The Feeding of the Multitude

Homily for Friday in the Second Week of Easter

Today, we begin to read from the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, the chapter which relates two different signs and offers what has been popularly called "The Discourse on the Bread of Life." Today's opening verses present us with the only story that is included in all four of the Gospels, "The Feeding of the Multitude." The story is filled with numbers: two hundred days' wages, five barley loaves, two fish, 5,000 men (Matthew adds that this number doesn't include women and children), and twelve wicker baskets.

I doubt that many of us has ever sat down with this many people for a meal. By the same token, I doubt that any of the people who have followed Jesus to this place had given any thought to what they were going to eat.

Think about what happens in the face of an approaching storm in our own culture. People generally will stock up necessary items and imperishable foodstuffs to prepare themselves for the possibility that they will be without power after a storm. However, this is a different kind of culture, and the people who followed Jesus were generally the poorer folk who lived a subsistence kind of life, not knowing where their next meal would come from. If a man did not find work on a particular day, there is a good chance that his family would not eat that day.

However, implausible it might seem, Jesus manages to feed the multitude with five barley loaves and two fish. The fact that the evangelists include the detail that the bread is made from barley is significant. Loaves of barley bread were the food of the poor. After all are satisfied, the fragments of bread and fish are gathered up and fill twelve wicker baskets. The number twelve helps us to understand that Jesus is symbolically feeding the entire nation, all twelve tribes of Israel.

John and the other evangelists are clearly pointing to something greater than simply feeding those present. There is enough for all. There is no need for hoarding, for stockpiling, for accruing more than we need. There is enough for all. The bread that comes to us from Jesus is all that we need as we continue our journey to the Promised Land.