by James Martin
Before leaving the States, several friends suggested staying at a well-situated hostel at Tabgha run by the Benedictines as part of their monastery there. “It’s right on the sea. And you know about the famous Benedictine hospitality,” said a Jesuit friend. “But it’s really hot.” His description was validated upon my emerging from the car. Our own hostel was on a breezy mount, but Tabgha was at ultrasultry sea level. It was absurdly hot and ridiculously humid. I wondered if Tabgha was actually Greek for “furnace.”
At the center of the monastery complex in Tabgha sits a simple stone chapel, a reconstruction of a fifth-century edifice. The Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, built over the Byzantine-era church, was completed in 1982. Its airy interior, with a high-timbered ceiling and creamy stone floor, is furnished with plain wooden pews. A small portion of the church—a few stones in the atrium, a frieze in the apse—date from the original structure. A gorgeous mosaic on the floor featuring a playful design of birds, plants, and flowers is one of the artistic gems of the region.
Of greater spiritual significance is another artwork, also preserved from the original structure. On the floor before the altar, a brown-and-white mosaic depicts two fish flanking a wicker basket filled with a few loaves, in reference to what happened here. The image is a popular symbol of Galilee; reproductions of the design on cups and plates and mugs and T-shirts proliferate all over the region.
The stone church was empty when we arrived. A heavy red curtain cordoned off the interior from the steamy air outside, making the room cool. I was happy to have time to pray.
It was my first time praying in Galilee, and I was overwhelmed simply to be there. I was moved to tears upon realizing I was where not just any miracle occurred—I had been to Lourdes and many other shrines associated with miracles of the saints—but never before a miracle of Jesus. In my journal that night I wrote, “It put all the other miracles in their place . . . so foundational and life changing.”
THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE Loaves and Fishes is actually an umbrella title for two miracles: the Feeding of the Five Thousand and the later Feeding of the Four Thousand. And that first story is the only miracle (apart from the Resurrection) recorded in all four of the Gospels. It appears not just in the Synoptics, but the Gospel of John as well.
Even though all four Gospel writers found this event worthy of extended description, the miracle of how Jesus fed an enormous crowd with a few loaves of bread and some fish is sometimes watered down.
Over the years I have heard homilies explaining away the story as follows: When the crowds gathered on the hillside, the disciples told Jesus that there wasn’t enough food to go around. So Jesus asked them to distribute what they had (depending on the Gospel, either five loaves and two fish or seven loaves and some small fish). Jesus blessed the small amount of food and gave it to his disciples, who distributed it to the crowds. Touched by the disciples’ generosity or moved by Jesus’s sharing what little he had, the crowd brought out the food they had been secretly carrying all along and shared it with one another. At the end of the meal, because so many had shared with one another, there were twelve baskets left over. So, in fact, it was a miracle of sharing. As some preachers will say, “And isn’t that just as miraculous as if Jesus had multiplied the loaves and fishes?”
To which I answer, No.
This easy-to-digest interpretation reflects the unfortunate modern desire to explain away the inexplicable. Donahue and Harrington refer to that particular explanation, which began circulating in the nineteenth century, as the “nice thought” interpretation, which has found its way into mainstream Christian spirituality and preaching.1 The two judicious scholars then issue a caution rarely found in a Bible commentary: this is one way not to interpret the passage. The “nice thought” interpretation reflects a tendency to downplay miracles in the midst of a story that is filled with the miraculous. Indeed, almost one-third of Mark’s Gospel is devoted to Jesus’s miracles.
Other examples of this rationalizing tendency that I sometimes hear are as follows: The Resurrection wasn’t about a truly resurrected Jesus; rather, the disciples gathered together after the events of Good Friday and had a powerful “shared memory” of Jesus and thus experienced him as present in a new way. (How a shared memory could account for the disciples moving from abject terror to a readiness to give their lives for Jesus goes unexplained.) Likewise, Lazarus wasn’t dead when Jesus raised him (though the Gospels make it clear he had been in the tomb four days); he was just sick. And, according to these interpretations, the people Jesus healed were suffering from purely psychosomatic illnesses. Thus Jesus’s compassionate presence cured them of whatever psychological problems led to their illness. (This may be true for a few cases, since the evangelists’ descriptions of the precise illnesses are at times vague, but I cannot believe, for example, that a withered hand or leprosy was psychosomatic.)
Another popular idea is that miracles are simply part and parcel of stories about powerful figures in antiquity, and so those miracles are to be expected in any retelling of the lives of people in that era. But though people in ancient times believed in the possibility of miracles, Lohfink points out that stories about major personalities who performed miraculous healings were “extremely rare in antiquity and well-attested ‘miracles’ were even more uncommon.” Surveying the Gospels he concludes, “Jesus is depicted as definitely a miracle worker, and a great many miracles are attributed to him, something that is unique in antiquity.”2
To my mind, many of the interpretations that seek to water down the miracle stories reflect an unease with God’s power and Jesus’s divinity, discomfort with the miraculous, and, more basically, an inability to believe in God’s ability to do anything.
