If you ever come to Los Angeles, we should go to a restaurant close to the intersection of Melrose and Robertson. My favorite memories with friends and loved ones always take place there. I love bringing people to this place because I think it is the best way for you to not just see my city, but get to know me.
Eating together connects people in ways that nothing else can. Take the feeding of the 5,000. Matthew, Mark and Luke all place it right after a scene where Herod hosts a banquet in his own honor with John the Baptist’s head on a platter. It’s as if they want us to get to know Jesus by seeing him offer an alternate dinner gathering, not designed by the values of this world but the marks of his kingdom.
This is the only miracle of Jesus that is mentioned in all four gospels. The scene takes place at the end of a long day of ministry for Jesus. The disciples reported to him all that they had done, and like a good teacher, Jesus wants to take them away to debrief and rest.
Mark tells us that Jesus and the disciples got into a boat, and the crowds ran ahead, anticipating his arrival on the other side. Who was this crowd? Luke’s account tells us this scene takes place in Bethsaida, the rural region of Galilee that was a stronghold of the Zealot movement. The zealots were a group of freedom fighters built on a political movement to incite the people of Judea into rebellion against the Roman empire. Mark describes this waiting crowd as “sheep without a shepherd” (6:34).
The “shepherd” reference means they were without a leader. In 1 Kings 22:17 the prophet Micaiah is confronting King Ahab regarding his failures and inevitable downfall as the king and gives him a message from the Lord: “I saw Israel scattered on the mountain as sheep that have no shepherd…they have no master, let each return home in peace.”
The original readers would have known the phrase to be describing the people of Israel when they had no king or ruler. John confirms this in 6:15, telling us that these zealots sought to forcefully crown him as king to lead the revolution against Rome.
And how does Jesus respond to this? He had compassion on them. He saw these crowds distressed by their oppression, longing for their freedom, and everything in him ached. Ached for what? To give them a banquet. What would you serve at this banquet for needy people? Bread, of course!
Bread in our culture is often an appetizer or something on the side of your plate. But in the Ancient Near East, it represented life. Jesus wants to give it to them in two ways: spiritually and physically. Mark 6:34 tells us Jesus “began to teach them many things.” Luke 9:11 mentions “he spoke to them concerning the kingdom of God.” This crowd likely came with weapons, seeking liberation and expecting orders. But they begin to hear Jesus tell them that if they want to be set free and find true life, then there is nothing more pressing than to hear the gospel of the kingdom.
When Jesus begins preaching with the presence of bread, he’s saying that we have a hunger within us that is so profound, even physical bread can’t fill it. And we are so hungry that we will not stop searching until something satisfies that hunger. We try to fill our lives with social status, careers, successful children, or intimate relationships. But the problem is those attempts will never satisfy that hunger.
In 2016 Jim Carrey began his award presentation at the Golden Globes with some tongue-in-cheek observations:
I am two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey…When I go to sleep at night, I’m not just a guy going to sleep. I’m two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey going to get some well-needed shut-eye. And when I dream, I don’t just dream any old dream. No sir. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe-winning actor Jim Carrey. Because then I would be enough. It would finally be true. And I could stop this terrible search for what I know ultimately won’t fulfill me.
The problem in our lives is that we have no idea what to do with this hunger, so by default we try what everyone else is doing and even keep going back to things that previously failed to satisfy us. Proverbs 26:11 says, “Like a dog that returns to its vomit so a fool repeats his foolishness.” It’s as if we don’t know how to stop searching in all the wrong places.
C.S. Lewis argued that the problem is not that we are hungry; we were built that way. But when things fail to satisfy our hunger, it should lead us to conclude that we’re longing for something not available in this world:
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. … If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing … I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and help others to do the same.
Jesus doesn’t just give the crowd spiritual food: He miraculously meets the crowd’s physical need for sustenance. Here Jesus is giving a sign of the new creation, showing the way the world was meant to be and will be when he makes everything right.
God did not create a world with hunger. In the garden of Eden, food was provided in plenty. It was intended that when we are hungry there is provision to meet the need. But when Adam and Eve sinned, they were exiled not just from God’s presence in the garden but all of the provision for life that was in the garden.
Today this effect of the fall remains. Experts estimate that one in 11 people worldwide goes to bed hungry. In Los Angeles, where I live, 30% of households experience food insecurity. These statistics represent a painful reality, one that is unnatural, part of sin’s curse.
With five loaves and two fish, Jesus invites his disciples to push back on the effects of the fall. Jesus is giving a signpost of a kingdom that is going to one day fully come. Because he is showing us what it will be like, we need to create ways to imitate this while knowing we won’t solve the issue until his kingdom is fully here.
We can’t give in to thinking ministry is only giving out spiritual bread or get so overwhelmed that we give up trying to meet the physical needs around us. Mara van der Lugt, a philosophy lecturer at St. Andrews University in Scotland, wrote an essay titled “Look On the Dark Side.” In it she talks about how we ought to face the future problems in the world by avoiding the mistakes of being overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. She suggests that what we need is a hopeful pessimism:
What hopeful pessimism asks instead is that we strive for change without certainties, without expecting anything from our efforts other than the knowledge that we have done what we are called upon to do as moral agents in a time of change. This may just be the thinnest hope, the bleakest consolation – but it may also be the very thing that will serve us best in times to come, as a value, and yes, an exercise of moral fervour: a fragile virtue for a fragile age.
How convenient it would be to give up on issues like global hunger; and how easy it would be to seek to solve the problem and lose heart.
What’s the answer? We have to feed on the only one who can feed us.
Who really is this man that feeds a crowd that hoped he’d be their general? There are several clues. When He fed the multitudes, some people would have been reminded of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. The way Jesus organized the people into groups of fifties and hundreds and is reminiscent of Moses. But when the people were satisfied in the green grass by their shepherd, they might have seen Jesus as a better David. So, who is he?
Mark hints that Jesus is the Christ, God’s chosen one to lead his revolutionary kingdom that will renew the whole world. But he won’t do it by picking up a sword; he will do it in the breaking of bread. The bread that he says later on is His body broken, not for crowds who want to follow him, but disciples who will abandon Him.
God calls us to give bread to our neighbors and those across the world, both spiritually and literally. The only way for us to give that without losing heart is if we are feeding on the bread of life so that we are, just like the crowds, completely satisfied.
Alex Watlington serves as senior pastor of Pacific Crossroads Church in Santa Monica, California.