Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
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John 6:1-15
Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand
Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), 2 and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. 3 Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. 4 The Jewish Passover Festival was near.
5 When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” 6 He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.
7 Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”
8 Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, 9 “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). 11 Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.
12 When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” 13 So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.
14 After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
This is John’s account of the miraculous feeding of five thousand people with a small amount of food – in this case, five barley loaves and two small fish they got from a young boy. It seems that the miraculous feeding of crowds of people might have happened more than once. As you might remember from past Reflections, the Gospel of Mark is understood to be Peter’s eyewitness account, and that gospel has accounts of two different miraculous feedings.
John’s version, the one we’re reading today, has a couple of wrinkles that need some particular consideration. First of all, you might remember that we’ve said in the past that in the Gospel of John, the miracles Jesus performs are almost always described as “signs.” And that word signs isn’t just a synonym for ‘miracles’; it has a specific meaning. A sign is a symbolic action that points to something beyond itself. And we understand that the miracles Jesus performed were intended to be signs of the kingdom of God – little previews of that kingdom to come.
In our reading for today, Jesus sees the crowd approaching, and he turns to Philip and asks how they might feed all these people. As you might expect, Philip can’t imagine how they could stretch their limited resources to feed so many people. He points out that eight month’s wages for a typical worker wouldn’t be enough to give everyone in the crowd a single bite.
But Jesus finds a way to feed the whole crowd. One of the disciples, Andrew, discovers the boy with the five barley loaves and two fish. Barley loaves probably would have been the size of small or medium-sized pita, and they were typically the food of the poorer people because barley was cheaper than wheat. So, as we sometimes say, all Jesus had to work with was some kid’s lunch. But Jesus started handing out the food, and when he was done, the whole crowd had been fed and there were twelve baskets of leftovers.
It seems to me that the most important lesson of this story and the others like it is that the God we love and serve can take very modest resources and use them to accomplish great things. We tend to assume that great things can’t be accomplished by a small congregation with a small budget, or by ordinary people like us. But what we forget is that our God has a 4,000-year track record of accomplishing great things through ordinary people with limited resources. And when you read about some of the things that are being accomplished through the followers of Jesus around the world, it’s pretty clear that by the Holy Spirit, God is still at work, magnifying the impact of modest resources.
Not long ago, I read an article about a church that was about to close its doors. Like many churches, the neighborhood around it had changed demographically and now there were just a couple dozen senior citizens left in the congregation. But those senior citizens decided to keep serving the children of the low-income families in the neighborhood as long as they could. And the next thing they knew, those kids and their families started worshipping with the congregation, which somehow exploded back to life. It seems to me that story illustrates how God still does miraculous things with modest resources, when people of faith put those resources into Jesus’ hands.
It seems to me that the end of this reading is particularly interesting. John tells us that this miraculous feeding – this sign – convinced lots of people in the crowd that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah whose coming had been prophesied. So even though the people in the crowd didn’t really understand what Jesus’ ministry would be all about, they did at least recognize that one of the characteristics of the kingdom of God would be the end of worldly suffering like hunger.
And there’s a detail at the end of the passage that we sometimes overlook. If you remember, some of those in the crowd wanted to make Jesus an earthly king. It’s probably more significant than we usually think. I say that because the crowd’s desire to make Jesus a king demonstrates how the Hebrew people of the time misunderstood what the Messiah was meant to do when he came. People wanted an earthly leader who would re-establish their country as a free and prosperous nation, and provide for their material needs. The fact that Jesus had no interest in leading a liberation army and reigning over a kingdom “of this world” was probably a major factor that led some disappointed Jewish people to join the calls for his crucifixion.
Some New Testament scholars even suggested that it may have been a major factor leading Judas to betray Jesus to his death.
Let’s pray. Lord, we pray that by your Holy Spirit, you will take our limited resources, and multiply them to be a great blessing to people who are suffering and in need. And take our modest spiritual gifts, and multiply them, too, so that others encounter your love through us, and come to follow you through those encounters. And protect us from trying to draft Jesus as a servant of our own worldly agendas. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
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