This story is so important it’s in all four of the gospels, with the details remarkably congruent. It was the spring of the year. They were in the area of Capernaum. The apostles returned from their ministry tour and reported to Jesus. He said, “’Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest a while.’ He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat.” So they got into a boat again and headed to Bethsaida, close to where the Jordan emptied into the Sea of Galilee, in the hills to the north and east of town and the surrounding villages and farms. The grass was green. But when they got there they found that the people had followed them on foot and they were again surrounded. Each gospel writer records the size of the crowd…huge! “Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.”
That went on for most of the day. Question…what would it take in such an agrarian culture, in the spring of the year, planting season, to pull people away from their fields and flocks and shops? Answer…it is clear that following Jesus was, for some of them, a matter more important than their immediate need for food or security for themselves or their family.
Can you imagine the scene? Weather; partly cloudy with a breeze from the west, in the upper 6o’s or lower 70’s. Green hills all around, with flocks of goats and sheep from Bethsaida and the villages to the south of them. If they all fell quiet and held their breath they would be able to hear the Jordan rolling over small rapids before it spilled into the Sea of Galilee. But they weren’t quiet. A crowd mostly masculine, but liberally sprinkled with women and children, spoken of by the gospel writers as numbering 5,000 if you only counted the men. I think you could easily double that number for an accurate count. Voices in different octaves, a smell of unwashed bodies, a search for sheltered places for the elimination of body wastes, all the activities of a large crowd.
Have you ever wondered how Jesus spoke to such crowds and made himself heard? I was a public speaker for most of my life and occasionally spoke in outdoor settings. It’s tough to be heard outside. A speaker with a large voice could arrange to be heard by about 1,000, max. But in this story Jesus taught for most of the day, to a crowd probably ten times that number. And he was sitting down with his disciples closest to him. How did the crowd possibly hear?
Writers of that day tell us that the speaker (Jesus) would speak a capsule of thought. His speech would go a certain distance. At the edge of that distance certain people would assume the task of remembering what he said, turning, and repeating it strongly to the people farther away. So the message would go father until it was weak again, and there would be repeated by yet another person, over and over until it traveled to the back of the crowd. Pretty cool! It was rather like a stone dropped into the water, rippling out in waves until the edge of the pond was reached. Imagine how it was: If Jesus used that method he would not speak continuously, but in capsules, waiting between them for the other speakers to pass on what he said before continuing. The crowd was attentive, but not quiet, as the message traveled from front to back, with crowd reaction heard as it rippled through. It gave people time to hear, time to think, and time to make a memory.
In that setting the day passed until it was late afternoon. People were becoming hungry. The disciples asked Jesus to send the people away so that they could go in to Bethsaida and nearby farms and villages to buy food. “But Jesus said, ‘You feed them.’” Of course they protested their inability to do so. “Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. ‘There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?’” Of course, he knew what he was about to do, so he did it, using that small amount to divide over and over in a miraculous way until all were fed and twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered up.
I do not find this unusual…not from Jesus, not at that time, not with that crowd. Those people had been following him. They had seen his miracles as he contravened nature. On that hillside he simply did again what he had been doing all along, telling the good news of the Kingdom and caring for their needs. A bit later he would remind them that he was their good shepherd and their bread of life. By the time he told them those things they had little trouble believing him. His actions had delivered that message already.
Prayer: “Great Shepherd, how I wish I could have been there to witness that day. Perhaps in Heaven you will replay that event for us all to see. Then again, maybe not, for there you will host us all at the great wedding feast of the lamb and his bride and we will never hunger again. Between now and then feed our souls with your truth and our hearts with your hope. Be our shepherd in this day. Amen.”