Us Vs. Them

Saturday of the 5^th Week in Ordinary Time

1 Kings 12:26-32; 13:33-34; Mark 8:1-10

A team of social scientists enlisted some preteen boys to help them with an experiment. With their parents’ permission, the kids spent several days at a summer camp. Each boy was assigned to one of two groups. For awhile, the groups stayed separate so the boys could get to know each other. When the groups finally met, an “us vs. them” mentality quickly emerged and eventually led to hostility. Because the scientists’ real purpose was to see how such groups might be brought together, they tried some joint activities like movie nights. These failed; if anything, the groups grew even further apart. Finally, the scientists faked what looked to the boys like a real emergency: the camp’s water supply had “somehow” been cut off. As the team predicted, when the groups got together and worked to fix the problem, hostility greatly decreased; they became much friendlier to each other.

Of course, the “us vs. them” mentality is nothing new. We see it in the first reading. One group, the 10 tribes under Jeroboam, want things one way; the other group, the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, another. Both want to worship God, but sadly, hostility breaks out over how and where to do that. In Jeroboam’s case, this spells disaster; his house was cut off and destroyed from the earth (1 Kings 13:34). The tribes under him fare little better; they are conquered and absorbed into the surrounding Gentile peoples.

It is in Gentile territory that Mark now tells of a “great crowd” that has come to hear Jesus. Descendants of the struggle for power over the centuries, they are of two groups: some Jews, but mostly Gentiles. In the area of the Decapolis, where Jesus now is, these two groups live and work near each other, but remain pretty much separate, and, at times, hostile. Nevertheless, here they are, shoulder to shoulder, listening to Jesus.

And listening for three days! We don’t know what he said, but whatever it was, it held them fast. He sees how hungry they are, and that they can’t go on without food, so, as he did in Jewish territory, he now does in Gentile territory. Since this is the second time Jesus has fed a multitude with a few loaves and fish, we might ask why the disciples didn’t know what he was going to do, but I think the focus is better put on who he was doing it for: Gentiles. Two hostile groups – Jew and Gentile – two miraculous feedings. Perhaps Jesus is showing both groups, through his word and bread, that they have a common problem, far greater than any group allegiance – hunger – and that he and only he is the solution. Jesus has come not only to feed people of every group, but to unite them to himself, and, in so doing, to each other. One bread, one body.

What was true then is true now. Like people of every age, we have ample opportunity to see ourselves as “us vs. them.” We in the Church are “us,” the rest of the world, “them.” Or, we could divide by finer lines: Catholic vs. Protestant; this kind of Catholic vs. another; this ministry vs. another; this clergy vs. another; this person vs. another. Where does that get us? Where it has always gotten us… little more than Jeroboam.

Rather, let us remember the miraculous feedings done by Jesus. He and he alone is the food that satisfies the deepest hunger of every human being who has ever lived. The Blessed Sacrament we are preparing to receive is called the Sacrament of Unity for that reason. In Christ, there is no “them.” There is only “us.”

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