NOTES for Joh 6:5-6
The story of the miraculous feeding of a large number of people with a minimal amount of food is repeated in the Gospel more than once. In John's account there is an interesting nuance: when Jesus asks Philip a question, He already knows the answer. He Himself knows what He will do. The question turns out to be more of a kind of test for the disciple: what does he think? Of course, one could interpret this as a kind of test of trust in the Savior Himself. But the issue is not only Philip's trust in Jesus.
The issue is first of all where, in what world, Philip lives: in the Kingdom or on the untransformed earth. This is what determines the possibilities. And there is only one way to become a true disciple of the Savior: by sharing His life with Him. The life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world. When five loaves and two small fish are enough for several thousand people, it is clear that this can only be about the Kingdom: in our untransformed world such a thing is impossible. But this is only an episode, one that touched both the five thousand who had to be fed and, of course, the apostles themselves. Gospel history is made up of such episodes. But what is there between them?
After all, the apostles spent more than one year with Jesus, and besides those moments when the Kingdom was opened to them visibly and tangibly, they also lived somehow, communicated somehow with the Teacher, thought and felt something... Were they in the Kingdom the rest of the time? Jesus' question to Philip is a test of abiding in the Kingdom. Philip reacts like a normal person living an ordinary earthly life: they need to send to the nearest town for food; they need money.
The alternative simply does not occur to him. And that means there is no talk of the Kingdom in his life at that particular moment. Nor, probably, in the lives of the other disciples. Of course, very soon they will remember the Kingdom. They will remember it in connection with the next miracle. But one cannot become an inhabitant of the Kingdom if one remembers it only after the next miracle. And Jesus wants to wake Philip up, hinting to him at something greater than what he sees in this world. But only a miracle can wake him up. Time will pass, and everything will be different. Later. After Pentecost. For now, things are as they are.