Note Who The Hero Is

Jesus excels at working with the small. All week we’ve been looking at how Jesus fed thousands of people with one boy’s lunch pail. Along the way, John includes a few details that we don’t want to miss.

Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish.” - John 6:9

Note that the bread is small and the fish are small. It’s not just one boy’s meal, after all! And the fish would almost certainly have been salted - probably something like sardines. John points out that the loaves were made of barley - not the wheat flour bread of people who had money. So when you add it all up, John is making sure we know that Jesus is using the small lunch of a small, poor boy to feed thousands of people.

There’s something about how Jesus uses those on the margins - the children, the poor, the unemployed, the uneducated - to teach the rest of us what true faith looks like. Think about it: there’s a reason that the boy’s lunch is ‘on the table’ so to speak. It’s not like Andrew waded into the crowd looking for some hidden cache of food and this is all he could come up with. The only way this food could have showed up is if the boy had presented it to Jesus because he overheard the need to feed the people. So get this - a poor boy is showing up the ‘great’ disciples of Jesus. He’s willing to offer what he has for the needs of his community. And it’s enough.

Have you been close enough to Jesus to see this story enacted in your life, when those on the margins show up and save the day for the rest of us? If you’ve always had enough and never needed anything, perhaps you’re not the boy in the story - perhaps you’re Philip or Andrew. How do you respond to this strange turn of events, when those with little are the very ones who provide for everyone else?