Getting late and getting hungry

The precious time with Jesus slipped away all too soon.  And the disciples were aware that the crowd needed food.  They would have been hungry after their hurried journey round the Lake and some of the food would have been eaten when they were settled on arrival at the grassy plain.  And Jesus, good Teacher that he was, is unlikely to have taught them without any breaks, and he himself would have needed some breaks.  Teaching in the open with no public address system must have been very demanding.  So we can imagine that between periods of teaching, there would have been breaks for reflection and healing the sick, and refreshment. And we can be sure that the hungry demands of children during the day would have made sure that by now all their food had gone.

The problem of the hungry crowd

So the disciples asked Jesus to send the people away so that they could buy food.  In reply, he told the disciples to give them food.  Jesus ignored their rather irritable-sounding suggestion about going out and buying bread and said, “How many loaves have you?  Go and see” (NRSV, Mark 6:38).  Jesus may very well have been asking them to check their baskets to see if any food was left.  Unsurprisingly, the baskets were empty.  Jesus and his disciples would never have eaten food without sharing it with any people nearby who had nothing.  And true to the Jewish culture of hospitality (14) this sharing would have been replicated throughout the crowd.  Hospitality was an important part of the Jewish Faith (Leviticus 19:34; Deuteronomy 10:17-20) and was ingrained in the collective consciousness of the Jewish people because their ancestors had been strangers in Egypt and had wandered in the harsh desert on the way to the Promised Land.

But we know that someone did have some food – a young boy with five barley loaves and two small fishes.  Presumably he lived locally and perhaps he had seen the great crowd and came later with his simple picnic to see what was going on.  We can imagine him edging his way to the front of the crowd and who knows, perhaps Jesus smiled at him and chatted to him during a break.  At any rate the boy was near the disciples when they were searching for food and he knew there was a problem.  So he offered his little picnic, perhaps hoping Jesus would have some.