Feeding the Five Thousand

6After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.^{* 2}A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.³Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples.⁴Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.⁵When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’⁶He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do.⁷Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages^* would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’⁸One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him,⁹‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’¹⁰Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they^* sat down, about five thousand in all.¹¹Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.¹²When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’¹³So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.¹⁴When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

We’re presented with impossible things in thse stories: a aged woman with an aged husband is to conceive his child; and 5000 people are fed with five loaves and two fish. What is the storytellers’ point in recounting miracles, since after all, faith is not a matter of just believing anything we’re told?  In both cases, the reader is invited to see that trust in One who is beyond all understanding, is fruitful here and now within history. Abraham and Sarah have shown this trust by leaving their own land on a journey to a new home. They have remained fruitful as a individuals and as a couple, and almost against their own wills are prepared to trust in the humanly laughable idea of having a child, who will be called “laughter” (Isaac). The miracle is an expression of God’s “beyondness” in their lives. 

The same is true of the feeding of the 5000. The reader is warned that what Jesus will do is in some way a replacement for the Passover, the feast of liberation. Jesus trusts that the people will be nourished by what his disciples have been given by a child. The people are drawn to Jesus by their trust that he is their true king or shepherd. The insistence on the importance of grass is a hint that the 23rd Psalam is to be remembered. “The Lord is ny shepherd, I shall not want. he makes me lie down in green pastures….. he has prepared a table for me in the presence of my enemies…” Through the leadership of Jesus and the trust of the crowd, God’s “beyondness” enters their lives and they are all fed. But they misplace their trust, thinking that Jesus is a Messiah to be installed by violence, instead of recognising God’s rule which cannot be co-opted for political programmes.

an ordinary miracle: blackbird at sunset

Of course in another sense these miracles are quite ordinary: giving birth and feeding people are common enough occurrences. The Bible encourages us to experience the miraculous in ordinary events; to know in our trust and in our doubting where the beyondness of God has been present to us. We can never  prove such experiences to others nor should we use them for any worldly advantage: they are tokens of God’s companionship (*companion, from the Latin, literally, “One who shares bread”).