April 21 - Feed 5000 / A Teaching Moment

April 21 – Feed 5000 – A Teaching Moment

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. (John 6:1-15)

Do you ever hang around those people who seem to be teaching you all the time.  No matter what happens – there’s a lesson to be learned from it.  Dad was one of those people.  Is there a problem with the car?  Well, this might be a good time to teach me about sparkplugs or how to change the oil or any number of things.  It really didn’t matter what we came across, he always had some nugget of information to share.  Mom was the same way, but not quite so obvious with it.

If I had been Philip and received a question like that from Jesus, my knees probably would have weakened a little, knowing that this man had big expectations and if I didn’t give Him the answer He was looking for – there would be a teaching moment.  And there was.

Did you see that in there?  Jesus already knew what He was going to do … He set Philip up completely!  All the other disciples sat back and felt quite pleased with themselves because they had avoided the hot seat on this issue.  Andrew thought he was going to help Philip out a bit – he’d seen a boy with his lunch.  They all knew that wasn’t enough.

Limited by what they could see and what their life experience told them, they had no idea of the power of Jesus’ teaching moment.

He wasn’t teaching them about sharing or how to feed a large group.  He wasn’t even asking them to think outside the box.  He was asking them to think outside everything they knew or could imagine! He was teaching them about the power that they could access because they knew Him.  It was a MUCH bigger lesson than any of them could have foreseen.

We limit ourselves to what we can manage with our five senses and with our knowledge of what is real and what we have experience.  Imagine what the possibilities would be if we could eliminate those limitations and face life in that manner!

The worst thing about that teaching moment?  We still aren’t learning from it.