The idea that sharing food would have so flabbergasted Jesus’s followers that all four evangelists would make room for it in their Gospels, with two going so far as to record two variations (feeding four thousand and feeding five thousand) is hard to fathom. Only one other miracle narrative appears in all four Gospels: the Resurrection. That provides a gauge for how dramatic, memorable, and important the Tabgha event was for the disciples and the early church. Certainly sharing was a significant part of the life of Jesus and his followers, and it was a characteristic virtue of the early church.3 But the theory that the food was not the result of a miracle but of sharing fails to explain the prominence of the story in the Gospels. Nor does that interpretation jibe with the disciples’ complaints to Jesus about the lack of food.4 If people had brought food and were hungry, they would presumably have taken it out—and eaten it.
As Lohfink writes, these types of explanations, which seek to make things credible for modern audiences, reflect a desire to explain away all that we cannot understand. The principle can be summarized as follows: “What does not happen now did not happen then either. If no one today can walk on a lake, Jesus did not walk on water.”5 Harrington suggests that such an attitude also assumes that historical events can and should be interpreted only through the realm of earthly cause and effect, with no supernatural explanation, and that there are no unique historical figures.6 When we take this approach, we are in danger of reducing Jesus to the status of everyone else, when in fact he was, as Lohfink says, “irritatingly unique.” It is the discomfort with Jesus’s divinity that I mentioned in the introduction.
So let’s look at this miracle, symbolized by that simple fourth-century mosaic of two fish and a basket of bread, which waits on the floor of that Benedictine church in Tabgha, as if still prepared for its encounter with the irritatingly unique Son of God.
SCHOLARS DIFFER OVER WHY two versions of this story—the Feeding of the Five Thousand and the Feeding of the Four Thousand—appear in the Gospels.7 One explanation is that there were two distinct events (which differed in a few details, such as the amount of food available as well as the number of the people who were fed). Thus, Mark and Matthew, who include both accounts, were simply recounting two stories about two separate feedings
, the first in a predominantly Jewish area, the second in Gentile territory. Most scholars, however, believe that there were two versions circulating of one story, and that Mark and Matthew included both in their narratives, not wanting to discount either tradition. (Repetition was not as much of a literary sin as it is today.) One argument for that view is that the second time the miracle occurs in Mark and Matthew, the disciples seem to have forgotten about the first time!8
For the sake of clarity, then, let’s look at the first story (the Feeding of the Five Thousand) as it appears in the Gospel of Mark, the earliest form available to us. But we’ll also examine the other versions to see what they might tell us about Jesus.
In the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, the twelve apostles have just returned from the assignment that Jesus had given them, during which they had “cast out many demons” and exercised the ministry of teaching.9 They report their successes to Jesus, and it’s easy to imagine them energized and even a little giddy. In response, Jesus says to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”10 Jesus isn’t one to drive on punishingly until collapse; both he and his followers frequently retreat from the crowds. Also, Mark explains that the presence of hordes of people meant that the apostles had no chance to eat after having returned. So they were hungry.
In Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s “withdrawal” is linked to another event, the execution of John the Baptist by King Herod. After the ruler beheads the prophet, Matthew reports that John’s disciples took the body and buried it, and then “they went and told Jesus.” So Jesus may have had two practical reasons for withdrawing: rest for his disciples and a desire to avoid the murderous wrath of Herod. After his public baptism by John, he would have been clearly associated with the prophet. But Jesus judged that his hour had not yet come. And we can imagine a more personal reason: Jesus was grieved by the death of his friend and possible mentor. All these reasons moved Jesus to spend time alone.
Jesus and the disciples board a boat and sail to the deserted place, which Luke locates as Bethsaida, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. But the crowds, seeing them depart, “hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.” That little sentence offers yet another sign of Jesus’s magnetism. Saying that he was “popular” doesn’t convey the people’s almost physical desire to be in his presence. They want healing and preaching, but they also want him.
When Jesus and the disciples come ashore, he catches sight of all those who have run ahead to be close to him. As Mark tells us, he had “compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Mark’s readers would have seen in this an echo of the Good Shepherd in the Book of Ezekiel, who both tends his flock and teaches them.11 Such parallels with the Old Testament would have enabled readers to understand, in the lovely phrase of Raymond Brown, “God’s total plan.”12
One can imagine Jesus seeing a crowd hungry for answers and healing, and wanting them to know all the good that God has in store for them. Have you ever known someone who was lost, hopeless, or despairing, and you desperately wanted that person to find hope? This may be a window into Jesus’s emotional response. The Greek is vivid—again the word esplagchnisthē—Jesus felt this in his guts. Out of compassion he begins to teach them “many things.” Luke adds that Jesus also “healed those who needed to be cured.”
He must have spoken for some time, because Mark next tells us that “when it grew late” the disciples offer Jesus some unsolicited advice. Here we are in a desolate place, they say, it’s late, and the crowd has nothing to eat. Send the people away, say the disciples, so that they can go somewhere and buy something to eat. The Greek is almost an order: “Send them away!” On the one hand, it is a sensible, reasonable request. There were too many people to feed, and perhaps the crowd was grumbling about the lack of food. Maybe the disciples feared a riot. On the other hand, it is the opposite of Jesus’s reaction. When he sees a group of people in need, he wants to spend time with them. The disciples want to send them away.
