I invite you on a journey through Mark’s Good News about Jesus Christ. We are thinking about what Mark wants to tell us through bread. If you missed where we started, click here. Now, I invite you to consider Mark 6:45-52.
Last time, we watched Jesus feed thousands of people. The event takes place in Jewish territory and has all sorts of clues for the Jewish people that shout: God has come! We are his people and he is feeding us and we are satisfied!
Then Jesus takes his disciples to the other side.
The other side is a bad place with pigs and demons and unclean people are. There’s no way God is on the other side. To go there is dangerous; life threatening.
Do you have an other side? Do you have a people or place that you have determined God is not present and the places and people are demonic and unclean?
Fortunately, the disciples trust Jesus enough to begin the journey across the lake but what happens when they are on the water? A storm comes up and the disciples are terrified but Jesus shows up. Look at verse 51-52:
“Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.
THEY didn’t understand.
Do YOU understand?
cultural atheist 
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I would be hesitant to determine that and yet, I think we subtly do so. We see the outside and measure it according to our perspective. Have we not seen Christians with signs saying something like “God hates (blank)”?
In the time of the New Testament, there were deeply held beliefs about who was on the right side and who was on the other side. Besides that, Mark’s record shows all the scary things on the other side – demons, pigs, and unclean Gentiles. That’s the scandal of God’s grace – there is just as much for our side as the other side.