Out Our Way: The Gospel According to Goliath: Of loaves and fishes

Mark 6:35-44

Out our way, different professions call for different skills. Goliath has the makings of a good cow horse because he has what they call “horse sense.” He isn’t afraid of bulls, but he respects their power — and he usually doesn’t need much direction from me to know how to head off a heifer that is going to get in too much trouble because “Old Doc” knew his business.

Many years ago when God called me into the ministry, he was specific about me being a Presbyterian. That called for an intense study of the Holy Scriptures — not only in English, but in the original languages. Greek was terrifying, but Hebrew, OY! Now, we didn’t have to master the languages or be fluent in them, but we did have to be able to translate from the scriptures — and the final exam consisted of an obscure passage from one of the prophets, and counted 75 percent of our final grade.

Now to complete the requirements for Hebrew, we were required to either take a full year of study — or an intensive eight-week summer program in which we spent six hours a day in an un-airconditioned room in humid New Jersey — followed by three to five hours of translation and homework. I opted for the summer school session and literally sweated my way through those eight weeks. By the end of the course, I was barely passing, for I am rather slow when it comes to different languages — and especially ones using funny looking squiggles, dashes and dots instead of our alphabet.

Though I had tried my best during those eight intensive weeks, I am no linguist and it wasn’t sinking in. It took me hours to translate a single sentence — and I usually got it wrong. No wonder my instructor suggested I might consider a different denomination — one that didn’t require the languages. But God had been clear. For whatever reason, He wanted me to be Presbyterian — and that meant I had to pass Hebrew.

The day of the final exam arrived and we were given an entire page of Hebrew to translate within one hour, and I couldn’t read a single word. And so I prayed.

“Lord, You know I have given my best in trying to learn the Hebrew, how i have worked every day for eight weeks and studied late into the night. You also know that You called me to be a Presbyterian pastor, and the Presbyterian Church will not accept me if I can’t pass this exam. Help me, Lord.”

And God did. He told me to rewrite each Hebrew word in my own hand — and as I did, each word become clear to me. And as I did so, indeed each word suddenly became understandable. I could not read an entire sentence at first, but only one word at a time. Yet, as I translated each separate word, the meaning of the sentence began to make sense, and before much longer I was translating whole sentences. When the hour was up, I had competed the translation. I had nearly translated the whole page flawlessly — and since the final exam was worth 75 percent of my entire grade, my D+ average had been raised to a B+.

Later, after having passed all my national exams, including Hebrew, required by the denomination, I underwent my oral examination, and at one point was asked if I believed in miracles. I told them about my Hebrew exam. Some laughed and thought it was an attempt at humor, but in reality it was a straightforward testimony to the Hand of God actively at work in a very tangible and practical matter.

In the account of the loaves and fishes — when Jesus told His disciples to feed more than 5,000 people — they were as unable to comprehend how such a thing was possible. Yet Jesus said, “If you follow Me, all things are possible.”

Now, if the crowd that had followed Jesus that day had missed their supper that night, it would not have been all that terrible, would it? Sure they would have been hungry, but nobody was going to starve to death. Yet Jesus took pity on the multitude — all those “unimportant” and very ordinary men, women and children who had come to see and hear Him. And so no one went hungry that day.

What difference would it have made to the Gospel or the Church of Jesus Christ if one lone candidate for the ministr had not been blessed and given the ability to pass his final Hebrew exam? Yet Jesus took pity on that obscure, ordinary and very unimportant student. In the overall scheme of things, it really didn’t make much difference to the Kingdom or to the Presbyterian Church. But it made a difference to Christ because it made a difference to me.

You don’t have to be famous or powerful or influential in the world to be important to God. You just have to be …. to be important to God.

(John Bruingtong is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Havre, Montana — where his Greek and Hebrew are as terrible as ever — but still useful when God wants to show him an important insight he might have missed otherwise. As far as Goliath is concerned, the only Hebrew Brother John ha retained is the word “Oy!” — usually after falling off and trying to get back up and remount. Goliath occasssionally calls him, “rabbi” in tribute to his constant use of the word — as Brother John falls off a lot.)