This passage is a nice example of how quickly Mark moves. The first part we may recognize from Matthew 14 where it is not only Jesus who walks on water, but he calls Peter to do so as well. Mark almost uses this famous story as a mere transition to get to more healing- to get from one place to another, both physically and narratively. It feels much more practical in Mark than it does in Matthew. In Mark Jesus simply sees they’re in trouble, still tries to avoid them, but when he see’s they’re in trouble, he can’t. So he gets into the boat with them, calms the storm, and in their lack of understanding about the loaves and about this, Mark says, “but their hearts were hardened”. That’s it. It’s very technical and uninspiring, if you ask me.

Then we get to more healing stories, but even that feels a bit fly over: It’s merely, “all who touched him were healed”. What I find interesting about putting these two stories in the same day’s reading is the dichotomy between Jesus’ disciples and the crowds. The disciples, who are living, eating and sleeping with Jesus have hardened hearts about all that Jesus is doing. They’re unsure, they don’t get it, they’re bordering on confusion. But the crowds “recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was” (6:54-55). The crowds believe. The crowds see him for who he is without seeking to understand the nuances of who he is. All they know is that Jesus is one who feeds the hungry, heals the sick, liberates the possessed and oppressed.

That said, the crowds don’t have the responsibility of following him. So before I say what I want to below, I also want to give the disciples a little benefit of the doubt. They’re trying. But the trick of being in that position is the risk we run of doing what Wordsworth warned us about in a whole other context: “We murder to dissect.” That is, when we seek to understand something entirely, we often chop it to pieces to the degree that we destroy its heart and soul.

With that said, I wonder sometimes if we get too wrapped up in dissecting Jesus as though he’s a subject on a lab table for us to cut open and study and understand, rather than laying ourselves down on an operating table as a patient for the surgeon to press into and heal and transform. The operating table is scary, but it’s good. Very good. And so is the surgeon.