Two Interpretations

Whether religiously affiliated or not, many people are familiar with the story of The Feeding of the 5,000. It’s a well-known narrative in the Bible, where Jesus multiplies a small amount of bread and fish to feed a crowd of 5,000 people. It has also been portrayed in art. Today, I want to explore two ways of viewing and interpreting this story, and I hope you find encouragement in it.

Here’s the basic story:

Many people had been following Jesus on foot as he traveled throughout the towns of Galilee, teaching along the way. One day, about 5,000 people gathered, and the disciples suggested sending them home, concerned that they needed food and rest. But Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.”

Um… how?

He asked how much food they had, and they responded with five loaves and two fish.

That’s when Jesus took action. He instructed the people to sit in groups, and they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, blessed the loaves, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute. He also divided the two fish among them all. Everyone ate and was filled, and they collected twelve baskets full of broken pieces and fish. The number of people who had eaten the loaves was about five thousand men. (Mark 6:40-44)

What happened here?

Interpretation #1:

One interpretation is that Jesus performed a miracle of creation. He took a meager amount of food and made enough to feed 5,000 people with leftovers. And Mark, the gospel writer, harkens back to the first sentence of what he wrote: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus is in alignment with the Creator.

And there’s also another possibility.

Interpretation #2

Notice that the story doesn’t explicitly say Jesus created more bread and fish. He broke the food before them and set it in front of them. What happened in that space between blessing, breaking, setting before, dividing, and “And all ate and were filled“? I once heard theologian John Dominic Crossan suggest that Jesus was providing a teaching moment. He showed this small amount of food and began dividing it as if he were going to split it among them all, and then they, sitting in groups, realized the lesson. Perhaps they too had a small amount to share. And so they took what they had brought — even if it was small — and also set it before one another for the sharing.

The miracle was that they shared what they had, and there was so much between them that there were baskets of leftovers.

Jesus revealed a miracle.

Perhaps one or both of these may speak to you in this time we are living. I want to leave you with two quotes.

One is a mantra I tell myself:
There is abundance in the community, and the community is my partner.

The other is something I recently heard Bernie Sanders say:
“What we can do, we must do.”

— Renee Roederer