Following Herod’s sadistic banquet, Mark reports on a banquet of Jesus (6:31–44). The banquet of Herod was in a palace; Jesus’s is in the open. Herod invited important people; Jesus receives all people. Herod bolstered his own reputation; Jesus ministers to peoples’ hunger and needs. So memorable is Jesus’s banquet that it is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels.
After the return of the Twelve, and in fulfillment of the first prerequisite of apostleship (3:14), Jesus summons the Twelve away from the pursuit of the crowd to be with him in rest and solitude. The crowd anticipates their retreat, however, and precedes them to the destination. Despite the invasiveness of the crowd, Jesus looks on it with compassion and, according to custom, teaches the people. Given the remoteness of…