Miracles are fascinating things! But in the age of scientism most people struggle to accept them at face value. ‘How does this work?’, we may ask, ‘Surely there is a rational explanation’.
Then there are people like Derren Brown who do seemingly miraculous, impossible things and are very particular about these things being mere tricks, not miracles. Good for Derren Brown, because he could have claimed the opposite and easily started a cult!
In 2011, the British magician called Dynamo attempted to walk on water across the Thames towards the Houses of Parliament. I say ‘attempted’ not because the act failed but because he was stopped half-way across by the Port of London Authority boat. He did not try to conceal the fact that the act was a magic trick, but it did not stop Sky News from coming up with the title ‘Is magician’s walk on water genuine?’ as they reported on this? I think perhaps other than Sky News, most people would have wanted to know how this trick was done rather than wondered if Dynamo was the next Messiah.
So if we were looking at the feeding of the 5,000 with today’s eyes, we may have wanted to find an explanation of how it worked. Perhaps we could have started with some calculations, in the spirit of science. If an average weight of a loaf of bread is about 500 grams, then 5 loaves would be 2.5 kg, which, divided by 5,000 men would result in about 0.5 grams per person, leaving the women and children hungry. To be fair, the men would not be exactly filled either because 0.5 grams is less than a crumb, containing about 1.2 calories out of roughly 2,500 calories required by a grown man daily. And then there would be a tiny piece of fish to go with that as well.
This clearly does not work, considering also there were 12 baskets full of bread left afterwards – more than the amount Jesus started with. And one may want to come up with some explanations of how this was still possible: perhaps, as some have suggested, the act of sharing the five loaves of bread and the two fish inspired others to share the food they had with them, and this is how everyone was fed.
However, if we were trying to explain exactly how this miracle happened and made sense, we would be treating it as a trick, no more than Dynamo’s attempt to walk across the Thames or Harry Houdini’s escape from the water tank. We would focus on the mechanics of the event rather than its meaning. However, if we do believe that it is indeed the Son of God performing this act, we ought to be looking deeper.
Let us cast our minds over the earlier books of the Bible. We may remember that feeding huge numbers of people has already happened before. Famously, in the book of Exodus, as Moses was leading Israel across the desert, the hungry people rebelled. In response, God reassured Moses and gave the people manna – bread from heaven. This bread was miraculous not only because it materialised out of nowhere, but also because there was just the right amount of it: those who may have gathered too much did not have an excess and those who gathered little were still full and satisfied. It is important to note that in the reading from Matthew the people are also said to be satisfied – they most certainly did not just get a tiny crumb.
Another story from the Old Testament, less known, comes from the second book of Kings, chapter 4. In this narrative, Elisha orders his servant to feed 100 men with 20 loaves of barley bread. It is a much more favourable ratio than in the Gospel story, but the servant still protests considering the task impossible. Elisha replies, ‘Thus says the Lord, “They shall eat and have some left”’. There is again an obvious parallel with the Gospel story: not only were all present satisfied with the amount of food, they also had leftovers.
Evident parallels with these Old Testament events make it very clear that Jesus goes in the footsteps of both Moses, who represents the Law, and Elisha, who represents the Prophets. Jesus is the fulfilment of both. And not only that, but in the two Old Testament miracles the Lord himself multiplies the food and ensures there is enough for everyone. By doing the same, Jesus makes it very clear: He is the Lord.
Also, pair this up with another miracle at the wedding at Cana and we have Jesus multiplying bread and miraculously producing wine – very much a Eucharistic feast!
More symbolism is potentially to be found in numbers that feature in this passage, but I think the image we have so far is powerful enough: the passage confirms Christ’s identity as the Son of God, the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets, and affirms his miraculous Eucharistic presence.
Purely symbolic explanations, however, skirt around the challenge of having an actual miracle in front of us. The act of multiplying bread is a demonstration of unimaginable power and overwhelming generosity of which God can be the only author. This is why such miracles are incomprehensible to us – God Himself is impossible to get our heads around. This is why we should not beat ourselves up too much about the initial impulse to find an explanation that we might have reading this story.
In the Gospel of John, the same narrative continues with the passages about Christ himself as the bread. In the gospels of Mark and Matthew, the theme changes, leaving a greater focus on the significance of the bread in this very episode. For a 1st-century Jew, bread was a means of survival. Today, with fresh bread available in every shop, we may not see it like this, unless we change our perspective slightly. The perspective I was given as a child was offered by the survivors of the siege of Leningrad, including my own great-grandmother and my grandfather, her son. The daily norm of bread, in the absence of literally any other food, was 125 grams. Bread was sacred. This was so impressed upon me that I still cannot put bread in the bin. I will be soaking an absolutely solid piece in a bowl of soup but I will not bin it. The perspective of Jesus’ contemporaries also meant that bread was holy; it was equivalent to the very life force. God gives us our daily bread in exactly the same way He breathed life into Adam. All life comes from Him, and this is I think what the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 is about. It is about God giving life.
We do not pause to marvel at the fresh shoots coming up from the ground once the winter is over, we do not marvel at the fact that apparently a baby grows 6.5 billion times in the mother’s womb, from an egg cell to a full-term newborn. We talk about the theory of evolution without asking where life itself, that very first impulse came from. As far as I am concerned, all these are miraculous! And yet, we get worked up about whether it is possible to multiply the bread, forgetting that the two – the multiplication of bread and the multiplication of cells that create life – are the same and come from one source. As we reflect on these things today, may we be reminded that our daily life is a miracle and then perhaps it will be easier for us to accept the miracles of the Bible. Amen.
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