NOTES for Joh 6:5-14
Jesus clearly uses every opportunity to show the people listening to Him what the Kingdom is. And often these opportunities are connected with a meal, with food, with being fed. To some of us today, such manifestations of the Kingdom may appear "low" and "unspiritual." But it is important to remember that in those days a meal was never simply the consumption of food. It always began with the blessing of bread, and if there was wine on the table, of the wine as well. No one sat down at the table without such a blessing. And with this approach every meal became sacred, because God Himself was always invited to take part in it. And the breaking of bread, if there was bread on the table, was also an essential part of it, since bread, like wine, was in any case blessed separately. With this attitude toward the meal, it became a form of communion with God in which all who had gathered at the table took part.
And Jesus, as we see, uses this in order to bring His listeners into communion with the Kingdom, to show them what new life in the renewed world can be. Of course, the people sitting on the ground in expectation of the meal knew perfectly well how bread and wine were blessed. But they hardly expected the blessing to have such an effect. And the effect was plain: the food, which had seemed to be very little, was enough for everyone.
Such is the nature of the Kingdom, where matter is completely subject to spirit. Jesus' listeners began their meal in our world, not yet transformed, according to its laws, and finished it in the Kingdom, according to the laws of the Kingdom. There could have been no better testimony: after all, it is always better to see once than to hear a hundred times, and this applies to the Kingdom more than to anything else. Of course, the people listening to Jesus did not fully understand what had happened. But they received the experience of being in the Kingdom, and such an experience is not forgotten.