Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Another story in the gospels speaks, similarly to the one about the wedding at Cana, of the abundance of the new thing that begins with Jesus. It is the story of the miraculous multiplication of loaves, handed down to us in the gospels no fewer than six times.¹¹ Let us follow the story on the basis of Mark 6:30-44.

The superscription used in almost all versions of the New Testament nowadays, “feeding of the five thousand,” is not especially apt. “Feeding” is reminiscent of school lunches and charitable meals, not particularly of a feast, a banquet, a groaning board. But Mark obviously wants to tell us about a banquet, since according to Mark 6:39 Jesus tells the disciples to see to it that all those present recline, that is, take their places for a banquet.

People in antiquity had two different styles for eating a meal. The ordinary, everyday meal was taken sitting down, just as it is today. But when they celebrated a feast or invited guests to a festal dinner they reclined at table, lying on bolsters and pillows, leaning on the left arm and eating with the right. So when the disciples are to invite the people to recline on the ground it means that now a dinner is about to be served at which people will take their time; it will be a feast at which all may eat their fill. It is true that the bolsters and pillows are lacking, but they are replaced by rich, green grass, which Mark mentions specifically (6:39).

That this is actually a festive banquet is shown by the end of the story, where we are told specifically that the disciples collected the pieces that were left over. That too was a fixed ritual at a Jewish banquet: after the main course the banquet hall was “cleansed” by collecting all the fallen crumbs of bread that were larger than an olive. In Mark 6:43 the disciples collect twelve basketfuls of the remnants of the meal.

Why is there so much left over? Not because the participants in the meal did not enjoy the food or had not eaten their fill, but because it was a banquet. There are always leftovers from a banquet, as every cook knows. For a festal meal there is always more cooked, fried, and baked than is really necessary, because celebrating includes extravagance and a festal meal provides more than just enough. There can be no stinginess with such a meal; we would rather offer too much than too little. When at the end of the story of the multiplication of the loaves there are twelve baskets left over, the intention is to say that Jesus was a good host; he had presented a glorious meal and made a feast possible.

Why did the early Christian communities tell such stories? What did Jesus have to do with festal banquets, and what did groaning boards have to do with the reign of God? According to biblical theology, a great deal! In Isaiah 25:6-8 we read:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

This text from Isaiah presupposes that God has entered into his eschatological royal reign. This is clear from the connection to what has gone before in Isaiah 24:21-23. God’s enthronement is followed by a banquet spread on Mount Zion. At this feast Israel shines with new glory. All the nations are invited to this enthronement meal, and during it the shroud of sorrow and suffering that lies over the nations is destroyed. Eschatological joy shines throughout the whole world and it will never come to an end.

For the prophets, what these images announce is still in the future. Jesus, by contrast, proclaims that the future has arrived. It is already present. The joy of the eschaton has begun. God’s banquet with his people Israel, which is to expand into a banquet for all nations, is now beginning. Jesus is so sure that the reign of God will now become reality in the form of an abundant banquet that he calls his poor and hungry hearers blessed:

Blessed are you who are poor,

    for yours is the kingdom of God!

Blessed are you who are hungry now,

    for you will be filled!

Blessed are you who weep now,

    for you will laugh! (Luke 6:20-21)

As assurance of a reign of God that will come someday, some time, these statements in the Sermon on the Plain would have been utterly cynical, even a ridiculing of the audience. One may only promise the hungry that they will be filled if one expects that fulfillment not in the great beyond or in an uncertain future but in one that is already beginning. Jesus is altogether certain: that future is already present as an overflowing gift of God. He is already experiencing that future as a fascinating now.