It will be a long time before the people leave Egypt
again. When Jacob dies, his final
request is to be buried in the cave that his grandfather, Abraham, had
purchased as a place to bury his wife, Sarah.
It was the only place in all the land that belonged to the family and
all his ancestors and Leah, the one Jacob was tricked into marrying, was there
as well. Rachel had died and was buried
elsewhere. Joseph orders his father to
be embalmed for the trip back to Canaan for the burial and when the work is
done he seeks leave from Pharaoh to take his father back and fulfill his dying
wish. He is given permission to go and
do this for his father but Pharaoh's servants, the elders of his house, and the
elders of Egypt went with the family. It
was a measure of the importance of Joseph to the ruler. It will be four hundred years before anyone
asks the Pharaoh to let the people go from the land again.
The crowd has been with Jesus three days and has nothing to
eat. Whatever food they might have had
with them would have already been consumed and now they are in what the
disciples refer to as a "desolate place" where there are no shops, no
other sources of food. Some
commentators, whose world view is non-supernatural, have suggested that these
people had some bread with them and Jesus' actions here inspired them to share
what they had with those who no longer had any.
The reason Mark and the other Gospels record the details of three days
and a desolate place is so we will know for certain there was nothing more than the seven loaves. Jesus takes the seven and asks the Father to
bless them and, voila, there is enough and some to spare. When He had fasted forty days He was tempted
to turn stones into bread but for Himself He would do nothing. When the crowd asks Him to feed them in John
6 there is no need for feeding them, they have access to food in the town. Here, it is a necessity based in compassion.
In addition to the divisions noted in the first chapter of
the letter, that there were factions saying, I follow Paul or, I follow
Apollos, there are also divisions based on class. Here, Paul says he hears there are some who
are feasting in the meeting time, even getting drunk, while others are going
hungry. This would cut across everything
Paul ever taught about the ending of such class distinctions in the
church. He argued there is neither slave
nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female and here the rich are not sharing with
their poorer brothers. In our first
lesson we see Egyptians and the family of Israel, who have lived apart in
Goshen, coming together for mourning and grief.
In the Gospel we see the crowd as simply a crowd, all receiving
compassion and food equally. Here, Paul
asks how they can possibly take communion together when they are separated from
one another by class. Worthy reception
requires us to conclude our own unworthiness, the distinction that flattens the
world into Jesus and everyone else.
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