By Dr. Dale W. Barrigar

In Mark 6, we can read the story that is sometimes called “The 5000.” In terms of word count, it’s the length of a modern flash fiction.

Five thousand people come out to hear him. They listen all day. At night they are tired, drained, elated, and far from home. And they are hungry.

His twelve disciples are distressed. The very pressing question on their minds is, “How the h-ll are we going to feed all these hungry people?”

The Teacher does not get upset. Bring me what you have, he says.

They collect what they have. It consists of a few loaves of bread and a few fishes.

The disciples are now even more stressed. How will this ever be enough for all these people? Utterly impossible. And he tells them that they are fools to get concerned.

He starts distributing the fishes and bread to all the hungry ones.

And it turns out that there is enough.

There is more than enough.

Everyone gets enough.

Everyone is able to eat until they are full, and satisfied.

In the space between the impossibility and the outcome lies “the miracle.”

No one really knows what happened in that space.

Jesus was not the only miracle-worker of his time. There were many such. They roamed the countryside, visited the towns, and drifted through the cities all the time.

He was not the only miracle-worker by a long stretch. Back then, it was “a thing” they did, kind of like indigenous peoples in other places would transform themselves through shamanistic rituals and the use of drugs like magic mushrooms or peyote.

The lesson of the story is what matters.

And the lesson is this.

There is enough.

There is more than enough for everyone.

Modern science has proved this many times over.

It is not a matter of producing enough food and shelter for everybody.

The earth can provide, even now, when the population is 8 billion and climbing.

It’s all a matter of how things get distributed.

And it’s all a matter of what people want.

If people’s wants remain simple, and real, and if we all share what there is, there won’t be any problems any more.

Or at least there wouldn’t be the kinds of problems we see now: war, disagreement, stress created by greed, conflict created by desire. All of these things are rampant everywhere right now, from East to West, from North to South, and all points in between.

But there is enough, both materially and spiritually.

How we choose to use what there is – that is the message of the story.

He is the great messenger. But so is the anonymous writer, called “Mark,” who wrote the book of Mark. And so are all the ordinary people who came out to hear him. And so are all the readers of good faith who have studied his works and words over the centuries, no matter what their specific beliefs on other issues (like the afterlife) are, or were.

(Socrates said, “I believe in the afterlife because it makes me feel better to do so. If it isn’t there when I’m dead I won’t know it.

The end.”)