The Gospel of John, Chapter 6:1-21: Loaves and Fishes

The Gospel of John, Chapter 6:1-21 

Read Chapter 6 here

Chapter 6 is really long, so I’m going to split it up.

We turn from Jesus’ sermon about his authority to a new scene.  Jesus leaves Jerusalem and goes to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. There are crowds following him, because he has healed the sick.  It is implied that Jesus tries to escape by going up a mountain with just the disciples.  But the crowd follows.

Passover is approaching - I guess the implication is that shops will be as bare as they are here just before a snowstorm hits, with all the bread and milk bought out.  Jesus is omniscient here - he asks the disciples, how are we going to feed this crowd? even though Jesus knows how to feed them.  “He himself knew what he was going to do.”  Unlike in previous chapters, Jesus seems to be speaking about food practically, not metaphorically.  The disciples focus only on how much it would cost to buy food for everyone. 

The text doesn’t point this out, but I think there are possibly numerous miracles that occur here. The disciples are observant. That’s the first miracle.  They have seen that in the crowd there is a boy with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.   That’s the second miracle.  The third miracle is that the disciples are able to get the entire crowd to sit down, all five thousand of them.  Anybody who has gotten on a commercial airplane knows how long it takes just 100 people to be seated.  

The fourth miracle is that the boy was willing to share his loaves and fishes (or was he? The text doesn’t say.).  The fifth miracle is that, after Jesus gives thanks, that tiny amount of food is able to feed the entire crowd, and (sixth miracle!) there are leftovers.  

The gospel author tells us that the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is another “sign”.  The people know that this means Jesus is “the prophet who is to come into the world.”  

Jesus sees that the people (I assume that “they” means the people of the crowd) want to make him into a king.  So he again tries to escape the crowd by going to a mountain, but this time he does not take the disciples with him.

From this miracle we can draw some lessons on how to think about scarcity.  We could learn that if we share what we have and each person only takes what they need, and no more, there can be enough for everyone.  We could learn that by being calm (everyone sitting down) and distributing things methodically, there can be enough for everyone.  

I can’t help but point out that this scene is downright socialist.  We could learn that if everyone puts a little bit into a big pot of loaves and fishes called Medicare, then we can have enough for everyone (even those under the age of 65) to have at least basic medical care. (It’s true, though, that to implement that, we would have to sit down in a grassy field for a few years, waiting nervously for a completely new method of distributing medical care to take shape.)

But perhaps the biggest lesson the author is trying to impart is that Jesus can provide us with enough.  In past chapters, Jesus has used food as a metaphor, so I think it is fair for us to read this story as saying once again, that metaphorically, Jesus meets our needs.  It’s a reinforcement of the living water metaphor Jesus offered the woman at the well, and of the “bread of life” metaphor that is coming up later in this chapter.

After Jesus goes off by himself, the disciples get into a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee back to Capernaum, even though night has fallen.  It’s dark, the sea is rough, and the wind is strong.  The text does not say, at this point, that the disciples are terrified.  They are rowing, and are about 3-4 miles from shore, when they see Jesus walking on the sea. That is the point when they are terrified, and rightly so.  Jesus tells them, it’s me, don’t be afraid.  And then magically the boat has reached the shore.

We also see in this chapter that Jesus does not want to be an earthly king, and that he is desperate to be by himself, away from the crowds.  

Metaphors:  There is no explicit metaphor, but we can easily read the feeding of the crowd as representing food meeting our needs, and the stormy waters as the vagaries of life.

Images and themes: crowds, loaves, fishes, boat(s), a storm, walking on water.

People/Beings:   Jesus, the large crowd, the disciples (including Philip and Andrew), a boy with food.   

Places:  the Sea of Galilee, and both its shores; a mountain, a grassy area; in a boat; Capernaum.