The Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began to teach them many things.
—Mark 6:34
Of the four canonical gospels, Mark is both the oldest and the shortest. Because it is so brief, we find an urgency in Mark’s account of the life and ministry of Jesus, and the Evangelist doesn’t spend any more time or words than are necessary to move the story along. And so, this means that when we read Mark’s Gospel, we must pay careful attention to the details he includes and to the words he uses.
In the portion of the Gospel we hear this Sunday, Mark tells us that Jesus and the Twelve have gone into the desert for a bit of a reprieve from the growing number of would-be followers and fans who have begun to flock to Jesus. The location is an important part of this story because, in the Scriptures, the desert isn’t only a place of solitude or escape. For the Jewish People, the desert was a reminder of the forty years the People of Israel spent wandering after the Exodus, but it was also the place where God made a covenant with this Chosen People, claiming them as his own special possession. And so, in the way he has crafted the story, Mark wants us to think of the desert not as a place of isolation or as a wilderness, but as a place of covenant and recommitment.
Not at all put off by Jesus’ attempt to take some time and space, the crowds continued to follow. And it is here that Mark gives us one of his most powerful statements about how Jesus saw himself in relation to these people he came to serve. As the Lectionary translation tells us: he was moved with pity.
Unfortunately, our English word “pity” doesn’t capture the energy of Mark’s original text.
Remember, Mark, is a careful author and he uses a specific Greek word—splanchnizomai—to convey Jesus’ feelings, telling us that Jesus was “moved in his guts.”
This wasn’t just sadness. Jesus was experiencing a deep, intense emotional response to the crowd, seeing them as a flock of sheep in need of a shepherd. These people were looking for someone to follow who could also protect then and give them what they needed. There is, in Jesus’ attitude, a sharp indictment of the religious leaders who were not fulfilling their mission to shepherd the people. This theme is brought out more clearly in the passage we hear from the Prophet Jeremiah in the First Reading:
Woe to the shepherds
who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture…
You have not cared for them,
but I will take care to punish your evil deeds.
I myself will gather the remnant of my flock
In his life and ministry, Jesus fulfills Jeremiah’s prophecy as he begins to teach the people, gathering together sinners, seekers, and saints to be his own flock. And, just as God made a covenant with the people of Israel in the desert, calling together the Chosen People, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, continues to gather into this new flock those who are wandering in the deserts of today. We find this saving work wonderfully summarized in the book Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life:
“When Jesus saw the crowd harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd, he felt with them in the center of his being (Mt 9:36). When Jesus saw the blind, the paralyzed, and the deaf being brought to him from all directions, he trembled from within and experienced their pains in his own heart (Mt 14:14). When he noticed that the thousands who had followed him for days were tired and hungry, Jesus said, I am moved with compassion (Mk 8:2). And so it was with the two blind men who called after him (Mt 9:27), the leper who fell to his knees in front of him (Mk 1:41), and the widow of Nain who was burying her only son (Lk 7:13). They moved Jesus, they made him feel with all his intimate sensibilities the depth of their sorrow. He became lost with the lost, hungry with the hungry, and sick with the sick. In Jesus, all suffering was sensed with a perfect sensitivity.”
The liturgy for this Sunday invites us to reflect on the saving mission of Jesus and to recognize that he desires to shepherd us and that we—the sinners, seekers, and saints of today—have also been invited to be part of this flock.
Show favor, O Lord, to your servants
and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace,
that, made fervent in hope, faith and charity,
they may be ever watchful in keeping your commands.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
