left no room for God's action. Whatever is brought to God can be transformed. The prophet Elisha once fed a hundred people with twenty barley loaves and a small amount of grain (see 2 Kings 4:42-44), and here stood One greater than Elisha. Even five loaves and two fish proved enough for five thousand people!

Jesus knows how to meet both the spiritual and physical needs of people. He is both the Word and the Bread of Life. Do we notice our neighbours' spiritual needs, or only their physical ones? We can help many people by placing the little we have in the Lord's hands.

During close fellowship with Jesus, one can never say with certainty where events are unfolding: in the world not yet transfigured, or in the Kingdom. So it is in the account of feeding the multitude who listen to Him with five loaves and two fish. The laws of the untransfigured world do not, of course, allow such a thing. But on the other hand, those before us are still ordinary people who, for now, are only listening to Jesus, and it is not yet known which of them will be ready to follow Him.

How, then, did they find themselves in the Kingdom? The only answer to this question is probably the mention of the breaking of bread performed by the Savior. The breaking of bread is an ancient Jewish rite whose roots go back at least to the age of the captivity, and perhaps to still earlier times. This rite was evidently always domestic, originally a family rite and later, after the emergence of religious brotherhoods, both a family and a fraternal rite. At all times it was regarded as a continuation of the Temple sacrifice, as its domestic dimension complementing the communal dimension. The original meaning of every sacrifice, even a pagan one, let alone a Yahwistic sacrifice, came down to communion with God: everyone always regarded the sacrifice as a shared meal of God—or, among pagans, of the gods—and human beings. The faithful prepared the meal and invited God to the table so that He Himself might sanctify it and bless those assembled. So it was at gatherings in the Temple, and so it was at gatherings in the home. Now the One who brought the fullness of the Kingdom into the world performs the breaking of bread.

It is not surprising that everyone who takes part becomes, at least for the duration of the gathering, an inhabitant of the Kingdom. With Christ, God's presence is revealed in all possible fullness, and the Kingdom becomes the most certain reality. Such participation is of course only the first step, only the beginning of the journey. Yet this experience is very important, because it enables everyone who has lived through it to understand what the Kingdom is not in words but in reality, and to make a decision based not on other people's stories but on personal experience.

"You give them something to eat!" These words of Christ are addressed not only to the apostles two thousand years ago, but to each of His disciples in every age. When we ask Him how He intends to care for the people He has created, He says exactly these words to us. Of course, we will not have to perform miracles in His place; He will multiply both the bread and the fish.

But for this our participation is necessary: our readiness to come to the aid of someone in need, to comfort someone who is weeping, to share love with someone who lacks it. All the puzzled questions addressed to God He redirects to us: "You give them something to eat; you be My presence in this world; you become channels of My love..."

The multiplication of food is spoken of more than once in the Gospel: in a similar situation events develop in a similar way. This repeatedly recurring situation seems to remind us that this is not simply a miracle; this is precisely the Kingdom in all its fullness. What, after all, is a miracle?

From our point of view it is always some disruption of the regular course of events, the intrusion of a nonsystemic factor into the chains of cause and effect that determine the course of events in our world. Meanwhile, in such a situation a question is always appropriate: is the factor we perceive as outside the system not actually part of another system interacting with the one inside which we find ourselves?

Perhaps in many cases a miracle is a miracle only for us, living in our little world separated from God, which seems infinitely large to us, while in God's great world, which we usually do not notice, miracle is the norm of life. In our fallen world, substances are not very obedient to the human will; here they are limited by their own nature. But that is true only here, while in the Kingdom substances are limited and determined only by the action of God's will, and there they are far more pliant to human will when it acts together with God's will.

There, dense water is possible, water that holds a person if he wants to step onto it, and doors that are absolutely permeable, becoming so if a person needs to pass through them, and an increase in the amount of food if what is present is not enough to feed everyone. There water too can become wine if the human will wants to see water as wine and not as water. Of course, what is meant here is the will of a person not wounded by sin, and Jesus is precisely such a Man. He does not simply work miracles; He makes the people who entrust themselves to Him part of the Kingdom, where miracle is the norm.

