"Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?"
He said this to test him,
because he himself knew what he was going to do.
Jesus already had a plan, but he didn't explain it to Philip, Andrew, or the other disciples right away. Instead he asked them with the purpose of testing them. No doubt this led first to discomfort and uncertainty as one possibility after another proved untenable. If Jesus was so certain of his plan then why put his disciples through this test? There must have been a reason. Furthermore, Jesus still seems to do this with us, his modern disciples. He always knows the plan but still leaves us to struggle to find the answer. What did the disciples gain from this exercise, or how might we in turn grow as a result?
Philip answered him,
"Two hundred days' wages worth of food would not be enough
for each of them to have a little."
If Jesus had not asked as he did the disciples might never have paused to recognize their own insufficiency. If he had simply provided they might never have known the depth of their need. And if they had not known that, could they truly have valued the gift or expressed genuine thanksgiving?
One of his disciples,
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him,
"There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish;
but what good are these for so many?"
In looking at the problem from the angle of human solutions and what they could bring to the table they found some resources, although these were obviously insufficient. And yet without these the problem never would have been solved in the way that it was. These were the very loaves and fish that fed the crowds. But if Jesus had not tested his disciples these meager offerings might never have been brought forward.
Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks,
and distributed them to those who were reclining,
and also as much of the fish as they wanted.
It was important that the disciples learn what they were on their own, not so much so they might end in a learned helplessness, but rather so that they would learn to bring what they did have to Jesus. Their own insufficiency included a trivial number of loaves and fish that was definitely not enough for a massive crowd. But they weren't to be so entirely passive as to neglect these treasures. They were meant to learn to bring what they did have to Jesus himself.
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work (see Second Corinthians 9:8).
If they hadn't cared enough to consider the problem or to bring forward the fact that a boy had a meager amount it isn't at all clear how Jesus would have fed the crowds. He didn't need a backup plan, of course, because he knew how his disciples would respond. But his way of proceeding was predicated on the fact that they did indeed bring the food the boy possessed as potential offering. They struggled to see a way forward, and could not in fact find one. But they brought all that they found and felt and thought to Jesus. And by doing so what was far too little became more than enough.
"Gather the fragments left over,
so that nothing will be wasted."
One might wonder why the fragments were so precious if Jesus was a magical bread multiplication machine. And so this too was to be a part of the lesson for the disciples, part of the revelation of his teaching that they received. When he did provide an excess he meant all of it to be appreciated. It was necessary to learn to treasure the leftovers even after one had eaten and was satisfied. Learning to remember the value of a gift even when the need was no longer urgent was no doubt part of the intended lesson. Leftovers were not given willy-nilly as an excuse to be reckless and wasteful. Rather, these were like the excess manna that fell before the Sabbath that was to be collected for the following day.
On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each (see Exodus 16:22).
We know that the preciousness of these fragments hint at a deep Eucharistic theology that runs through the entire feeding of the five thousand as well as the Bread of Life Discourse. The short explanation of this is that when the gift is literally Jesus himself, body, blood, soul, and divinity, then every smallest crumb and every last drop is precious, sacred, and holy, deserving of utmost care and devotion.
When the people saw the sign he had done, they said,
"This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world."
Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off
to make him king,
he withdrew again to the mountain alone.
Jesus was not always willing to satisfy the merely natural desires of those who came to him. He didn't want them to misunderstand him to be some kind of Santa like figure who came to attend to our list of wants. He knew that when he did do so we were all too likely to typecast him as precisely this type of figure and not leave room for him to be anything else. We would set him as an earthly king, to be sure, but not leave room for him to be messiah and redeemer. We would be entirely open to his help, but not often open to being changed by him. Jesus wouldn't allow himself to be captured and forced to play an overly simplified role like this. He insisted that when he did provide real physical food that it point toward something greater and more supernatural. There were really two ways an individual who experienced the multiplication of the loaves could respond. One was by remaining the center of their own existence but now trying to insist that Jesus stay on hand to supply the desires of the ego. And the other was to let go of the ego and its fear of scarcity and place Jesus himself at the center. From there, he, rather than the ego, could dictate priorities. And only by yielding to this second option could those who followed Jesus discover the true rest he desired to give them. Then they would truly be sheep, lying in green pastures, fed by the Good Shepherd himself.
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