Christ, Our Bread

The Gospel story you have just heard must have been very important in the life of the early Christians. It is interesting to note that except for the crucifixion of Christ it is the only story to appear in all four of the Gospels. Moreover, it appears in some of the Gospels more than once, in slightly altered form. It is reasonable to assume that the early Christians found this episode so helpful that they wanted to be sure that we, in later generations, would get the message.

The story is a very simple and a very familiar one — probably one of the first many of us learned as children. Jesus was out in the wilderness with His disciples. They saw the crowds converging on them — thousands of people. It was mealtime. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was mingling close enough to the people to realize that there was a little boy who had with him five barley loaves and two fish. And…