"A lot happens in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus is rejected in his hometown. He sends the twelve on mission. John the Baptist is killed. Jesus feeds the five thousand and walks on water. These are all major events in Mark’s narrative, so much so that the passages appointed for today pale in comparison. But in fact, the passages that make up the Gospel reading for today serve in important ways to advance Mark’s central concern: the inauguration of the kingdom of God in Jesus. These verses emphasize Jesus’ identity as the true, divine shepherd, who will guide his sheep into the kingdom; and the nature of that kingdom, through healings that disrupt the economy of this world."
As Dr. Webb sees it, "The healings that Jesus performs after the second sea crossing in today’s text point to how the kingdom of God upends the economy of this world. When Jesus and his apostles land, the people, as noted above, rush about “the whole region,” bringing the sick to wherever Jesus is. “And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, … and all who touched [the fringe of Jesus’ cloak] were healed” (Mark 6:56). The word translated “marketplace,” agora, refers to a public space in which legal hearings, elections, and debates took place, in addition to the buying and selling of goods. Thus the marketplace was the political and commercial center of a city or town."
Further, Dr. Webb shows how the healing love of Jesus dissolves the distance between the currently established centers and the fringes of our human societies: "By healing the sick, the weakest and most vulnerable members of a community, in this space, Jesus is subverting the economy of this world through the very inauguration of God’s kingdom economy."
She concludes with a challenge: "While the marketplaces of the world belong to the rich and powerful, in the kingdom of God this most political and commercial of spaces is occupied by those with the least. In the age to come, Jesus proclaims, 'many who are first will be last, and the last will be first' (Mark 10:31). That age is now breaking into this age; we who seek to live God’s kingdom here and now must follow Jesus’ subversion of worldly power and wealth."
Dr. Webb's full reflections (2015) on this gospel passage can be found at workingpreacher.org
Elizabeth A. Webb is a theologian and Episcopal layperson living in Liberty, Missouri. She received her Ph.D. in Theological Studies from Emory University, and has taught at Augustana College (IL), Rhodes College, and William Jewell College. Her research interests include trauma and compassion, Eucharist, and theology and literature. Her most recent publications include “Writing Hunger on the Body: Simone Weil’s Ethic of Hunger and Eucharistic Practice,” in Women, Writing, Theology: Transforming a Tradition of Exclusion, ed. Emily A. Holmes and Wendy Farley (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011).