Miracles of Bread and Water (Walking)—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 10B (John 6)

John 6:1-21 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

6 After 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. ³ Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. ⁴ Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. ⁵ When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” ⁶ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. ⁷ Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” ⁸ One 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?” ¹⁰ Jesus 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. ¹¹ Then 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. ¹² When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” ¹³ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. ¹⁴ When 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.

¹⁶ When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, ¹⁷ got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. ¹⁸ The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. ¹⁹ When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. ²⁰ But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” ²¹ Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

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                Jesus had been trying to get away for a bit of rest and refreshment, especially after the execution of John the Baptist. His problem has been that wherever he goes, crowds follow. These are sheep without a shepherd, as we’ve seen in earlier readings from the Gospel of Mark. In our previous reading from Mark, the lectionary skipped over the Feeding of the 5000, focusing instead on other aspects of Jesus’ ministry. This week we hear a word about that miracle. However, instead of reading the account in Mark 6, the lectionary points us to the reading from John 6, a passage that includes another of Jesus’ miracles—he walks on water. While Thomas Jefferson might wish to have a miracle-free Bible, the Gospels thrive on miracles. It would seem that if we wish to hear the full message we must accept the testimony of these miracle stories, even if we struggle to make sense of them. As Frank Honeycutt helpfully reminds us, “The stories are true to the extent that they lead a reader or listener to deep truth. In an era of outright lying in politics masquerading as truth, with conspiracy theories holding an outsized role in the imaginations of the American electorate, the abiding promise found in these old miracle narratives offers no small alternative to the false claims of fake news” (Miracles for Skeptics, p. 36).

                The Feeding of the 5000 is one of the few events in the larger story that appears in all four Gospels. While there are differences in presentation, they all agree on the basic concern and that is Jesus fed a large group of people with a small amount of food. How he did it is open to discussion. If we eliminate the supernatural/miraculous then we have to find another way of explaining things. There might be legitimate explanations, but is that the message the Gospels wish to share? After all, Jesus also walks on water in John’s account and Mark’s and Matthew’s accounts (Mk 6:30-52; Matthew 14;13-33). That all four gospels record the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 suggests that something rather powerful happened that involved food. This is the second food-and-drink-related miracle story in John’s Gospel, with the previous one being the time Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana (Jn. 2:1-11).

                The feeding of the 5000 in John’s Gospel has larger implications than the readings in Mark and Matthew. For John, the bread ultimately has symbolic value that involves sacramental dimensions. We’ll not encounter the full story, which continues after the story of Jesus walking on water, which our prior reading from Mark also omitted (perhaps Jefferson got to the lectionary creators last week).

                In the Gospels, the crowds grow increasingly larger and more persistent with time. That’s likely due to the healing miracles of Jesus. But they may have also been intrigued by his message. Again, they were like sheep without shepherds, and Jesus seemed to be caring for them. In our reading, a crowd has gathered to hear Jesus. It’s a rather large crowd, especially when you’re reminded this was before the age of PA systems. The Roman amphitheaters were designed to allow large crowds to listen to a speaker, and one could get a similar experience in natural settings. So, we can use our imaginations to envision the crowd sitting on a hillside that allowed Jesus to project his message. John doesn’t have a teaching moment like Mark does before he feeds the crowd. Instead, having crossed the lake he encounters a large crowd who gathered because they had experienced his healing ministry.

When Jesus saw the gathering crowd, he climbed to the top of the hill and sat down with his disciples. John adds that this takes place near Passover, a festival that figures prominently in John’s Gospel. When Jesus looked at the crowd, he asked Philip where they might buy bread to feed the crowd. Philip tells Jesus that it would take more than two hundred denarii (a denarii was considered a normal day’s wage), which would take a lot more money than they had with them. Nevertheless, the question was only meant to be a test because Jesus already had a plan.  What is Jesus’ plan? He tells Philip and the rest of his disciples to go feed the people, which makes no sense to them since they don’t have that kind of money. All they could scrounge up were five barley loaves and a couple of fish that belonged to a boy in the crowd. Obviously, that was not enough to feed a crowd that would take more than half a year’s wages to feed. But Jesus had a plan, or so he told his followers.

