Jesus Tests: John 6:1-13

 Ordinary Time (July 2026)

Series: Jesus Moves 

 After this Jesus went across the Galilee Sea (that is, the Tiberias Sea). 2 A large crowd followed him, because they had seen the miraculous signs he had done among the sick. 3 Jesus went up a mountain and sat there with his disciples. 4 It was nearly time for Passover, the Jewish festival. 5 Jesus looked up and saw the large crowd coming toward him. He asked Philip, “Where will we buy food to feed these people?” 6 Jesus said this to test him, for he already knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip replied, “More than a half year’s salary worth of food wouldn’t be enough for each person to have even a little bit.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said, 9 “A youth here has five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that for a crowd like this?” 10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass there. They sat down, about five thousand of them. 11 Then Jesus took the bread. When he had given thanks, he distributed it to those who were sitting there. He did the same with the fish, each getting as much as they wanted. 12 When they had plenty to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather up the leftover pieces, so that nothing will be wasted.” 13 So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves that had been left over by those who had eaten. (CEB) 

 New City has been working its way through a series called—and I haven’t quite gotten the choreography for it yet, so bear with me—“Jesus Moves”. We’re looking at the ways Jesus acts and speaks and is in the gospels, as we follow to become more Christ-like and learn how we, too, can move through the world. 

 The feeding of the 5,000 is one of those Bible stories that many people kind of know even if we don’t know why or how we know it—it’s a common metaphor, a Western reference point for making something stretch unexpectedly. To Jesus, though, this wasn’t unexpected, and He invites His disciples to learn to live like big things can happen. The “after this” that begins today’s Scripture is Jesus healing a man at the pool of Bethsaida and then getting into it with the religious leaders about it because all this had happened on the Sabbath. Sabbath is for rest and if you’re healing, you’re not resting, said the leaders, and Jesus is pretty done with the notion that allowing suffering is fine if there’s a law we can use to justify it.

 After that, Jesus heads out to a new locale and a bunch of people follow Him because this Guy is doing some impressive things. Because this wasn’t a scheduled lecture with break time for lunch, things go long and Jesus realizes folks are bound to be hungry so He asks His disciple Philip, “Where will we buy food to feed these people?” The editorial comment afterward, that Jesus said this to “test” Philip, rests in the Greek word πειράζων [peiRAzon], which means “to make proof or trial of, put to the proof, whether with good or mischievous intent.”1 We don’t usually use “testing” someone in a positive way these days and it can seem kind of mean that Jesus, in a high-stress situation of being surrounded by thousands of hungry folks, is needling poor Philip. Maybe when we think of “testing” we automatically think of “failing,” as though Jesus is having a gotcha moment with His friend since Jesus “already knew what he was going to do.” 

 But Jesus is rarely a jerk; Jesus is always a teacher. After having healed a man and gotten yelled at for it and having to explain to the religious leaders that things aren’t always an either/or situation, Jesus is inviting His disciple, His friend, to look at this moment of a hungry crowd and dream. “Where will we buy food” is a leading question, sure, but it’s also a call into imagination—Jesus knows as well as everybody else that there’s no Kowalski’s nearby to which they can dash for a sandwich platter. Feeding 5,000 people—and that’s probably just the men since women and children were considered auxiliary in crowd counting—was absurd. That’s the stuff that emperors could do, not a ragtag group of fishermen and tax collectors. Jesus is not asking for a literal answer, although Philip gives Him one; He’s saying how shall we give people what they need with what we have? Are you ready to believe that God can do things way beyond your imagination?  And the disciples aren’t quite, because the story continues, but 5,000 people are fed anyway because God knows what God’s up to. We, like the disciples, come along for the wild ride.