Short and sweet today – but, we're dealing with the Word of God, so it hopefully this will be not only sweet but rich.  "You satisfy us with the richest of foods", says the Psalmist (63:5).

In 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to being led in "Christ's triumphal procession" (2:14).  When you read this, it's important to understand that this is a victory celebration that can only be interpreted through the 'secret decoder lenses' of discipleship to and faith in Christ – the crucified Christ.  A triumphal procession is the party a conquering king would throw after returning home from defeating an enemy in war.  Those being led in the procession would have been prisoners: soldiers captured alive in battle who would then be executed when they reached the end of the parade.  What Paul is saying is that it is far, far better to be condemned to die with Jesus than it is to be among the people lining the parade route, rejoicing over the humiliation of their enemies.  The cheering, mocking crowd will be alive and well tomorrow, and they revel in the smell of death.  But those being led in the procession – those condemned to die with Christ – they know that they are the true victors.  Though they die today, they will be raised to life with Christ and live and reign with Him forever.  If you have eyes to see – this is a message repeated again and again throughout the New Testament.  At the judgment, the conquerors themselves will be conquered; those who have suffered all kinds of insults and persecution will be comforted, and exalted to the place of honor in God's eternal Kingdom (Matt 5:11).

In Mark, another pair of 'secret decoder glasses' is needed to see what is going on.  Mark has a way of arranging his passages so that one gives insight into how another should be interpreted (this literary feature of his Gospel is called, amusingly, a 'Markan sandwich.')  The first passage shows us Jesus in the region of Tyre.  Tyre is a historical enemy of the people of Israel.  In Ezekiel, God condemns Tyre in the the harshest of terms because they rejoiced when Jerusalem was conquered and burned to the ground by Babylon (the dashboard lights about cheering along the parade route of a triumphal procession should be going off like crazy right about now.)  Ezekiel prophesies so harshly against the king of Tyre that students of the Bible have long wondered whether God unconsciously slips from talking about the king of Tyre to talking about Satan.  It is while Jesus is here, that a woman from that region begs Him to heal her daughter.  He resists initially, but agrees because of the woman's persistence (which Jesus refers to as faith in the story as told in Matt 15:28.)  

Spoiler alert: this is not a story about Jesus being unwilling to help non-Jews.  The purpose of this story is to set up what happens next.  In the next passage, we again find Jesus in an area inhabited by non-Jews – the Ten Towns (or the Decapolis).  A great crowd gathers and Jesus spends three days with them.  On the third day, He hints to His disciples that it's time for them to do what He invited them to do the last time a huge crowd had run out of food: feed them.  The disciples ask, "How are we supposed to find enough food for them here in the wilderness?"  

Now, the first time Jesus commands His disciples to feed a crowd of 5,000, we ought to be able to empathize with the disciples' intimidation over being called to such a seemingly impossible task.  But the disciples have just witnessed Jesus perform the astonishing miracle of multiplying the loaves and fish until everyone has eaten and there are twelve baskets of leftovers.  This is not something you would expect to soon forget.  Is there something else going on that explains the disciples' resistance to the possibility of feeding this particular group?

Think back to the story about the Syro-Phonecian woman.  Jesus initially resists helping this non-Jew, a non-Jew who might be better referred to as an enemy.  This is foreshadowing, a hint to help prepare us for what's about to happen.  Maybe, just maybe, the disciples' blindness has nothing to do with their belief in Jesus' ability to do the same miracle again, but is instead the result of their unwillingness to imagine that Jesus would perform such a miracle for these non-Jews.  

It is the difference in the details provided between the two miracle feeding accounts that dispels any suspicion that the same episode separated into two distinct stories over time.  NO.  In the feeding of the 5,000, there are five loaves; in the feeding of the 4,000 there are seven.  In the feeding of the 5,000 there are twelve baskets of leftovers; in the feeding of the 4,000 there are seven.  Five loaves, five books of Torah.  Twelve baskets of leftovers, twelve tribes of Israel.  Seven loaves and seven baskets of leftovers?  Seven nations of Canaan (Acts 13:19), whom the Lord displaced to give Israel the land.  Jesus feeds the crowd of 5,000 in Jewish territory.  Jesus feeds the 4,000 in non-Jewish territory.