Jesus’s response may be a rebuke to their uncaring attitude: “You give them something to eat,” he says. The Greek is an imperative: Dote autois hymeis phagein! “You yourselves give them something to eat!” The disciples counter that this is impossible. It would take two hundred denarii—a denarius was a day’s wages—to feed such an immense crowd. Jesus asks them to find out how many loaves of bread and fishes they have. After checking, they report back: “Five, and two fish.” These are probably preserved or dried fish. It is this meager supply that is depicted in the ancient mosaic in the church in Tabgha.
Then Jesus invites everyone to recline, as if for a banquet. The English doesn’t capture the Greek phrase symposia symposia, indicating a formal dinner party (and perhaps reminding readers of the symposia of the Greek philosophers, an occasion for teaching). The repetition of the word means something like “group by group.” Mark notes that they sat down in groups of fifties and hundreds, which underscores the vastness of the crowd. The disciples must have been—as they often are—flummoxed. Where is Jesus going with this?
Two charming comments color the scene. Jesus asks everyone to recline on the chlōrō chortō, the “green grass.” It is probably close to Passover, and the grass is lush after the winter rains. The Gospel paints a verdant picture of sheep without a shepherd, ready to be fed in fertile fields. Mark also says that Jesus has them sit prasiai prasiai, again a repetition, here of a marvelous word meaning “flower beds.”13 They are arranged together like flower beds, in an orderly manner; some scholars suggest that the image of flower beds derives from the varied colored robes in the crowd. The description underscores the gentle, pastoral setting, as in a painting by Constable or Poussin.
What Jesus does next is something we frequently discussed in our graduate classes in liturgy. “Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.” These actions—take, look to heaven, bless, break, and give—most of which will reappear in the Last Supper, will later be incorporated into early eucharistic celebrations, and later still, the Mass. The blessing would have been the traditional Jewish blessing, praising God; the breaking of the loaves was reserved for the head of a Jewish family.14
Here we find another possible reason why all four Gospels include the story—other than its miraculous character. Even as early as Mark (around AD 70) readers would have drawn parallels to the church’s eucharistic meals. One commentator notes that the eucharistic celebrations would have made the story of the loaves and fishes “common property in all the Christian communities.”15 In other words, each of the evangelists wanted to include the event in his retelling, because for each of the audiences the story carried special meaning as an antecedent to the communal worship they knew so well. As Meier notes, “In any of the Synoptic Gospels, the only occasion outside the feeding miracles when Jesus acts as the host of the meal, takes bread, gives thanks or pronounces a blessing, breaks the bread, and gives it to his followers is the Last Supper.”16
Mark offers an understated description of the miracle itself. In a terse sentence and with no description of the astonishment the disciples normally feel, he writes: “They ate and were filled.” Literally, everyone was satisfied, with the Greek suggesting a superabundance of food that enabled everyone to eat as much as they might have wanted. To hammer home the point, Mark tells us that twelve baskets of food were left, and that those who had eaten “numbered five thousand men.” Matthew adds, more inclusively, “besides women and children.”17 Overall, though, the Synoptics mainly agree on the retelling of this dramatic miracle.
John’s version is slightly different, highlighting the crowd’s astonishment and offering more detail. Briefly put, John tells us that it happened near the time of Passover, names the disciples present, and even describes what kind of bread was used.18 Jesus asks Philip how all the people are going
to be fed. “He said this to test him,” says John, “for he himself knew what he was going to do.” Another detail: Andrew, Peter’s brother, says to Jesus, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?”
Such touching details help us picture the disciples stumbling upon an unsuspecting boy carrying a basket of food, perhaps for his family. Or, as I imagined it on a retreat, Andrew spots the boy and pulls him out of the crowd. The boy tries valiantly to keep hold of the basket, so as not to spill the precious contents as he is guided toward Jesus. Andrew was a practiced fisherman, and I imagine him steering through the crowd as easily as he navigated the Sea of Galilee. Finally brought into Jesus’s presence, the boy looks into the carpenter’s eyes, and wonders.
John too paints a bucolic picture, with “a great deal of grass in the place.” In John the connection to the Eucharist is even clearer because Jesus eucharistēsas, he “gives thanks.” As in the Synoptics, all five thousand eat and have their fill.
The main difference, though, is the response to the miracle. As in the Synoptics, a “large crowd” has followed Jesus, but in John because of healing he has done. John often stresses Jesus’s performing “signs” (sēmeia) that point not only to his own divinity, but reveal other meanings: here, for example, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to which all are invited and which Jesus used in his preaching as a symbol of the reign of God.19 Especially in John the miracles have an educative purpose. In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus’s mighty works tend to depend on the faith of the people; in John’s Gospel, Jesus’s signs prompt faith.
And so, “When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!’” The Messianic Secret, that is, Jesus’s asking his disciples not to disclose his identity, is not secret here at all. They get it.