Our offering, God's blessing

The disciples in St Mark are wonderful characters because they say what so many of us are too ashamed to say.

They say to Jesus ‘you can’t do that’, ‘that can’t be true’, ‘surely not’, ‘you don’t mean it’.

We are much to tasteful and religious to say those things most of the time, and that is why it is a gospel story – a good news story – because here as elsewhere, the disciples have that freedom to say to Jesus the unthinkable, unspeakable words of protest - ‘We can’t do it’, ‘you can’t do it’ - and Jesus does not condemn them or shut his ears to them, he just asks them another question and gives them another task.

And when we do try to face our poverty and our sense of being out of control, our exhaustion, our unwillingness to ask; when we face those honestly it’s because we are confident that in the face of Jesus we’re not going to be repudiated for that.

He knows what we mean. And he gives us not a solution or a happy ending, but a task - ‘go and see’.

When Alec McCowan did his famous dramatised reading of St Mark’s gospel, one of the moments many people remarked on was his reading this passage. ‘How many loaves do you have’, he asked.

And then he would leave a pause for us to imagine the disciples looking at one another and shrugging their shoulders, and Jesus saying with barely controlled impatience:‘Go and see’. ‘Don’t just stand there, go and look!’

And sometimes, of course, that is a word the church needs to hear. ‘Go and see’.

Alright, you’ve no idea how you are going to solve the problems, you’ve no idea where the resources are going to come from ...

Go and look around, go ask, go and see what the nourishing skills and imagination of the world might have.