This might seem like a bunch of tedious attention to obscure numbers and geographical details of questionable relevance, but I refer you again to the idea of a Markan sandwich.  Any good sandwich has bread (or a bun) on the top and the bottom. So we should expect the passage either immediately before or following these two will have the same theme... and that is, in fact, exactly what we find.  The first half of Mark 7 (vv. 1-23) has to do with the laws and traditions that serve to preserve the separateness of the Jewish people:  washing hands (a ritual given to reflect the purity of the priesthood), and foods that are off limits (a prohibition given to help the earliest Israelites separate themselves from the customs of the people God was calling them to be different from).  

To skip to the punch line: Jesus ends up calling all foods clean, thus breaking down one of the dividing walls separating Jews and non-Jews.  He reveals that the Law has resulted in a focus on the boundary itself rather than the reason for the boundary.  The Israelites were called to be separate not so that they could stay separate, but so that they would be able to become a people who reflected God's character, who would formed into a community on earth whose life was a foretaste of heaven.  But God's people (not unlike us with our denominational loyalties, our confessions, rituals, and our crosses), ended up thinking of rule-following as a badge of honor that indicated their 'in/superior' status, relegating everyone else to the status of 'out/inferior'.  The Israelites had been called to draw the nations to God, to be a "light to the nations" (Isa 49:6), but instead, they became self-focused, self-interested, and judgmental toward all who failed to live up to their standard–not to mention dead-set on the destruction of their enemies.  They had so lost touch with the purpose of the Law, that they even manipulated it to benefit themselves at the expense of not only non-Jews, but even of their own parents.  They found a loophole in the Law that allowed them to hide their money in a kind of religious 'tax-shelter', so that it would be unavailable in the event that their mothers and/or fathers happened to be in need.  The money would still be there, available for withdrawal, when the time of the parents' need (or the parents themselves) passed.  It's a wonder that we don't find Jesus angry much more often in the Gospels.

So, when after all this we find Jesus feeding a massive crowd of non-Jews, we can be nearly certain that He is educating His disciples–slowly, so that they don't end up with a case of whiplash so severe they can't recover–He is preparing His disciples to do what God had always intended His people to do: to take the blessing of God and share that blessing with all the nations of the world.  Despite Jesus telling this plainly to His disciples in places like Matthew 28:18-19, John 20:21, and Acts 1:8, it would still require the onset of brutal persecution by their enemies to force the early Church out of its comfort zone in Jerusalem out onto the roads leading through Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The bottom line of this Markan sandwich: there is more than enough for everyone.  The Kingdom isn't just for my people or our people – our obedience to Jesus isn't just for our sake (so that we can feel good about our own moral uprightness or assured about our own eternal destiny) – the goal and purpose of the Kingdom of God is to swallow up the kingdoms of this world until all barriers that divide people are brought down, all hatred has been overcome by love, all enemies have been reconciled to each other and to God – until creation itself has been made new by the Spirit that compels the sons and daughters of God to groan along with Him for the redemption of His creation.

This is what Paul is getting at in Ephesians 2 when he writes:

For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and non-Jews into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and non-Jews by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.

He brought this Good News of peace to you nations who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.

If there's anyone in your life today, anyone in your world, who you cannot, will not, imagine being swept up into this act of divine re-creation, I would gently point out to you that you are standing against the narrative current of the entire Bible.  If you self-identify as a Christian, your claims about yourself reveal less about your actual status with God than do your attitudes and behavior.  The blessing you receive by God's grace alone is not for you alone, not for your benefit alone.  It is given to you so that you will serve as a conduit for it to reach others – even those 'others' – especially those others – who you have most excluded, who you have most counted yourself righteous in comparison to, about whom you are most likely to use the label 'enemy'.  

Romans 5:5 makes it perfectly clear that when, in love, Jesus gave Himself for you, you were God's enemy.  Go and do likewise.

(Ok, maybe not so short – but hopefully nonetheless sweet and rich on account of being a little longer than anticipated.)