Today we have the story of the feeding of the five thousand with five small loaves of bread and two fish.

Mark 6:30-44

Jesus Feeds Five Thousand (Matthew 14.13-21; Luke 9.10-17; John 6.1-14)

30After the apostles returned to Jesus, they told him everything they had done and taught. 31But so many people were coming and going that Jesus and the apostles did not even have a chance to eat. Then Jesus said, “Let’s go to a place [b] where we can be alone and get some rest.” 32They left in a boat for a place where they could be alone. 33But many people saw them leave and figured out where they were going. So people from every town ran on ahead and got there first.

34When Jesus got out of the boat, he saw the large crowd that was like sheep without a shepherd. He felt sorry for the people and started teaching them many things.

35That evening the disciples came to Jesus and said, “This place is like a desert, and it is already late. 36Let the crowds leave, so they can go to the farms and villages near here and buy something to eat.”

37Jesus replied, “You give them something to eat.”

But they asked him, “Don’t you know that it would take almost a year’s wages to buy all of these people something to eat?”

38Then Jesus said, “How much bread do you have? Go and see!”

They found out and answered, “We have five small loaves of bread and two fish.” 39Jesus told his disciples to have the people sit down on the green grass. 40They sat down in groups of a hundred and groups of fifty.

41Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up toward heaven and blessed the food. Then he broke the bread and handed it to his disciples to give to the people. He also divided the two fish, so that everyone could have some.

42After everyone had eaten all they wanted, 43Jesus’ disciples picked up twelve large baskets of leftover bread and fish.

44There were five thousand men who ate the food.

Copyright © 1995 by American Bible Society

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 5:41 pm by dan and is filed under Mark for Lent 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.