Lunch for Five Thousand

Jairus's daughter was up and eating again, and Jesus sent his twelve friends out in pairs to the villages to tell people about God's kingdom. They came back bursting with stories.

Sad news came too. King Herod had killed John the Baptist, the prophet who had baptized Jesus.

So many people came and went that Jesus and his friends had no time even to eat. (A funny problem for a story about lunch.)

"Come away with me," Jesus said, "just us, to an empty place, and rest a while."

So they pushed off in a boat. But people on the shore saw where it was heading. "There they go!" Along the beach and around the top of the lake ran farmers and fishermen, grandmothers and children, from every town. They got there first. When the boat scraped onto the sand, thousands stood waiting, puffing and red in the face.

Jesus looked at them and his heart went out to them. They were like sheep with no shepherd. So he taught them, hour after hour.

Late in the day his friends came to him. "There's nothing out here, and it's getting late. Send them off to buy food."

"You give them something to eat," said Jesus.

He turned to Philip. "Where can we buy bread for all these people?" (Jesus already knew what he would do. He was testing Philip.)

Philip did the sums. "We could work for most of a year and still not buy enough for everyone to get one bite!"

"How many loaves do you have?" Jesus asked. "Go and see."

Andrew came back with a boy. "Here's a boy with five barley loaves and two small fish. But what is that for so many?"

Barley bread was the cheap kind. It was lunch for one boy.

"Have the people sit down," said Jesus.

So everyone sat on the green grass in groups of fifty and a hundred. (From the hillside they looked like rows in a vegetable garden.) There were five thousand men, and women and children besides.

Jesus took the loaves and fish, looked up to heaven, and said a blessing. Then he broke the bread and handed it to his friends to carry out. He broke it again and again, and the pieces kept coming, fish too. Everyone ate until they were full.

"Gather up the leftover pieces," Jesus said, "so that nothing is wasted."

His friends came back with twelve baskets full, one for each friend who had said, "Send them away."

"This must be the Prophet God promised!" people said, and they planned to grab Jesus and make him king that very night. So he slipped away up the mountain alone.

The crowd wanted a king who would hand out bread. What they had was a shepherd.

A thousand years before, King David had sung, "The LORD is my shepherd. I have everything I need. He makes me lie down in green pastures."

Kings came and went, and the sheep kept wandering. Then, on a hill by the lake, a crowd of sheep with no shepherd was told to sit down on the green grass, and someone fed them until every one was full. God had come to shepherd his people himself. This shepherd had barley crumbs on his hands, and soon he would lay down his life for his sheep.