Book of Faith - John 6:1-21 - Feeding of the 5,000

The group commented that John's telling of this miracle was fairly straight forward as compared to some other passages of John.  The one addition to the story is the testing of Phillip.  John always has Jesus knowing what he is doing and what is going to happen.  He knows there will be a miracle and is wondering if Phillip is open to the possibility.  This raises as interesting question.  Does Jesus always know what's going to happen?  In John, it would appear so.  It's almost as though Jesus has a day planner already written by God and simply follows the script.  This raises an additional question as to how Jesus is divine and human?  The group believed that Jesus new what the broad strokes of his life were going to be.  In other words, he knew his purpose, but he did not know the details.  He could genuinely be surprised and he could change.  Both of these attributes make him human, and, for the group, did not take away from his divinity.  In the history of the church, there was a real battle between the divinity and humanity of Jesus, particularly in the early years. Each of the gospels leans one direction of the other.  The solution, captured in the creeds was to say that Jesus was fully divine and fully human.  

We also discussed the miracle itself.  One person pointed out that it was interesting that Jesus did not feed the poor as a regular part of his ministry.  Here, he feeds 5,000 pilgrims as they make their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.  Our group was open to two possibilities as far as the miracle.  One possibility would be that this is simply a miracle.  By the power of God, 5 loaves and 2 fish feed everyone and there are 12 baskets of food left over.  The second possibility would be that the pilgrims already had food with them, but as Jesus called them together, divided them into groups of 50, and then offered what little he had, the pilgrims were moved to share with each other and there were still 12 baskets left over.  In either case, a miracle took place.  In fact, our group preferred the second miracle of sharing.  

The conversation this week continues on Wednesday and we encourage any and all to participate.  Each time we venture into the bible, we discover new insights for the living of our faith.  Join us!