This essay first appeared in our weekly Scripture reflection newsletter on June 21, 2025.
In today’s Gospel, the Twelve come to Jesus with what seems like an insurmountable problem. How can we possibly feed all these people who have come to listen to you? The situation seems so hopeless that the apostles tell Jesus that he simply needs to get rid of the crowds.
Their predicament may prompt you to recall the people of Israel wandering in the desert, asking Moses why he brought them to a place with no food. It also might prompt you to think about two more contemporary situations: migrants and refugees being told that there’s not enough for them, and many people’s sense of despair over how to respond to this and so many other pressing needs today. Sometimes it seems like despair is the most obvious and most rational response.
But not for Jesus. In the reign of God, two things are always true: first, there is always enough for everyone; and second, nothing is impossible with God.
That’s why Jesus reminds the Twelve that they cannot simply give up. That’s also why he tells them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They must have looked at one another and said, “What food?” Then they probably pointed to the five loaves and two fish at their feet. “For all these people?” And remember that Luke’s Gospel says that there are 5,000 men. There were probably equal amounts of women and children, as another Gospel points out. So the crowd was probably closer to 15,000 people. And they were to be fed with five loaves and two fishes. It must have seemed ridiculous.
In the reign of God, two things are always true: first, there is always enough for everyone; and second, nothing is impossible with God.
That’s the situation that so many of us feel like we are in today, given so many seemingly insurmountable challenges in our families, our communities, our church, our country and our world. I don’t think I need to fill in the blanks here. It can feel overwhelming. We say: “We can’t possibly do this.” “We can’t possibly address so many problems.” And “There’s not enough!” Just like the disciples felt.
But Jesus can take what little we offer and magnify it. Now, that may sound too supernatural, and in this story it is indeed a miracle that occurs. By the way, I don’t give too much credence to the idea that what really happened here was some sharing. New Testament scholars sometimes called this the “nice thought” explanation of this event: everyone secretly had some food hidden away and when they saw the disciples sharing, everyone brought out their food and there was enough for everyone.
Now, sharing is wonderful, but that explanation ignores two things. First, the disciples clearly say there’s no food. And second, this miracle is recorded in every single Gospel, and in two Gospels it happens twice: first with 4,000 and then with 5,000. We are meant to understand that something memorable, dramatic, mind-blowing happened—and that it had important ramifications. As the New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson writes, we’re meant to understand that “abundance is found not in the power to purchase with money, but in the power of the Lord, and those who give receive back even more extravagantly.”
Jesus can take what little we offer and magnify it.
Once again, Jesus can take what little we offer and magnify it. I’m sure you’ve had that experience in your own life. For example, you say something simple to someone, or do something simple for them, and they tell you later that it helped them all out of proportion to what you had imagined.
Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest and spiritual writer, once told me the story of a man who wrote to him and said he had to come to see him to thank him for something that had changed his life. So the man drove for hours and showed up and Richard didn’t remember him at all. The man said that many years ago when he was in distress and despairing about his path, Richard said to him, “You don’t need to know.” And the man said that those words helped him through his painful time and that he repeated them every day to himself. And Richard told me, “I can’t even remember saying that!”
There are so many things that we can say about Jesus, about the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes, and about the Eucharist. But these days, when we’re all feeling so overwhelmed, maybe it’s good simply to remember that we can always give what little we have, and trust that Jesus will take it, bless it, break it open and give it, magnifying even our own few loaves and fishes for the salvation of all.
