Big Idea: This episode illustrates the key contrast of this central section in Mark. Jesus has the power to take care of his followers, but the disciples fail to understand this because of their hardness of heart and spiritual failure.

Understanding the Text

God provides for the needy (6:30–44), and Christ heals all who come (6:53–56). True disciples place their trust in God and Christ, who watch over them. As the new Israel, Jesus’s followers must be tested with their own “wilderness” experience. In other words, the disciples must go through a similar test to that of Jesus, and Jesus may have deliberately sent the disciples across the lake knowing what was to transpire. The mention of “wilderness area” (er?mos topos) three times (6:31, 32, 35) may point to this being a “wilderness testi…