Five Loaves, Two Fish, and a Walk on the Water

The twelve came back from the villages Jesus had sent them out to, and gathered round him, all of them with something to tell. They told him everything: everywhere they had been, everything they had done, everything they had taught. He had sent them out two by two, and he had sent them out with nothing — no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; one walking stick each and the sandals on their feet, and that was all. They had gone from village to village telling people that they should change their minds, and they had driven out evil spirits, and rubbed oil on people who were ill and made them well. He listened to all of it. And then he said to them, “Come away, just you, by yourselves, to a quiet place where nobody lives — and rest a little.” They needed it. There were so many people coming and going round them all day long that the twelve had not even had time to sit down and eat a meal. So they got into the boat, just the thirteen of them, and pushed off across the lake of Galilee, heading for an empty stretch of country on the other side where there was no town and no house and nobody at all. It was an ordinary fishing boat, with oars; and the lake was about thirteen miles long, with hills all the way round it. It did not work. People saw the boat go. They knew whose boat it was, and they could see which way it was pointing, and they set off round the shore on foot — out of this town and that town, more of them joining on at every turning — and they ran. And when the boat came in to the lonely place, there was the crowd standing on the shore, waiting. They had got there first. Nobody had their rest that day. And when Jesus came up out of the boat and saw them all standing there, he was sorry for them, right down inside himself, because they were like sheep with no shepherd to look after them. He did not send them away. He welcomed them. He went up the hillside and sat down there with his friends round him. And still the people kept coming — up from the shore and over the hill, more and more of them. They were following him because they had watched what he did for people who were ill. It was nearly time for the Passover, the great feast in the spring, when the whole country was on the move. Jesus looked up and saw the crowd coming towards him, and he turned to Philip and asked him, “Where are we going to buy bread, so that all these people can eat?” He only said it to test Philip. He knew already exactly what he was going to do. And Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for them — not even for every one of them to have a little bit.” A denarius was one day’s pay for a working man. Two hundred of them was most of a year’s work for one man. Then Jesus began to teach the people, and he went on for a long while, about a great many things. He talked to them about the kingdom of God. And all the people who needed healing, he healed — every one of them.

The sun went down the sky and the shadows got long, and the twelve came over to him. Out here there was nothing at all — no village, no market, no bread, and nowhere to sleep. “This is a lonely place, and it is late already. Send the crowd away now, so they can go off to the farms and villages round about and find somewhere to stay the night, and buy themselves something to eat.” And Jesus said, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” They stared at him. “Are we supposed to go off and spend two hundred denarii on loaves, and hand them round for them to eat?” And he said, “How many loaves have you got? Go and see.” So they went and looked among the people. It did not take long. It was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, who came back and told Jesus, “There is a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what is that, for so many?” Five flat loaves of barley bread, the kind a man can hold in one hand — barley was the cheap bread, the bread poor people ate — and two fish. Five loaves and two fish, for five thousand men out on that hillside. A man could hold the whole supper in his two hands. And Jesus said, “Bring them here to me.” So the boy’s five loaves and two fish were brought to him. And then he said to his friends, “Have the people sit down, in groups of about fifty.” It was springtime, and there was a great deal of grass in that place, and all of it was green. By the end of the summer those hills would be brown and dry, but in the spring, for a few weeks, they were green. So the twelve went round and had everybody sit down on the green grass, company by company. And the people settled themselves in blocks across the hill, in groups of a hundred and groups of fifty, laid out in rows like the beds of a garden. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looked up to heaven, and gave thanks, and said the blessing over them, the way the father of a household says it at supper. And he broke the bread. And he kept on giving it to his friends, and they kept on carrying it out to the people sitting on the grass; and the two fish he shared out among them all, every single one, as much as each one wanted. And everybody ate. Not a crumb each to be polite about — they ate until they had had enough and could not eat any more. When they were full, Jesus said to his friends, “Gather up the broken pieces that are left over, so that nothing is lost.” So the twelve went round the grass picking up what was left. And from those five barley loaves, after everybody had eaten, they filled twelve baskets with broken pieces of bread, and of the fish. They were the kind of baskets people carried their food in on a journey. One basket for each of the twelve. There were about five thousand men sitting on that hill — and that was only counting the men. There were women and children besides. A whole hillside of people sat in the evening light with enough to eat, in a place where there had been nothing at all.

And the people looked at what he had done, and they began saying, “This really is the prophet — the one who is coming into the world!” And Jesus knew what they were going to do next. They were going to come and take hold of him, whether he wanted it or not, and carry him off and make him their king. And at once he made his friends get into the boat and set off across the lake ahead of him, towards Bethsaida, while he stayed behind to send the crowd home. And when he had said goodbye to the last of them, he went back up the mountain by himself to pray. Evening came. The boat was out in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on the land.

It got dark, and still Jesus had not come to them. And a great wind got up and came down on the lake, and the water was all stirred up. On that lake the wind can come down off the hills all at once and stand the water up in waves. The wind was against them. They rowed, and rowed, and the waves battered the boat, and it was slow, hard going; and the hours went by, and their arms ached. They had come three or four miles, and they were still out in the middle of all that black water, a long way from any shore. And he saw them. From the land, in the dark, he saw them straining at the oars. The night was counted in four watches, like the turns of men standing guard, and the fourth watch was the last one: from about three in the morning until the first grey light. That is when he came to them. Walking. On the water. He came right up alongside the boat — and he was going to go straight past them. They saw something out on the lake coming towards them in the dark, walking on the waves, and every one of them saw it, and every one of them was shaken. “It is a ghost!” And they cried out with fear. And straight away a voice they knew came across the water: “Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.”

And Peter called back out of the boat, “Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus said one word. “Come.” So Peter climbed down over the side of the boat, in the dark, in the middle of a lake, and put his feet down on the water. And the water held him. And he walked on it, out towards Jesus. The wind was still blowing. The waves were still standing up. And he was walking about on the top of them. And then he saw the wind — saw how strong it was, and the waves heaving up all round him — and he was afraid; and the moment he was afraid he began to go down. And he shouted three words: “Lord, save me!” And straight away — not after he had gone under, straight away — Jesus put out his hand and took hold of him. And holding on to him, he said, “You of little faith. Why did you doubt?” The others wanted him in the boat with them, and the two of them came up into the boat together — and the wind dropped. And the men in that boat bowed down in front of him, and said, “Truly you are God’s Son.” They were astonished — completely beside themselves. That same day they had watched five thousand men eat out of five loaves, and they still had not understood about the loaves. Their hearts had gone hard and slow. They had seen the wind go quiet for him once before, on this same lake, on another night.

And straight away the boat was at the land. They had come across to Gennesaret, a little plain of fields and orchards along the edge of the lake, and they tied the boat up there as the morning came. And the moment he stepped out of the boat, people knew who he was. The men of that place sent word out into all the country round about. People ran — all over that whole countryside — and began carrying their sick people about on their mats, the thin beds they lay on, to wherever they heard he was; and they brought him everyone who was ill. And wherever he went after that — into the villages, into the towns, out into the farms — they laid the sick people down in the open marketplaces where he would pass, and begged him to let them touch only the fringe of his cloak. Every man of Israel wore a tassel at each corner of his cloak, because God had told their people to, long ago, so that whenever they saw it they would remember what he had told them to do. And the sick people reached out from their mats for the tassel on his, as he went by. And every one who touched it was made well.