The disciples said to him,
"Where could we ever get enough bread in this deserted place
to satisfy such a crowd?"
It wasn't all that long ago that Jesus had multiplied bread for an even larger crowd. Did they forget? Was this a different set of disciples who were not present at the earlier event? Or were they the same individuals who were present before, but this time speaking disingenuously? Did they give up immediately because they believed that this crowd was not worthy of the pity of Jesus in the way that they automatically accepted that the five thousand were? Indications from the text suggest that the earlier crowd was a Jewish one. For them there were twelve loaves leftover, suggesting the twelve tribes. But this group of four thousand appears to have been of Gentile origin. This was the reason the text made note of the fact that "they glorified the God of Israel". Otherwise, of course, whom else would they have glorified? But if they were Gentiles then it made since to specify. So too, after the multiplication of the loaves did the amount of fragments left over possibly point to the crowd being made up of Gentiles. The seven baskets full were a possible reference to the seven nations of Canaan. Were the disciples simply not interested in ensuring the well-being of this crowd? Did they begrudge seeing even the crumbs of the childrens' bread being given to the dogs?
Jesus said to them, "How many loaves do you have?"
"Seven," they replied, "and a few fish."
It is a good thing for us that the disciples got over it, since we too (or most of us) are among those of Gentile origin who continue to benefit from the fact that Jesus has pity for us as well as the Jewish people. It is more than noteworthy that the whole world of peoples and nations has come to glorify the God of Israel precisely because the compassion of Jesus was without limit. But he had to train his disciples to achieve this impartiality. Had they been allowed to act naturally they would have allowed prejudices and blind spots to restrict the ways in which they were willing to spread his love to the world. So too with us. We are not permitted to love only when it feels natural to do so. Sometimes we must overcome limiting feelings or perspectives, even if we have had them for our entire lives until now. As we learn to let Jesus use us and our resources he will gradually change our hearts as well. We will act as the people we want to become and in that way actually become such people. This may not always work in every scenario. We may not become rich by acting like rich people. But when we act like the Christians we want to be we allow the grace of Jesus to work within us and help us to make genuine change and forward progress. Even the best of us probably need such progress. Most of us prefer to perform the virtues that come easiest, and avoid the vices that are the least appealing. But Jesus may be asking us to act in ways that don't come naturally, since what we have been used to thus far is by no means automatically unassailably sacred. He may be asking us to actually grow. And that always means leaving our comfort zone to some extent. But with his help, our pathetically limited resources, far insufficient to the task at hand, become so superabundant that we not only don't struggle, but even have a baskets remaining.
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