Community of Care - Mark 6: 32-44

Last week we started a new sermon series about how to live a Christ like life as the Church. Specifically, what traits we want to embody and share with others because our Lord and Savior modeled them for us. We focused on humility and selflessness, words that are often misunderstood and dismissed as unappealing. 

This week, we will focus on Christ as caring. Another word that is often convoluted. Sometimes we use the word caring in a positive way, “I deeply care about this person” showing our concern. Other times we use care in a more ambivalent nature - when asked a question we may respond that we just don’t care. We have no opinion. No stake in the matter. And sometimes care can even be used in a hostile sense - “I’ll take care of him” or “I’ll take care of that problem.” No wonder we sometimes struggle to care for others as human beings with so many different ways to use the word. 

As Christians we sometimes don’t even know what we are saying when we state that Jesus cared. We think that Jesus’ care comes in his actions, but there are usually other indicators of Jesus’ deep care. When he met Mary in the garden after the resurrection he said her name in such a way that she recognized him. When he healed people, he sometimes asked them first if they wanted to be healed, acknowledging their humanity and choice in the matter. And in today’s gospel story, he invites others to be part of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand.

Jesus had went away with the disciples to a deserted place, probably to be refreshed in the presence of God as he was in last week’s message on seeking out places of stillness and solitude. But this time people recognized him. They crowed around him and wouldn’t grant him this time away, and Jesus had compassion on them. He saw how hungry they were for God. How much they needed a shepherd to care for them, lead them, and teach them. So Jesus discerned that he and the disciples abandoned their place of stillness in order to serve the people. 

Maybe the disciples were confused about why Jesus wanted to be away sometimes and other times he abandoned being alone for service. Maybe they were just tired of serving, but I read their response as a grumpy one. Send the people away. Let them go so they can eat. And implicitly let them go away so we can eat too. So we can rest like we planned. But Jesus responded differently then they anticipated. You feed them.

The disciples must of looked from one to another wondering how exactly they were going to feed all of these people - they didn’t even have food for themselves. Further, they were in a deserted place, a place where they wouldn’t even be able to go and buy food, if they had the money to do so. They told Jesus it would take 200 days worth of wages just to feed the people a little, not their fill. But Jesus didn’t tell them to go and buy food, he told them to feed the people.

And this is where Jesus’ care in this particular passage comes in. We’ve already seen his compassion in setting aside what he planned on doing in order to teach people. Now he is looking to feed the people out of their own resources, letting them be part of the miracle together. For he couldn’t feed people unless he received humbly from a stranger in the crowd. 

Jesus understood being hungry. He had kinship with those who gathered. Jesus understood that simply giving the people what they wanted wasn’t enough. For caring is so much more than simply taking care of a problem for someone, its feeling their pain, understanding their need, and inviting them to be part of the process of solution. 

Sometimes this is where we struggle as the church. We want to help people, but feeling their pain is just a bit too much. We’d rather hand them money and hope it helps instead of helping them change their circumstances by inviting them to part of their own healing. When we truly care we suffer with a person when they suffer. We cry out with them. We work with them. 

That’s why sometimes the best thing we can do because we care is sit with a person in silence. Not offer words that are meant to ease our own discomfort, rather we enter into someone else’s pain. And we don’t say “I understand” when we can never truly understand what another person is going through. Caring isn’t about fixing something for someone else. It’s about being present with them.

Perhaps this is the way we best know our Lord and Savior cares. Because he walks with us no matter what we are going through. Sometimes we may accuse him of not caring because he doesn’t respond exactly the way that we want or in our timing, but later we realize that his abiding presence with us is the best gift we could ever receive. 

The disciples would rather have dismissed the need of those gathered to hear Jesus. They would have rather made it someone else’s problem so they could move on with their day. But instead they got to witness an awe inspiring miracle as Jesus blessed five loaves of bread and 2 fish, hardly enough to feed one family, and made it enough with God’s blessing to feed all present until they were filled. 

We too can be like the disciples. Running away from difficult situations. Substituting solutions for care. But Jesus calls us to be a community of care. A community where people can come to have their heart filled. To be a place where they are listened to, respected, and encouraged. A place where someone will sit with them in their grief instead of offering platitudes. A place where wholeness can be found in Christ Jesus. 

I have been blessed to see communities of care. At the safe house in Australia where women engaged in prostitution were treated with respect, protected, and listened to. In Denison, TX where a community garden was formed and anyone who wanted to plant could harvest the food for free. In Madison, NJ where an after school program to help with homework became a place where student’s voices were heard and they grew into women of God. Communities like this know that genuine care transforms lives. 

Every human being has the capacity to care, but the church should be the community that specializes in caring, because we have a Savior who taught us how to care. That’s not to say that we are perfect all the time or that we always care for another as we should. But this is also a place where we can come together and learn how to care more deeply as we fall in love with the one who cares for us. This is the place where we learn to set aside our own interests, opinions, and judgments in order to care like Christ cares. 

Caring is not about simply doing good. Its about having our heart in the right place and approaching people in their humanity instead of simply satisfying their need. Its about knowing that there is actually more than enough from God, both in our hearts and in our hands, to reach out to others in the name of Christ, with the same gifts that we have so generously received. What have you received that you are being called to share? How can you humbly care for others? How can we invite people to be part of their own healing instead of simply giving them a handout? How often have we turned people away either because we don’t believe God can do something in the situation or we simply do not care for the person? And ultimately what can we learn about the type of care the Christ models for us that we can offer to others with a right spirit? May these questions penetrate our hearts and change our lives in the coming weeks. Amen.