According to the Gospel accounts, even with their variations, a large crowd is fed—at least 5000 people. Jesus had the disciples seat the crowd on the grass. Then Jesus, serving as the host, much as he did at Cana (Jn 2), took the five loaves of barley bread, gave thanks (eucharistein), and then distributed it to the crowd. He did the same with the two fish. When everyone had been fed, Jesus had the disciples gather up the fragments. They gathered up twelve baskets full of bread. That’s a lot of crumbs to come from five barley loaves. So, how did he do it? What’s his secret? John doesn’t tell us. While John’s readers might have accepted the story at face value, modern folk want explanations.  They want more than mystery. So, perhaps many in the crowd had brought a lunch, and Jesus inspired them to share. In other words, this is a morality play encouraging generosity. That has a nice ring to it, especially for social justice-oriented folk. But that’s not the way the story is told. Douglas John Hall addresses the failure of these modern attempts at explanation, suggesting that they are shallow and futile, writing:

[W]e cannot escape the biblical belief in a transcendent dimension, which in a prescientific culture could be allowed the kind of free range that moderns can only find excessive. But the caveat goes deeper than that: for the habit of “explaining everything,” surely one of the more dangerous as well as pretentious adventures of the modern spirit, ends—and has ended! —in a culture that has all but lost the capacity to wonder. People grown skeptical about the extraordinary is likely to miss the extraordinary within the ordinary. [Feasting on the Word, p. 288].

Wonder at the transcendent is on full display in John’s signs. The crowd responds. First, they hail him as a prophet (Jn. 6:14), perhaps like Elisha who fed a much smaller crowd with a small amount of food (2 Kings 4:42-44). Then they move from prophet to king. Yes, if he can feed crowds like this then they’re ready to make him their king. In verse 15 of John 6, we’re told that Jesus quickly discovered that his plan worked so well that the people decided to make him their king. After all, the Roman emperors kept the people in line with bread and games. You can gain a lot of followers if you give them bread and games. Jesus didn’t offer games, but he had provided bread and fish. He fed them for a moment. So, the crowd got ready to hail him as their king. If they could crown him surely more would join the movement. Before long, they could march on Jerusalem. All he needed to do was give them bread. When he realized what they intended to do he withdrew to the mountain. He went off by himself because the people had misunderstood what realm Jesus sought to inaugurate, and it wasn’t the kind that the Romans or even the Herodians and their predecessors envisioned.  

While many in the crowd looked to Jesus to provide food to feed their stomachs, John 6 as a whole offers the foundation for a theology of the Eucharist, though much of the discussion of how that works comes later in the chapter. Marianne Thompson Meye writes of how the early Christians read this story and its eucharistic implications:

In its prayer of thanksgiving over the Eucharist, the early Christian catechetical document the Didache (late first or early second c.) also interprets it in terms of the feeding miracle and, further, as the gathering of the church into one: “Even as what was broken was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom” (9.4; 10.5). 70 In John, the feeding miracle also serves as a figure of the Lord’s Supper and of the gathering of God’s people. Jesus gave his body and blood to gather his people together; hence, even as the bread is scattered, so must it be gathered; even as there are many pieces, there is also one loaf (cf. 1 Cor 10: 14– 17; 11: 27– 34). [John (New Testament Library) (p. 141).  Kindle Edition].

In the later verses of John 6, which we’ll encounter the following week, Jesus calls himself the “Bread of Life.” It is in these verses that we’ll see a fuller development of a eucharistic theology that seems rather realistic. But, that must wait a week.

After Jesus realized what the people wanted to do with him, Jesus withdrew from the crowd, finally getting a bit of peace. As for the disciples, they don’t seem sure what to do. It seems as if Jesus just disappeared and didn’t give them instructions. So, they just went down to the lake, got in their boat, and headed across the lake toward their headquarters at Capernaum. In Mark’s account, Jesus sends them off before taking time off by himself, but in either case, they’re not sure how Jesus is going to join them on the other side of the lake. As the boat crossed the lake without Jesus, it grew dark and then the lake became rough as wind blew across the lake. After rowing three to four miles, which might have taken them halfway across the lake (it is essentially eight miles wide and thirteen miles long), depending on where they set out from, they see Jesus walking across the water near the boat. They were, as you would expect, terrified. After all, they didn’t expect Jesus to walk on water, so it must be a ghost or apparition. Nevertheless, Jesus tells them not to be afraid because “It Is I” (Greek: egō eimi). While that might be a simple self-identification, in John’s gospel this phrase often takes on a more theological dimension. Whether that is meant here or not, later readers will intuit it.

Mark tends to be more straightforward about the meaning of events, but John offers more mystery. These are not just miracles, they’re signs. They reveal something about God and God’s realm, which Jesus embodies. If we demythologize these stories, we may miss the signs that God is at work in the world. As our readings from the Gospel often do, they invite us to ponder who this Jesus might be. What kinds of signs do we need if we’re going to embrace him and give our allegiance to him and his realm? Yes, we need to heed the call to be generous, but let’s not lose that sense of wonder that these signs offer us. 

Imaage Attribution: JESUS MAFA. Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48287 [retrieved July 19, 2024]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).