“At once, the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days,” Mark writes.

It was Jesus’ first mission after being baptized and blessed by God. He was with wild animals, he was tempted by Satan, and, eventually, he was fed by angels. He understood, from the inside, hunger. And he understood being fed by the work of God.

A couple years later, Jesus lets his disciples know how much that experience informs his care of people.

Out in the wilderness, after three days of listening, 4,000 people are hungry. “I have compassion for these people,” he says to his disciples. “If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way.”

In a conversation now familiar to us from the feeding of 5000 (or 15,012), Jesus and the disciples talk about how to feed that many people and about the limited resources at hand. Jesus gives thanks for what’s at hand, breaks it up and hands the pieces to the disciples, who hand them out. Someone finds some fish, which he blesses and which are distributed.

Mark writes, “The people ate and were satisfied.” And there were leftovers, seven baskets full.

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It’s not a stand-alone story; Jesus will come back to this in a few days to teach the disciples that he’s aware of what’s going on in their bodies and minds. Mark will come back to this in a few paragraphs to teach us about the way Jesus is aware and interacts with a variety of people.

There’s no little boy to focus on this time. Less about questions from the disciples. At the heart of this story is compassion. Jesus understands physical hunger. He knows what it feels like. He may even still hand the food to the disciples.