The fact that the event described by the evangelist is repeated again in an analogous situation testifies that what stands before us is not simply a repeated miracle performed by Jesus again and again. What stands before us is participation in another, new world, where the norm is also different, where what is possible in our fallen world only as an exception, as a miracle, is always possible. Thus Jesus accustoms those who followed Him to another, new norm: the norm of the Kingdom.

The event described in today's reading has always raised many questions, and many commentators and preachers have reflected and reasoned about it, trying to understand what actually happened then in the wilderness. Usually, when setting out on a journey for several days, travelers naturally took a supply of food with them. But this time the decision was evidently made so hastily that there was no time to get ready (v. 33). Judging by the fact that the disciples later had to cross to the opposite shore of the Lake of Gennesaret in order to get to Bethsaida (Mark 6:45), the events described took place on its eastern shore, in Transjordan, which in Gospel times was not a desert in the literal sense but a dry steppe. The eastern shore of the Lake of Gennesaret was a deserted place, and the nearest villages where food could be bought were not close. That is when the miracle took place, the one usually called the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. Nothing definite can be said about exactly how and at what moment it happened, since the Gospel text gives no details that would reveal, so to speak, the "mechanism" of the miracle. Only the result is described: five loaves and two fish were enough for several thousand people, and more than enough (vv. 41-44). The only explanation can be considered the blessing of the food by Jesus mentioned in the account (v. 41), without which no meal was possible for believing Jews, since during the blessing prayer those sitting down at the table call upon God, inviting Him to join them and bless the table and the food. In describing the miracle, the evangelist draws attention to the fact that Jesus' blessing was not an ordinary blessing, but one that allowed those present to enter directly into the Kingdom of God, where even the laws of nature do not work as they do in the ordinary world. Therefore hunger has no place there, and every hungry person is satisfied.

How much food does a person need in order to be satisfied? It is hard to answer this question unambiguously. Everything depends on the person: age, sex, height, physical condition. And on spiritual condition too, for a person is, on the one hand, spirit, and on the other, an animal, and his spiritual condition affects the physical, just as the reverse is also true. What, then, is this spiritual condition? What determines it? It is customary to think that a person's spiritual condition is determined by his own inner efforts, but this is only partly true. In reality, a person's spiritual condition is determined by the dynamic of his relationship with God, where human efforts themselves are certainly important, but God's action, His influence on the person and on human life, is still more important. A person's spiritual condition is determined in the process of his continuous dialogue with God; it depends on how deep and conscious this dialogue is.

Moreover, the same can be said not only of a person's spiritual condition, but also of the reality in which he lives. Today, even in science, one of the key problems is the problem of the observer, and scientists are becoming more and more convinced that any reality is real only insofar as it is observed. The universe can exist only insofar as it has an Observer who created it; this is another aspect of the so-called cosmological proof of the existence of God.

Yet the human being is also an observer, and as such he too creates his reality. It is, of course, real to the extent that the human being himself is real, and the human being is real to the extent that God determines his existence. Here lies the mystery of the Kingdom as a divine-human reality, which is revealed to us from the beginning in the Person of the God-Man. Here too lies the mystery of all the Gospel miracles: they are all divine-human miracles, not only in the sense that the God-Man performs them, but also in the sense that ordinary people participate in these miracles, entering into divine-human reality, entering its space.

In the space of divine-human reality, food is created not only by God, as in our fallen world, which is fallen because fallen humanity does not so much create it together with God as destroy it apart from Him, but also by the human being for whom the food is intended. The person's spiritual condition and the food's physical condition correspond perfectly to each other in the divine-human space of the Kingdom, and then any number of people can be satisfied with any amount of food, just as the evangelist describes.